Parents usually call family meetings for big announcements such as family vacations, a parent has to leave town, or something huge and exciting. Sometimes it's not exciting, sometimes it's sad and depressing. Sometimes it'll infuriate a family member. These meetings are usually called to in a living room, or a kitchen, where the parents announce whatever going to happen. A family reunion is usually filled with music and food, food that people of that ethnicity all eat. It's usually a fun and exciting family event Not in a mafia.
Instead, a text message goes out. I text Mom, Elena, Lorenzo, and every other family member about the upcoming meeting. To cancel whatever plans they made and to get here as soon as possible, no later than 12 pm. I sent those text messages last night as I left out of my Dad's office, it took me a while but eventually, I began copying and pasting everything. In this family meeting, I stand by the front door. Mom and I, greet our family members and make small talk as they enter the threshold. We shake their hands and give them bright happy smiles, even if we're not feeling very bright and happy.
They walk inside the house, and the much older members, are helped by Lorenzo and Elena. Once 12 pm hits we let in the remaining people who are coming, and then we close the door. I hope everyone who was supposed to come came, Mom and I make our way upstairs. Our mansion has several floors. The first floor consists of the kitchen, Dad's office, and the living room.
The second floor consists of my bedroom, my dance studio, my library, and then a room filled with nothing but weapons of all sorts. Guns, knives, bombs, grenades, etc. You name it and it's in there.
The fourth floor has Elena and Lorenzo's bedroom, along with two empty rooms. At least I think they're empty. I've never been up there and I don't plan on ever being up there.
The fifth floor has my parent's bedroom along with three other rooms. One room Mom uses for her yoga, the other room is a storage of all weapons, and the last room, I'm not sure. Nobody's allowed in there.
Then there's the sixth floor, the last floor. It's literally nothing except a huge room. We go into this room to fight, for example, if me and Lorenzo were to be arguing we'd have to go to the sixth floor and empty our pockets of any and all weapons. We'd have to fight like true assassins, the loser has to attend an extra training session for the week and the winner gets bragging rights or a few dollars, depending on if the members who were watching had a bet.
Then we have our basement, when you walk into our house and walk much further down the hall, there's a brown, wooden door. It usually has about five to six locks on it, it stays locked unless we have a meeting and Dad unlocks them all. We descend the long flight of stairs that spiral down like a cinnamon twist, it literally just twists.
The older members never use the stairs because they could get hurt or potentially die, so they use the elevator. Once you reach the last step you're met with a room that's similar to an auditorium, there are rows and rows of bright red chairs with amber desks in front of them.
In the front of the room is a long table with three seats, Dad's, mine, and Mom's. The three main members of the family. Behind us is a large white mat-looking thing, it's actually for our projector that Dad sets up when he wants to show pictures or videos.
The meeting never starts until me and Mom are downstairs and beside Dad, that's how he knows everyone should be here. I stand in the middle of my Mom and Dad, with my hands crossed in front of me and I look ahead of me at every family member in complete silence. Everyone chatters and talks while Dad speaks in a low hushed tone to me and Mom about what we're going to be showing, Mom doesn't know about the deaths and our suspects.
Once we have the outline of how the meeting is supposed to go, Dad grabs his phone which is already connected to the projector and he plays a loud booming sound that gets everyone to quiet down.
Before we begin with the meeting everyone stands up, their hand over their heart, and looks over to the Italian flag we have and we say our family motto along with the meaning in sync and in Italian.
"We are the Marino's, we walk silently but deadly. We trudge through our enemy's grounds and we show that we are not afraid. We walk silently, but we observe everything. Not a single thing goes unnoticed by us, for we are, The Marino's."
Everyone is seated, Mom and I take our seats while Dad walks over to the podium and clears his throat. All attention is on him.
"We are gathered here today because we have some new information that my daughter, Amaya Marino, will present to you all." I give them a brief smile as my Dad moves from behind the podium and I take his place.
"Good Afternoon, everyone." I greet. murmurs of Good Afternoon, are heard throughout the crowd.
"This week our family has suffered from five casualties, these people weren't family, but they did work for us." The projector clicks over to pictures of the five victims, all smiling and happy. "Leonardo, who was shot in the forehead was found in his living room. According to his family, he did not own a gun." Dad showed Leo, sitting upright against the wall, the gun in his left hand.
Soft gasps are heard throughout the crowd as I take a deep breath. I hate doing this so much. "Nicoli was found in his bathtub with his wrists slit along with his neck, according to the family he was never a cutter. Also as you can see,"
I pause as Dad zooms in closer to Nic's exposed wrists, where the fresh cuts were. "These cuts are brand new and they weren't made by Nic."
I pause as everyone takes in this new information, I want to rush through this. I don't like announcing people's deaths as if I'm some kind of news reporter or something. "Sofia died from a broken neck and was found hanging from the ceiling fan, all it takes is common sense to know that hanging from a ceiling cannot actually break your neck the way hers was."
"Rosa, who we all know was pregnant, was shot in her stomach. Directly where her baby was." I don't look at the image, I just can't. Knowing that poor baby didn't even get a chance at living at all, even though the life it would've been born into wouldn't have been an excellent one. They'd probably be filled with guilt on a daily basis. How can someone do that? Murder a pregnant woman and an innocent baby, a baby who couldn't even breathe on its own.
"Finally we are Marco, he's currently missing." I finish off as Dad takes the pictures down. I move from the podium and stand in front of it, my eyes raking over each of my family members as I begin to pace back and forth. Under their watchful gazes. "Now, what do all of these have in common?" I ask them.
"They all committed suicide." An unsure, girl's voice was heard in the crowd. Her voice was so unsure, I questioned if she was a real Marino or not, but that wasn't important. "Exactly, they were all staged as suicides. But here's the catch, they all died within this week, they all worked for us. So tell me, who would do this?"
I let that question hang in the air as I walk back over to my chair, and sit down in it. Mom looks over at me with a curious frown, I just shrug as Dad takes over. "I bet you, it was those god-forsaken Morelli's." A man from the crowd calls out, my dad blowing out a sigh. "Impossible, we have a truce. Do we not?" A woman calls out and asks, I fold my hands onto the table as Dad raises his hand to get everyone to quiet down.
"It is suspected that it's the Morelli family, while we do not have evidence of this, we do have facts. The Morelli family is known to be cold-blooded, they're known to do the most ruthless of activities to get what they want. We all also know that they hate us, just like we despise them."
"Isn't this them breaking the truce? I mean, we have the full motivation to go after them."
Dad shakes his head. "Sadly, we have no solid evidence, however, we will be going into town." I lean up in my seat at this piece of information. We're going into town?
"Me, Amaya, Elena, Enzo, and Elenora. We'll be living in the small town of CederBrook, Chicago, to collect evidence and be sure it's them." Dad explains, holy shit. We're going into the city! I can finally get out of this sad, lonely, isolated place.
Now I'm excited about this mission.
The meeting drones on for about 40 more minutes with Dad explaining everything that'll be happening, how they could contact us, and even our addresses. He answers any and all questions they ask him while Mom and I talk in our own hushed voices. Apparently last night Dad found an old mansion, it had been abandoned for fifteen years, Dad wouldn't tell me the reason why nobody had lived there for that long.
Once the meeting was over, we walked everyone out of the house, told them goodbye and we locked up the house afterward. Dad told us we'd be leaving for Cederbrook early tomorrow morning, so when I went to bed that night, I packed everything I felt like I'd need.
"Maya." There's a gentle knock at my door, so I know it's only Mom. Elena just walks in and Dad's knocks sound more like a pounding. I'm folding a shirt and placing it in my suitcase when she sits down on my bed. "Did Dad say how long we're staying?" I asked her and she shook her head, that means this mission could go on for a very long time. A few months at its best.
"I want to talk to you." Mom's voice is so gentle and sweet, but don't let that trick you. Mom can hold a very stern tone when she needs to, I shut my suitcase and begin zipping it closed. "Yeah?"
She's quiet for a moment, trying to find the right words to use. I shoved my suitcase up under my bed and sat down on it, Mom was chewing on her fingernails. "We're only going because your father wants to keep an eye on the other families, you know, to protect them." She explained, I nodded but I didn't understand why Dad didn't just say that.
Was it embarrassing for him to protect those who work for him? After Mom told me that she bid me goodnight and closed my bedroom room door, I stared at it for several moments before crawling into the bed and getting some sleep.
**__**
I was woken up out of my slumber at exactly 6:00 in the morning, and a large body was on top of me, trapping me inside my blankets. I began to panic, literally panic, as I tried to free myself from the heavyweight that was trying to suffocate me. My heart was hammering against my chest as my arms and legs flailed around, trying to break free.
When I finally did I was breathing as if I ran a marathon, Lorenzo looked at me with a sheepish grin, an apology written in his eyes. "Sorry, Maya. Piero told me to wake you." His Italian accent was thick, but I understood him. I rolled my eyes at him and threw my covers off my body, my legs dangling from the edge of my bed as I muttered, "imbecile."
I stayed in that position until my breathing was back to normal, I got up and went straight into my bathroom where I put toothpaste on my toothbrush and I began brushing. Lorenzo is known to be very playful, sometimes he doesn't think before he does things, and that's why I didn't get entirely pissed at him. He's very immature, but he's only a child. Let him stay one while he can.
But when he's on a job he takes them very seriously, he can be a bit paranoid at times, but that's his gift because he's always right. If he feels uneasy around someone, he'll tell you and that's how we immediately know to back off. Enzo is one of our most truth-worthy soldiers, hopefully, in the future, he ranks up.
Once my teeth are brushed and my hair is pulled up into a ponytail, I leave out my bathroom and change into a hoodie and a pair of sweatpants before grabbing my suitcase from under the bed. I look around my bedroom, at the walls that are plastered with images of black cats. Above my headboard in gold cursive writing is my name, Amaya, with a pink heart on the end. My walls are painted a baby blue, I reminded myself to change them when I get back home, I want them to be a much darker color.
My bedsheets are black, grey, and red. My comforter and blanket patches, on my dresser, are perfume bottles and magazines.
Above it is a giant flatscreen tv, if anyone were to look into my room, they'd see a normal teenage girl. A normal bedroom for a teenage girl. I smile at that thought, but it quickly vanishes when I remember I need to be downstairs before I miss breakfast. I wheel my suitcase out of my bedroom and downstairs where the smell of scrambled eggs, french toast, and coffee hits my nose in an instant. It makes my mouth water, just thinking about how it'll all taste.
"Enzo, take your cousin's suitcase to the car." Elena says no quicker than I appear in the dining room, Enzo puts his phone down and slides off the chair. He doesn't meet my eye as he takes my suitcase and wheels it outside. I frown at this because I know he feels guilty, he feels at fault for scaring me, but I need him to know that it's okay.
When he comes back inside the house I take a seat next to him, Mom's in the kitchen cooking the breakfast while Elena is starting up the coffee maker and plating our food. Enzo, whose next to me, plays a shooting game on his phone. But he keeps dying and that's how I know he's far from being okay. I nudge his leg under the table and looks up at me. "Ehi, va tutto bene, lo prometto." I drop my voice down to a whisper, so only we can hear, he presses his lips together and nods at me.
He does seem to relax though, when he goes back to playing his game, he actually wins and stops missing enemies. I smile at that as a plate of food is sat down in front of us, a glass of orange juice for Enzo because he hates coffee and a mug of french vanilla coffee for me. I tell Elena and Mom thank you in Italian, they tell me I'm welcome and I begin to eat.
Soon after Dad walks into the dining room and presses a kiss to my forehead while fist-bumping Enzo. "How's everyone this morning?" He asks in his happy voice, Dad is always happy when there's a mission. I'm not sure how, but I'm really happy about this mission because we'll be protecting and gathering information. Not murdering and stalking people.
"Amaya, when we get there, and during your morning walk, I want you to stop by Rosa's family's house. See if you can get any information from there." I nod at his order, I can't speak since my mouth is filled with french toast. Nobody knows how much I fucking love French Toast, like, when I die please bury me with Mom's french toast.
"Amore mio, I want you and Lena to get information from Nic's family. Vince and I are going track down the Morelli's." I smile at the nickname my Dad gave to Mom, they've been married for years and they still love each other so much. I want that, but I never have time for it. Guns and guys don't mix.
After we all each breakfast we pile into our cars, I drive a black Jeep Wrangler, Dad is in an SUV, Mom is in her black Mercedes, and Elena and Enzo are on their black motorcycle. It's actually Enzo's but he can't drive yet, if we ever need more cars we'll just call one of our men to bring it to us. Dad texted me the address to the house, but I don't need it because I intend on following them in a straight line.
Dad honks his horn twice, Mom honks hers twice, Enzo and Elena throw a thumbs up, and I honk my horn twice. All indicating that we're ready to get going. We all drive out in a straight line, Dad first. Then Mom. Then Elena and Enzo. And I'm last.
I turn on my radio while we drive, just so I have something other than my thoughts to listen to. But of course, my thoughts overpower the music. I have no clue what Cederbrook is like, I hope it's fun with activities for the teenagers during the summer. I remember when we worked in the northern part of Chicago, I had to go undercover as a high school kid, there were so many activities to do during school time and the summer. I had fun while I was working.
The sad thing is though, I've never had friends. I never lived in a neighborhood long enough to get and keep a friend, I don't think my lifestyle could actually fit any new friends. I'll be too busy and I'll have to lie about everything and lord knows I hate lying. Even though it's how I survive.
I wonder if Cederbrook has its own little cafe where teenagers go to hang out and drink coffee. I hope there is, I miss having little cafes to calm down and chill at. A place where I feel normal. I've never felt normal, not since I found out the truth about my life.
My thoughts then spiral to the victims and their families, I know they were all loved, and they all died tragically. But Rosa? She was pregnant for fucks sake, if the Morelli's actually did this, they're more evil and cold-blooded than I thought they were. That was such a horrible thing to do, I know Rosa had a husband and she had two other kids.
They had lived in poverty for so long until they found our family, and now she's dead. It depresses me that anybody could do something like that, something so malicious.
We drive for about an hour before we actually see civilization and not just trees, the cars that zoom by us give us weird looks in their window. As if I can't see them. I don't know why though, maybe because we literally have a string of cars following each other? As the morning comes, the air gets warmer until it's blazing hot by 7 am.
I pull off my hoodie when we're at a red light, revealing the red crop top I had on underneath. I turn on my air conditioning as we turn into a neighborhood. It looks like a complete ghost town. As if nobody lives here.
But then again, who's even awake in the summer at 7 in the morning? Everyone's most likely sleeping in, trying to catch up on the sleep they missed during the school year. That used to be my favorite part, the weekends and summer. Even though it was very very short-lived. When I was younger I didn't hate school, but I also didn't like it.
I didn't like having to wake up super early every single day. I didn't like having to walk into a place where kids bullied me because my parents hardly ever attended a school event. Elementary school kids are heartless and cruel, I sigh at the thought.
After driving for another thirty minutes we finally reach a tall black mansion, like the mansion is literally black and it looks to be at least two floors high. There are two windows in the front that are boarded up, everything is just dark.
Even though it's light outside.