Like Father, Like Son

Chapter 22

My mother sits in the living room like she's been surgically inserted into the leather armchair, spine rigid with the kind of determination usually reserved for dental procedures and tax audits.

Her presence here, in the Caruso mansion, feels as natural as a flamingo at a funeral.

"Salvatore called me. Said you collapsed at a meeting." She doesn't bother with pleasantries, her voice carrying that particular maternal frequency that makes grown women feel twelve again. "He sounded concerned. More concerned than a father-in-law should be about his son's wife."

"I got dizzy. It happens when you skip breakfast and live on coffee and dread." I pour myself water with hands that want to shake but won't, not in front of her. "Since when do you and Salvatore have each other's phone numbers?"

"Since I asked for it after your wedding. A mother needs contingencies when her daughter marries into this world." She studies me with eyes that used to avoid confrontation but now seek it out like bloodhounds. "You look terrible, Lucia. Pale, exhausted, guilty. Like someone playing with fire in a house made of gasoline, romanticizing ghosts you don't understand."

"That's oddly specific imagery, even for you."

"I've seen that look before. Twenty-three years ago, actually, on another young wife in this very house." She shifts in the chair, and the leather creaks like old bones. "Joana Caruso used to sit exactly where you're sitting now, wearing that same hollow expression, trying to pretend everything was fine."

The casual revelation makes my breath catch. "You knew Joana?"

"I knew her well. Better than the sanitized version everyone prefers to remember." Her fingers drum against the armchair's leather. "We met at those insufferable charity luncheons the wives were expected to attend. She was desperate for a friend who wasn't connected to Salvatore's family."

The news lands like a slap, reorganizing everything I thought I understood about my mother's place in this ecosystem of crime families and their careful distances.

"You never mentioned that before."

"There are many things I never mention. Self-preservation requires selective amnesia in this world." She leans forward, and the movement carries weight, intention. "But watching you moon over Salvatore like he's some tragic hero, I can't stay silent anymore. Joana wanted to leave before her death, did you know that?"

"That's not possible. Salvatore loved her completely, you can see it in how he still—"

"Salvatore saw what he wanted to see. Men like him always do." My mother's interruption cuts clean through my protest. "Joana was terrified of what she had birthed. Those were her exact words to me three days before she died. 'Maria, I'm terrified of what I've birthed.'"

The room tilts slightly, reality shifting on its axis. "You're talking about Marco."

"Even as a teenager, that boy was… wrong." Her voice drops, carrying the weight of secrets held too long. "Joana found him in the garage once with the neighbor's cat. What he was doing to it... She couldn't even finish telling me."

Nausea rolls through me in waves, the full-body revulsion of recognition, of puzzle pieces clicking into place.

"She tried to get him help. Therapists who specialized in certain tendencies. But Marco was clever even then—he'd charm them, play the misunderstood rich boy so well they'd tell Joana she was overreacting." My mother's hands twist in her lap, betraying the calm of her voice. "Then she found the notebooks. Detailed plans about accidents that could happen to Salvatore. Brake lines that could fail, food allergies that could be triggered, scenarios that looked natural but weren't. He was literally writing a recipe book for patricide."

"She must have told Salvatore. He would have—"

"She tried. God, how she tried. But you've seen how Salvatore is about family. He thought she was overreacting to normal teenage rebellion." Maria's laugh comes out bitter as burnt coffee. "Fatherly duty makes men blind to their sons' monstrosity."

I think of Salvatore's pride these past weeks as Marco closes deals and acts human, the satisfaction in his voice when he speaks of his son finally growing up. The willful blindness of a father desperate to see potential instead of pathology.

"The suicide—if that's even what it was—happened three hours after she confronted Marco directly." My mother's eyes lock onto mine with the intensity of someone delivering a verdict.

"You're saying Marco killed his own mother."

"I'm not saying anything that could get me buried in the Hudson. I'm telling you what anyone with eyes could see but no one with sense would say out loud." She stands, smoothing her skirt. "Salvatore thinks it was suicide. People knew better. We all knew better. But knowing and proving are different currencies in this world."

The full weight of it crashes over me—I've been sleeping next to a man who possibly murdered his mother, fantasizing about a father-in-law who refused to see the monster he raised.

"Marco always craved his mother's attention, but the ways he tried to get it were twisted. Dead birds in her jewelry box, her favorite dress shredded, messages written in her lipstick on her bathroom mirror." My mother moves toward the door. "She avoided him because she was afraid of him."

"Why are you telling me this now?" My voice cracks under the weight of this new reality.

"Because I see how he looks at you lately. The same possessive way he used to look at Joana when she'd try to leave a room he was in." Her hand hesitates on the handle. "And because I see you making the same mistake she did—thinking you can navigate this with logic and careful moves. But you can't outmaneuver someone who's been playing a game you didn't know existed."

"So what am I supposed to do? Run? Hide? Pretend I don't know what he is?" The questions tumble out, each one more desperate than the last.

Before she can respond, the door bursts open with enough force to crack against the wall. One of Salvatore's men—Tommy, the one with the nervous tic in his left eye—stands there panting, his face the color of an old newspaper.

"Mrs. Caruso, Mrs. Santoro." His voice cracks like he's fourteen instead of forty. "There's been an incident. Mr Santoro—he's dead."