Page 9 of Brando
“I’m right here with you,” I tell the table at large as my brothers’ heads start turning my way.
“You know you can tell us if something’s wrong, right? I’m worried about you.”
My sister-in-law sounds like a mother hen. Which pleases me completely, especially since we don’t have any other femalesin our lives. Oh, did I mention that we killed our mother because she was a vile, disgusting human being who planned our execution? First, she ordered the hit on Don Marone, which resulted in my Aunt Thalia’s murder. Then, she was the cause of my twin brother’s death. After that, she came back following our father’s death and fourteen years in exile to proclaim herself head of the Gatti empire. And to kill us. But we beat her to the punch.
“Brando…?”
I ignore them all as another message comes through and I bury my head in my phone. I feel Allegra’s eyes on me as my eyebrows crease in concern. I stand from the table quickly, excusing myself, even as Allegra and Scar call after me. I’ll explain to them later. But right now, Mason Ironside is losing his shit because he’s lost his nieces, and I don’t want to have to fight another war right now, not when my brother is expecting his first child.
That, and Mason Ironside is a little crazy. I’ve seen his sort of crazy firsthand. The man rampages when he loses control; it’s truly a sight to behold. He’s definitely the kind of man you’d want on your team if you were going to war, because he’s a beast when he needs to be, but I’m kind of enjoying the relative calm in our lives right now. So I’ll attend to him, calm him down, assure him that things will be alright, and avoid a near catastrophe. I hope.
The car comesto a speeding halt beside Mason Ironside’s car in the small lot outside a store that seems like it’s been plucked out of a scene from the past. He wasn’t wrong when he said no one would be able to find the place, even if they were lookingfor it. Mason comes crashing out the front door, hands in his hair, losing his mind as he rambles about his nieces and how they’re missing. He’s almost incoherent as he mumbles about all the things they’re going to be subjected to at the hands of the Maltese.
“Calm the fuck down and start at the beginning,” I tell him. I’m always the voice of reason, but Mason is the total opposite, and right about now, we can’t waste precious time with him being incoherent.
He indicates for me to follow him, and I enter the store where there’s an elderly couple sitting behind a counter to my right. They say nothing as they lift their doe eyes and watch us quietly as we walk in the opposite direction. I follow Mason the few feet it takes to get to a room in the back. There’s a girl inside, laying on a sofa, curled up in a ball, her eyes red rimmed. She sits up when she sees me, swipes at her eyes and watches me expectantly. She’s about my age, blonde hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, her eyes two wide, puffy globes of ice blue. There’s a sense of familiarity about her, but I can’t place her and I don’t give it another thought as I look from her to Mason, waiting for an explanation.
“The twins, they took off while she was asleep.”
“Twins?”
“The two younger girls are a little flighty,” Mason shrugs, as if to say he’s tried everything and the terrible two can’t be held down.
“What makes you think they took off? And why would they take off?” I ask, addressing Mason.
I look back at the girl. She’s now standing, walking toward me slowly, as if suddenly waking from a dream. She squints as she looks at me, as if by doing so, she can dissect the contours and lines of my face to come to the conclusion she’s about to land on.
“Brando?”
Mason does a sort of crazy spin as he looks open-mouthed from his niece to me, then back again.
“Wait. You twoknoweach other?” He gawks.
I’m still trying to make her out, even as her presence scratches at my surface, a long-repressed memory tucked neatly away in that box from the past.
“The TV was still on,” the girl’s soft voice tinkles on the air around us, a soothing lullaby. I allow my eyes to rest on her one second longer than they should, trying to figure out where I know her from. “That’s what my sisters do when they’re trying to sneak around. Because total silence is the only way I can fall totally asleep.”
“Because total silence is the only way I can fall totally asleep…”
The words ring through my head, tickling at a memory from long ago, before everything clicks into place. It was so long ago, and so many things have happened since, yet still, the memory of her is fresh in my mind. She could never sleep unless there was total silence. She hated noise, could wake if a fly dared whizz past her even while she was in the throes of the deepest sleep. I’d always found it odd, but uniquely her. And I know this is the confirmation I need about her identity.
Mia Andrade.
How could I ever forget that angelic face, or the way her touch ghosted over my skin? My childhood friend…then my crush…maybe more than that. She’d been the girl stuck between me and my mortal rival, Frank Falcone. The cutest girl in school, but she didn’t even know it. She’d been the first friend I made when we moved after Christiano’s death, and she’d played a pivotal role in my healing. Because she sealed the gaps, she filled the void of my loss. She was there to listen, to understand, and to share without recrimination or judgment.
She had been lightweight and fluttery, the girl everyone wanted to stand beside. Her hair was a cascade of corn-colored waves that danced playfully around her shoulders whenever she moved, casting flickering shadows in the sunlit corridors of our high school. Her eyes, a deep ice blue, sparkled with mischief when she laughed.
For many years, Mia remained an untouchable mirage. From being neighbors at the age of ten, to becoming sometimes friends, to the culmination and angst of our high school years; Mia was right there through it all. Until she wasn’t.
My memories are vignettes painted in golden hues on the canvas of my mind: Mia giving selflessly of herself as she tutored students in the library; Mia cheering at our school games (though not just for Frank but for all of us); Mia sitting quietly by herself during recess, completely immersed in another world far from the one in which she existed while she read.
It wasn't her looks that attracted others to her, because in the scheme of things, she was cute, but she wasn’t visually the most beautiful girl in the school. It was her essence—how she carried herself with an effortless grace that made her stand out. Her beauty was in the way she treated everyone with kindness irrespective of who they were and how others responded to them. She embodied a purity and an integrity that was rare and enchanting. And there had always been a natural, gravitational pull toward her.
Yet now, years later, those schoolyard days are nothing more than echoes of the past. And although she has suddenly reappeared in my life after all this time, she remains there—a poignant part of my past, forever etched in my memory as if time never dared lay its weight upon those short but blissful moments.
I can’t seem to reconcile the girl she was with the woman she is today. But now she stands before me, a grown woman whohas filled out and taken shape. She’s come into her own. And she has the kind of beauty that doesn't scream for attention but rather whispers, making it impossible to ignore her. Had she not spoken…had she not uttered my name, I may never have noticed her. But now that she’s touched on that memory from long ago, I can’t ignore her.
I shake my head, trying to understand how she is here and why now. How is it that she is Tommy Corsica’s daughter? And how did I never know this? Well, of course, it made sense now, because Tommy had chosen to go by the moniker ‘Corsica’, the island he hailed from. And suddenly, I’m angry. Angry at her. Angry at her father. Angry that after all these years, this is the way that we meet again, and that she’ll merely be passing through.