4. FRANKIE

I didn't let my father get to me, or my mother. I didn't fit into their perfect box like my brothers, but I had something the others didn't. I had guts and I showed absolutely no mercy when I was following them.

My father, as the head of the Borgesi family sat at the head of the dining table.

The family table could seat twenty, and the more seats at the table, the more conflict I could smell in the air. Today, however, the table was only half-filled with only the immediate family and spouses present. They didn't ask me to bring Cal, but he was part of my life, and important too.

* * *

Twenty-Three Months Ago

Cal flinched every time I opened the door to the bedroom. I'd tried to keep it ajar, but he asked me to keep it closed. He wanted to know when someone was coming in.

I carried in a tray of warm soup and bread rolls. It was just microwaved chicken soup and a couple of blended veggies.

"Ow," he grumbled, slowly lifting his arm and placing it across his ribs.

It had been a month since I rescued him from that crack den, and there had been no new leads. Everything pointed to them disappearing off the face of the earth. The family wasn't helping, they didn't even know about Cal. They would've had me bring him to the house and force him back into a basement to torture for information.

"Did you take more aspirin?" I asked, sitting beside him on the bed. I placed the tray across his lap. "If you have, you've got to tell me. I'm not having you OD on pain meds."

"I haven't," he grumbled.

"I'm not having the cops sniffing around because some kid died in my bed."

"I'm not a kid," he said, frowning at me.

"Yeah, you are," I told him. "Now, can you eat on your own, do you need me to feed you?"

He lifted his arm, determined to feed himself. He tssked back against the pain in his body. "I want to do it myself."

I smiled at him. I couldn't help it. I tried to fight the feeling, but it had buried itself deep. Every single day he was wearing me down, and I was letting it happen. It felt like I was purposefully dulling my knife just in case I accidentally hurt him with it.

"I'm sorry, Cal," I said, rubbing a hand on his shoulder. "I know you want to, but you're in pain. You need to heal and get better."

He looked away from me, dipping his head. His eyeline touched me again, looking from my arm at his shoulder, to the hand on the tray. "You know you don't have to sleep on the sofa."

"Well, I can't exactly put you on the sofa," I told him. "You'd never get better there."

Cal rubbed his chin and cheek against my hand. "Maybe I'd get better if I had something to keep me warm at night."

It was my fault. I'd kissed him. It was a lapse in judgement. I never had those. I'd told him I'd kiss his cuts and bruises better, and after the first kiss, I realized I'd done something I couldn't take back.

* * *

I sat beside Cal at the dinner table. Under the table, he'd took my hand. He was doing what I'd told him with his big smile.

My mom placed the large dish of lasagna on the table, alongside garlic bread and a side salad. "I'm so glad all my babies can come together under the same roof once a week," she said.

"Thanks, ma," Tommaso, my older brother said. "I look forward to this all week. Sorry, babe, you know nothing can beat mom's cooking." He turned to his wife, Anna, who shared in the chuckling.

"Anna watches every week, I'm surprised she hasn't picked up any tips yet," mom said. "Oh. Paolo, where's your brother? I set him a place."

My father was in his sixties, a thick head of hair, gold rings on each of his fingers, and an almost tickly cough in his chest every time he spoke. "Vito left. He and Frankie got into it about last night."

"Dad, c'mon, we're at dinner," I said.

He held his hands up jokingly before coughing into a fist. "It's fine, hon. Vito had to leave anyway."

My uncle, Vito, was my father's right-hand man. I don't know why because that man caused more problems than I ever did. The only difference being, I could clean up after myself. Vito needed me to clean his messes up.

"I'll save him a plate," she said. "He'll probably be back later."

Cal clenched my hand harder under the table. It stung a little, but only because of how busted my knuckles were already. "Smells amazing," he said.

"Thank you, Cal," she said. "Thanks to you, the sauce didn't burn. You know, he'll make an excellent wife one day." She smirked, glancing over at Anna and then to Nina.

"Husband," Cal said, the corners of his mouth twitching as he strained to keep his smile. "When two guys get married, they're both husbands. There isn't a husband and wife."

My father cleared his throat, his face unamused by the conversation.

I went into damage control before he could say anything. "Hold up. We're not even engaged," I said.

"Besides, I'm not even sure I want to get married," Cal said, knowing it would push my buttons. "I just don't think we're made to love one person for the rest of our lives."

I grabbed his hand by the wrist under the table. I pressed my finger down hard against the blood vessels to his hand. "You don't really think that, do you?" Pushing harder, I knew his hand would become numb and start to ache.

He was resilient, a trait I'd put inside him when he was so eager and willing to learn. It was that trait that might've ended up with us wrestling on this dining table and fucking, once more, just to prove to him that I didn't like being played with.

"Except for us," he whispered, his fingers twitching.

Mattia, my youngest brother scoffed. "Jeez, I'm starving."

"Elena, put your gadgets away," my mom said, seemingly ignoring me and Cal.

"It's my cell," she grumbled, looking up and chewing gum.

Mattia and Elena were twins. They were nineteen and both in college. They were the furthest in age from the rest of us. After Alessandro, my mom hadn't wanted anymore kids, that's why we were all in our thirties and they were still teens.

"You'll have to do that again tonight," Cal whispered, knocking his knee against mine. He enjoyed this form of dominance, if he hadn't, I wouldn't have done it with him.

A silence came over the dining room for mom to say grace. After that, it was a frenzy of cutlery against plates. Mom's food was the great healer, although I'd never have told Cal that, I still enjoyed how tender and loving he was when he was taking care of me.

My father was usually the one who declared when dinner was over, and time for dessert. Everyone looked to him for the cue, but it was my mom who held the real power, and she was the only one who could get away with talking back to him. I'd tried, several times in the past, and that usually ended up with me taking a beating.

The only siblings who hadn't seen that side to the parents were Mattia and Elena, like the twins from The Shining, they had the same mannerisms. They never got in trouble, and they never took beatings. I felt contempt for them, living an easy life, asking dad for money when they wanted.

The first time I asked for money, I was put to work in a chop shop where they took stolen cars and stripped them down for parts. Although it was there at the age of seventeen when I killed someone for the first time. Someone came by threatening us. I took a tire iron and plunged it straight through his chest. The thrill continued to tickle in my body eighteen years later.

"Dessert looks great," Cal said, his feet knocking against mine.

My happy place was where chaos reigned, every man for themself, only the strongest survived. Sometimes, I wished that was the case here, but nowadays, people surrounded themselves with guns and a small army of people.

"Yeah," I mumbled, far too distracted. "Looks incredible."

Dessert was a chocolate and coffee tiramisu, one of my mom's specialties. She probably made this one at the request of Alessandro for his birthday.

Unclenching my jaw, I took a deep, calming breath. Part of me wishes I'd given into Cal's request of not coming here today, but family was the most important thing, even if they pissed me off.

I barely ate my dessert. I noticed my dad stand, which marked the end of dinner. He'd be going off to his study to smoke. I pushed my dessert bowl to Cal before standing.

Tommaso and Alessandro stood to follow my father.

We followed him into his study on the floor above.

I caught the tail end of what Tommy was saying. "If he fucks with our shipment one more time, he's dead."

"Who?" I asked, cracking my knuckles.

"Some bastards in New Jersey," Sandro said.

"I can pay him a visit," I said. I wasn't involved in the family businesses, so I didn't know what was being shipped in through New Jersey.

"Nah," Sandro chuckled. "We've got someone on it."

Unlike my brothers, I didn't have people who reported to me. It was nice to not have to deal with all the people sucking up to you. My brothers had people who drove them everywhere, who shopped for groceries, and some were used purely as couriers. There were far too many points of entry into their lives.

"Plus, we'd only want to give him a broken leg or something, not six feet under," Tommy added.

"Boys," father called to us as we stood in the doorway of his study. "I have something important we need to discuss."

The study smelled of a smoky musk, it was intoxicating.

I took a seat on one of the leather armchairs, running my hands across the smooth arms. "Good news or bad?" I asked.

He opened a box of cigars on his desk. "Good and bad." He passed the cigars out.

Tommy passed. "I'm cutting back," he said.

"I'll take two then," Sandro said, pocketing the second cigar.

"What's the good news?" I asked, clipping the end of my cigar. "I wanna know if we're celebrating."

My father's cold stare looked over me. "Not like last night," he said. I could feel him about to go off into another rant about me taking control and stop letting anger run my emotions rampant. I knew he only said that because I was gay, and I was supposedly emotional, but the truth was, I was calculating, even drunk I knew the force at which to hit someone just to do superficial damage rather than put them in hospital. "But I'm not going to get back into that, Frankie, you've already heard it before."

I raised my brows, shocked he was letting the matter drop rather than taking the opportunity to berate me more. "Are you dying?" I asked outright with the unlit cigar pressed between my lips.

My brothers both looked at me.

"What?" I asked, grabbing the matchbook.

"Yes," he said. "It's not happening anytime soon, but I am dying. Doctors gave me a couple of years. Thank you for, once again, getting ahead of the topic and spoiling the surprise."

"Dad," Tommy said. "Doctors don't know everything."

"Yeah," Sandro added. "Tommy's right. We can get you help. We can take you to get that experimental stuff. I'm not lighting this up if that's your big news."

I sucked back on the end of the cigar; it was a heavenly taste. I blew out a cloud of smoke around me. "That's not it, is it dad?" I asked. "A couple of years, that's not news."

Our father laughed. "As always, Frankie, seeing right through it. I'm not dying, well, we're all dying. No, that's not what—"

"So, your doctor didn't say that?" Tommy asked, a scowl on his face. "What—what?"

"Take a fucking joke," our father said, glaring at Tommy. "I wanted to know which one of you were looking forward to it. And I saw your eyes light up, you little fucker. You're not ready to take over this operation. Vito would sooner be in charge."

Here we went again. Uncle Vito would've been sat in the corner, a grin on his face at that news.

"Bullshit," Sandro shouted.

Father grabbed Sandro by the collar of his shirt and yanked him down against the desk. "Show me some fucking respect," he said. "If I wanted my brother to take over, he would. Tommy is unprepared, you're a fucking half-wit following you brother around like a lost puppy, and Frankie—" he scoffed, looking at me. "Frankie is—he's far too important staying in the background."

Hiding somewhere in there was a compliment. I watched, with a smile on my face and took another drag from the cigar.

"I'm sorry," Sandro said, tapping out on the desk.

He let go of Sandro. "Mattia and Elena are in college, they're going to be the future of this family." Elena was studying law, and Mattia was studying business. "Now, the bad news, there was an explosion in a crack den we raided. A couple of our men are dead. The good news, I've got some information about that stolen shipment." He glared at Tommy and Sandro. "I need you to go get it." He looked directly at me.

I scoffed, nearly choking on the smoke in my throat. "I'm not a courier," I said. "If you need someone to get it, send someone else."

"That's the thing, son," he said. "I did. They're dead too."