My Mother Saved Her First Love and Buried Her Own Son

On the day of my baby sister's christening, our father carried her out himself to fetch the wine for the table, and on the road they were caught in a chain of cars that folded into one another like crushed tin.

If they had only reached help in time, both of them would have lived.

But my mother, a woman who could buy the loyalty of half the city, pulled away every man who might have saved them. All because her first love had complained that the smell of blood turned his stomach, and she wanted the doctors tending the scrape on his hand instead, a cut less than an inch long.

That night, my father lay outside the emergency corridor with my month-old sister in his arms, waiting from dusk into the dead of night.

My sister's cries grew weaker and weaker. My father begged everyone who passed, and still no help came.

In the end, the two of them died right there, inside the place that was meant to save them.

And I, by a scheme my own mother and her first love put together, was thrown out of the house like something the famiglia was ashamed to claim.

Twenty years later.

I was no longer that helpless little girl.

With the quiet protection my father's sworn brother had given me over the years, and a drive that nearly cost me my own life, I clawed my way to the top of this city's underworld, step by step, until I sat at the head of the Greco Syndicate, an empire worth tens of billions behind its clean and legitimate fronts.

On the day we weighed which of our young associates had earned the right to be brought in close, my consigliere set the files of five of them in front of me.

He opened to the first page, admiration plain in his voice.

"Don Greco, this young one, Marco Rossi, is exceptionally capable. His numbers have stayed near the top, and every capo who watched him scored him close to perfect."

I turned through his file without much thought.

When my eyes landed on the line listing his blood, my hand went still.

Two names were written there.

Two names I will never forget as long as I live.

For a moment the air in the room seemed to freeze.

After a long while, I closed the file and spoke flatly.

"Bring all five of them in."

Soon the five filed into the back room of the social club, one by one.

The pacts went out, one after another, each one binding a man to the Family for life.

Some could hardly contain themselves. Others only looked relieved, the way men do when they realize they will live to see another season.

Until the last one.

I lifted my head and looked at Marco Rossi, standing at the very end.

His expression was easy, even faintly amused, the look of a man who already counted himself among the names on that list.

In the next second, I slid the paper in my hand across the table to him.

It was no pact.

It was a casting out.

Meeting his suddenly rigid stare, I spoke slowly.

"Marco Rossi."

"You don't make the cut."

……

The room went silent at once.

The other four, the fresh oaths still warm in their hands, glanced at one another, none of them daring to make a sound. A glass was set down somewhere too carefully, and the small sound of it filled the room.

Every eye turned to Marco Rossi.

Even my consigliere, at my shoulder, was caught off guard. He clearly hadn't expected this. His mouth opened, then closed, and in the end he only murmured a quiet reminder.

"Don Greco……"

I went on as if I hadn't heard a word, simply watching the young man before me, calm.

I had to admit, he looked a great deal like his father.

The same striking face, the same sharp mind, the same superiority bred into the bone.

As if no matter what room he walked into, it was only natural that everything in it should turn toward him.

But Marco Rossi did not lose his composure the way the others expected.

The first shock stayed on his face for only a heartbeat before he gathered himself again.

He calmly opened the folder he carried and laid out paper after paper, neatly, across the table.

"Don Greco, I've run with this Family for three months and handled four matters that mattered. Two of them I closed entirely on my own."

"In that time, every man I was sent to bring in stayed loyal. I scored top marks in two reviews running, and I've stood first among all the young ones brought up alongside me."

His voice was steady and clear, without a trace of panic.

"Whether you measure by skill, by results, or by the whole of it, I'm the man who best meets the standard to be made."

He paused there, and looked straight at me.

"So I'd like to know why."

"If you mean to cast me out, you owe me a reasonable explanation."

There was no anger in those eyes, no wounded grievance.

Only the restraint and bafflement of a man who believes he's been wronged.

It was the kind of confidence only someone raised on favor could carry.

Men who have never been thrown down hard by the world always believe the code is fair.

I leaned back in my chair and watched him in silence for a few seconds.

Then I spoke, mildly.

"There is no reason."

The air seemed to freeze again.

Marco Rossi was visibly stunned.

I went on.

"This is my Family."

"Who I keep close and who I send away, I don't owe an explanation to anyone."

As the words fell, the calm on Marco Rossi's face finally cracked.

He stared at me, slowly tightening his grip on the folder. He laughed then, a beat too early, the sound looking for someone to join it and finding no one.

After a long moment, that cold laugh faded on its own.

"Don Greco."

"This is a man being buried for no cause."

His tone had gone fully cold.

"And if word of it gets put on the street, I don't imagine it'll do much for the Greco name."

I laughed at that.

But there was no warmth in it.

"I'm not burying you."

I raised my eyes to meet his and said it slowly, one word at a time.

"If you feel you've been marked, perhaps you should look at yourself first."

"A man who's truly worth something is never in a hurry to lay his failures at another man's feet."

"Only the man with something to hide rushes to find excuses for himself."

The instant the words landed, Marco Rossi's face went completely dark.

He had finally been provoked.

Just then my consigliere stepped quickly to my side, bent low, and dropped his voice.

"Don Greco, might you reconsider?"

"The young one's work these three months really has been something, and the inner circle has looked into his blood as well."

He paused, and his voice fell lower still.

"His mother…… is Vittoria Rossi. The Donna of the Rossi Family."

"We've got more than one arrangement standing between us and the Rossis right now. If we cast him out at this hour, I'm afraid it could stir up trouble we don't need……"