Chapter 8
CHAPTER 8
STEFANO
The doctor finished stitching up my arm while Tony and I talked about possible suspects in the campaign against me and how I wanted to proceed.
The bullet had lodged itself deep in the muscle, which hurt like a motherfucker when the doc got a grip on it and pulled it out. The pain would continue for a while, I knew that as well as the fact that it would take some time to heal.
Doc assured me the wound would fully heal with no permanent damage.
Once we got a good look at the bullet, my opinion about the shooter changed. We originally thought someone had fired high-powered rifle rounds, but a low caliber round came out of my arm, not something meant for a precision rifle.
An experienced hit man wouldn’t make that kind of mistake.
Whoever made the hit certainly wasn’t a professional.
He couldn’t have been very far away from Con Amore. Probably holed up in a tree less than two blocks away at best. Setting up like that had been a stupid mistake. A branch might have broken, a dog could have barked, or a pedestrian could have seen him.
Too many unreliable variables with the potential to give away his position.
Yes, he knew enough to pull the trigger all right, but that was about all he knew.
Dumb fucker.
And when I found him, he would be a dead fucker.
Since the job had been so messy and disorganized, that helped us rule out most of the people, I thought I might have pissed off enough to pull a stunt like this.
The list was a long one.
I had been reckless the past few years, living and working like I had nothing to lose, because I thought it was the truth.
I hadn’t known I had something to protect all this time…
Tony interrupted my thoughts while pacing by the fireplace.
“I don’t get it, boss. Who would know how to find a kid you didn’t even know about? And I mean, well, shooting up Con Amore is one thing, but killing those cops? Everyone in the business knows that draws more heat. Looks to me like the bastard panicked.”
“The whole thing was weak,” I said, “even for a rookie. Maybe he was just sent to deliver a powerful message, and he got caught up in it more than he should have. I don’t know. That doesn’t feel right either.”
I poured myself another drink, then waited as the doc finished up with my arm.
He tied off the stitches, applied gauze, and then wrapped a linen bandage tightly around my biceps.
I clenched my teeth and flexed my jaw to keep from grunting.
No one in the room would blame me for expressing my discomfort, but my father had instilled the habit of hiding my pain at a young age.
Real men didn’t show their weaknesses to others.
Being strong meant you suffered in silence.
A knock came at the door. I motioned for Tony to answer it. He drew his pistol and slowly opened the door, positioning himself between me and whoever stood on the other side.
Overkill. No one unwanted would get past my enforcers and enter the house.
My first thought was that my soon-to-be father-in-law had returned to improve the terms of our agreement for his daughter’s hand.
But then Tony holstered his weapon and stepped aside, giving me a clear view into the hallway.
It was the boy.
His gaze swept around the room. He ignored everything until he settled his eyes on me.
“Can we talk? Alone?” he asked.
I met his gaze and held it, then flicked my wrist at Tony and the doc.
“Give us the room.”
Doc quickly finished with the tape, repacked his bag, and headed for the door.
“I’ll come back tomorrow, sir, to change the dressing and examine you again for any signs of infection.”
Tony went to the door, holding it open to usher the doc out while gesturing for the kid to step inside.
“I'll get started on those leads,” he said.
As he and the doc left the room, the boy kept his eyes locked on me.
I motioned for him to come closer and take a seat on the antique couch my mother had picked out for my father when I was about this boy’s age. If she’d known a child would be sitting on it now, grandson or not, she would have killed me.
“Do you want something to drink?” I asked.
I didn’t know if we had anything appropriate for his age. What the hell did a kid his age drink?
“I might have chocolate milk or something more suitable for you in the kitchen.”
“Just water,” he said, taking a seat.
I walked over to the stocked bar in my study and poured him a glass, dropped in an orange slice and a cherry, and then mixed myself an old-fashioned.
After handing him his glass and taking a seat in the chair opposite the couch, we sat there for a moment in an oddly comfortable silence, taking each other in, gathering our thoughts, and sipping our drinks.
He looked so much like the pictures of me as a child, but with the added stoicism that reminded me of my older brother Anthony.
“Where does your mother think you are right now?” I asked.
“Asleep,” he said, “She’s taking a bath. That’s where she likes to think. She’ll be there for probably an hour.”
No sign of shame or any other indication that he thought he might have stepped out of line.
The instant image of Val soaking in the bathtub entered my mind, but I quickly pushed it aside.
“And why are you here if you should be in bed sleeping?”
“I have questions,” he said with a shrug. “I’m pretty sure you have answers.”
To a child, I supposed that would make perfect sense.
“I think I have more questions than answers myself, but I’ll tell you what I can,” I said.
“You won’t just lie to me, will you?” he asked. “I want the truth.”
The way he said it sounded nothing like an attempted insult or insinuation that I was some pathological liar. His question was genuine. The boy simply wanted to know beforehand whether I would choose to be up front with him or to treat him like the child he was.
All things considered, his question was more than fair. He didn’t know me, my name, my face, or my reputation.
“I will answer as honestly as I can, boy.”
He nodded like that was an acceptable answer.
“Are you my dad?”
Nothing like getting straight to the point.
“I think so,” I said. “We can do a DNA test to make sure.”
He shook his head without breaking eye contact.
“We can, I guess. But I don’t think we have to.”
I finished my drink and set the crystal tumbler on the coffee table between us.
“No, neither do I.”
“She has a picture of you in a drawer at home. She thinks I never saw it. You look different in the picture. Younger or happier or something. But I still think it’s you.”
I was confident I knew exactly which photo it was. The day we had taken it, Val and I were on the same couch I used earlier to shield us from bullets. She’d made a joke I couldn’t remember now, but I remembered how surprised I was to hear her making dirty jokes at all.
Then she pulled out her camera and snapped the candid photo of us together. It had perfectly captured her beautiful smile, aimed directly at the lens, and my face turning away mid-laugh.
She’d said she would send it to me, but she never did.
“So what are you gonna do about all this?” he asked, pulling me from the memory.
“I don't know. I didn’t know about you until a few hours ago. I don't even know your name. I mean, she called you Enzo earlier. Is that right?”
“Yeah. My name is Enzo Salvatore Salera. Why didn't she tell you about me?”
I pulled in a deep breath, trying to figure out the best way to answer. I knew I should tell him to ask his mother instead of me, but the boy deserved answers from us both, didn’t he?
He deserved whatever truth I could give him.
I couldn’t help but wonder just how intentional his middle name had been.
Val had known me as Stefano Salvatore before she discovered the truth—the fake last name I’d given her to hide who I really was. Was that where the name had come from? Was that her way of admitting to the world who Enzo’s father really was?
“Your mother and I weren't together very long,” I said. “I wasn’t completely honest with her back then about who I am, and when she found out on her own, she left me.”
“Well, who are you?”
That question shouldn’t have thrown me as much as it did. How could I answer that honestly? How could I tell the child I was a criminal, a mafia boss? That I ran one of the most vicious family businesses on the East Coast? That my family traded in arms, drugs, extortion, and bribed city officials?
I cleared my throat and settled for the middle ground.
“I'm a man whose family obligation dictates his life more than I would have liked.”
“That’s why Mama left and hid me from you? Because of your obligations?”
“I believe so, yes.”
We stared at each other, and I couldn’t bring myself to leave it at that. This boy, however clever he thought he was, however strong, still needed to understand the type of world he’d just entered. The type of danger that now defined his very existence.
“You should know that being my son comes with risks. A significant number of them. More so if you were legitimate, if your mother and I had married before you were born. But the fact remains, a lot of things are going to change for you. There are significant benefits, but also sizable drawbacks.”
“Is that why you didn’t want to marry her?”
The lump in my throat urged me to turn him away, cast him out of my study this very fucking second, end this conversation before this child’s uncanny ability to draw these truths out of me like water from a faucet undid what remained of my composure.
But I couldn’t.
"That's one of the reasons, yes," I said.
His questions just kept coming.
The more the boy talked, the more he reminded me of my brother—blunt, direct, straight to the point. He wasted no time with pleasantries or asking questions to which he truly didn’t care to know the answer.
A trait like this could serve Enzo well if he learned how to apply it properly. If not, he might end up like Anthony. Dead before his twenty-eighth birthday.
“Your turn to answer a few questions for me, Enzo.”
“Okay. I'll tell you what I can.”
After parroting my own words back to me, a sly smile curved his lips. Good. He was smarter than Anthony.
“Most kids your age wouldn't know how to deal with any of this,” I began. “Sometimes even I don't know how to deal with this. But you're sitting there, so calm after all the violence tonight, and finding out your mother’s been hiding you from me all these years. How do you do that?”
Enzo took another sip of water from his crystal glass, then set it on a coaster on the wooden table.
“It’s always been just me and Mama and the café. Well, her nonna too. I don’t think she was Mama’s real grandma, but she loved her like that. Before Nonna died, her mind got sick and started falling apart.
“She told me stories about her kids and how they died and the mafia. It made her so sad, but she didn’t stop talking.
“One day she was telling me about her last son and how he got in trouble. How he died because powerful men used him as a pawn. That was when Nonna told me why my mom has her secrets too.
“I don’t think she knew what she was saying, but she still knew a lot. That my mom was keeping a secret from me. After Nonna died, I was going through some of her things and found where Mama keeps her secrets. Some of them anyway."
“What kind of secrets?” I asked.
Enzo looked me in the eye with one brow slightly raised, the same way my mother had whenever I’d acted up and earned her disapproval.
“The kind I shouldn’t be talking about,” he said. “If you really wanna know, ask her.”
The way Enzo seemed to look through me and yet see absolutely everything was more than a little unnerving.
My father had been able to do the same thing, especially when someone tried to hide a certain truth from him. He could sniff it out like the best bloodhound on a trail.
Now I could practically see the wheels turning in this boy’s head as he pondered his next moves, as if he were calculating all the outcomes of every scenario and then choosing his actions accordingly.
“My point,” Enzo continued, “is that I know Mama had to make really hard choices in her life. I know her choices have always been to protect me. So when she keeps a secret from me, I know Mama has a good reason.”
I nodded, searching his face for clues, but there were none.
“I understand. And you don't want to tell me what those reasons might be.”
“I think what happened tonight is one of them. Something she was trying to keep me safe from.”
Again that eyebrow arched, reminding me of my mother and her silent warnings that I knew better than to act in whatever way she disapproved of so much.
“Maybe it is,” I conceded. “In that case, why don’t we talk about a few things your mother won’t object to?”
That seemed agreeable enough to him. Enzo asked me questions about my family, which I answered as honestly as I felt was appropriate.
I told him I was the last one of us, that I had a sister who was married into another family. I told him my father and brother had passed and that my mother had followed shortly after, though I didn’t divulge how.
I got the impression that Enzo learned more from my conversational pivots and strategic silences than he did from my answers.
I asked him about school, what subjects he liked, which he didn’t like, and what his goals were.
The boy lit up when he talked about how much he enjoyed reading and exploring new worlds, fictional or otherwise, and watching the movie that played out in his head whenever he dove into a good book.
I understood the feeling at a surprisingly profound level.
“You obviously read at an advanced level for your age,” I said. “And you enjoy it, which is half the battle right there, if you ask me. It makes me wonder, though, why your mother still reads to you.
“I'm sure you could blaze through those books yourself in less than half the time. So why keep indulging her with bedtime stories? I would have expected you to outgrow something like that by now.”
Enzo finished his water and set his empty glass down in the exact middle of the coaster. Then he looked me in the eye in a way that most grown men didn't have the balls to do and replied with a simple answer.
“Because it makes her happy.”
I nodded slowly, trying to mask the unfamiliar tightness in my chest at his words.
“I should go back before she finds out I'm gone,” he said.
We both stood.
“Do I need to show you back to your room?” I asked.
“No, thanks. I can find it.”
Enzo headed for the door, reached for the handle, and paused before turning back to face me.
“One other thing.”
“What's that, Enzo?”
“If you ever point a gun at Mama again, I will come at you no matter how big you are, and I won’t stop until you kill me.”
I suppressed a grin and nodded.
Then he opened the door and stepped through it as if he’d said nothing more threatening than a casual goodnight.
That said more about the boy than anything he’d told me in that last half hour.
Plenty of grown men who’d lived their entire lives inside the mafia didn’t have the nerve to pull off something like that, let alone do it with such unwavering bravado.
It didn’t matter that Val had tried to keep my son from me.
Even if she had succeeded, Enzo was born to lead. It was in him just as surely as it had always been in me.
Politics or business, criminal or otherwise, he would grow up to occupy whatever position of power he wanted.
And he would have the strength to keep it.
Yes, this boy belonged to me.