Page 3 of Pomegranate Seeds

Roberto only rolled his eyes at me, making me giggle. Michele was throwing me killer looks, but I couldn’t give less fucks about him. He could get annoyed as much as he wanted.

“Doesn’t matter,” Gabriele said, too serious. He was good at keeping his cool, and I admired that. I sucked at it. “Roberto is not coming.”

Coming? Oh, he was going to Chicago for this truce. He really thought about this then. It was happening. Good. It would really be good for us. Also, a vacation to Chicago sounded great, but for that, I had to play my cards right. Thank God I was too lucky when it came to that. It was all because of my charm.

“Why is he not coming?”

“I need to leave someone here.” He could not leave Michele, of course. “I would have just sent him and stayed with my wife and son, but Roberto’s son is younger, and I don’t trust him after the last incident.”

My nephew Adrian was five months old, but Roberto’s son was only a few days old. We got to see him, and he was adorable. I told Roberto he was a pretty boy, nothing like him. Roberto very calmly said that he looked like his mother, and it was what he had wanted all along.

That was cute of him.

But about the last incident, I didn’t have any knowledge. I was busy sneaking off the house, I guessed.

I looked at Roberto and pouted my lips. “Oh, Roberto, what did you do?”

“He shot his wife’s gynecologist,” Michele answered with a smile.

I froze with shock. What the fuck? “Isn’t this a little too much jealousy, Robby-boy?”

Roberto looked at me with eyes that could cut stone. “Fucker tried to give my wife a 'husband stitch.'”

Oh well. My terror left my body, and I smiled up at him. “Great job then, Roberto. More power to you.”

“Don’t encourage him,” Gabriele said with a pleading voice, but I only shrugged. He deserved it, so it was okay. Killing people was a regular business in the mob, and when they deserved it, there was no point in agonizing over it.

This was our life, after all. Our destiny. No need to live in misery because people you love were murderers. It was best to get used to it.

“So, we will go, right? Are Kira and Adrian coming with us?” Michele asked our brother, changing the topic to Chicago again.

A growl left his throat, and he brushed away his golden hair. “We should look peaceful. Act like it is a family visit, but I really don’t want to take Kira and Adrian there.”

“You don’t trust them?” I asked.

Gabriele shook his head. “Well, of course, I have worries, but I don’t think they are going to attack us when we are on a friendly visit. I am more nervous about traveling. Adrian is still young, and I don’t want Kira to get tired too much. I want her to be comfortable.”

Of course, he did. He was so much in love with his wife, and my heart melted at that. Still, it was my opening. “Well, we can still look the friendly family visit part without them.”

“How,” Gabriele asked too innocently. He was just ready to be caught in my nets. Great.

I smiled hugely and tried to look my sweetest self. “You can take me.”

Chapter 2

Antonio

I walked towards my destination without looking at anyone. I usually liked seeing emotions so evident on people’s faces. It gave me a chance to learn and sometimes mimic. I wanted to know how every emotion looked on people since I didn’t have them the same way.

This place, though, exhausted me. Emotions in graveyards were just too much and too hard to comprehend. Sadness was everywhere, but there were also many more. I used to look at the people and try to guess their feelings, their thoughts. After a while, I gave up. Death created too many mixed emotions. It usually threw me off and gave me wrong impressions.

Now I only focused on my destination. A road I knew too well. First Thursday of every month, I walked this road. Visiting the grave was too absurd for me. It served no logic. A part of me thought I pushed myself to act like a normal person first Thursday of every month. Another part of me believed this was just part of my perfect routine. I hoped it was not the latter. I liked the thought of still having feelings in me. And if I didn’t, I liked acting like that. It made me feel human.

When I reached her tombstone, I put down the pink flowers I had bought. “They didn’t have white ones,” I said to her. It was the stupidest thing. She was dead. She didn’t care if her flowers were white or pink, but I still felt like I needed to apologize. She liked them white when she was alive.

I crouched down to get eye level with the words like I could somehow get eye-level with her.

Rosetta Mazzoni

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