“I have the vacation days, so it wasn’t too big of an issue.”
“Thank goodness.”
I notice Alejandro is speaking quietly on his phone. He hangs up just as Heidi finishes.
“We have men who can go with you to your places while you gather what you need.”
My family and I thank him for arranging that. I definitely feel much better about them going with armed guards. Joaquin and Alejandro head into the dining room with their laptops, explaining they have work to do. My parents, Heidi, and Friedrich take off, and Noor needs to go to her office in town. Hisham walks down the hallway to his study. It’s a beautiful day outside, so Jorge and I head out there and sit together on a swinging bench.
“I know you said you’d prefer to stay with me, but what about work? You’re essentially giving up your job to follow me, unless you intend to fly back and forth between here and New York whenever you have client meetings. You certainly don’t have to fly commercial.”
I shake my head as my eyes widen. “I can’t imagine the expense of that.”
Jorge cocks an eyebrow as if to say, “We’re rich.” I just nod.
“Actually, as I consider it more, I realize what the outcome of all of this could be. The Frankfurt office may close. I don’t know whether Papa wants to continue working or not. I don’t know if my parents would even want to stay in Frankfurt. This has been a deeply traumatizing experience. I assumeOnkelClaude will carry on the business and who knows, perhaps my parents might move to Munich to be closer to him, or my father just retires.”
I shrug and sigh as I continue to ruminate aloud on what this means for my family.
“I don’t know what it would look like becauseOnkelClyde’s children are the same age as Heidi and me, but they’ve taken no interest in the family business.”
Jorge appears thoughtful before he responds. “Alejandro’s father, mytíoMatáis, is our financier in most situations. He’s who you were originally going to meet with, but he had to be somewhere else, so I filled in. I think it was in the stars for that to happen.”
“I think so too.”
“SinceTíoMatáis handles all our legal endeavors, perhaps you’d like to work with him. I know he’d like to spend more time at home withTíaCatalina. Perhaps you could help split some of the travel with him or cover the accounts he has when he must travel.”
It surprises me that Jorge suggests I work for his family, even if it’s on the legal side. Bringing me into the family business is a huge commitment. Perhaps even more so than he and I living together. His arm’s around my shoulders, just like it usually is when we sit beside each other. He gives it a squeeze.
“Just think about it.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Jorge
As I sit with my arm around Liesel on the swing in Noor and Hisham’s backyard, I can finally breathe for a few minutes. I’m relaxed knowing we’re headed home soon. Even though we haven’t resolved anything, at least I have an explanation and targets for my anger once we’re home. It took everything in me to only issue Bastian threats when I wanted to tear him apart. If Liesel hadn’t been there, I might have. I truly don’t know that I would’ve had the restraint to do nothing if it were just my brother and cousin with me.
I can channel my waves of rage toward the responsible parties rather than feeling flustered and frustrated like I have this entire time. I push off with my feet every few swings, and I wonder if one day Liesel and I might sit like this when we’re old and gray, watching our grandchildren play in our yard. That makes me consider where we might live.
There’re two neighborhoods adjacent to one another. They’ve become syndicate Switzerland. Couples from all Four Families live there. It’s practically become an underworld compound. It’s where most of us grew up. We moved into thatneighborhood whenMamábrought my brothers and me to the U.S.
The Kutsenkos and their Andreyev cousins didn’t move into the neighborhood until the oldest, Maksim, married and had twins. Then his brothers and cousins followed him—of course, because they’re an eight-tentacle octopus. Where you get one, you get all the others with only one brain amongst them. Their mother moved into a home once the brothers were out of the house and could afford to buy her the property there. Before that, they’d grown up near Brighton Beach, a Russian enclave.
Pablo, his parents, and his brother lived in New Jersey. But he and Florencia recently purchased a home in that neighborhood. Javier and Madeline did the same thing. They live a couple streets over fromMamá.
All the Mancinellis, except for Carmine, grew up there too. His parents had a home farther out in Queens along the coast. Carmine’s parents got married at nineteen when his mother got pregnant with him. Paola’s and Cesare’s fathers forced them into the marriage, then basically exiled them to a beautiful, sprawling home far away from everyone else. However, Carmine and his wife, Serafina, now have a home in the neighborhood too.
As teens, we generally stayed away with our own groups of friends, but every once in a while, our paths would cross. There was one particular time where it exploded in our faces. All of my generation’s members of the Four Families wound up at the same high school party. We were keeping to ourselves until Maria Mancinelli’s friend tried to approach Joaquin because she had a crush on him. Joaquin was a senior when the girls were freshmen.
He was flattered by the attention but not interested. It was super noisy, and Maria misheard what Javier said, thinking my brother claimed the girls were flat-chested bitches. Instead, Javier basically told JoaquinTíoEnrique would flatten him likea dead dog if he went anywhere near girls so much younger than him.
Maria told Carmine and Gabriele, who then called over the rest of their family. The Kutsenkos and Andreyevs heard and thought my brother insulted a girl, so they got involved since theyloveto fancy themselves every woman’s knight in shining armor. Fucking hypocrites to the nth degree. Then the O’Rourkes chimed in, egging on both sides.
It turned into a syndicate melee with guns and knives. Everyone who wasn’t in a syndicate took off in different directions once the fight broke out. At least we waited until the outsiders fled before we drew those weapons. We barely got out in the nick of time when we heard the sirens. It was actually Maria who got us all off the hook with the cops. She recognized some officer whose father was in the Mafia. She explained who was there and why the fight happened. Before we knew it, the cops were gone.
All the syndicate members hid in nearby yards or behind trees at a park, waiting to see what would happen. The outcome was all Four Families’ leaders were absolutely livid. The old bratvapakhantortured the Kutsenkos and Andreyevs, just like he’d done while training them. Don Salvatore,TíoEnrique, and Liam O’Rourke—the mob boss—lit into their respective family members. It was apparently a jumble of languages among all the men; native tongues mixed with English.
None of the leaders had been that angry in decades. Probably the entire time they’d led their families. I nearly cringe remembering that, but I don’t want Liesel to misunderstand.
