Chapter 21

CHAPTER 21

Oliver

Ashes came with us, clinging to my hand so tightly that I was losing feeling in my fingers. They had accepted my explanation about D’Angelo and the Mafia surprisingly easily, though I wondered how much of that acceptance was simply shock.

The sun had fully set by the time the car pulled to a stop a few blocks from my house. Everything looked exactly the same as I remembered. None of the houses seemed disturbed, not even my own house, but that didn’t guarantee anything.

Ashes’s place had also looked fine from the outside.

Gavriil was sent out alone to scope out my house and see what was going on. As much as I wanted to just charge in and make sure my family was all right, the incident with Ashes demonstrated how dangerous that could be.

A few nerve-wracking minutes later, Gavriil returned to report that my family seemed fine and even the security that D’Angelo had assigned to guard them hadn’t seen anything suspicious.

If it weren’t for the close call with Ashes, as well as my own attack, I would think we were being paranoid.

“I’m going in on my own.”

“Oliver, no,” D’Angelo immediately argued.

I was already reaching for the door handle. “My family isn’t in immediate danger right now. How do you think it’ll look if you bust into the house, guns blazing?”

D’Angelo sniffed like he was offended, but his hand twitched toward the gun strapped to his hip. “I was planning on being more subtle than that.”

“And what? You’ll just show up and start demanding answers about my father and my family? They don’t know you. They have no reason to tell you anything.”

From the front seat of the car, Eva’s voice was even colder than usual. “We have plenty of ways to convince people to talk.”

“And I’d prefer that you don’t threaten my family.” I had no idea where the confidence to challenge someone that had previously tried to kill me came from. It was like, from the moment I’d been thrown into this strange world of murder and Mafia, some part of my brain had just turned off. The rules of normal life had been thrown out. We were playing a whole new game now, and I was free to do or say anything I wanted.

D’Angelo placed a gentle hand over mine, which still rested on the door handle. “Just because it doesn’t look dangerous doesn’t mean it’s actually safe.”

I gripped the handle harder. “I know, but I still need to talk with them. Not only do I want answers, but if they are in danger then I need to convince them to come with us for safety.”

We hadn’t actually discussed what to do with my family, but since Ashes had been allowed to come with us, I saw no reason why the same couldn’t be true for the rest of the people I cared about.

D’Angelo nodded slowly then oddly started adjusting the collar of my shirt. “I figured you’d say that. All right. You can go in alone, but you’re wearing this camera so we can see and hear everything that happens. If you’re threatened, then we’ll come get you. Meanwhile, we’ll guard the house.”

He added something to one of the buttons on my shirt. Like a little glass cap, it simply looked like a different style of button, but D’Angelo showed me the screen of his phone to reveal a live recording from my perspective.

“It’ll be fine,” I assured him, flashing him a smile I didn’t truly feel. “I’m just going to talk with them. What could go wrong?”

Famous last words, but I refused to let my nerves show.

Sucking in a deep breath, I exited the car and headed toward the house. Stepping through the front door with the night sky hanging over my head made it feel like just another day of coming home after a late closing shift at the coffee shop.

Rowan was the first to notice my presence, sitting up in his chair and immediately forgetting the movie he was watching. “Oliver. You’re back already.”

Back already?

I was confused for a moment, until I remembered the cover story D’Angelo had made up about taking me away on a vacation.

My mother stood from the couch, wringing her hands as she looked between me and the kitchen. “We weren’t expecting you back so soon. Have you eaten? I can make you something.”

Rolling close enough to almost run over my foot, Rowan grinned mischievously up at me. “I’m sure his boyfriend didn’t let him go hungry.”

I ruffled his hair in the way I knew he hated. “Shut up, brat. You don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

Scowling, he frantically tried to fix his hair. “Hey. I’m fifteen. Not five. I know about... that kind of stuff.”

“You can’t even say the word ‘sex’. You definitely don’t know what you’re talking about,” I teased, letting a grin touch my lips.

It was so easy to fall back into familiar banter with my brother and cast aside threats of Mafia and assassins.

But I couldn’t ignore it. That wouldn’t do anything except get us all killed.

“Actually, Mom. I do want to talk to you. Can we speak in the kitchen?”

The nervous movements of her hands increased. “Of course. What do you... I mean, yes. Let’s speak in the kitchen.”

It was no surprise when my grandmother joined us as well. She always insisted on being part of any gossip, and based on my tone they probably realized the weight of what I wanted to talk about.

Once all three of us were sitting around the kitchen table, with Rowan distracted by his latest monster movie in the living room, it was surprisingly my mother who spoke up first.

“I know what you’re going to say.”

“You... do?”

“Yes. I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault. I don’t know why I didn’t notice sooner.”

Now I was really confused.

Had she truly not known that my Father was a member of the Italian Mafia when they were married?

Or was she talking about the fire?

Her hands practically twisted themselves into nervous knots as they rested on the kitchen table. “I know about the money.”

Huh?

My baffled expression must have been obvious, but my mother didn’t notice.

She was too busy stumbling over her own words.

“Since you were going to be gone for a bit, I finally took a look at our finances for myself. I don’t know why I let you talk me into taking care of the bills on your own.” She finally met my eyes, and there were unshed tears clinging to her eyelashes. “We have a lot of debt, but it’s significantly lower than it should be. Oliver...”

A few tears slipped from her eyes, and her chin wobbled as she struggled not to cry. “Oh, Oliver. I can’t imagine what you’ve been doing to make that much extra money, but it’s not... it’s not... Please tell me you didn’t do anything dangerous, or... or...”

She couldn’t even bring herself to finish the statement as she broke down into actual sobs.

My extra night job at the club?

That’s what she was so worked up over?

I knew what she was insinuating I’d done, and a month ago I would have been upset over the accusation. However, such concerns seemed inconsequential after everything else I’d recently experienced.

“Um, yeah.” I scratched at my scarred arm, not sure what to say now that my expectations for the conversation had been derailed. “I have a night job. It’s no big deal. I just didn’t tell you about it because I didn’t want you to worry that I was overworking myself.”

“Did you sell yourself?” My grandmother’s voice was surprisingly flat when she said this.

I jerked back so hard in surprise that my chair scraped against the floor. “What? No. I was hired to dance at a club. That’s it.”

My grandmother’s expression didn’t change. “I know what kind of club you’re talking about. Even if no one touched you, you still sold your body for others’ enjoyment.”

“Nana…” My mother’s hand slammed against the table. “That isn’t helping. Look, Oliver. We’re not judging you, but that kind of... work… isn’t safe. You need to stop. I know you’re worried about our finances and taking care of Rowan, but it isn’t your responsibility. This is for me to handle, and I’ve been pushing things off on you too much. You need to focus on living your own life.”

Living my life?

That was going to be a lot harder while being targeted by the Mafia. Despite stepping into the house with a goal in mind, I’d let the conversation slip away from me, and I needed to get back to the real issue.

Placing my open hands on the table, I forced myself to stay calm.

“Rowan is my brother, so his health is my concern as well. However, that’s not actually what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Looking both my mother and grandmother in the eye, I channeled all the confidence I had.

“I know about my father, and about the fire. Why did you never tell me my father was a part of the Mafia, and that he set the fire intentionally?” I automatically raised my hand to touch my cheek, tracing the raised texture of the scars there.

In an oddly similar gesture, my mother also raised her hand, but she covered her mouth to control a new wave of sobs.

Silence wrapped the room in a stifling embrace. I would have wondered if I’d gone deaf, but after a minute my grandmother stood to start preparing a pot of tea, and the clink of porcelain seemed to ring as loud as church bells in the silence.

Eventually, she returned and placed a cup of tea in front of each of us at the table. Only after taking a sip did my mother finally collect herself enough to respond.

“Where did you learn about that?”

I swirled the teacup in my hands, watching the sugar dissolve in the drink. Tea wasn’t as common of a selection at the coffee shop, so I didn’t know as much about it. I didn’t recognize the type, but it must have been a particularly strong flavor because the color was unusually dark. I couldn’t even see the bottom of the cup.

Tea was supposed to be calming. I suppose my mother needed as much calm as could be condensed into a single cup.

“So, it is true. Dad really was a part of the Mafia, and he stole from them, then set our house on fire in order to help himself run away.”

She didn’t even try to deny it.

Gripping the cup in a tight fist, I angrily threw back half the drink in one go. It definitely had a strong taste, but I was too upset to even notice anything other than the heat on my tongue.

My mother cast a look toward Nana, as if waiting to see if the other woman had anything to add but was met with only more silence. Taking another sip of her own tea, she finally gave me an actual answer.

“Your father may not have been a good man, but he didn’t intend to hurt you. You were supposed to be sleeping over at a friend’s house that night, and he probably didn’t realize that you’d come back early.”

If she expected that to calm me down, it failed. In fact, it only made me angrier. I clenched my hand so hard around the cup that the porcelain cracked.

“I could believe that, but what about Rowan? He was only a baby. There’s no way Dad didn’t realize he was in the house.”

My mother startled so badly she spilled her tea over the table. Brown liquid slowly seeped into the tablecloth, creating a stain that looked vaguely like a heart.

Nana stood and grabbed a wet towel from the sink to start cleaning up the stain. “It was probably meant to be one last gift for the family.”

I watched her hands rubbing back and forth at the stain, and my stomach seemed to roll with the same rhythm.

“What do you mean gift? How could anything about this be considered a gift?”

The stain was better, but still present when Nana returned to the sink and rinsed out the rag.

“My son didn’t always make good choices, but he did care about his family in his own way. Rowan’s condition is expensive. He probably wanted to make sure we wouldn’t be burdened with that expense after he was gone.”

It took me a moment to realize what she was saying, but when I did, fury boiled my blood in my veins. My own father had intentionally tried to kill my brother, all in order to “save” us from having to deal with his condition. The coward stole from the Mafia and ran away for his own selfish reasons, then decided he could kill two birds with one house fire, securing his escape and getting rid of my brother at the same time.

“What the hell?”

The words echoed what I was thinking, but I wasn’t the one who said them.

Off to the side, the door to the kitchen swung open to reveal Rowan, who must have been eavesdropping from the other room.

“Dad didn’t... he didn’t really... he couldn’t have...”

Although he was a teenager, the tears that welled up in his eyes at that moment made him look like the same helpless child I’d carried out of the fire.

I jumped up from my chair to comfort him, but the moment my feet hit the floor the whole room spun. Desperately clutching at the table to try and stay upright, I looked over to see my mother slumped in her seat. The heart shaped stain, still only half cleaned, lay under her unconscious cheek.

Weakness hit me like a wave, making my whole body go numb. I collapsed, but just before I hit the ground, oddly, soft hands grabbed me and guided me down gently. My vision had already failed, and everything blurred together, so I couldn’t see who held me, but I felt someone tugging at the button on my shirt with the hidden camera.

I tried to protest, but I didn’t manage anything more than a useless croaking sound before my voice failed as well.

Then, like sinking into the depths of the ocean, everything faded to black.