Indebted to the Mafia King
The Truth

Eleni

I stand behind the chair on the opposite side of Dante's desk and watch him, shirt thankfully buttoned again, ease himself onto the smooth red leather of the boss' seat. Part of me wants to run out of the room before he opens his mouth. I made up my mind. I'm leaving. I don't need to say anything to him other than "goodbye," no matter what Gianna said. But another part of me just keeps thinking of that first day, when I didn't know whether he was alive or dead, and I came down here looking for answers. Anything that could explain why he killed Christos.

He's offering me those answers now. With Mama on the other side of a plane ride to Greece, I would be stupid not to take them. No matter what else, I couldn't face her knowing I could have told her what happened to her baby and refused. "Sit," Dante says. "Or are you more used to the view from this side of the desk now?"

His smile is an olive branch. He wants to have the conversation peaceably.

I throw myself down in the empty chair across from him. I'd take the olive branch when he earned it.

"Fair enough." He adjusts the ice pack I gave him on the back of his head and straightens. "When I said what I did, I thought I was going to die."

"So did I," I bite out. "What difference does that make?"

"You have to understand that I kept this from you for "

I scoff. "Kept this from me? That's a funny way of saying you lied for weeks."

"He asked me"

"I don't care." I kick my feet up on the edge of his desk. "He's not here to answer for whatever he did. You are."

The words burn past my lips. I'm furious, but I haven't really considered whether I'm angry with Christos yet. That seems like a problem I can solve when I'm an ocean away with Mama to dry my tears.

"We can do it like that, if you want." He tosses the ice pack down on the desk with a wince, and his eyes grow hard. "You're a Staten Island Saint, and I killed your brother. I did it for a good goddamn reason, but that doesn't mean I don't owe you answers."

I nod for him to go ahead.

"Everything I told you about Christos is true," he says. "I met him in college, and he was a genius running back. There was an NFL scout at his first game, looking at one of the seniors, and I saw the scout later asking why the hell he hadn't seen number eighty-three on the field before."

I swallow. Christos was so thrilled when he pulled eighty-three. That was the year Mama and Baba met. He said it was good luck. But I didn't know there were scouts as early as freshman year.

"I already had one foot out the door." Dante shrugs. "It wasn't like I was ever going to play pro ball. My dad was counting down the days until I could shadow him full-time. But Christos was a hard guy not to like." He chuckles. "I actually remember the first time I noticed him. It was some team party after a loss, which was always weird. I'd just crushed two defensive linemen at beer pong when I stumbled back into the living room and found him toe-to-toe with the QB, just screaming at each other. I figured out Christos had just saved our kicker, another freshman, from a nonconsensual keg stand the quarterback lined up to 'put a little hair on his chest.' I just wanted everybody to stop fucking yelling, so I stepped in the middle and said I'd do the stand." He smiles softly. "Christos shoved me back, told me he could fight his own battles, and set the keg stand record for the year. The kicker never got shit again."

I blink furiously. I'm not tearing up. I'm not picturing the easy smile on his face in the photograph I stole, the way he used to do that when he caught Mama and Baba dancing in the kitchen. I'm the ice queen. It's a frat boy story, anyway. "Then what?" I demand.

Dante shakes his head. "Then I graduated. I didn't see him until I managed to wriggle out of work for the homecoming game, and I could tell right away, something was different. I asked around and figured out he'd gotten tired of never having enough money for shit, so he started running drugs for the Lombardis."

I clench my jaw so he can't see my reactions. Christos never breathed a word of that. Every time he came home from school, it was all glowing recounting how cool his team was, how much everyone loved him. I assumed he was king of the school.

"Didn't take long from there." Dante frowned. "Never does. I learned this across a string of scattered games I managed to sneak off to, so I couldn't exactly do anything, but long story short, he got jumped while carrying product one night. Lost...nobody knew the exact number, but I heard somewhere between ten and a hundred thousand dollars."

"No," I whisper.

Dante raises an eyebrow at me. I lean back, try to reclaim my poise. I don't care.

"Yeah, I tried to get him out, but I was already too late. That kind of debt to a mob boss can either be paid in blood, or sweat. Christos chose sweat." He stares at his desk for a long moment. "One day, he had scouts climbing over themselves to knock on his door. The next, he'd dropped out and become a Lombardi soldier. I'm not sure he really had a choice, Eleni."

After he dropped out of school, Christos spent weeks job-hunting across the city, pounding the pavement like Baba told him to. He always came home tired, sometimes irritated, and on a few notable occasions, reeking of alcohol. I chalked all that up to the stress of finding work. Could it really have been signs of his involvement with the Lombardis?

"I didn't see him for a year." He crosses his arms. "Frank Lombardi murdered my dad. I started raiding Lombardi spots as often as I could. And one day, I turned a corner in a warehouse during the tail end of a raid to find Christos staring back at me in Lombardi colors." He meets my gaze. "He drew first, but I wasn't just going to stand there with a gun pointed at me. I tried to talk him down. Told him we could still be friends, that it didn't have to be this way. That I could get him back to his fucking parents."

He shifts his weight in the chair, his brow pinched and eyes darkening as I watch the memory of the night play over his face. He continues somberly, "he told me he wanted to be a capo. He wanted to rise through the ranks, have something to show for his life. And bagging a boss, even a baby one like me, was his ticket to the top."

Ticket to the top. That sounds like Christos. On the good days of "job-hunting," he would lay on the bed across the room from mine and tell me about what he saw for his future. His work changed every time. That was part of the game. But no matter what he did, he was the best, the brightest, an innovator like the world had never seen before. And Mama and Baba were proud. Tears sting my eyes.

"We both shot. He missed." Dante leans back in his chair like a weight has been lifted off him.

Confusion, grief, and rage swirl within me. Dante doesn't get to feel relieved after this. Christos should've known better. I should've seen the signs. Silent tears sheet down my face, the first I've cried in weeks. I stand, not sure where I'm going. Maybe Greece. Maybe the Narrows. Maybe nowhere at all.

"I caught him before he fell." Dante stands with me, holding my attention. "He had one breath to say something, and he told me not to tell his family what happened. The last thing he wanted on this Earth was for you to believe he was who he said he was. That's why I didn't tell you, El."