Bastiano Romano: A Standalone Mafia Romance Novel (The Five Syndicates Book 4) by Parker S. Huntington (15)

There weren’t too many people in the mafia community. I lived in a big city, but my world was small. Though I didn’t understand normal, I understood this little world like the back of my hand.

My mom had never physically hurt anyone. Not with her own hands, at least. But she’d been an absent mother at best and an unfaithful wife at worst. She’d turned a blind eye to the countless number of times her family had harmed, injured, and killed people, regardless of whether they’d been guilty or not, and had even encouraged—though not ordered—a death or two. Maybe she’d never done anything truly bad by her own hand, but all those little things made her a bad person.

Gio, on the other hand, had been more active in his transgressions. He had no qualms about murder, and he’d done exactly so without remorse in the past. He was an active Romano caporegime, who’d made an extracurricular activity out of killing to protect the family and fucking every decent-looking girl in the city. No amount of love I held for him or donations to charity to ease his guilt changed the fact that he was. Not. A. Good. Person.

Tessie, however, was the sunshine of our lives. Perpetually happy and radiating purity, she’d never had a malicious thought towards anyone—probably wasn’t capable of it. When confronted with adversity, her solutions always involved unity, working together, and the type of rainbow-full-of-unicorns bullshit only someone with truly moral intent could conjure. Sure, she was young and people changed, but goodness—true goodness like she had—wasn’t something that would go anywhere anytime soon. If ever.

Everett, despite being raised by the female equivalent of an ass-faced wildebeest, was exactly the same way. Pure. Good. Incapable of horror.

Point was, in my world, people were usually black and white. Good people were good, and bad people were bad, but so few delved into the grey area in between. I was one of those people. Ariana De Luca was one, too.

I was an asshole, and she was combative. I was the type to continue jacking off when interrupted, and she was the type to watch it and enjoy. I’d let my family’s indiscretions go uncontested time and time again while she had a secretive past she hid, and I knew—I just goddamn knew—it wasn’t a good one. She knew things she had no business knowing, and I had no reservations when it came to spying on my employees or anyone else for that matter.

But in her cards-too-close-to-her-chest, take-no-shit, and answer-to-no-one crusade, she’d managed to be kind. To the staff. To the customers. And most importantly, to my sister. I wasn’t as nice as her, but I had my hard limits. Killing was one. Treating Tessie and the women I loved nothing less than the way they deserved to be treated was another.

I liked to think that, so long as I didn’t do anything truly bad, I could exist in this murky grey zone for the rest of my life and feel pretty damned content about it. If the pendulum swung too far one way, I’d just swing it the other way.

And that was exactly what Ariana De Luca was doing, too.

Day One of her training period, she’d served me a dish for lunch that had gotten sent back to the kitchen by a customer. A bite had been missing from the corner of the Miyazaki wagyu, which she’d tried to conceal with a piece of broccolini.

I’d insisted she return it to the kitchen, and in front of a Zagat food critic, she crossed her arms and decried my failings to the homeless population of New York City, as if the solution to world famine and hunger hinged on not wasting the three-hundred-and-fifty-dollar six-ounce steak.

Day Two, she’d taken my five-thousand-dollar Eames executive chair to the break room to nap on, and when I had demanded Ariana to return it, she turned it into a “unicorn” chair for Tessie to do her homework on, complete with an ice-cream-cone-turned-unicorn-horn and a makeshift tail made from cooked spaghetti noodles.

“But you can’t take Uni from us, Bastian!” Tessie had shouted when I’d accidentally stepped on the ridiculous spaghetti noodles hanging from the back of the chair.

Us, she’d said, as if she and Ariana were a unified front.

Squashing Uni’s tail, of course, had made me the bad guy.

Ariana: 2. Bastian: 0.

Day Three, Ariana had compiled in one of my crystal decanters—turning my sister into a thief when Tessie nabbed it from my office—all the alcohol waste from my customers. I’d spit it out when I poured myself a glass that night, and Ariana hadn’t missed the opportunity to point out that it’d taken no more than fifteen minutes to fill the thirty-ounce container.

“Maybe if you made better drinks, there’d be no waste. You could end the water crisis.” I’d pointed out, to which Tessie—as if I’d insulted them both—argued, “Stop pretending you care about people and actually care about people.”

What. The. Fuck.

Ariana was turning Tessie into a new age hippie environmentalist under my own nose.

And Day Four—fuck Day Four—Ariana had managed to wrangle an unearned pay raise, win her pick of work hours, and secure her employment at L’Oscuritá. All while making a fool of me.

I was down four now, and that was four times in a row she’d proven herself to be no stranger to the inner workings of Hell. But yesterday, after four consecutive slights to me, she’d decided to swing the pendulum from evil to virtuous, confusing the hell out of me.

I couldn’t fight someone good.

Even I wasn’t that far gone.

And today, she still hadn’t swung her pendulum back to evil.

Ariana eyed the door for the third time in three minutes. Tessie sat in front of her, oblivious, but her presence alone was a signifier of mine. After our confrontation the other day ended with her dodging my questions and the follow up ended in an unspoken truce, I figured Ariana was dreading seeing me. She kept looking at the door like I’d enter the break room any second now.

Interesting.

I watched on the security monitor as Tessie pointed to something in her textbook. Ariana stood, grabbed a white erase marker, and began writing on the whiteboard we sometimes used for employee meetings.

It was her lunch hour, and she’d been spending it tutoring Tessie. The Mother Teresa act baffled me, and it didn’t escape me that she not only gave my sister unsolicited help but also looked happy doing so. Not to mention she had no way of knowing I was spying on her, taking in her good deeds with no clue how to process them.

Tessie hadn’t been born for most of my relationship with Elsa, but Dana had met Tessie plenty of times while we’d dated, and she’d never lifted a hand to help her. My mother and father foot the bill for Tessie’s private tutoring, various extracurriculars, and so on, but that wasn’t the same as honest-to-God, hands-on helping. I tried to help as much as I could, but I lived several states away from Tessie for most of the year. Limits bound me, and they were almost as asphyxiating as Gio’s expectations of me. If I could, I’d be there for Tessie and Everett every day. It killed me that the two hadn’t even met since they were both too young to remember.

But Ariana held a fancy degree from a top-five university, worked a dead-end job as a bartender, and helped the eight-year-old sister of her asshole boss with the little free time she had during her breaks. None of it made sense to me.

So, here I was, spying on Ariana when I should have been spying on Graham. Vince had sent over a dossier a few days ago, listing supposed allegations against Graham and a proposed schedule that would make it easier for me to keep watch over him.

I may or may not have switched Ariana’s schedule to match Graham’s—two birds, one stone and all. In my defense, she warranted looking into. Nothing she did made sense. She was too educated to be here, too combative with me despite the fact that I was her boss, and too idiosyncratic, exhibiting behavior none of my sizable staff ever had. If I had reason to look into Graham, I certainly had reason to look into Ariana De Luca.

With that in mind, I slipped on my suit jacket, grabbed the Graham dossier, and headed to the break room.

“Can you adopt me?”

The fuck? I froze, just short of the doorway.

An awkward laugh crept out of Ariana’s lips. “What? Why?”

“Mom went back home yesterday, so I might have to go back soon. I don’t like it in California. The beaches are cool. So is Disneyland when I’m allowed to go. But my mom is never home, Aronne and Alex are really mean, and they live with us, so Alex never stops bullying me.”—Wait, she never told me that—"Plus, I never get to see my dad or Bastian.” She took a deep breath. “I know you hate Bastian—”

“I don’t hate your brother…”

Unconvincing.

“—but he’s the best big brother ever, and I miss him.”

Back at ya, kiddo.

I waited for Ariana to shit talk me.

She didn’t.

“Remember when I told you that people are usually mean when they’re jealous?”

“Yeah?”

“I was wrong. People are mean for lots of reasons. Jealousy is just one of the big ones.”

“What’s another reason?”

“Because they’re scared, angry, sad—it can be anything, really.”

“How do I do anything about it if I don’t know what’s wrong?”

I dipped my head a little past the bend, just out of sight.

Ariana shifted in her seat before I slid back behind the wall, and I could picture her turning to Tessie and reaching for her hands. “Sometimes, there’s nothing you can do but do your best to be kind to others and hope that, one day, they’ll be kind back.”—What a crock of bullshit.—“But other times, you have to stand up for yourself. It’s up to you to know when to do which. You’re smart. I trust your judgment.”

“If I stay in California, do you think Bastian will visit me?”

“Have you ever asked him?”

“No. I’m afraid he’ll say no.”

Fuck me. I was the worst brother ever.

“If he says no, he’s stupid.”

Fair assessment.

“Yup!” Tessie giggled. “Will you go to California with me? You can come if Bastian visits me!”

And that was my cue to interrupt.

Ariana expertly dodged the question, “Did you know I used to live in California?” She glanced at me as I entered. “I went to school there—Degory University.”

Boring.

I placed a hand on Tessie’s shoulder and spared Ariana a cursory glance. “Did you take a class on how to name drop at Degory?”

She ignored me, her head tilted on the dossier in my hand.

Nosy, nosy girl.

Graham’s name was printed in the corner. The font was small, but I had no doubt it was legible for her, so I casually tucked the file under my arm, narrowed my eyes at her, and asked, “No comeback?”

She tilted her chin up at me, defiant as always. “Comeback? What are we? Eight?”

Tessie’s head swung to Ariana, her hair whipping my side. “Hey!”

“You’re right, sweetie.” She patted Tessie’s arm. “You’re much more mature than your brother.”

I rolled my eyes. “Time to go, Tessie.”

“It’s Contessa. You can’t call me Tessie. It’s a child’s name.”

Lately, Tessie had it in her head that nicknames were for children. The fact that she was still a child was, apparently, lost on her.

“Funny. I missed when you turned eighteen.” I rolled my eyes. “You let Ariana call you Tessie.”

“That’s different. She’s cool.” Ouch. “Plus, she lets me call her Ari, and she made me a unicorn chair.”

A damn unicorn chair.

Who could compete with that?

“Fine, Contessa, let’s go.”

She turned, hugged Ariana, and skipped out of the room. I followed after her but stopped short of the doorway.

And just because Ariana was right—Tessie was far more mature than I was—and I was maybe a little jealous of her relationship with Tessie, I turned, said, “You have right shift,” and left.

The right-side bartender was responsible for the heavy duty, back-breaking tasks, like restocking alcohol and ice, and was usually given to the more muscular bartenders. Was this an asshole move? Probably. But I had no problem with my pendulum swinging in the direction of evil.

I matched Tessie’s pace out the door and into the town car.

When she settled into her seat and clipped her seatbelt, she turned to me. “I like Ari. She doesn’t talk to me like I’m a kid.”

“Just be careful, kiddo. She’s a De Luca.”

If I were being honest, I didn’t mind Ariana’s friendship with Tessie. My problem here wasn’t with Ariana. It was with the fact that there would be a time, probably soon, when Tessie would leave for California or Ariana would stop working at L’Osuritá, and the closer the two got to each other, the bigger the heartbreak for Tessie.

And that was the last thing I wanted.

Tessie met my eyes. “She’s not one of those De Lucas.”

“So?”

She shrugged. “Well, I like her anyway.”

She looked out the window for the rest of the ride home.