Ma looks strong right now, but I sense her heart is weeping.
Fuck, I can already guess from the sight of her that some shit has happened, and she hasn’t even looked at me yet. It’s the way she’s pruning the roses. With care, but with an edge of anger.
The garden is her place of Zen. The place she comes to on the regular and most often stays out in for the whole day just to get away from my father’s shit.
“Buonasera, Ma,” I greet her when she lifts her head.
She smiles at me and her whole face comes alive with that heart warmth that coming home should feel like.
“My son,” she says and comes over to give me a hug. “I was hoping to see you before you went into see your father.”
“I always come and see you,” I remind her.
“Yeah you do but, when you’re in one of your moods I can’t tell what you’ll do,” she says with a chuckle. “I have to say Christian that ignoring your father’s calls is not the best thing to do if you want to keep on his good side. I know why you did it though.”
“Thanks. It’s nice to have your understanding,” I answer.
She looks across to the terrace and I follow her gaze. A maid I haven’t seen before has just walked out with a dust cloth and she’s started cleaning the tables.
She lifts her head and sees Ma watching and looks away quickly with the fear of God in her eyes. She’s not that far away that I can’t tell she’s scared.
When Ma looks back to me her eyes look glassy.
“Do you think she’s pretty?” she asks. “Your father does. Every year they get younger. She’s eighteen. Wants to go to college but can’t afford it. Working here helps. I’m sure your father will pay her handsomely for her services.”
She’s not talking about cleaning. The tear that slides down her cheek pulls on my heart and I don’t know why she stays. She doesn’t need to put up with shit like this.
She wipes away the tear quickly with the heel of her hand and rights herself with a smile she plasters on her face like a mask. It’s a habit I grew up with.
“Ma, what happened?”
“Nothing, dear,” she says shaking her head. “Don’t be late. Don’t make your father mad.”
“Ma tell me what happened. He’s going to be mad at me whatever I do,” I insist, and she knows I’m right.
“It’s just been awhile since I caught your father doing something …unsavory. I know it happens, I’ve seen him in action enough times, but it’s hard when you’ve walked the line of death and you don’t even have the husband you thought you had to support you.”
“Leave him…” I tell her. it’s not the first time I’ve said it.
She smirks. “I don’t know if I have the strength and my heart won’t allow me to leave the boy I used to know.”
God… I’ll be damned. I have to calm my rage. If we were talking about different people I would march into the house and beat my father to a fucking pulp. I can’t do that though. I have to do what I always do and look the other way. It would be worse if I did anything other than that.
“Don’t say anything, Christian,” she cautions. “I’ll figure things out. Go, don’t be late. Don’t let them push you around either.”
I dip my head in appreciation and give her a kiss on her forehead before making my way into the house.
I see the same maid cleaning the stairs and give her a hardened gaze when she looks at me. The look I give her is warning enough, although I know it means nothing. She doesn’t answer to me. She answers to my father. he’s the fucker in charge here and we’re all under his control.
His office door is open.
Inside Pa stands over his desk, talking to Georgiou. Both stop talking when I enter the room and close the door.
Georgiou gives me a withered stare. A sign that I really am going to have to stand my ground. My father doesn’t like the fact that I can’t be controlled. We’re like two forces pushing against each other and I have to bow to his control to get what I want. I hate it.
“Morning,” I say.
Pa releases a deep sigh and has that look in his eye that tells me if I was a kid, he’d knock my lights out. The same way he did when I was sixteen. That was the first time I defied him, and I didn’t even do anything big to make him lose his shit the way he did.
“Take a seat,” he says cutting past the pleasantries.
I take the seat in front of him and avoid Georgiou’s stare. The secret messages we used to send each other when we were kids still continued into adulthood. I’m not looking at him now though because anything he’s going to tell me with a look or with words is going to be shit I don’t want to hear.
“For a start, the shit you pulled yesterday is not gonna happen again,” Pa says glaring at me. he’s remained standing on purpose to show me he’s higher than me. “I call you; you answer the fucking phone. You hear me?”
He wants me to answer, but I’m not gonna be a pussy and do so. Instead I grit my teeth and I can see Georgiou across from me trying to keep his cool so he doesn’t strangle me himself.
Pa shakes his head as the silence makes its way between us.
“Christian, this is serious. What happened is serious and there’s shit happening that you don’t know about or seem to care about. It’s always the same with you,” Pa seethes.
“Always? Pa, one mistake.” I lash back.
“One mistake that could cost us. Angelo is furious that this happened. he’s already talked to some of the VIP clients and they’ve called for assurance that their shipments will be safe. It’s bad enough I had to tell people everything is delayed because we have a fuck load of new staff, but assurance is another thing. We have not handled this well and the situation has gotten out of control.”
I bite the inside of my lip, unable to respond. When you’re in the wrong, you’re in the wrong.
The worst-case scenario I figured is clients may still use us because we’re the only ones they know who can still get a job done, but we’ll lose big time if our VIP’s leave. those are people who can leave because they have connections.
“I’m trying to fix the situation,” I promise. I told him the same when we spoke earlier. He just wanted to see me though to do this. rip into me. “Getting to a man like Falcone is hard Pa.”
“that’s why it should never have happened. It shouldn’t have and I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit back and allow you to make our family look bad. the problem is not what you did, its’ who you are.”
Bastard. This is what he’s like. Normally I can give as much as I get but not this trip. Not when it truly is my fault.
“Because of who you are, Christian, which is why you took the easy way out and trusted Jonny,” he continues, and I just stare back at him. “That’s why this shit is happening to us. If you weren’t my son, I would have ended you before you got the chance to explain yourself.”
“My apologies for that pesky little biological fact,” I sneer.
He grabs the paperweight from the stack of documents and lunges it into the wall.
It smashes and by the time I look back to him the man has his guns pulled on me.