"True," she said quietly. She couldn't deny those facts. "But you don't know how torn up he was about it. He asked me so many times, 'do you think he really hates me?' I always said no, hoping I wasn't lying to him, hoping you understood why he did what he did."
"I get he wanted to keep us safe…"
"But? I know there's a but."
"But he brought Enzo home. It was safe enough for Enzo to come back years ago, but not me. He's never welcomed me back."
"Now you're being ridiculous."
"Am I, Mom?" he asked, glancing across the table at her. "You know what the first thing he said to me when I came back to New York was? The first thing out of his mouth when he saw my face?"
"What?"
"Why are you here?"
"He just worries," she said. "He was concerned about why you came. He thought something was wrong."
"There is something wrong."
Her expression softened as she gazed at him. "Look, Matty, my point is you were such a little man back then, and you've grown into even more of a man now. It doesn't matter what people tell you... you do what you want. You always have. That's why he locked you in your room. If he hadn't, you would've defied him and gone anyway, despite the fact that he said you couldn't."
"What does that have to do with this?"
"Well, I don't expect any less from you now," she replied. "Life's short. Too short. Trust me. You'll never have enough time. So it doesn't matter if you think this girl might be all wrong for you. You want her? Then go for her."
"It's not that easy."
"Yes, it is. If she doesn't want you anymore? Her loss. Otherwise, there's no reason not to pursue what you want."
Matteo Barsanti.
Genna scarcely remembered there even being a Matteo Barsanti. He had become more of a phantom than a person, a ghost story, whisperings of a vague memory of the oldest Barsanti kid that nobody could quite recall in detail. His existence was sort of an urban legend, the Mafia Boss's son who seemed to vanish from society. Everybody had questions, but nobody ever dared ask for any answers.
Genna had been fifteen the first time she recalled hearing of him... her fifteenth birthday. Against her father's wishes, she'd stowed away into the attic of their house and rummaged through her mother's packed-up belongings, digging through all of her fancy clothes, admiring her jewelry, trying on her wedding dress. The things had been up there for less than a year then but a layer of dust already coated everything, like a lifetime had passed since she had been around to use any of it.
In one of the boxes, in a small wooden chest with a rusty metal clasp, Genna found a thick stack of photographs. She had sat right there in the middle of the dim attic, wearing her mother's pearls and one of her favorite sundresses, and sorted through the faded pictures. She had never seen any of them before, most of her brothers and her. On the bottom of the stack, the last few photos were of Joey and another little boy.
Flipping one over, Genna glanced at the back, seeing her mother's elegant cursive.
Joseph Galante & Matteo Barsanti
Seven years old
She stared at it, surprised. She knew the Barsanti family by that point, had their names and faces memorized as her father routinely quizzed Dante and her, ensuring they could recognize them out on the street. But never, in all of it, had anyone mentioned a Matteo to her.
After cleaning up the attic, she went downstairs, clutching one of the pictures. Her father sat in his office with the door wide-open. Curious, Genna paused in the doorway. "Dad, who's Matteo Barsanti?"
Her father's eyes darted to her. "What did you say?"
Stepping into the room, she held up the picture. "I found this, and on the back it says—"
"I know what it says." Her father was on his feet, tearing the photo out of her hands before she had even realized he moved. "Go to your room."
She gaped at him. "But—"
"Don't argue, Genevieve," he yelled, angrier than she had ever seen him before, his eyes glowing with rage, his hand shaking as he fisted the photograph. "And stay out of the goddamn attic. I'm not going to tell you again!"
She had later asked Dante, who brushed off her question with a half-assed answer. "He's not around anymore."
That was it. No explanation.
A year later, during one of her reckless rebellion moments, Genna was scrounging through her father's bedroom and found that photo in the drawer in his nightstand... half of it, anyway.
Joey's half.
Matteo had been carelessly ripped out of it.
She eventually got more out of Dante but nothing significant. Matteo was the eldest son, Joey's age… he would have been in his early twenties now. She assumed the boy had died, just like her brother had, but clearly he was alive and well.
And somehow managing to fuck with my life.
As soon as Dante and Genna made it home from Little Italy that afternoon, he strode right to their father's office. Voices carried out from in there, the various cars aligning their property telling her they were conducting business. In his haste, Dante had left the door open a crack behind him. Curiously, Genna tiptoed that way, standing against the wall beside the door, straining her ears to listen.
"I saw him today," Dante said. "Matteo Barsanti."
That silenced the other men right away.
"You're sure it was him? Matteo?" Primo asked. "No chance it was a mistake?"
"No chance."
Genna's stomach dropped.
"The Barsantis must think it’s safe to bring him home and involve him in things," Primo said. "Why else would he be around now?"
His mother's sick, she thought. He came home so not to miss this chance.
"I don't know," Dante said. "But I'll find out."
Sighing, Genna pushed away from the wall before getting caught eavesdropping and headed up to her room, throwing herself down in bed and staring up at the ceiling. She laid there for what felt like forever, until there was a light knock at her door.
"Come in," she mumbled, not loud enough for anyone to hear.
The door opened anyway, her brother sauntering in, looking much more relaxed than he had been when they got home. Turning her head, she watched him as he sat down on the bed nearby.
"I'm sorry about earlier," he said right away. "I shouldn't have thrown Joey in your face like that to scare you."
She sighed. "You meant well."
"I did," he agreed, "but it still wasn't right. I shouldn't do that."
"Well, I forgive you."
"Thanks." Dante reached over, playfully nudging her. "So tell me more about this guy of yours that has you trying to spontaneously combust."
She shook her head slowly. "There's no point."
"Why?"
"I think you might've been right about it all."
"Yeah?"
"I realized I don't even know him," she said. "I was just fooling myself, being an idiot as usual, thinking he could be different when they're all just the same."
"Ah, I don't believe that."
"I'm a shit judge of character," she muttered. "I'm just gonna lay here and waste away, no point in even bothering anymore. I officially quit life."
Dante stood up, grabbing her hand to pull her up. She resisted, in no mood to even move, but he was undeterred, physically dragging her out of the bed. She grunted when her back slammed into the hard floor, but Dante still didn't let go, clutching onto her wrists and pulling her thorough the room.
"Stop," she whined as he dragged her across the carpet. "You're gonna give me rug burn!"
"No," he said. "My sister's not a quitter."
She fought him off, digging in her heels, but he just pulled harder, practically tackling her on the floor. By the time he got her to the bedroom door, she was engulfed in a fit of laughter and unable to fight him anymore.
"Okay, okay, I quit!" He narrowed his eyes, and she laughed harder. "I mean I don't quit. You win, okay?"
"Good," he said, yanking her to her feet finally. "Because those stairs
would've hurt if I had to drag you down them, too."
A few minutes past eight. They were both late for dinner. Genna followed Dante downstairs, slipping into her seat. Their father said nothing about their tardiness, simply reaching across the table and taking their hands to pray. They all ate quietly, the atmosphere strained. A torturous hour passed before she finally had a chance to escape, slipping back upstairs as her brother followed their father into his office.
As soon as she reached her bedroom, she grabbed her cell phone out of her purse and flopped down on the bed.
Lying back, she gazed at the screen, opening her contacts to see his name.
Matty B.
Matteo Barsanti, just the touch of a button away.
Their families didn't just carry animosity—they were mortal enemies, hell-bent on destroying each other. The two of them were a disaster waiting to happen, and they had just been fooling themselves if they thought anything good could come out of this thing.
Hesitating, her finger hovered over the screen for a moment before she hit the delete button, erasing him from her life just as quickly as he had been dropped into it.
120 hours of community service—three hours a day, five days a week, for the next two months. That was practically Genna's entire summer wrapped up in punishment. The court set up grueling graffiti cleanup duty in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan, but her father quickly intervened and shut that down.
Greenwich Village was Barsanti territory.
Instead, she was scheduled to work in a soup kitchen in East Harlem, in a section of the neighborhood considered one of the sketchiest, but her father figured it would be the safest for her. None of their kind would ever dare venture that far east, he'd said.
She started the first Monday of June—dinner shift, from four to seven in the evening. Instead of bothering her brother for a ride, knowing he had better things to do than haul her around everywhere she needed to go, she called for a cab to take her. She showed up fifteen minutes late that first evening, wearing a nice black dress and high heels, her hair down and curled. She figured just because she had to do it didn't mean she couldn't do it in style.
Mistake.
The coordinator—a scrawny, tall man with gray hair and withered skin named Adam—met her at the door, took one look at her, and shook his head. "You know what you're getting into here?"
"Sure," she said, shrugging. They were feeding people. How hard could that be?
"All right, then," he said, tossing a grungy white apron at her. "Let's get started then."
As it turned out, she had absolutely no idea what she was getting into. She expected to slap dinner on a tray and mindlessly shove it along to the next person in an assembly line, never giving thought to the fact that someone had to cook the food.
And that someone, it seemed, was the same someone who served it.
By five o'clock, she was dripping sweat, her arms aching from hurriedly stirring a huge pot of chili, the front of her splattered by sauce, and her head itching from the hairnet she'd been forced to wear. In her eighteen years of life, she'd never cooked before—she never had to. Her mother was the farthest from domestic as a person could possibly get and Genna seemed to have inherited her kitchen skills. Her inadequacy earned her amused looks from the coordinator as he watched her scramble to be ready in time.
Lugging the heavy pot out of the kitchen, she stumbled in her heels and nearly dropped the chili. Grunting, she shoved it up on the serving counter, barely having time to catch her breath when the doors opened and people started filtering in to eat. From that moment on, it was nonstop as she ladled the chili into small Styrofoam cups, barely a few bites for each person, before plopping it on a tray and sending it down the line for sandwiches and cartons of milk.
When seven o'clock finally neared, her shift coming to a close, she was utterly exhausted, her feet aching, her muscles twitching. She almost longed for graffiti duty. On the way out, the coordinator met her at the door, where he stood most of the evening, greeting everyone who came along.
"I'm surprised you survived all night, Miss Galante," he said, glancing at his watch. She knew it was a few minutes early, but she was hoping he would let it slide. It was only about a half hour trip home, but she didn't want to be late for dinner. "Well, nearly all night. Will we be seeing you again tomorrow?"
"Of course," she replied. "And the next day. And the one after that, too."
And almost every fucking day for the next eight weeks.
"Good," he said. "And I assume in better shoes?"
"Absolutely."
She wouldn't make that mistake again.
The next evening, she took the train into the city, getting off right across the street from the community center that housed the soup kitchen, and made it there fifteen minutes early, dressed in jeans and a tank top, sneakers on her feet, one of her brother's Yankee ball caps backward on her head, her hair loosely braided. The coordinator smiled, greeting her much more assuredly.
"You ever made beef stew?" he asked, raising his eyebrows curiously.
"Nope," she said. "I've never made anything… except for chili now, of course."
That seemed to amuse him. "Well, no better time than the present to learn, huh?"
Every day was something new, something just as unappetizing as the day before—beef stew, corn chowder, potato soup—but Genna dutifully followed the recipes given to her, making sure she was ready by the time five o'clock rolled around. Friday was special, a full tray of food: some mystery meat contraption billed as meatloaf with instant potatoes, brown gravy, mixed vegetables and a dinner roll. Twice as many people came through then, keeping them constantly moving as she slapped slab of meat after slab of meat on the old plastic trays before shoving them down the line.
"Weekends are busiest," the coordinator explained, pitching in on the line to keep it steadily going. "More families come in, with more kids, so we try to make sure we have enough to sustain them all."
She stayed until seven that day, not stepping away from the line until the last person had come through. Pulling off the filthy apron, she tossed it in a nearby hamper and scanned the packed room. The tables were old, the cracked multicolored seats filled with bodies, not a single one vacant tonight. "Do you ever run out of food before you run out of people?"
"Occasionally," he replied. "Usually we have enough that some of them come back for seconds, though."
Her brow furrowed. "I've never seen anyone come back for seconds."
"That's because you're gone by the time that happens," he said. "Dinner shift ends at seven, officially, but we don't make anyone leave. Some of these people are still here come ten o'clock, eating until the food runs out. We let nothing go to waste, and for most of them, this is the only meal they'll get today."
That stunned her. She glanced around, taking in their faces. Most of them smiled as a wave of chatter rolled through the room. They didn't have a fraction of what she had in life, yet they looked more satisfied than she ever was.
She didn't think of herself as a self-centered person, but she felt extremely greedy then.
"You can go now," the coordinator said. "It's seven."
"No, I'd like to stay," she said, glancing at him. "If that's okay."
He smiled. "Absolutely. You're welcome to stay as long as you want."
There wasn't a lot of leftover food tonight, but enough that a few dozen were able to come back for second helpings—mostly parents, getting it for their children. It was civil and polite, no one fighting over who got extra or walking away angry. They seemed to be just grateful for whatever they were given.
It was after ten o'clock when she finally left the community center, where she promptly discovered her brother standing out front, leaning back against his car parked along the curb, his arms crossed over his chest. Her brow furrowed as she approached him. "Dante? Everything okay?"
"Dad sent me to check on you. You didn't come home for dinner so he got worried."
&nb
sp; "How long have you been here?"
"An hour or so."
"Why didn't you come in?"
"I did," he replied. "I walked in, was gonna ask when you left, but I saw you were still working. Figured I'd let you do your thing and wait here for you."
"You didn't have to wait," she said. Dante just stared at her. Yes, he did have to wait. Their father sent him for her, and there was no way he could have gone back home alone.
"Come on," he said, opening the passenger side door, and motioning inside. "Let's go home. I'm starving."
The thirty-floor luxury building stood on a street corner on Sixth Avenue in the Chelsea neighborhood, housing sixty vast condominiums, each one still vacant. Construction was just wrapping up, tenants expected to start moving in within a matter of weeks. Lights shined on the outside of the building, reflecting off of the expansive windows and illuminating the small trailer still parked on the lot.
A dim light shined within the trailer as electricity hummed from a generator connected to it. Matty pulled his Lotus straight up to the front of the new building, parking in the space designed for valet drop off. He locked his car doors and set off straight for the trailer, tapping lightly on the door when he approached it.
It only took a moment before it was pulled open a crack, suspicious eyes peering out at him. Confusion played on the guy's face momentarily before a smile split his hard exterior. He yanked the door open the rest of the way and stood there, grinning.
Gavin Amaro.
"Well, well, well," Gavin said, "if it isn't the one and only Matty-B."
The Amaros, along with the Genevas and the Calabreses, rounded out the five crime families that controlled New York's underworld. While they tried to maintain neutrality, the Amaro family was widely considered the Barsantis greatest ally due to the fact that they were practically family.
Practically being key. Roberto Barsanti and Johnny Amaro shared no blood, but their children did. The men had married sisters, Savina and Lena Brazzi from the family that controlled most of New Jersey. While that wasn't enough to officially unify the families, it did give Matty someone on the outside that he could turn to. Gavin wasn't only his cousin, but he was also a mentor, and even someone he would call a close friend. And to people in the lifestyle, even those as far-removed as Matty, friend wasn't a term used lightly.