Chapter 53
Dario “Dash” Mangiacavallo
For a moment, my focus lingered on Vincent standing in the corner, laughing with Violetta and Tyler.
Fear gripped my soul, its icy talons sinking deep.
If he lost me…christ, I didn’t even want to think about that possibility.
He would go over the deep end and never come back.
That was, if my parents didn’t get spiteful and take him out, as well.
Slowly sliding the pocket door aside to close it, I bowed my chin and closed my eyelids.
It never dawned on me my parents would find out about me suddenly being gay, and it certainly hadn’t occurred they’d be so upset, they’d track me down and threaten to kill me.
I honestly never thought they’d care enough to acknowledge me, at all.
Clearing my throat, I walked over to the desk and sat down, looking around at the two walls covered in bookshelves filled with novels and sports memorabilia.
Gazing at the computer monitor full of different security angles, I focused on the porch, seeing the scene replaying from earlier.
It was a small space, barely eight feet by eight, but it had served me well over the years.
Would it now be where Tyler sat to write his songs?
I huffed and looked out the window. Instead of seeing the carport and the screened in porch just beyond, I found Mary’s grotesque, rotten face staring in. Clucking my teeth and rolling my eyes, I threw my head back and groaned.
“Oh, fuck off, Mary. Jesus, I don’t need your shit right now.”
I pulled my cellphone from my pocket, activated the screen, and searched my contacts. Finding the one I was looking for, I tapped it and glanced back at the empty view. Huffing, my elbow banged to the surface to rub at my temple.
“Well, well, well,” a deep, baritone voice chortled in my ear after four rings. “Where the hell have you been?”
I chuckled, some of the distress fading. “Been around. What’ve you been up to, Maximus?”
“Living life, one day at a time.”
“That’s good to hear. How’s Evie?”
He coughed, the mood instantly changing. “Uh, ahem. I, actually, wouldn’t know. We, uh, don’t exactly talk too much these days.”
My brows furrowed and I sat up. “What? No way.” That made no sense, those two had always been as close as Violetta and Vincent, if not more so. “How long?”
“Been a minute,” he muttered.
“What happened?”
“She doesn’t approve of my wicked life choices,” he sighed, his attitude now melancholy. “She’s pissed I’m following in my dad’s footsteps instead of choosing a so-called legit path.”
I clucked my teeth and slouched low in the seat, resting my head to the back. Staring at the ceiling, I sighed. “Sorry, man. Maybe she’ll come around.”
“Hm. We’ll see. Maybe one day when she’s a little older. Right now, she’s still kind of sheltered under Mom’s thumb. I’m hoping college will open her mind a bit, but, for now, I’m just going to back off. So,” he huffed, changing the subject. “How’s life in Alabama?”
I snorted and bowed my chin to my chest, lifting the hem of my shirt to eye the skin scarring over the worst wound. “Does everyone in the family know what I’ve been up to all these years?”
“Pretty much,” he chuckled. “You really think I don’t have eyes watching you, making sure you’re okay?”
My fingertips gently tracing the puckered skin, I glanced toward the window once more. Mary was out there, pacing the deck off to the side. Rolling my eyes, I grumbled, “You really mean that?”
“Of course, I do. You’re family.”
“No matter what?”
He paused, the mood now shifting to tension. “Okay, sounds like we’re about to have a serious discussion. Start from the beginning, lay out the key points, and get to the ending as quickly as possible.”
“Is it safe to talk openly?”
“You know it is.”
“Okay. It started with my wife disappearing,” I stressed to indicate my true meaning. “Because she was cheating on me.”
“Okay, I think I heard about that.”
“Yeah, well, before I could finish processing that bullshit, the leader of the Serpents, not the head honcho, but the one just beneath him, Jackyl, decided he wanted me and several other people dead.”
“Ah, yes, yes. Now this, I definitely heard of. Your parents were very upset at the condition of their home when it was all over with.”
I snorted and rolled my eyes yet again. No doubt, the cops had been all over them, wanting to know what connection, if any, they had to the shootout that happened that night.
“Worried about the house, not their son.”
He huffed, his tone harsh when he spoke. “They never were very in tune with their emotions, but they do love you, Dario.”
“Yeah, so much, they popped up on my doorstep today to tell me they wanted me dead.”
“I beg your finest pardon?” he exploded, something banging in the background.
“Yup. I had no idea they were coming, they just rang the doorbell, told me to do as they said, or they’d get rid of me.”
“And what the fuck, exactly, are they wanting you to do?”
“Not get married.”
He paused again. “Married?”
“Yup,” I sighed, sitting up to lean into the desk again.
If I was worried about what gang life would be like as a gay man, it was nothing compared to how the mafia would embrace me now.
This conversation could go one of two ways.
Either he was going to embrace me and protect my choices, or Maximus Giordana would get rid of me before my parents could, and if that was the case, I much rather prefer my parents because there was a deviance to him that made him scary.
He enjoyed killing, thrived off the depravity and torture and pain he inflicted.
At least with my folks, it would be over with quickly. The faster, the better, they always said. Quick and simple left less mess to clean up later.
There would also be no running from the mafia. If things ever got nasty here, we could flee to Italy to my little villa. No small gang from Alabama could touch us there. The mafia could get us anywhere, there was no hiding.
“Uh. Ahem.” My ankles crossed and tucked beneath the chair, my eyelids closing. “My…fiancé…I’m…His name is Vincent. Vinny. Vin. He’s a brother. In the Serpents. I got the gayness. I’m gay. Now. Maybe always? I dunno. I’m marrying a dude, Max.”
Dead. Silence.
I grimaced, my insides lurching painfully. Looked like I made an error in judgement. Shit. This was about to turn bad, quickly.
I coughed and squirmed, suddenly coated in sweat.
“Gayness?”
“Mm hm,” I croaked, pinching the bridge of my nose.
“You know that’s not a word, right?”
Utterly frozen, my eyelids snatched wide to stare past my fingers at the window. Not even paying Mary any attention, my heartbeat was thumping rapidly at the quiet chuckle added to that comment.
“Uh, ahem. What?”
“Gayness. It’s not a word, Dario. Is your fiancé new to homosexuality, as well?”
I squinted and sat up, beyond confused right now. “Uh, no? No. He’s…always been gay. Ain’t even ever been with a woman.”
“And he lets you use that word?”
“Yeah? Um, yeah. Why?”
“Wow. He must really love you, then, because I’d knock you the fuck out for being so disrespectful.”
My pulse skipped and my insides turned over, my breaths growing shorter. “Dis…disrespect?”
“Yeah, you don’t call it ‘gayness,’ Dario. If this is the life’s path you’re choosing to follow now, you have to honor it. Actually, fuck that. You don’t have to label it, at all, but don’t treat it with ignorance.”
“What…wait, wait, wait. Hang on. You ain’t…gonna kill me?”
He snorted. “First of all, I get it, you live out in the deep south and you guys have your ways about you, but I know where the fuck you came from, so don’t speak to me like you’re some uneducated hick. Talk to me properly, Dario. Secondly, why the hell would I kill you over this?”
“Over this? Because Mom and Pops want me dead over this.”
“That really what they said?”
“Yeah, like I said, they just showed up and I ain’t…
” I took a deep breath, calmed my nerves, and exhaled through my nose.
“I have no clue how they even knew where to find me, but they showed up unexpectedly, told me I was humiliating the family name, and warned me to break things off with Vinny, or they would prove just how dispensable I was to them.”
“Hm. What else?”
“That’s pretty much it. My future brother-in-law had been watching us and stepped in when Pops attacked—”
“He put his hands on you?” he blasted, ringing my ear. “Knowing you’re still healing from several gunshot wounds?”
“Yeah, he did. And Tyler rushed outside—”
“Tyler? Tyler Warren, right?”
Struck dumb for a moment, my jaw fell, wondering just how much everyone knew of my life out here in Mobile. All these years, I thought I’d been off their radar, and no one knew shit. Wrong, they knew every single detail and, honestly, I shouldn’t be surprised.
“Yeah.”
“You think I can get an autograph?” he asked, his voice changing to curious. “Evie loves him.”
“Uh…y-yeah. Sure.”
“This is so cool. One of these days, when things smooth out between us, we need to come visit so you can introduce them. She will flip out.”
A smile tugging the corner of my mouth, something suddenly dawned on me, my own words sinking into my brain.
When I married Vincent, and Tyler married Violetta, we would all be related, family.
My brother-in-law was going to be a two-time Grammy winning country singer.
How the hell had all this change happened so quickly?
“Max?”
“Hm?”
“My parents?”
“Oh, oh. Right. Uh, y-yeah. I got that. Don’t you worry about them, Dario. I’ll have a little chat with them, and they won’t ever even contact you anymore. I’ll make sure they keep sending monthly allowances for Piera, but, otherwise, you’ll not have to worry about them ever again.”
“And you’re okay with me and the gayness?”
“I’m not okay with that word, Dario,” he chuckled. “Have you forgotten what we did when we were kids?”
Frowning, I racked my brain but couldn’t figure out what he was referring to.
“Oh, my god, you did,” he laughed. “We fucked around, Dario. How can you not recall that?”