Page 80 of Stolen Sin

In a few minutes, he’s asleep, and I’m not far behind.

* * *

“Imagine you walk up to someone on a crowded street, scream out your real name and your Social Security number, then shoot a stranger in the skull. Imagine you somehow convince everyone that an angry grizzly bear did the murder and not you.” Davide raises his glass in a salute. “Because that’s basically what my brother’s trying to do, and it’s working. Cheers to fucking that.”

It feels so normal. Family dinner in the main house. Except Freddie’s still in the hospital glued to her husband’s side, there’s construction going on all over the oasis, and bullet holes still riddle most of the walls. Elena hung pictures and paintings in a vain effort to cover most of them over, but she missed a few and I can’t stop staring at them.

The sheer number of bullets that were fired is staggering. I didn’t see the worst of it, but Stefania gave me some of the gory details. There were so many shells that the cleanup crew had to work for an entire day sweeping them up with massive brooms, and that was only after the cops took two trash bags filled with them, as if they’re going to do ballistics.

“It’s almost good there were so many people trying to kill each other,” Elena says thoughtfully as she tops up all the wine glasses.

“Explain that one to me,” Stefania says, eyebrows raised.

“Well, it’s just too much for the cops to follow through on. The sheer scale of what happened is crazy. The politicians have an incentive to make it seem less bad, and the DA doesn’t want to jam fifty different murder cases through the system all at once. It’s almost like bigger is better.”

Stefania doesn’t look convinced, but at least it gets a bitter laugh from Simon. “That’s a good point, but it means they’ll come for the leaders instead.” Then he points at himself and finishes his drink. “Although I’d like to see them try. We have an army of lawyers, and they’re arguably the most dangerous part of our family.”

The conversation moves on to how they’ll rebuild. Some of the houses have too much damage and will need to be totally renovated, and there’s still a big clean-up crew getting rid of all the biological contamination. Which is a nice way of saying all the blood and guts.

Then there are the grieving families. At least twelve Famiglia soldiers died on that day and a couple dozen more were wounded. Some men lost limbs and others will be deeply scarred by what happened. Simon’s worried about everyone in his organization and he seems dedicated to making sure his people are taken care of, from extended family on down to spouses and kids of those left behind.

It’s expensive. That’s the one problem everyone’s dancing around. The Bianco organization has a lot of cash at its disposal plus a bunch of assets they can sell if it comes to that, but nobody wants to talk about how they’re going to afford this nightmare of a recovery. Simon’s stressed all the time trying to handle everything, and I’m afraid it’s going to break him.

Which is why I steer the conversation onto easier subjects. We chat about movies and TV shows, basically anything that’s not the attack and the fallout from the attack, until the subject of art comes up.

“They shot my hands.” Laura stares down at the table with a hard expression.

Elena bursts out laughing and Stefania cracks up with her. I can’t help but join in, then everyone’s laughing, including Laura, which I think is the first time I’ve ever seen it, but this family needs more laughter right now. They need catharsis because there’s too much pain and too many wounds to deal with all on their own.

“You know what’s strange?” Elena asks as the night’s winding down and the last bottle of wine gets poured around. “It’s only us now.” She looks around the table.

Davide grunts. “You’re right. Just us. The older generation isn’t here.” And everyone goes quiet again. Alessandro will live, and Freddie’s okay, but their absence weighs heavily on the shoulders of these four siblings, and I don’t know what they’re going to do.

“All our lives, we had Mom and Dad to run things,” Simon says, swirling his drink. He doesn’t look upset, but I put my hand on his knee to comfort him anyway. He smiles at me. “Now we’ll find out if anything they taught us stuck.”

“God help us,” Laura murmurs.

This time, nobody laughs.

I look around the table. There’s quiet, strong Davide with his scars and his brooding. There’s light Elena, the kind of woman who glows and brightens any room. There’s strange, quirky, angry Laura. There’s Angelo, the missing sibling, somewhere behind bars. And there’s Simon. The new Don, the leader of the Bianco Famiglia.

“You guys have this,” I say, surprising myself. Everyone looks at me and I take a big drink, my cheeks turning red.

“She’s right,” Stefania adds. “I’ve been around the mafia my whole life, and I’ve never been in a room with four competent leaders like this before.”

“Don’t you have a bunch of brothers?” Simon asks, eyebrows raised.

“Like I said.” She grins and shrugs.

“I’m new to this whole world, but you’ve all survived so much already.” I shrug like it’s no big deal, and I expect them to laugh at me, but nobody’s smiling. Instead, they’re looking at me and listening to me like I’m an equal, and for the first time since I came into this family, I finally feel like I’m a real part of it, like my voice matters. “You’ll survive this too. You’ll thrive. We’ll all thrive together.”

“Yes, we will,” Simon says and pulls me against him. He leans down and kisses me.

Then Davide groans and rolls his eyes and they start bickering over who’s going to do the dishes until Stefania and I finally step up to do it, because they’re still siblings after all.

Chapter 49

Simon

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