Heavy Crown by Sophie Lark

1

Sebastian

I’m sitting in the corner booth of La Mer with my two brothers and my little sister Aida. It’s an hour past closing time, so the servers have already taken the linen and glassware off the tables, and the cooks are just finishing their deep-clean of the stovetops and fridges.

The bartender is still doing his nightly inventory check, probably lingering longer than usual in case any of us want one last drink. That’s the perk of owning the restaurant—nobody can kick you out.

La Mer is known for its high-end seafood—halibut and salmon flown in from the east coast every morning, and king crab legs longer than your arm. We all feasted on butter-drenched lobster earlier in the evening. For the last several hours we’ve simply been sipping our drinks and talking. This might be our last night all together for a while.

Dante leaves for Paris tomorrow morning. He’s taking his wife, his son, and his brand-new baby girl across the Atlantic for what he’s calling an extended honeymoon. But I’ve got a feeling that he’s not coming back.

Dante never wanted to become the capocrimine. He’s been the de facto leader of our family for years only because he’s the eldest—not because it was his ambition.

Of course my father is still the real don, but his health is getting worse every year. He’s been delegating more and more of the running of our family business. It used to be that he personally handled every meeting with the other mafia families, no matter how small the issue. Now he only puts on his suit and goes out for the most dire of situations.

He’s become a hermit in our old mansion on Meyer Ave. If our housekeeper Greta didn’t also live there full-time, eating lunch with him, and listening to him complain about how Steinbeck should be ranked higher than Hemingway in the pantheon of authors, then I might be seriously worried about him.

I guess I feel guilty because I could be living there with him, too. All the rest of my siblings have moved out—Dante and Aida to get married, Nero to live with his girlfriend Camille in the apartment over her brand-new custom car mod shop.

Once I finished school, I could have come back home. But I didn’t. I’ve been living with my lieutenant Jace in Hyde Park.

I tell myself that I need a little more privacy for bringing girls home or staying out as late as I want. But the truth is, I feel a strange kind of wedge between me and the rest of my family. I feel like I’m drifting—in sight of the rest of them, but not on the same boat.

They’re all changing so rapidly, and I am, too. But I don’t think we’re changing in the same way.

It’s been three years since we had our last run-in with the Griffin family.

That night changed my life.

It started with a dinner, very like this one, except it was on the rooftop of our family home, while we were all still living there. We saw fireworks breaking over the lake, and we knew the Griffins were holding a birthday party for their youngest daughter.

How different our lives would be if we hadn’t seen those fireworks. If Aida hadn’t perceived them as a sort of challenge, or a call.

I remember the bursts of colored light reflecting in her eyes as she turned to me and whispered, “We should crash the party.”

We snuck onto the Griffins’ estate. Aida stole their great-grandfather’s watch and accidentally lit a fire in their library. Which made Callum Griffin come hunting for us later that night. He trapped Aida and me on the pier. Then his bodyguard smashed my knee.

That was the fracture in time that sent my life shooting off in a completely different direction.

Before that moment, all I cared about was basketball. I played hours and hours every day. It’s hard to even remember how much it consumed me. Everywhere I went, I had a ball with me. I’d practice dribbling and crossovers in every spare moment. I’d watch old games every night before bed. I read that Kobe Bryant never stopped practicing until he’d made at least four hundred baskets a day. I decided I’d sink five hundred daily, and I stayed for hours after our regular practices, until the janitors turned off the lights in the gym.

The rhythm and feel of the ball in my hands was burned into my brain. Its pebbled texture was the most familiar thing in the world, and the most familiar sound was sneakers squeaking on hardwood.

It was the one true love of my life. The way I felt about that game was stronger than my interest in girls, or food, or entertainment, or anything else.

When the bodyguard’s boot came down on my knee, and I felt that blinding, sickening burst of pain, I knew my dream was over. Pros come back from injuries, but injured players don’t make pro.

For over a year, I was in denial. I did rehab every single day. I endured surgery, heat packs, cold packs, ultrasound therapy on the scar tissue, electro-stimulation of the surrounding muscles, and countless hours of tedious physiotherapy.

I went to the gym daily, making the rest of my body as strong as possible. Packing thirty pounds of muscle onto a formerly lean frame.

But it was all for nothing. I got rid of the limp, but the speed never came back. During the time I should have been getting faster and more accurate, I couldn’t even get back to where I used to be. I was swimming against the current, while slowly drifting downstream.

And now I live in this strange alternate reality where the Griffins are our closest allies. My sister Aida is married to the man who ordered his bodyguard to smash my knee.

The funny thing is, I don’t hate Callum. He’s been good to my sister. They’re wildly in love, and they have a little boy together—the heir to both our families, Miles Griffin. The Griffins have upheld their end of the marriage pact. They’ve been loyal partners.

But I’m still so fucking angry.

It’s this churning, boiling fury inside of me, every single day.

I’ve always known what my family did for a living. It’s as much a part of the Gallos as our blood and our bones. We’re mafiosos.

I never questioned it.

But I thought I had a choice.

I thought I could skirt around the edges of the business, while still unfettered, able to pursue anything else I wanted in life.

I didn’t realize how much that life had already wrapped its chains around me. There was never any choice. I was bound to be pulled into it one way or another.

Sure enough, after my knee was fucked and I lost my place on the team, my brothers started calling me more and more often for jobs.

When Nessa Griffin was kidnapped, we joined the Griffins in their vendetta against the Polish mafia. That night, I shot a man for the very first time.

I don’t know how to describe that moment. I had a gun in my hand, but I didn’t expect to actually use it. I thought I was there for backup. As a lookout at most. Then I saw one of the Polish soldiers pull his gun on my brother, and instinct took over. My hand floated up, the gun pointed right between the man’s eyes. I pulled the trigger without a thought.

He went tumbling backward. I expected to feel something: shock, horror, guilt.

Instead I felt . . . absolutely nothing. It seemed inevitable. Like I’d always been destined to kill someone. Like it had always been in my nature.

That’s when I realized that I’m not actually a good person.

I always assumed that I was. I think everyone does.

I thought, I’m warmer than my brother Dante. Less psychopathic than Nero. More responsible than Aida. I considered myself kind, hardworking, a good man.

In that moment I realized I have violence inside of me. And selfishness, too. I wasn’t going to sacrifice my brother for somebody else. And I certainly wouldn’t sacrifice myself. I was willing to hurt or to kill. Or a whole lot worse.

It’s a strange thing to learn about yourself.

I look around the table at my siblings. They all have blood on their hands, one way or another. Looking at them, you’d never guess it. Well, maybe you’d guess it with Dante—his hands look like scarred baseball mitts. They were made for tearing people apart. If he were a gladiator, the Romans would have to pair him up against a lion to make it a fair fight.

But they all look happier than I’ve seen them in years. Aida’s eyes are bright and cheerful, and she’s flushed from the wine. She hadn’t been able to drink the whole time she was nursing, so she’s thrilled to be able to get just a little bit tipsy again.

Dante has this look of contentment, like he’s already sitting at some outdoor cafe in Paris. Like he’s already starting the rest of his life.

Even Nero has changed. And he’s the one I never thought would find happiness.

He’s always been so vicious and full of rage. I honestly thought he was sociopathic when we were teenagers—he didn’t seem to care about anyone, not even our family. Not really.

Then he met Camille, and all of a sudden he’s completely different. I wouldn’t say he’s a nice guy—he’s still ruthless and rude as hell. But that sense of nihilism is gone. He’s more focused than ever, more deliberate. He has something to lose now.

Aida says to Dante, “Are you gonna learn French?”

“Yes,” he grunts.

“I can’t picture that,” Nero says.

“I can learn French,” Dante says defensively. “I’m not an idiot.”

“It’s not your intelligence,” Aida says. “It’s your accent.”

“What do you mean?”

She and Nero exchange an amused glance.

“Even your accent in Italian . . . isn’t great,” Aida says.

“What are you talking about?” Dante demands.

“Say something in Italian,” Aida goads him.

“Alright,” Dante says stubbornly. “Voi due siete degli stronzi.” You two are assholes.

The sentence is accurate. The problem is that Dante keeps his same flat Chicago accent, so it sounds like, “Voy doo-way see-etay deg-lee strawn-zee.” He sounds like a midwestern farmer trying to order off a menu in a fancy Italian restaurant.

Aida and Nero burst into laughter, and I can’t help letting out a little snort myself. Dante scowls at us all, still not hearing it.

“What?” he demands. “What’s so damn funny?”

“You better let Simone do the talking,” Aida says between giggles.

“Well it’s not like I actually lived in Italy!” Dante growls. “You know, I speak some Arabic too, which is more than you two chuckleheads.” When they won’t stop laughing he adds, “Fuck you guys! I’m cultured.”

“As cultured as yogurt,” Nero says, which only makes them laugh harder.

I think Dante would have knocked their heads together in the old days, but he’s above their nonsense now that he’s a husband and father. He just shakes his head at them and signals the bartender for one more drink.

Becoming a mother hasn’t made Aida above anything. Seeing that Dante isn’t going to respond to her teasing anymore, she looks across the table and fixes her keen gray eyes on me.

“Seb has a gift for languages,” she says. “Do you remember when we were coming back from Sardinia, and you thought you were supposed to talk to the customs officers in Italian? And they kept asking you questions to make sure you were actually an American citizen, and you wouldn’t say anything except ‘Il mio nome è Sebastian?’ ”

That’s true. I was seven years old, and I got flustered with all those adults staring at me, barking at me. I was so deeply tanned from my summer in Italy that I’m sure it looked like my father had snatched some little island boy out of Costa Rei and was trying to bring him back across the Atlantic.

The customs officers kept demanding, “Is this your family? Are you American?” And I, for some reason, had decided that I had to respond in their native language, even though they were speaking English. In the moment, all I could think of to say was “My name is Sebastian,” over and over.

Damn Aida for even remembering that—she was only five herself. But she never forgets something embarrassing she can bring up later at the most inopportune time.

“I wanted to stay on vacation a little longer,” I tell Aida coolly.

“Good strategy,” she says. “You almost got to stay forever.”

I am going to miss Dante. I miss all my siblings, the more they branch out into their own lives.

They can be infuriating and inconvenient, but they love me. They know all my faults and all my mistakes, and they accept me anyway. I know I can count on them, if I really need them. And I would show up for them, any time, any place. That’s a powerful bond.

“We’ll come visit you,” I say to Dante.

He smiles just a little. “Not all at the same time, please,” he says. “I don’t want to scare Simone away right after we finally got married.”

“Simone loves me,” Aida says. “And I’m already bribing my way into your children’s hearts. You know that’s the path to becoming the favorite aunt—giving them loud and dangerous gifts that their parents wouldn’t allow.”

“That must be why you liked Uncle Francesco,” I say. “He gave you a bow and arrows.”

“That’s right,” Aida says. “And I always adored him.”

So did I. But we lost Uncle Francesco two years after that particular gift. The Bratva cut his fingers off and set him on fire while he was still alive. That sparked a two-year bloodbath with the Russians. My father was in a rage like I’ve never seen before. He drove them out of their territory on the west side of the city, killing eight of their men in revenge. I don’t know what he did to the bratok who threw the match on Uncle Francesco, but I remember him coming home that night with his dress shirt drenched in blood to the point where you couldn’t see a single square inch of white cotton anymore.

I still have my favorite gift from my uncle: a small gold medallion of Saint Eustachius. I wear it every day.

Uncle Francesco was a good man: funny and charming. Passionate about everything. He loved to cook and to play tennis. He’d take Nero and me to the courts and play two-against-one, smoking us every time. He wasn’t tall, but he was compact and wiry, and he could fire a shot into the very back corner of the court, so the ball touched the lines while still remaining inside. It was impossible to return. Nero and I would be sweating and panting, swearing this would be the time we finally beat him.

I sometimes wish we could have him back for a day so he could see what we all look like as adults. So we could talk to him as peers.

I wish the same thing about my mother.

She never saw who we turned out to be.

I wonder if she’d be happy?

She never liked the mafia life. She ignored it, pretended to be ignorant of what her husband was doing. She was a concert pianist when my father first spotted her playing on stage. He pursued her relentlessly. He was much older than her. I’m sure she was impressed that he spoke three languages, that he was well-read and well-spoken. And I’m sure his aura of authority was impressive to her. My father was already the head Don of Chicago. One of the most powerful men in the city. She loved who he was, but not what he did.

What would she think of us? Of what we’ve done?

We just completed a massive real estate development on the South Shore. Would she look on that in awe, or would she think that every one of those buildings was built with blood money? Would she marvel at the structures we brought into being, or picture the skeletons buried beneath their foundations?

The bartender brings Dante’s drink.

“Can I get another for anyone else?” he asks us.

“Yes!” Aida says at once.

“Alright,” Nero agrees.

“Not for me,” I say. “I’m gonna head out.”

“What’s your rush?” Nero says.

“Nothing.” I shrug.

I don’t know how to express that I feel impatient and uneasy. Maybe I’m jealous of Dante leaving for Paris with his wife. Maybe I’m jealous of Aida and Nero, too. They seem sure of their path. Happy in their lives.

I’m not. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.

Dante stands up to let me out of the booth. Before I leave, he hugs me. His heavy arms almost crack my ribs.

“Thanks for coming out tonight,” he says.

“Of course. Send us postcards.”

“Fuck postcards. Send me chocolate!” Aida pipes up.

I give her a little wave, and Nero, too.

“She hasn’t had wine in a while,” I say to Nero. “You better drive her home.”

“I will,” Nero says, “but if you puke in my car, I will fucking cut you, Aida.”

“I would never,” Aida says.

“You have before,” Nero snarls.

I leave them in the booth, heading out into the warm Chicago evening. It’s summertime—even at ten o’clock at night, the heat is barely beginning to fade.

We’re close to the river. I could walk home along Randolph Street, but I take the river walkway instead, passing all the restaurants with their strings of lights reflecting on the dark water. I cross over into River North, where the streets are quieter and less brightly lit. I stroll along with my hands in my pockets. It’s a nice area, and I’m 6’7. I’m not worried about getting mugged.

Still, when I hear a shriek, I tense up and look around for the source of the noise.

About fifty yards down the sidewalk, I see a blonde girl struggling with a man in dark clothing. He’s burly, with a tattoo of an arrow on the side of his shaved head. He appears to be trying to shove her in the open trunk of his car.

The girl looks like she was headed out to a party—she’s wearing a short dress and sky-high heels. The heels aren’t helping her keep her balance while the man bodily lifts her off her feet and tries to throw her backward into the trunk. She gets a hand free and slaps him hard across the face—hard enough that I can hear the blow all the way down the street. He retaliates by slapping her back even harder.

That really pisses me off. Before I even think what I’m doing, I’m sprinting down the sidewalk, charging right at him.

Just as he manages to shove her into the trunk, but before he can close the lid, I barrel into him from the side. I hit him hard with my shoulder, sending him flying into a wrought-iron fence.

He slams into the fence, but he’s back up on his feet again a moment later, coming at me with both fists swinging.

I don’t actually have all that much experience with fighting—I’ve only been in three or four fights, while Nero’s probably been in a hundred. But I’m a big fucking dude, with a long reach. And with two older brothers, you learn some things.

The guy comes at me in a blitzkrieg, both fists flying. I keep my own arms up, blocking most of his punches at my face. He hits me a couple times in the body, which doesn’t feel great. I watch for an opening. When he sends another wild right cross at my face, I step aside and hit him in the eye with a left. That rocks his head back. He’s still coming at me, but not quite as steadily.

He’s got a broad, ugly face. Discolored teeth. His skin is the color of uncooked bread dough. He’s in a rage, snarling at me. Sweating and panting while he keeps throwing haymakers at me that can’t quite reach my face.

I’m not raging. Actually, I feel colder and more calculated by the moment. I feel myself analyzing him like he’s a character in a video game. Looking for the best and quickest way to annihilate him.

I start hitting him again and again in the face and the gut. Each blow feels solid and satisfying, like punching a heavy bag. Every grunt of pain from this asshole gives me a glow of pleasure.

He gets me with a jab to the lip, and I taste blood in my mouth. That just pisses me off more. I grab him by the face like I’m palming a basketball, and I slam his head back into the fence. I do that three or four times until the light goes out of his eyes, and he slumps down on the sidewalk. I don’t even bother to break his fall.

The blonde girl has pulled herself out of the trunk. Seeing her assailant out cold on the pavement, she runs up and kicks him in the gut.

“Chtob u tebya hui vo Ibu vyros!” she shouts, pulling back her high-heeled foot and kicking him again.

To be honest, I kinda forgot about the girl for a minute while I was beating the shit out of this guy. Now I turn around and really look at her for the first time.

She’s tall, and that’s saying something from my perspective. She’s got to be over six feet in those heels. With her face aflame with fury, she looks like a vengeful Valkyrie. She’s white-blonde, her hair pulled up in a high ponytail on top of her head. Her features are sharp and exotic—high cheekbones, almond-shaped eyes, full lips, fierce white teeth. And her body . . .

I feel bad thinking about that, when some dude just tried to abduct her. But it’s pretty impossible to miss the Amazonian figure stuffed into that skin-tight dress. Full breasts, tiny waist, mile-long legs . . . it’s hard to snap my eyes back up to her face.

“Are you okay?” I ask her.

Her left cheek is red and swollen where the man slapped her. I can see his individual finger marks on the side of her face.

“I’m fine!” she says angrily. She has a hint of an accent. I’m pretty sure she was shouting in Russian a minute ago.

“What did you say to that guy?” I ask her.

“What?”

“When you kicked him—what were you saying?”

“Oh.” She shakes her head impatiently. “It means . . . something like ‘May a dick grow on your forehead.’ ”

I let out a snort. “Really?”

“Yes,” she says, frowning at me. “This is a very common insult in Russia. Very rude, trust me. He would not like it if he could hear what I said.”

“Well, he can’t hear shit,” I say. “But he deserved it anyway.”

“He deserves to be castrated!” the girl says, spitting on the sidewalk next to her fallen assailant. It’s funny—spitting is the furthest thing from ladylike. But I find it oddly attractive. It seems wild and foreign, like she’s a warrior princess.

Speaking of which . . .

“Do you know who he is?” I ask her. “Why was he grabbing you?”

The girl makes a sharp, dismissive sound. “You wouldn’t understand,” she says.

That just makes me curious.

“Why don’t you try me?” I say.

She looks me up and down like she’s trying to figure me out. At last she shrugs, maybe thinking she owes me an explanation.

“My father is a powerful man,” she says. “He has a lot of enemies. I suppose this one here thought it would be easier to attack me instead.”

“Who’s your father?” I ask her.

“Alexei Yenin,” she says, not expecting me to recognize the name.

I do, though. He’s the head of the Bratva in Chicago. Or, I should say, he’s the new boss—after the Griffins killed the old one.

“What’s your name?” I ask her.

“Yelena Yenina,” she says with a proud upward tilt of her chin.

“Sebastian Gallo,” I tell her. I don’t see any flicker of recognition in her eyes. She doesn’t seem familiar with my family.

Instead, she looks me up and down again with a mistrustful expression on her face.

“Why are you so huge?” she demands, as if it’s suspicious to be this tall.

“Genetics,” I say blandly.

“No.” She shakes her head. “You know how to fight. What do you do?”

“As a job?”

“Yes, of course as a job,” she snaps.

It amuses me that this girl barely seems grateful that I helped save her. Instead she’s haughty and imperious.

I don’t know how to answer her question, however.

I’ve been doing a lot of jobs lately. All family business. Running our underground gambling ring, handling the various issues that arise at our restaurants and clubs. Doing some work on the South Shore project too, though Nero has mostly taken that over.

“My family owns a few businesses,” I say vaguely. “Restaurants and whatnot.”

“Hm,” the girl says, still suspicious.

“Where are you going?” I ask her. “You want me to walk with you?”

“Why not,” she says, as if she’s doing me a favor. “It isn’t far.”

“Just a second,” I say.

I grab her assailant by the front of his shirt and heave him up, his head flopping limply. I toss him in the trunk of his own car and slam the lid.

“He can enjoy kicking his way out of there when he wakes up,” I say.

The girl gives a short laugh. “Well, well,” she says. “Here I thought you were a good boy with that face.”

“This face?” I grin.

“Yes. Smooth cheeks. Big eyes. Soft curls. Like a little baby,” she says.

I can tell she’s trying to wind me up, but I don’t give a fuck.

“I think you look like a Viking,” I tell her.

She doesn’t want to smile, but I think she likes that.

I notice that her eyes are an unusual color—more violet than blue. Very striking against her fair hair and pale skin. I’ve never met a woman like this. She’s not like anybody I’ve seen around here.

“So where are we going?”

“What’s this we?” she says.

“Is it a party?” I persist. “I like parties.”

“You weren’t invited,” she says, a hint of a smile playing on her full lips.

“I bet you could get me in.”

“Maybe,” she says. “If you were my date.”

I look down at her, grinning all the way now.

“Yeah?” I say. “What do I have to do to be your date?”

* * *