Merciless Queen: A Dark Mafia Romance (Varasso Brothers Book Book 4) Read online

  That was never quite the feeling I got from Luca. Until recently, I don’t even think he would have said so. “Yeah.” I twisted my neck, and it crunched loudly.

  Molly let out a whistle. “That sounds nasty.”

  “It’s been like that for a while,” I admitted, rubbing the side of my neck in search of relief.

  Molly took out her phone, clicked away on it for a minute, and then my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out and looked down at it, and she’d sent me a text with just the words ‘Hoga Studio’ in it. “Hoga Studio?”

  “It’s shortened for Holistic Yoga. It’s a yoga studio I go to downtown whenever I’m not too busy. This shit is stressful, and yoga helps. The woman who owns the studio is also a health consultant and does all the classes herself. You should give it a try,” Molly explained.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know that yoga’s my thing.”

  “Gabe, right now, your thing is cowering in fear at your own brother and sounding like an abacus when you move.” She slapped my back as she walked past me. “I’ll call and set up an appointment for you. Just try it once. And don’t forget to call Marco.”

  2

  Stacy

  I balanced a somewhat heavy box on my hip as I stepped through the front door of my parents’ new rambler. Despite that it was just one floor and had a single hallway that ran from one end to the other, it still felt a little too modern for them. I supposed I wasn’t in any position to talk. My house two doors down didn’t even have a standard roof, having sacrificed the typical gabled roof for a flat, sleek look. My parents, at least, had something that came to a point.

  “Those can go in the back bedroom, Stace!” my mom called after me as I entered.

  I waved my free hand through the air. “Got it!”

  There was just something about swimming through pastel-colored walls and a bland, multi-thread count carpet that brought me a little too close to thinking we were sacrificing ourselves. I wanted my parents’ old shag and wood paneling, the dusky smell of sage and incense clinging to the air, and the natural lighting that very nearly eliminated a need for lamps. At least when I’d abandoned Woodstock, New York, about seven months ago, I could still drive the few hours and return to my grassroots. We would sit around my dad’s self-dug fire pit while my mom strummed away at her acoustic guitar and I doodled any small creature I could find. Occasionally, I’d draw my parents, too. My dad, who was rocking a man-bun before it was cool, looked good on paper with his ratty curled beard and freckled face. So did my mom’s waist-length blond hair, slowly being invaded by gray, and her blue eyes that still sparked as bright as an ocean in the sun. She always looked so calm when she was playing, and drawing her made me calm, too. Maybe I could convince her to dig the guitar out after we’d finished loading in the boxes.

  I skipped to the left of the door, making my way down the hallway to the door at its end. I nearly leaped out of my skin when I passed a mirror that was set into the wall by design. I still wasn’t quite used to the ever-present vanity of a big city. The incessant need to make sure oneself looked okay was arduous on a good day. Still, my open hand flicked to my lengthy blond beach waves to primp them before journeying to my set of hazel-green eyes to flick an errant eyelash back into place. I was rubbing my thumb along my thin, peach lips before I caught myself and walked away from my reflection. It was already seeping into me, a need for perfection that hadn’t existed when I was just an innocent, young earth child.

  I didn’t like using the term hippie. It evoked images of weed-filled tokes and barely-there souls drifting through life without a worry or a care. Sure, my parents would occasionally partake of a recreational drug, but the by and large of it was that we simply lived a more holistic lifestyle than most. We didn’t own televisions, and our computers had been purchased out of necessity. My mom was potentially still the only person buying stationary kits, and it took several stern talking-tos and about three hundred dollars worth of organic, non-labor, non-animal-tested bath products to convince my dad that showers were a requirement. Not every practice our seventies ancestors had handed down were worth hanging onto, and that one had to go. None of us ate meat, and my parents were totally vegan. I was working on it, but I’d had several unexplained affairs with cheese that I refused to apologize for.

  I knew that my parents would dig into their new home and get it feeling more like them in no time, but it still made me sad that my childhood home was no longer accessible to me.

  “Well?” My mom slid into the empty room alongside me, standing a comical four inches beneath me at five-foot-two compared to my slightly taller five-foot-six. “What do you think? This could be your room. For when you’re here, of course. Your father and I are still totally in support of you living on your own.”

  I wrinkled up my nose. “It’s stale.”

  “Well, it’ll need a good cleansing. I’ll work on that tonight once I can get some sage and rosemary out.” She swiped her hand through the air, something I recognized as her trying to get the unknown aura unmixed from her own. “It’ll really need a good cleansing.”

  “I’m okay with this room, but isn’t it the biggest one?” I crossed my arms, hiding the top of my strapless white, sunflower-covered sundress. “You guys should take this one.”

  My mom laughed. “I guess we’re so used to giving you the most of what we have.”

  “You already moved all the way out here. I think you’ve given me enough.” I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her into a side hug, resting my head on top of hers. “You could probably get some good plants in here.”

  My mom clapped. “And enough room for you to lead me through your new, big-city yoga!”

  I shook my head. “It’s the same yoga, Mom. It’s just in a big city now.”

  When my yoga practice got too big for Woodstock, I knew I was going to have to take it to a big city if I wanted to continue growing. I couldn’t imagine living in New York City for any reason, and a lot of the surrounding cities felt too laborious to live in. Concrete jungles weren’t my scene, and even if they were, the entranced populations, way too consumed with work to worry about the health of their bodies, wouldn’t be good for business. Philly just seemed like a natural choice, with it still being close enough to my parents and a big enough city but still living off of its historical blood. It moved fast but slower than some of my other options, so I took it. Though I was already twenty-three, it was the first time I’d lived on my own, and I felt it instantly. Being so far from my parents was like being amidst a constant sap of energy. After visiting my parents for the fifth time in a month, they put their house up for sale and started looking for places in Philadelphia near me.

  “Well, either way. I can lay a yoga mat in here, and we can have our Sunday morning yoga sessions again.” She clapped. “Oh. I’m so happy to be back near my baby again.”

  “I’m happy, too.” I was. I could admit it. I was an adult who needed her parents. I just wasn’t meant to be so far from them. Not ever.

  “Ladies!” My dad’s voice rocketed down the hallway and found us in the bedroom as if he were right next to us. “Lunch!”

  My mom and I kicked aside the boxes we’d brought in and turned back into the hallway, walking down to find that my dad had pushed together some of the boxes and laid a tablecloth over them. He’d set out the takeout he’d gotten around his makeshift table and presented it with open arms as we walked in.

  “Ta-da!”

  “This is that Asian place you were telling us about, right, Stace?” my mom asked, walking over and sitting cross-legged next to the box.

  Another thing my family generally did without was furniture. A bed to sleep in, a kotatsu table to sit at, maybe an armchair or two for reading, but other than that, it was pillows or the floor. Too much furniture could clutter an aura the same way it cluttered a room. It wasn’t feng shui, but it was in the same frame of mind. A minimally appointed space created good energy, and my family was nothing if not a foste
r of good energy.

  “Yep.” I joined my mom, sitting kitty-corner from her. “I discovered it not long after I got here. Delicious vegan noodles. Lots of veggie-based dishes. Trust me, you’re gonna love it.”

  We passed around the white takeout boxes, each helping ourselves to healthy servings of the noodles, veggies, and spicy tofu, snapped open a pair of chopsticks, and settled in.

  “So, how’s work been going, sweet girl?” my dad asked. “I was surprised to see some of the stuff in your place. It looked expensive.”

  I wouldn’t say I was abandoning my parents’ minimalist lifestyle, but being of the younger generation, there were just some modern luxuries I grew to love along with the rest of my peers during school. I had a cell phone, a laptop, and a desktop computer. I didn’t pay for any form of cable, but I could be a bit of a sucker for streaming services. After getting sick of glaring at my computer screens all day long, I finally sprung for a television. Maybe it was the reason I loved going home to my parents when they still lived in Woodstock. It was more of the natural and authentic way I’d been raised, whereas I’d fallen victim to the twenty-first-century vibe. I still didn’t have a ton of furniture, but what TV wasn’t complete without a couch?

  Needless to say, my parents suffered a bit of culture shock the first time they came to visit and view the house they would eventually buy. I tried to maintain saging and burning incense and keeping my aura and energy clean, something my mom noted almost immediately, but I could see my dad scrutinizing some of my modern choices as he walked around.

  “Yeah. I guess Philly turned me a little.” I chuckled nervously, not wanting to get into it more than that. “Work is good. Business is booming! I made a new friend. She’s really tied into the holistic scene here and helped get my name out there. I’ve had nonstop customers ever since. I have group walk-in sessions every two hours on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Certified health coaching on Tuesdays, and examinations and aromatherapy on Thursdays. Private sessions on Saturdays, though I send the receptionist home by two if we haven’t had any scheduled, and then I take Sundays off.”

  I was a licensed physical therapist, though the degree was obtained only to the end of being able to offer people naturalistic health advice without modern medical professionals calling me a crack. I was always safe about the advice I gave, and I believed in medication and hospitals the same as the next guy over. I just also believed that Mother Nature provides some of the best cures money doesn’t have to buy.

  Yoga was just one way I helped my clients, but I also provided aromatherapy to relieve stress, depression, and anxiety, and led health coaching classes to teach people about the natural ways to keep their bodies fresh and fit. I tried to cover different topics every week—weight loss, vegetarianism or veganism, sexual wellness—but sometimes the classes just ended up flowing with whatever the attendees needed, and I was okay with that, too. I was a typical, cliche go with the flow kind of girl. It was necessary in both my personal and professional lives.

  My dad scoffed. “Well, jeez, sounds like you’re slacking there, kiddo.” My dad was a solid dad. If you were looking for a good dad joke or someone to call you sport, he was your guy. I always found it endearing, though it tended to embarrass my friends in high school. “You make sure you’re not overworking yourself, huh?”

  “I know, Daddy.” I leaned over to kiss him on his cheek. “It doesn’t even feel like work when I love doing it so much. Most of my Saturdays end up being empty, though I’m up to charging three hundred an hour for a private session.”

  My mom nearly spit out her food. “Three hundred? That’s a lot. You don’t feel bad?”

  My parents knew that I wasn’t in my line of work for the money. I loved helping people be healthy, especially if I could help them do it naturally. When I first started out, I was charging the minimum cost for a group or private session. It was okay in Woodstock because my doors and windows were bursting with customers, and the rent of the building I worked out of was cheap, but along with a larger city came a higher cost of doing business, and my rent nearly tripled even though I looked for a place as far outside of the downtown area as I could get without sacrificing customers.

  “I had to up it to cover rent. Being open on the weekends, especially with heating and cooling and utilities, costs extra. If I wanted to be able to have private sessions on the weekends, I had to charge more. Besides, just living in Philly is more expensive, too. I wanted to be able to live in relative comfort.” I stirred around my vegan noodles on my plate. “Do you think I should lower it?”

  “Oh, no, honey.” My mom waved the air about me, feeling my aura gathering some negativity. “If that’s what you have to charge to cover your costs, then you shouldn’t feel bad. I guess it’s just a far cry from when you used to charge fifty dollars.”

  My dad stuck out his chopsticks. “That was too cheap. This one’s super smart and super talented. It’s okay to charge what you’re worth, baby.”

  My mood lightened a bit. “Thanks, Dad.”

  My mom smiled at my dad, and we all turned our attention to eating in silence. I watched as my mom reached over to pick the corn off my dad’s plate and replace it with her zucchini. Even though she was tossing her unwanted greens at him every few minutes, each time she did it, he gave her a warm smile and a, “Thank you, my love.” They were a good pair. I was single because of them. Not because they were overbearing or intrusive; in fact, they were the opposite. My parents always tried to promote a healthy view of dating and sex, to the point that both of my parents often tried to set me up. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to date, but I’d grown up around two people who worshipped the ground the other walked on. Something about a guy wandering up to me any old way just didn’t strike me as worth my time. I wanted a guy who loved me like my dad loved my mom. High standards, some people called it, but I wasn’t looking for a man who was rich, or incredibly attractive, or held some six-figure vocation. I just wanted the kind of passion my parents had. I wanted to be able to look up in forty years and still be as head over heels as I was the day we met.

  “You okay, Stace?” my mom asked, interrupting my thoughts.

  I smiled. “Yes. Just lost in thought.”

  My dad opened his mouth to make what I’m sure would have been a groan-worthy joke, but before he could get it out, my ringtone spilled into the room. I reached into the pockets on my sundress, my favorite part of its design, and pulled out my cell phone. It was my assistant-slash-receptionist at my studio. She did her best to avoid calling me on Saturdays, so I knew it must have been important.

  “Sorry.” I held up a hand to my parents and answered the call. “Hey, Sam.”

  “Hi!” Her voice was cheery and upbeat, so I could take that to mean nothing was wrong. “I know it’s getting pretty close to two o’clock, but I just got a call for a private session. I told her I’d have to check in with you since we’re almost closed. Do you wanna take it?”

  I wasn’t in the business for the money, certainly, but I wasn’t about to turn down money on a day that would otherwise be a bust. “Yeah, I’ll take it. When is it?”

  “She asked for the soonest possible slot.”

  I stood up from the fake table and kissed each of my parents on their foreheads, whispering love-yous and goodbyes. “Call her back and tell her I can see her at two-thirty. I’m on my way.”

  3

  Gabriel

  When Molly said that it would be in my best interest to wear comfortable pants to my yoga session, I didn’t quite know how to accomplish what she was looking for. My wardrobe was almost entirely made up of suit pants and a few random pairs of jeans that I never wore. Hours of digging through both mine and the remainders of Marco’s and Alessandro’s closets had resulted in the unearthing of a pair of sweatpants. I had a small collection of t-shirts, mostly plain white ones to go under a suit coat when I needed a wider range of movement than a button-up offered. I paired the two, trying to ignore how much I had to p
ull the pair of drawstrings on the pants to make them fit, added some tennis shoes to the ensemble, and headed out.

  I still had about forty-five minutes before the yoga session that Molly had set up for me, so I planned to talk to Marco on the way. I’d decided that I would call Alessandro, too. I needed help with something, and they were probably the only two that could help me.

  Try though she might to hide it, I could see the stress settled in the deep bags under Molly’s ordinarily vibrant brown eyes. She kept a brave face on. She needed to know that our resident knight in shining armor, Marco, was off in California, living the domestic dad-life, but she wore her listlessness like a thickly woven robe.

  She and Luca loved each other, probably more than either of them loved anything else in their lives, but I couldn’t help but get vibes that were reminiscent of the time they broke up before they got married. Their self-defenses were covered in the sharpest of swords. Back before Alessandro left, Luca and Molly got into an argument that I feared they wouldn’t recover from. The business was destroying their relationship. I got more flashes of Alessandro’s ghostly expression in my mind and got chills down to my toes.

  The Varasso men invested in women on a deeper level than they invested in anything else. They didn’t like to trust people, didn’t like to let them in. We’d been raised in a way that almost suggested family was all we needed, and with the way my father would occasionally treat my brothers’ mother, it was clear he believed that love was bothersome on a good day and an insurmountable obstacle on a bad one.

  Luca led the charge, falling in love with Molly, something deeper and more real than his relationship with his daughter’s real mother. He needed Molly like addicts needed drugs or like addicts needed recovery, depending on the day. When they were on, there wasn’t a force in the world that could stop them, but the rapidly growing tear between them made it feel like the world was turning a bit slower. I saw the way Alessandro broke when he thought he lost Willow, the way he shifted into an Alessandro-shaped version of my father, and I feared the same happening to Luca. I had to ensure that he and Molly stayed together. Their relationship was probably the last remaining strand of our family fabric that wasn’t fraying, and after letting Alessandro down, I’d dedicated myself to a personal duty to keep that strand strong.