Little by little, I shed the baggage I’d brought with me. “Fake it ’til you make it,” as they say, and that’s exactly what I did. I started every day with a mantra: You are not your family. You are not your past.
After a while, I even started to believe that.
But right now, I realize just how wrong I was.
I never truly escaped. I never truly left my past behind me. When I see my father pass by, drunk and arrogant as always, I see it now: I ran away from home. But home never ran away from me.
I know I ought to say something. Eventually, I’ll have to say something. I left my family right after the birth of my daughter, right after she was stolen from me. I’m certain my father knew where I was for the first four years that I was working at the flower shop and the diner, but he didn’t try to find me. Maybe he knew I needed space. Maybe he knew that if I saw him again so soon, I’d curse up a blue streak that would put sailors to shame. I spent huge swaths of those first four years dreaming up the speech I’d deliver. I pictured it reducing him to a blubbering wreck of tears and remorse. God, it was gonna be a good one. All I needed was the chance to give it to him the way he deserved.
Yet, here he is and I’m speechless.
So many things I could say, that I’ve wanted to say for a very long time now, but my mouth has apparently decided to disconnect from my brain.
My father is like one of his bombs: brash, violent, and the force of his actions goes far beyond the intended targets. Collateral damage, in his eyes, is merely the cost of doing business. I’ve spent years thinking about the people he’s killed as the don of his Mafia, and even more about the bodies of their loved ones left in my father’s wake. Innocents and bystanders alike—all dead.
Business, business, it’s always about the motherfucking business in Gianluigi’s eyes. “The give and take,” he would call it. But I never saw him doing much giving. He’s been taking, hand over fist, for as long as I can remember.
I think about myself and how he took my daughter. I’m his daughter and he took my most vulnerable moment and turned it into more fucking business.
But maybe that’s my emotions blinding me from his stated reasoning—that my daughter would always be in danger if people knew she was a Balducci. My situation right now is proof of what he said. Nobody is safe with the Balducci attached to them.
And as much as I’m opposed to it, he’s still my father.
I turn to Maksim, expecting more of his trademark cold fury. But he’s looking back at me. Not only is anger missing from his face, but there isn’t a single trace of surprise. You’d think a mob don would be a little bit concerned about ending up in the same nightclub as his sworn enemy, but Maksim doesn’t seem worried at all.
Then it all clicks into place.
That’s why he was insistent that I come out tonight: He knew my father would be here.
I should be pissed. Once again, I’m just another pawn in a man’s game.
But seeing my father again after all this time makes me feel like I’m being hurled into another timeline, where, while I’m still prioritized above other people, I’m also still loved—imperfectly, messily, but in my father’s own way.
Maksim looks away from me. “Go to him.”
I take a step toward the stairs automatically, but I stop. I turn to him. “Why?”
“It’s not your place to ask questions, Cassandra. Go.”
I glance at the booths. I can’t see my father anymore. He must be sitting close to the wall. Of course, he would be. He can’t risk being somewhere that someone could sneak up behind him.
“I’m not moving until you tell me what’s going on,” I snap. I pull my hair out of its bun, trying to act like the opposite of an anxious prodigal daughter. My hair still feels wet and it’s turned wavy from being tied up so tightly. Just another sign that anything under pressure will bend, but I’m not quite ready to be that flexible.
“You don’t need to know anything. It won’t change the plan,” he murmurs.
I continue running my fingers through my hair, the strands getting stuck between my fingers. “Just so we’re clear, I don’t give a flying fuck about your plan.”
“You should. It’s the only route that will end with you seeing your daughter.”
He carries his conceit like a gun, ready to shoot anyone down, but I know one day he’ll have it turned against him. I just hope I’m the one who triggers it.
“Are you going to constantly hold that over my head to get what you want?” I ask. “Because at some point, I’m going to decide it’s a lot easier to take things into my own hands.”
“You’re smarter than that,” he says. “You know the moment I think you’re going near that girl, I’ll forewarn the school, I’ll forewarn her parents, I’ll forewarn—”
“I’m her parent.”
He shakes his head. “Not anymore. She has an adoptive mother and father. Because of your father, they don’t know who you are. So, get over your fucking daddy issues, go up there, and talk to him.”
“I don’t know what your problem is,” I say. “But if you think I’ll listen to you because you’re the big bad Bratva boss, you should remember that I already defied a mob boss once. I’m not afraid to do it again.”
His lip curls up in disdain. “You didn’t defy him. You ran away. Now is your chance to be as brave as you think you are.”
We’re standing so close
