No one said a word as Ma and my uncles sat on the sofas. Christian and Dante stood to the side, watching and listening for what was about to happen. The words were coming, I knew they were, and as soon as they were spoken, nothing would be the same. It wouldn’t be my dad everyone looked to for answers, but me.
My heart hammered in my chest, and I wasn’t sure which of them to look at while I waited for everything to change.
“We have a problem,” Ma started.
I whipped my attention to her. Those weren’t the words I’d expected to hear.
Ma looked to Uncle Alonzo, and once he nodded, she continued, “Your dad wanted you to take over the…business.” I blinked. I’d known this since I was a little kid. It wasn’t like the prospect of me being head of the Beretta Mafia was new to me. I’d been taking on more responsibility lately, almost as if my father knew something nobody else did. “But…there are rules.”
“Rules?” I snorted, not expecting that word. “What kind of rules?”
“Rules for you to become boss,” Uncle Alonzo said, his deep voice gaining my attention. His dark-brown hair was peppered with gray, and even though he was sixty-one years old, he didn’t look a day over forty.
“What the fuck you talkin’ about?” I stood, the bottle of whisky held tightly in my hand. “Dad died, and I’m the oldest son. That’s all anyone needs to understand.” I stormed from around the desk and toward the door. I wasn’t going to sit here and listen to this. I’d buried my dad hours ago, and now they were telling me I had to follow some fuckin’ rules I’d never even heard of? Fuck that. I was the new boss of the Beretta family, whether people liked it or not. It was my birthright. I’d been a captain of my own soldiers for years, I was used to dictating what would happen around me, and I wasn’t about to change that now.
“Wait,” Ma shouted, her tone frantic. “Wait, Lorenzo.” I halted, my gaze focused on the office door. I couldn’t turn around, not with how I felt at that moment. I needed time to process everything that had happened over the last few days. And I needed to drink this entire bottle of alcohol, and possibly another one just to numb all of my swirling thoughts.
Rules? Fuckin’ rules?
“Lorenzo,” Dante said, his voice so much like mine. “Listen to what they have to say.” Dante had always been the calm brother, the one who took it easy, but that was because he didn’t have to do what I did. Things weren’t expected of him, the second son. He hadn’t seen what I had, but now Dad was gone, and he wouldn’t have a choice but to do more, just like I hadn’t for my entire life.
“Three rules,” Uncle Antonio said. He was the stricter uncle. The one who didn’t take an ounce of shit. He was also married to the gentlest woman I’d ever known, my auntie Vivianna. Both of my uncles weren’t blood-related but were married to my dad’s sisters. They’d come up in the business and knew it inside out, but they were also in here, trying to steer me in a direction I had no idea existed.
I took a breath, trying to sort through my scattered thoughts. I took another gulp of the burning alcohol, winced, then turned to face them.
“The Enterprise needs to agree to you becoming boss,” Uncle Antonio continued, standing. He brushed off the lapels of his jacket, his lips spread into a thin line. He looked stern now, but I knew how quickly that sternness could turn to terrifying anger. I’d watched him torture a man for twenty hours straight without a flicker of emotion. “They have all agreed, as we knew they would.” I nodded, trying to take it all in. I’d known The Enterprise had to be unanimous because my father had already told me that. The Enterprise consisted of five bosses of differing organizations, each working in tandem with each other.
“Okay,” I ventured, stepping toward everyone. “What else?”
Uncle Antonio kept his gaze locked on to mine. “You need to be thirty to take over as boss.”
“What?” I sneered. “Why?”
“Have you heard of the 1924 massacre?” Uncle Alonzo asked, and I frowned. Dad had told me about it once upon a time. The Mafia boss who killed his wife and two young kids. He’d said the pressure of being boss at twenty-four was too much, right before he pulled the trigger and killed himself, leaving behind a bloody mess that authorities couldn’t explain, at least not publicly.
“Yeah. Dad told me about it.” My shoulders drooped. It made sense, but…
“I don’t turn thirty for another three weeks.”
“It’ll give us the time we need,” Uncle Alonzo said, a small smile on his face.
“Time for what?” Everyone was suspiciously silent, their gazes flickering everywhere but at me. They’d said that there were three rules, but they’d only told me two, which meant they knew I wouldn’t like the final rule. A rule I had no choice but to follow if I wanted to continue my father’s legacy. “Tell me,” I demanded, using the tone that I knew would get me answers.
“You have to get married,” Ma blurted out. I blinked. “To an Italian girl.”
“What?” I wasn’t asking her to repeat what she’d said, but she did anyway. I couldn’t believe what she was saying. “Bullshit,” I growled. “That’s fuckin’ bullshit.”
“Doesn’t change the rule whether you think it’s right or not,” Uncle Antonio said, his voice easygoing for the first time. It sounded so unlike him. “Arranged marriage. It’s the old rules.”
“Wait.” I laughed and stepped toward them. “You’re saying that it has to be arranged?”
“Well, I’m guessing you don’t have anyone ready to marry you, son,” Uncle Alonzo said, wincing at the last word. He’d always used that name with me, but it held more right now—more on this day, more when my father dying meant I had to get married to a good fuckin’ Italian girl.
I didn’t want to be weighed down by a woman at home, waiting to see if I survived the violence I faced every day. I didn’t need her to be in the back of my mind as I was dishing out punishments to men who tried to break our rules.
Fuck.
Rules. It shouldn’t have surprised me what was happening right now, not when we were surrounded by rules and hierarchy.