Dear , I knew something was terribly wrong as I watched my father during dinner. He had the nervous energy of a trapped animal. Thalia’s eyes shifted to me, her dark eyebrows raised in silent question. She was always trying to act as if she had grown up, yet she still seemed to think that I always knew more than she did. But in our house there were always more questions than answers. I shrugged my shoulders and cast a glance toward Mom, but her attention was focused on Dad, with the same curious expression on his face that T alia was giving me. None of us seemed to get answers; Dad stared intently at his iPhone, but the screen remained black. Whatever he was waiting and hoping for was not happening. His fingers drummed in an irregular rhythm on the mahogany of our dining room table, a silent click-click of nails on wood. Usually Dad wore his nails meticulously low, but whatever was turning him into the nervous wreck in front of us had made him forget his personal hygiene.
“Brando, you just touched dinner. Don’t you like roast beef?” asked Mom. She had spent two hours in the kitchen preparing our Sunday feast. Every other day of the week our cook was in charge of the kitchen.
Dad jumped up in his chair. His wide, bloodshot eyes found Mom, then registered T alia and me.
A sense of unease crept into the pit of his stomach. I had never seen him like this. Dad was calm and analytical. Few people could make him angry . But after the party at the Falcone’s, he seemed a little stressed.
“I’m not hungry,” Dad said before his gaze returned to his cell phone.
I glanced at the pocket hanging from his belt. Dad loved to eat and never let Mom’s roast beef go to waste .
The screen of his phone flashed with a message and Dad’s face lost all color. I put down my fork; I was no longer hungry. But I didn’t have a chance to cast another questioning glance at Mom because Dad stood up sharply. His chair toppled over and crashed to the hardwood floor.
Mom got up too, but T alia and I were frozen in our seats. What was going on?
“Brando, what-”
Dad rushed away before Mom could finish the sentence. Mom followed him and after a moment I stood up. T alia was still glued to the chair. She blinked . My eyes flicked to the door, torn between running after our parents to find out what was going on and following the rules. We were not to get up from the dining table without permission. I didn’t like that rule, but I had always respected it. After all, dinners were the only time our family really had a chance to spend quality time together . The dining room door swung open again and Dad returned, two guns in his hand. He put one down, only to pull out his phone and press it against his ear. I stared at the gun on our table.
I knew what Dad did for a living, what he was. I had known for as long as I could remember, even though Mom, T alia and I lived a fairly normal life. Even though you tried to be blind to the truth, sometimes it would hit you in the face uninvited. But so far Dad had tried to maintain the illusion of normalcy around us. It hadn’t exactly been difficult for him because until a few months ago T alia and I had both attended an all-girls’ boarding school and had only come home on weekends and vacations. And soon I was leaving for college and T alia was going back to school. I had never seen him openly display a gun. I had never seen a gun so closely. Dad was involved in organized crime, but a lot of people who had to do with gambling were in Las Vegas; I wasn’t even sure exactly what he was doing, except that he ran most of the Camorra casinos. Mom walked into the dining room, looking completely out, but Dad did not look at her. “When will you be here?” hissed Dad into the phone. He nodded after a moment. “We’ll be ready then. Hurry.” Finally he turned toward us. He tried to sound calm, but failed miserably. “T alia, Cara, please pack a suitcase. Just the things you will absolutely need to survive for a few days.” Mom had become a pillar of salt. “Are we going on vacation?” asked T alia with the hope and naivete I wished for myself. Dad always humored us if we said something stupid. Not today. “Don’t be ridiculous, T alia,” he barked. She jumped in her chair, obviously caught off guard by the harsh tone. “Are we in trouble?” I asked cautiously. “I don’t have time to discuss the details with you. All you need to know right now is that we don’t have much time, so get a few things.” The phone flashed with a message. Father’s shoulders lifted in relief. He hurried out of the dining room. This time all three of us followed him into the entrance of the house. Dad opened the door and in walked several men I had never seen before.
They looked rough; tight jeans, leather jackets, sneakers. They looked like the kind of guys I wouldn’t want to meet in the dark, or at all. Their calculating eyes slid over me. They were the kind of men who would make you cross the street to avoid them.
I had to restrain myself from wrapping my arms around my chest for protection. If Dad had invited them in, they could not be dangerous. Dad pulled an envelope out of his jacket pocket and handed it to one of the men. Thalia’s arm brushed against mine as she moved a little closer. I wished I could have given her the comfort she was obviously seeking, but my nerves were shattered. The man looked inside. “Where’s the rest?” he said in a thick accent. Were they Russians? They had sounded slightly Slavic to me, but I had not considered the option that they were actually Russians. Dad worked for the Camorra, and it was no secret that Russians were the enemy. Weren’t we all committing treason by having those men inside our house? My head was spinning, but I kept the questions to myself, for fear of making things worse. “You will get it when my family and I are safe in New York. That was the deal, Wladimir,” Dad said. Talia gave me a confused look, but I didn’t dare look away from what was going on. Why were we going to New York? And what had Father done that he needed the Russians to protect him for? He rarely talked business in our presence, but whenever I had heard the occasional snippet about New York or the Russians it had not been good.
Wladimir exchanged a glance with his companions, then nodded quickly. “It won’t be a problem. Tomorrow you will be in New York.” Father turned back to us. “What are you still doing here? I told you to pack your bags. Hurry up.” I hesitated, but Mom grabbed T alia’s hand and led her toward the stairs. After a moment, I followed her, but not without looking over my shoulder again. The Russians were talking among themselves.
Dad seemed to trust them, or at least he trusted that they wanted the rest of the money desperately enough to get us to New York.
This made me remember. I reached Mom and T alia, then whispered. “Why New York? I thought we couldn’t go because the ruling family there doesn’t get along with Father’s boss.” Mom paused. “Where did you hear that?””I don’t know. Sometimes I hear things. But it’s the truth, right?” “New York is a difficult subject. I haven’t been there for a long time.” There was longing in his voice. I opened my mouth to ask him when a bang resounded downstairs, then men shouted. “We have to hide,” Mom whispered as she dragged T alia toward the master bedroom. I was about to follow them when footsteps rumbled up the stairs. I quickly pushed my way into the nearest room, T alia’s, and hid in her overcrowded closet. There was a pile of discarded clothes on the floor and I used it to hide even more. I could still see most of the room through the cracks in the door, but with only the dim light from the hallway coming in, it was hard to make out much. I barely had time to crouch down and stand still before the door swung open. Someone staggered in. For a moment the light hit the man’s face and I recognized him as one of the Russians. He was bleeding from a wound in his arm. He moved toward the window. Was he going to jump? He tried to push the window up but got stuck because of his frantic movements. I held my breath and buried myself even deeper in the pile of clothes. Another man, much taller and more muscular than the first, sneaked in and grabbed the Russian. Everything happened too quickly to see much, but something seemed familiar about the second man. There was a brief scuffle. The Russian pulled out a knife but never managed to use it . The other man grabbed him by the neck and twisted. I stifled a gasp as the Russian fell, hit the door, which swung wide open and eventually fell to the floor in a lifeless heap. Now light filled the entire center of the room. My eyes returned to rest on the murderer. His back was to me. But I knew him. I had dreamed of him several times in the last two weeks since the party. Growling, of course.