Page 5 of Third Degree

“What the fuck are you doing out of your bed, Gianna?” my father dodged my question.

“Is he going to kill me?”

“Go to bed, Gianna.”

“Please, Papa. Will you protect me? Why did you let him go?”

Yes, Papa, why did you let him go? Why didn’t you protect me as a child, scared and crying alone in the corner, watching you stick a gun to a man’s head? I was just a child. Why did you let him threaten my life?

I was just a child… I was just a little girl. Please, Papa. Save me.

I woke up from my dream in a panicked sweat. This was why I didn’t go to bed at night. I was about seven years old when I witnessed my dad let a man go who had threatened to kill me. As a young child, it had been ingrained in my head.

Ever since that accident, I’d suffered from panic attacks, insomnia, and a wealth of other undiagnosed mental health issues.

Tonight, the insomnia was suffocating.

I grabbed a hoodie from the floor and headed out the back door to where the garden was, peering down at the flowers I had planted earlier in the day with Tomas. They were the same, but I still grabbed the watering can and poured some extra on them.

When I focused on pruning and clipping, it helped the thoughts stop. The night was scary. I was doing my best to run away from the shadows.

3

Elio

37 years old

The only love of my life died two years ago, but it may as well have been yesterday. There should be no time limits on how long it is deemed “acceptable” to grieve over the woman you loved boundlessly.

My boys tend to think two years is long enough. The family believes two years is long enough. I have to disagree with them.

When my wife, Bea, passed away from cancer, it wasn’t spontaneous or a surprise to anyone, but still, nobody can prepare you for the insurmountable wave of grief that comes with losing a loved one. The pain came at me like a tidal wave, and I’ve been waiting for the tsunami to pass, but nothing has changed in the last couple of years.

Losing my wife was a constant ache that never really went away, an ache many didn’t understand. It felt like a part of me was missing, as if I was incomplete without her. Almost like a heavy weight on my chest that never went away, no matter how much time passed.

My two sons had been my rock through all of this, but even they didn’t fully understand the depth of my grief.

They tried to be strong for me, but I could see the sadness in their eyes too. Sometimes, it felt like I was drowning in a sea of memories and emotions, and there was no escape from the despair.

I know that time was supposed to heal all wounds, but it felt like my heart would always be broken without her.

Both of my boys were now in college, away from this sleepy little town in Northern California where my wife begged to raise her kids. I was constantly surrounded by people at the club, and when I took a little break, I realized how lonely I was.

I eventually resorted to getting a dog. I had to walk down Main Street one day near the shops when I saw this woman who had a basket full of puppies. They were all orphaned, and I kept thinking about how sad they must be without their mother. I related to the sadness and somehow came home with a fucking dog.

The dog didn’t talk back, though, no matter how much I tried to converse with it. I lost all family connections when my Bea decided she didn’t want to raise her kids in the Gambini family anymore. She was insistent on it, and I worked so fucking hard to find a way out of the Italian Mafia.

But the truth was, the burden of my past still weighed heavily on my conscience. I should be able to share our story with my sons, but the fear of repercussions still gripped me in a vise. I didn’t want to be the reason they were harmed. If I lost either of them, it would be far too much for my heart to handle, so I decided that when they graduated from school, I would tell them of my involvement in the Gambini family.

I was forced to make unimaginable sacrifices to protect my family and my name. I had to lie to Bea her entire life, pretending that I had left the Mafia behind and started a legitimate nightclub business. But the truth was that the nightclub was just a front for laundering the family business money and bribes for the Gambini family.

I’d become a recognized head of the family and was lowered down all the way to being a workhorse. It was a shame that I carried like a heavy weight on my shoulders.

I wasn’t a part of the Gambini family by blood, but I was born a Made man. My father married Mr. Gambini’s daughter after gaining the trust of the family, and the Marchettis and the Gambinis joined forces. So formally, we were still known as the Gambini clan, but there were a lot of us who weren’t necessarily full-blooded members.

When a Made man is born, his entire life is written out for him. Because of my father’s value of the family, I was destined to do great things for them. I was going to go on and be the second-in-charge until Bea.

But with Bea, I had simply been Elio Marchetti, the club owner, formerly a Made man, or at least that was what she thought until the day she passed.

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