Chapter 7 - When the Mafia Boss Woke UpI woke to Mia coloring on my hospital blanket.
Apparently nobody in Boston had the authority to stop her.
“Those are expensive sheets,” I said.
She looked up.
“You’re awake.”
“So I’ve noticed.”
She climbed down.
Then yelled:
“MAMA! MR. DUCA ISN’T DEAD!”
Half the hospital probably heard her.
Grace entered first.
Daniel came behind her.
For a second, everything else vanished.
My brother stood there.
Not on video.
Not in a photograph.
Real.
I stared.
“So,” Daniel said.
“You look terrible.”
I laughed.
It hurt.
He sat beside me.
Neither of us knew what to do.
Finally I said:
“I buried you.”
“I know.”
“I hated you for leaving.”
“I know.”
“I hated myself more.”
His eyes lowered.
“I know that too.”
We talked for three hours.
About our father.
Vincenzo.
Helena.
The staged warehouse explosion.
Daniel’s years moving between safe houses.
My years becoming exactly the man our father feared I would become.
At one point Daniel said:
“You weren’t born for this.”
“For what?”
“The family business.”
I looked at him.
“I’ve been running it for fifteen years.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“You got good at surviving it.”
He leaned back.
“That doesn’t mean you were made for it.”
Those words stayed.
Helena was charged.
Vincenzo was arrested after trying to flee through Montreal.
Mrs. Baines took a plea agreement.
Thomas entered a protected cooperation program but refused to disappear again.
Grace made him rent an apartment six blocks away before she would even discuss reconciliation.
Again, I respected her.
The house changed too.
Every hidden passage was mapped.
Every wall opened.
Mia supervised aggressively.
She wore a yellow plastic construction helmet Roman bought her.
“Why is she in charge?” I asked.
Roman shrugged.
“She discovered the first tunnel.”
Fair.
One afternoon, Mia found me in the library.
The bookcase had been removed.
Sunlight now entered through a new opening leading to a courtyard.
“No more knocking,” she said.
“No.”
She seemed disappointed.
“You liked the knocking?”
“No.”
“Then?”
She shrugged.
“It made you talk to us.”
That hit harder than Helena’s bullet.
Before that night, Grace and her children had been invisible to me.
Not because I was cruel.
Because I had constructed a life where people became functions.
Driver.
Housekeeper.
Guard.
Cook.
Lawyer.
Useful.
Not useful.
Loyal.
Dangerous.
I had thought distance made me powerful.
It mostly made me blind.
I looked at Mia.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
She thought seriously.
“A veterinarian.”
“Why?”
“Dogs don’t lie.”
Reasonable.
“What does that require?”
“School.”
“I mean financially.”
She frowned.
“I’m six.”
Also reasonable.
That evening, I created an education trust for both girls.
Grace found out the next morning.
She marched into my study.
“No.”
“What?”
“You can’t buy us.”
I almost laughed.
“You sound familiar.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
She placed the documents on my desk.
“We don’t want charity.”
“It isn’t charity.”
“What is it?”
“A debt.”
“For what?”
I looked toward the broken wall.
“Your daughter saved my brother.”
Grace softened.
“Mia heard a noise.”
“She listened.”
I paused.
“Most adults learn not to.”
Grace sat down.
Finally.
“You’re changing.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“For you? Probably.”
We talked for an hour.
Not employer and employee.
Two adults.
Two people whose families had been damaged by the same secrets.
When she left, Daniel entered.
“You like her.”
I stared at him.
“She works for me.”
“That was not my statement.”
“Go away.”
He smiled.
It felt like being twenty again.
Then his expression became serious.
“There’s one more thing.”
“What?”
“Dad left a final instruction.”
I sighed.
“Of course he did.”
Daniel placed an envelope on my desk.
May you like
On the front, in my father’s handwriting:
FOR ADRIAN — AFTER THE WALLS COME DOWN.
