Like Father, Like Son

Chapter 3

The funny thing about watching your life collapse is that it happens in such ordinary moments—walking through your front door after another fourteen-hour shift, keys jangling the same tune they always do.

My parents sit in the living room like mannequins someone arranged for a funeral viewing.

Dad occupies his leather throne. Mom perches on the sofa's edge, hands folded in her lap like she's praying to saints who stopped listening years ago.

They're both dressed in their good clothes—Dad in the suit that still fits if he holds his breath, Mom in the dress she wore to cousin Teresa's wedding three years back.

"Lucia." Dad's voice carries that particular weight that means he's about to dress up catastrophe as opportunity. "Sit down, baby girl. We need to discuss something important."

I remain standing, even though my feet throb from another double shift.

"Where's the money, Dad?"

"That's what we need to talk about." He straightens his tie, this little gesture of dignity that seems tragic. "The game didn't go as planned."

"The game never goes as planned, Dad." The words fall flat between us, facts without feeling because feeling costs energy I don't have anymore. "How much did you lose this time?"

"All of it." Mom's whisper barely disturbs the air, but it lands like a sledgehammer.

Dad shoots her a look that could curdle milk. "Maria, let me handle this."

"Handle what, Franco? You've handled enough."

Her voice gains the faintest edge, steel under silk, and for a moment I glimpse the woman she might have been if she'd married someone else.

"How much do we owe?" I ask, though the number barely matters. It's always more than we have.

"Fifty thousand." Dad delivers this like he's announcing the weather.

"You lost fifty thousand dollars to Salvatore Caruso." Each word tastes like copper, like blood, like the ending of things. "Dad, his people break bones for missed payments. They don't negotiate."

"Which is why we're not going to miss any payments."

He leans forward, his eyes bright with that particular fever that comes when desperate men think they've found salvation.

"Salvatore has offered us a way to clear the debt entirely."

Mom's hands twist in her lap, wringing invisible water from invisible cloth. Her mouth opens, closes, opens again. No words emerge.

"What kind of solution?"

Though my body already knows. Every muscle tenses like I'm preparing for impact.

"You'll marry his son, Marco."

Dad speaks quickly now, words tumbling over each other like he's afraid silence will give me time to refuse.

"Think about it, Lucia. The Carusos need legitimacy. They have power, but they're new money, new blood. A bride from one of the five founding families silences everyone who questions their authority."

"You're selling me…"

The accusation hangs between us, naked and undeniable.

"I'm saving us." His voice rises, indignation flooding in to fill the spaces where shame should live. "The Santoro name allied with the Carusos—we could rebuild everything."

"There is no 'we' in this scenario, Dad. There's me, married to a stranger, and you, debt-free and delusional."

Mom finally finds her voice, though it emerges threadbare and careful. "Marco Caruso is twenty-six. Educated and quite handsome, from what I hear."

"You've been discussing my sale price while I was at work." A laugh bubbles up, bitter as burnt coffee. "Did you negotiate terms? Haggle over the details?"

"Drop the act." Dad stands, pacing to the window like he's surveying an empire instead of a rented house with bars on the windows. "Marriages have been arranged for less noble reasons than saving a family from ruin."

"Noble? You think this is noble?" I move toward him. "You stole my savings. You gambled it away. Now you want me to pay for your losses with my life."

"Your life?" He whirls around. "What life, Lucia? Working yourself to death at that drugstore? Counting pennies? Growing old behind a register while the world forgets the Santoros ever mattered?"

"At least it would be my life!"

"No life is truly yours when your family needs you."

He softens his voice now, shifting tactics like a salesman who senses resistance.

"Baby girl, I'm not asking you to love him. Just marry him. Live in comfort. Have children who won't need to count every dollar."

"Children." The word tastes like ash. "You're already planning my children."

Mom stands, moving toward me with careful steps like I'm a wild animal that might bolt. "Lucia, sweetheart, arranged marriages aren't always unhappy. Sometimes they grow into something more."

"Like yours did?"

The question lands exactly where I aimed it. She flinches, her hand dropping before it reaches my arm.

Dad's jaw tightens. "We meet with the Carusos tomorrow evening. Six o'clock at their estate."

"And if I refuse?"

The silence stretches, elastic and suffocating. Dad returns to his chair, settling into it with the gravity of a judge delivering a sentence.

"Then Salvatore Caruso collects his debt in other ways." His eyes meet mine, and for once, he doesn't look away. "They know everything about us, Lucia. That's what men like Salvatore do—they know everything about everyone who owes them."

The threat doesn't need elaboration. I've heard the stories.

People who cross the Carusos don't just disappear; they serve as examples first.

"So those are my choices." My voice sounds distant, like it belongs to someone else. "Marriage or violence."

"Marriage to a wealthy man or violence to your entire family." Dad corrects me with the precision of someone who's practiced this argument. "The choice seems clear."

"To you. The choice seems clear to you."

Mom sinks back onto the sofa, her brief moment of steel completely spent. "We just want you to be safe, sweetheart."

"You want me to be useful."

"You're being unfair." Dad's voice carries warning now, the last resort of men who've run out of logic. "We're your parents. Everything we do is for you."

"Name one thing. One single thing you've done for me that didn't serve you first."

The challenge hangs in the air like smoke from a snuffed candle. Neither of them answers because we all know the truth—love in the Santoro family comes with terms and conditions, fine print that always favors the house.

"Six o'clock tomorrow." Dad repeats, conversation closed. "Wear something appropriate. First impressions matter."

I turn toward the stairs, my body moving on autopilot while my mind calculates the geography of this trap. Twenty-three years old and already a ghost, about to trade one haunting for another.

"Lucia." Mom's voice stops me at the bottom of the stairs. "For what it's worth, I am sorry."

"No." I don't turn around. "You're not."