Page 66 of Forbidden Pregnancy
The temperature drops tonight and if it’s a sign, I don’t know what to make of it. I shouldn’t read too much into the weather. It’s Buffalo, New York – not Florida – but the cold feels almost intentional. Dad spends many evenings a week playing the slots just outside of town at the Seneca casino.
We share that vice – gambling. I prefer sports gambling because of the guarantees and the ease with which you can double or triple your earnings by setting up a parlay. Dad thinks he can control the slots the way I think I can mindmeld with Josh Allen’s arm while watching a Bills/Chiefs game.
Tonight, we’re both tempting fate. CC’s job tonight is simple. I accepted her offer to help me and she’s here, ready to do the unthinkable by my side. I don’t bother turning this into “a thing”, but CC agonizes over her clothes.
“This wig is atrocious,” she says once I stop the car in the parking lot for employees behind the casino. I know the blind spots to the cameras here and have the layout of the area around this casino memorized like the beautiful new stretch marks raised over Myra’s baby bump.
My sister isn’t wrong about the wig. Nobody needs to wear teal hair with bangs. Even in her regular clothing, she looks likea stripper, even if she assured me this job was more like being a bottle girl in skimpy ass clothing – a Hooters situation with your whole ass out. I don’t like it.
“Do you think you can pull it off?” I ask her, stifling the grumbling and overprotective part of me, because expressing that to CC would only piss her off, anyways.
“I drugged you, didn’t I?” CC replies. “Don’t question me, Michael.”
I grunt with half-hearted acknowledgment of the deal I’ve made with the devil. At least I know CC won’t betray me. She gets out of the car, ready to head in to the back entrance and use her connections at this place to get into the club where she can work her “magic” on my father.
When CC enters the club, I call my cousin.
He answers with a smooth, calm voice that gives me instant relief.
“How’s it going?”
“Pretty good,” Luigi says. “I have them here. Your end?”
“CC walked into the casino. Might take about forty-minutes for him to come crawling out.”
“Cool,” Luigi says. “Call me when you’re coming over.”
You always exchange as little information as possible over the phone. The generation before us grew up with the FBI and local police executing wiretaps and all other possible surveillance methods to root out our family businesses and continue the unfair targeting of immigrants in this country that continues today.
Our activities were only designed to protect us and our people in a country that was completely unwelcoming toguidoswho they viewed as darker, greasier, and more criminal than the American-born. When I hang up, I drink coffee and continue waiting for a sign from CC.
We don’t have a backup plan if my father detects her despite the surprise. She did a good job of painting on that alien-looking whore makeup women wear to nightclubs, although she did tell me calling it that would get me “cancelled” one day.
Hm. It takes a lot more than disapproval to cancel a man holding both the wallet and the gun – just my two cents. I hate waiting. On the outside, I might appear to have that innate reptilian sensibility for the hunt that many of my Italian family members possess, but I have nothing of the sort.
Every minute of waiting aches, but CC emerges, holding hands with my father, who can barely stand up. CC does a great job of leading him to the car in her high heels. When they get close, I hop out of the driver’s seat, leaning into the rush of adrenaline to take control.
“How bad is he?”
“Bad,” CC says, her voice shaking. She can’t look at me. I put a hand on her shoulder to calm her down.
“Get in the car, sis. I’ll handle the rest.”
Chapter Thirty
Luigi
My father doesn’t know where I am. He may have suspected when I came to him seeking answers about what happened with Michael. He explained the entire story to me and what he wanted from me specifically. It’s simple and it’s part of my typical job within the organization. The only part that’s really different is the secrecy.
Perhaps Leandro suspects. Delphine certainly does. Because of the uncertain nature of my next job, I have spent the past five days or so giving my wife and the twins additional attention. My beautiful children… Gio and Leo are beautiful angels.
And they’re the bigger reason I’m participating in Michael’s war of revenge against his father. I can’t have my children at risk of death because of their skin color. I have the power to act right now, and opportunities rarely present themselves the same way twice. To protect Delphine and my children, I have to act.
Discovering who committed the attack twelve years ago isn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I don’t give my father a reason for my research. He’ll figure it out.
“Why do you want to know about twelve years ago?” he asks when I meet him in person. I don’t want our conversationintercepted, so I visit him at our childhood home, where he sits surrounded by stacks and stacks of papers in his home office.
“Personal.”
