“Isn’t that how this works? I think so. While being made to work for your father, I witnessed a great deal, saw how you men operate in order to maintain fear in the people that serve you.”
“Watch yourself,” I warn, putting my hand on the gun.
“Please, stop the charade.” He pushes aside his beer.
I laugh, and I almost admire the guy for his candidness. “It’s your daughter, Mr. Gallo. I want your daughter.”
Stefano shifts in his chair, listening to me, waiting to hear the context of my meaning.
“As impossible as it may sound—hell I’ve struggled with it too—but Mia and I have this, this thing that tethers us together. And trust me, life would be easier if this wasn’t the case, but I can’t go on pretending that it’s nothing.”
“And you expect me to believe this?” The old man eyes me up and down. “A moment ago, I was ready to die, you had your gun against my head, and now you’re telling me that what? You’re in love with my daughter?”
“Yes,” I agree. “Haven’t you ever wished you could go back, change that last-minute decision you made that could have altered your life for the better? Well, I realized just then that any future after I pull the trigger, would be one without Mia. And I don’t think I could handle that.”
“So why are you telling me this? What do you want?” Stefano Gallo, the old accountant, looks angered rather than relieved.
“What do I want?” I lean closer. “I want to make you an offer.”
* * *
Mia lowers the gun,stumbles off the pavilion, and sits on a fallen trunk of a tree a few feet to the side of the water. Huxley, Vinnie, and the other guys look on in dismay.
“Help me up here, would you?”
Vinnie comes over, helps me to my feet, my stomach stinging where the knife scraped past, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. “Boss, we lost a few soldiers today. But the family is safe.”
“No, not everyone,” Mia shouts out, her face blank and staring out onto the water. “Sophia, she… she was shot.”
“It’s true, we found her in the office,” Vinnie informs me.
“Bastards. Antonio, we have to retaliate. Fuck politics, we have to kill all these fuckers! I mean old school medieval shit!” Huxley starts to pace. “To make a move on the day of our father’s funeral. These guys need to disappear, the lot of them.”
“He’s right,” I tell Vinnie. “This is not a time to care about the ethics of our organization. For now, just go and help my auntie and sister. Tell them I’ll be up in a minute.”
I take a seat next to Mia, and slowly take the gun from her.
“Vinnie,” Mia calls out before he walks away. “Thank you—for before, for saving me.”
He pauses for a moment and nods, then walks toward the house. Huxley joins him.
“And I need to thank you,” I tell Mia. I look over at the piece of shit who managed to get one on me. Fuck, if Mia didn’t come over when she did... I grab her hand. “Seriously.”
She throws it away. “I just killed someone, Antonio. Before that, your maid’s brains splashed against my face. And now you tell me my father’s alive when I’ve been going out of my mind thinking he’s dead.”
“You’re right, Mia, about everything.” I try to take her hand again, but she moves away. “There’s no excuse I can give you that will fix this. The only things I can say are the facts. That I didn’t pull the trigger on your father, and that this world that surrounds us doesn’t follow the same rules as the world out there. And I know there’s no easy way to prepare yourself for seeing someone die in front of you, but the fact is, that’s just the way life goes. And I wish I could offer you a solution to better handle such circumstances, but there isn’t one—you just have to face them head on. Something I should have done with you from the beginning.”
Mia turns her head toward mine. “You should have because now I’m not sure of what I want. I mean, what happened here? We can’t just brush this madness under the carpet. Men came to your house and tried to kill everyone inside.”
“Yeah,” I agree, “they tried.”
“And what? You’re unaffected by that?”
I look into her eyes, moving from left to right, “No, I’m not. That’s why I’m going to make sure they pay for what they did. And the fact that we’re even having this conversation, and that you haven’t run off screaming in fear, tells me that this life calls at something within you.”
Mia doesn’t respond to me after that, and I think it’s because I’m right, something is telling her that she belongs here, and she doesn’t know how to rebuke the fact.
“The only thing I can do right now for you is to try and make up for my mistakes. Come on.” I stand. “Let me take you to your father.”