Page 5 of Married to the Mafia Devil

“One step at a time, kid. We find you another job first, and then we deal with your dad and Amelia.” Her resolve is infectious, a reminder of why she's been my only real friend since we were kids. That and the fact she gives me twenty percent off anything I buy in here.

“Hey,” she continues, getting to her feet as another customer comes in. “You'll be all right. I have faith in you.”

“Glad someone does.” I smile, a real one this time, bolstered by her faith in me. “Thanks, Pamela. I just wish it were that simple.”

“Simple is boring,” she teases. She hands me a copy of Les Miserables.

“I’ve already got a copy,” I say as she wraps my hands around it. “What kind of a friend doesn’t know what my favorite book is?”

“Your mom’s copy is falling apart. You said so yourself last week. Have a new one on me. Call it an early birthday present.”

“My birthday’s not for three months.”

“You do understand the definition of the word early, right? Now get out of here and get job hunting. You’ll have something lined up by the time I next see you. I guarantee it.”

“How do you stay so optimistic?”

“Look, you’ve saved my bacon dozens of times. Let me copy your homework, picked me up when I was wasted. Been there for me whenever some asshole dumped me. You’re a good person. You deserve good things.”

The customer calls for her attention at the register. “Oh, no,” Pamela says, walking up to her and examining her choices. “Seriously? Everything in here and these are what you choose? Have you no shame?”

I head for the door with a final smile, I step back into the daylight, the weight of the world still on my shoulders but now a bit more bearable.

I get back to the apartment and go through my rituals. I call to Amelia but she doesn’t answer. I peer around the door to her room. Still asleep.

I go into my own room, setting the book down on the nightstand next to Mom’s copy. I dig out my battered old laptop and boot it up. I spend the next hour on my bed, looking at jobs, applying for anything I can find.

I shift as time passes, trying to find a comfortable spot on the mattress that has known too many restless nights. The weight of today presses down on me. My sister’s soft breathing from the next room is the only sound apart from the traffic outside.

I should be used to this by now—life throwing curveballs at me. I always believed that if I worked hard enough, then maybe I'd find solid ground. Maybe then I wouldn't feel so...

Lost.

But deeper than that, buried beneath the layers of worry and exhaustion, is the thought that’s shadowed me for years: that I'm not enough.

Not good enough to hold my family together, not capable enough to chase my own dreams, not worthy enough of any future beyond this cycle of struggle and despair.

It’s a truth that’s been drilled into me every time my dad looks at me with glassy eyes, every bill I can't pay, every dream I push aside to deal with another crisis. I’m not good enough.

“Help me,” I say to Mom, my eyes drifting to the window. Exhaustion hits me like a tidal wave. I close my eyes for a moment to rest them but a moment later I’m fast asleep.

I wake up and I know something’s wrong at once. What’s making my heart race? I look across at the window. The breeze, the rumble of traffic. That’s the problem.

I left it shut. Now it’s wide open. Someone’s in here with me.

Then I see it. A shadow in the corner of the room.

My breath catches in my throat, a scream building just behind my lips as a panic attack seizes me, a visceral, clawing thing that has my heart hammering against my ribs.

And then a hand is over my mouth, large and firm, smothering my scream before it can escape.

This is it, I think to myself as a shadow leans over me with a gun pointing straight at me.

This is how I die.

TWO

Matteo

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