CHAPTER 15: SEBASTIAN
1555 Words
She was supposed to be older, or more mature. Not my one-night stand. Jesus, Morina looked damn good on the beach in her natural environment. Not that it mattered. She was dealing with a different side of me now.
This was the last place I needed to tie up my father’s illegal business doings. I’d been at it for years. The Armanelli Family, the most infamous Italian Mob in the United States, was almost legal. I knew Miami and this small town was my last loose end, the frayed thread that I needed to tighten up or cut off. Maribel had been dabbling on both sides of the fence.
She paid for protection from an Irish family to keep that food truck up and running. Then, she’d partnered with my Italian family, my father mostly, for the oil company. Two partnerships with opposing families meant she was f*****g one of us.
Morina knew something. She had to. Except given the way her eyes fell, that deep-blue sapphire suddenly a little misty and confused about her grandmother, I wasn’t sure she did. My one-night stand in Miami was turning out to be a f*****g problem.
“What do we have wrong here?” I asked Dante in the car later that day.
“It’s just a blip on the radar. We’re scoping out the city and Maribel, not a food truck. We’ll take care of it if necessary.”
“This little town connects to oil terminals, the farms, and the corporate area, Dante. That company brings in millions, and if the majority voter is dabbling in different partnerships, that’s a problem. My father always invested here, not the company itself.”
“Ah, your father maybe liked Maribel then.” I laughed at that ridiculous statement.
“He was a f*****g prick who loved no one but his money. We both know it. You remember my mother. If he couldn’t love her enough to stop doing the s**t he was, then he could love no one.”
Dante didn’t respond to that. He knew my mother. She’d showered the world in Italian love with her cooking, her singing, her passion for life. My father stared at her like she was beautiful, but he walked past her time and time again to go kill a man, to make a deal, to continue building his empire of wealth.
And he’d dragged me along with him. I remembered the first time I’d asked to stay home with Mother instead of go out on business with him. He’d pulled a gun from his suit jacket and told me to be the man he’d raised me to be.
It was just how Mario worked, how he’d built us up from a young age. Mario Armanelli groomed me to be ruthless, forceful, and greedy. I tried to be the complete opposite. I stared out the window at the palm trees. I felt the warm sun that leaked through them.
This town was quaint, understated, and probably underutilized. Still, I’d been providing protection and partnership to so many over the years based on my father’s illegal doings. I wouldn’t do that anymore. Maribel would have to let me take over her shares and run a clean business or I’d pull my protection.
The mindset was one I didn’t enjoy particularly. Allies were always good to have, but I needed them to be legitimate. My father had dirtied our hands time and time again. My family deserved to run everything legally, within the law, and still maintain the level of financial stability we’d always had. We’d earned that through years and years of hell. I rubbed my chin.
“We go to the source then.”
“Maribel only wanted virtual meetings because of her health.”
“Not doable, Dante. You and I both know that. I can’t read her when she’s on a screen.”
He sighed and texted away. We planned a surprise visit for that night and pulled up to a house very near to the coast, close enough that the older woman could make it there by foot if she had the mobility. We exited the car onto a dirt driveway.
The plants around it weren’t enormous nor was the home. It didn’t seem as though the person who lived here was doing so lavishly or hoarding money I didn’t know about. Her porch had been painted white fairly recently, and as I stepped up onto the wood, it felt sturdy enough, even where the winds and the rain could potentially ruin it.
“What the hell are you doing on my porch?” an older woman with deep wrinkles croaked at me through a screen door.
“We have business to discuss.” I pulled at my tie, seeing her brow furrow.
“I only discussed business with your father, Bastian.” She sighed like she’d known I was coming.
“I haven’t introduced myself,” I said as I took in her stance.
She hadn’t opened the door yet, and I would wait for the invite before I entered.
“No need to. We both know who each other are. You look like your father. And I’m sure I don’t look anything like how he didn’t describe me. I say didn’t because we all know he didn’t drop my name to you once.”
I schooled my facial features as she waited and studied me. She smiled when she realized I wouldn’t let anything slip in my expressions. I’d trained myself to never give a thing away.
“I’m thinking I’ve met my match in you because your father would have started talking already. Even so, I just said it and I’ll say it again—I only discussed business with your father.”
She smoothed the white nightgown she was wearing. The woman wasn’t at all concerned about her appearance. She brushed away my visit, lessening the importance by focusing on her pajamas.
“My father’s dead, Maribel.” Her gaze shot up, and she scanned the scenery behind me.
“You know I ordered a hit on him.” I molded myself at the time of his death.
I called that shot to kill him and watched him bleed out, watched the beginning of our sins leak away with him. She scoffed but glanced past me to my security. Dante was a good friend, a man who I trusted to stand by me while I made house calls like the one I was making now. The old woman’s eyes narrowed.
“My granddaughter is here. Don’t say a word about my shares in the oil company. You got it? And I’ll sell them to you fair and square. You keep my city running. That’s the deal.” I hummed and rocked on my heels.
I met her stare, and we watched each other with the legacies and traditions flying between us, weighing us down, ripping at our trust in each other.
“I won’t bend on that. You make good on this town, Bastian.”
“You paid some Irish to have that food truck on the beach, not us.” She scoffed.
“One time. It keeps my granddaughter happy. It wasn’t a slight to your family. Not like what your father’s done to mine time and time again. Now, let me get dressed.” She slammed the door on both of us.
Dante chuckled behind me. “Not our warmest welcome.”
“f**k me,” I grumbled.
Morina hadn’t known. s**t.
“This is getting more complicated by the second,” I muttered.
“We got eyes on the place in case she’s planning anything,” Dante told me.
“She’s not.” That wasn’t what I was worried about.
“She doesn’t trust us because my father probably f****d her over.”
“Mario wasn’t nice to anyone unless he had the motivation. He did what he had to do in order to get what he wanted for our family.”
“You don’t make alliances that way. Sometimes it takes family sacrifice for the good of all your partners.”
“I wouldn’t argue with that.” Dante cracked his knuckles, and I glanced back at him.
His light eyes contrasted with his bronzed skin and the tattoos across his neck.
“We’ll have to keep levelheaded. I’ve heard about her through the underground channels.” I checked my watch as the fall breeze picked up.
It wasn’t enough to keep us cool in the Florida air, the humidity weighing everything down with it suffocating warmth.
“I need a vacation.”
“You’re never going to get one.”
“Why not?” Dante didn’t respond.
He knew as well as I did that the head of the Mafia didn’t ever get to rest. That wasn’t an option. I’d never had one to begin with. The door swung open again, but instead of an old woman, there stood the young one.
Morina had the exact same shape of eyes as her grandmother. My mind didn’t calculate fast enough, but I knew the end result was going to be one I didn’t want.
“You’ve got to be kidding. Did you follow me here?” Her voice came out high pitched.
I took a step back with her statement.
- Writer
