“Fuck!” I bellow and throw the remains of the fucking figurine into the wall. The shards of glass bounce off it because there’s nothing left to break. Nothing left to crack.
A little like me.
I’ve played that video one time only. It was when I set up this room. It was just after I moved here.
I wanted Sorcha to have something, something that said I didn’t forget her. I couldn’t stay at the old house after what happened.
I barely went back to move out. Within weeks after her death, I got this place and moved away from the nightmare of what happened to my girl.
The last time I played that video, it left me in a mess. The same mess threatens to take me now.
It was hearing her voice. Hearing it on the TV, like she’s here. Like nothing ever happened. That day I made that video felt like we had forever to look forward to.
It took us five years to get pregnant with Timothy, and we went through so much we called him our miracle baby. We were planning to have more children, and that day felt like the start of something amazing I would share with her forever.
I never knew it wouldn’t be.
I wipe away another tear and feel disgusted with myself. Look at me crying like a pussy. Look at me pathetic.
When am I going to stop feeling like this?
Sorcha's gone. Forever. I can't bring her back, and I can't do anything to change the past.
I’m just left here blaming myself.
And damn Ava. Why the fuck did she come in here?
Anyone else would have some death wish defying me like that. Not her though. Just like everything else since I met her.
It’s like she doesn’t have that survival instinct for herself. What was it this time? Was she so fascinated to find out what I might have in here that she came in here snooping around my wife’s things… fuck!
Wife. I keep saying that, but I don’t have a wife. I’m a widower and a single father. That is what I am, and I’m deluded if I keep referring to Sorcha as my wife.
I leave the room, locking the door, and head down to my office. I go straight for the cabinet where I keep my good drinks and grab some whiskey and rum. Those are the only things that are going to help me when I get like this.
That, fucking, or killing. Since I definitely don’t feel like fucking, and I can’t kill the guy I’m supposed to kill, I’m doing the lesser of the three evils.
I don’t bother with a glass. I start on the rum first and practically down it even though it burns my throat. In fact, it fucking scorches it.
Whiskey next, and the same thing happens, but it does the job to calm me. I grab more rum, and one sip takes me to the place I want to be.
It’s a place where my mind is so numb I can’t think.
I don’t think.
I remember sitting down behind my desk and closing my eyes. I remember registering that part, then feeling like I’m having an out-of-body experience and watching myself.
Then I’m somewhere else, taken somewhere else in my mind.
I’m still watching, and I turn around. I’m back at the old house. I see it just as it was. That day I came home. It was the middle of the day, although maybe the devil had gotten there the minute I left the house. I don’t know.
I was gone since the night before, covering the streets with the guys, scouring them for Stephanou. How twistedly ironic that he was at my home when I was searching the streets for him.
It was the bullet holes in the door that made me burst in, then I saw more in the passageway with my dead guards lining the path up to the stairs.
I head straight to the kitchen because that was where I built the safe room. It led down to the basement, where Sorcha and the baby would be safe. Only I knew the code to open the door, and the metal door was bullet proof.
In my mind, I walk the path I took two years ago. I see myself go into the kitchen. And there she is. My girl lying on the floor covered in blood, her lips blue, the baby crying behind the metal door.
I know she’s dead, but I don’t want to believe it.
My phone rings, and I hear his voice as I answer it.
It’s Stephanou… “I raped her as she begged for her life,” he says with a devilish laugh, and then I hear screaming.
I jump out of the nightmare as someone shakes me. Instinct makes me want to reach for my gun, but I stop when I see Marguerite.
She’s staring down at me, worry in her eyes. It’s morning, and the sun piercing through the window picks out the silver in her hair.
“Vincent…” she says. She keeps her hand on me and runs it over my shoulder the way she did when I was a child. “Are you okay?”
I shake my head. “No.” My answer is short and succinct but tells all.
“What happened?”
“Everything. It’s everything, Marguerite.”
“There’s broken glass in the room upstairs. Did something happen in there?”
I run a hand over my face and settle on my beard.
“Vinny,” she prods, and I return my attention to her. “I have been in this family since I was a girl. My mother worked for your grandparents and parents, and I have worked for them all my life. The one thing I know is my place. I know not to step over the line, but today, I will because I love you like my own child. I will step over the line and say, you… need to move on.”
My lips part, but I press them together. “How?”
“You have to find a way. Sorcha wouldn't want you to be like this. Miserable and a shadow of the person you used to be. She would not want that for you. Things happen, the life we live makes it so. Even when you try to leave it behind, it follows because you can’t run away from who you are. The problem is, you keep blaming yourself, and you shouldn’t.”
I’m as numb as the drink made me earlier. I hang my head down, but she lifts it back up.
“You cannot blame yourself for her death. Now, get up and clean up. Your father wants to see you. He wants a report. I assume you know what that means.”
I nod. Sure, I know what that means. He wants to talk about our Bratva friends.
***
I walk into Pa’s office at Giordanos Inc.
He’s sitting behind his desk doing paperwork.
I already know he’s not going to be happy when I tell him I’m still in two minds about the alliance.
He frowns when he sees me. “Vinny, you look like shit. You come see your old man looking like that? Unshaved with red eyes?” He’s being serious.
I could have shaved, but there’s nothing much I can do about the red eyes.
“I’m sorry, it’s been a long night.”
“I don’t know if I want to know what that means,” he answers, giving me that look I used to get when he knew I was getting up to no good with a woman, or at The Dark Odyssey.
He’d probably be surprised to know I did neither last night.
I take a seat in front of him.
“So, what’s the status with your decision for the Russians? Everything looks all good to me. I’d say yes to them… what say ye?”
I tense and stare at him. My stare makes him temple his fingers at first then ball his fist and bar his teeth the way I do when I’m mad.
“Vincent,” he prods.
“Pa… I’m not too keen on them,” I answer simply, deciding to opt for the truth.
“Why? Why the fuck not?”
“I don’t know. Something… feels off.”
“What feels off, boy?”
“Them,” I say, leaning forward. His frown deepens.
“Working with the Bratva is going to be good for us. Alliances between groups like us are a powerful form of collaboration. These are powerful men, Vincent. I dare say that some of the problems we’ve had in the past would never have happened with such an alliance.”
He’s not wrong about that. In Chicago, we have an alliance with a lot of the other crime families, but this would be on another level. The Ivanezh Brotherhood are worldwide, strong in Moscow, and I know we should be grateful that they want to do business with us.
I just can’t do business with men I don’t trust.
“Pa, I agree. I absolutely agree. No one would fuck with us if we had men like that on our side.”
“So, what is the fucking problem, boy?”
“I told you, something feels off. I don’t know what it is. Pa, there’s no harm in them waiting until I take the time to feel comfortable with my decision.” There’s no way I’m even going to think about what that decision will be until I hear back from Gibbs.
“Vinny, taking so much time to think suggests distrust. It shows we have something to distrust them over, and there’s nothing,” he stresses.
“Pa, the fact that none of the families in our existing alliance have ever worked with the Bratva is enough to make me want to take the time to think about it.”
That silences him. He can’t refute it. It’s a fact, one I think we should consider.
“Vincent.” He sighs with frustration. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed the change in you since Sorcha’s death.” Pa straightens up and glowers at me.
I narrow my eyes at him. What the hell is he going to say to me now?
“Do you expect me to be the same?”
“No, I don’t, but fuck, you’re neither here nor there. One end of the spectrum to the next. Never in the middle. You can kill a man for selling drugs to kids right off the bat, but you can’t kill Mark when he steals two million from you and fucks with us. You can kill a man who stabbed his wife, but you can’t see for shit when you have something good in front of you.”
He could continue. The list of things I’ve done since Sorcha’s death is long. I became a no-chances guy after. It was enough for me to know that a guy was evil, doing evil things, and I didn’t think it was right for me to know that and let him walk away.
It’s rage. I won’t claim that I was being heroic. It’s more the case of me dealing out death to those I thought deserved it. But what happened with Mark was Ava. She was his get out of jail card. He did bad things too, and I practically let him go.
“Pa—”
“No, Vincent, don’t make me regret my decision to make you boss of this family. It would break my heart. My other boys are each as deserving of the position, but you are the only one who earned it. In the end, though, I will do what’s right for the family the way I always have. Take your remaining three weeks, but no more. If at the end of that time you still feel the same and can’t come to me with a solid reason for why we shouldn’t follow through with this alliance, I will take matters into my own hands. I will do it, and you will not like it. This opportunity is too big to fuck it up.”
I’m listening. Listening loud and clear, and hearing him, knowing that I better take that month to shape up in more ways than one.
Even if I don’t want to.