C15 Chapter 14 - Matteo

His father doesn’t come home until the next day, not even by the time Matteo, Marco and Aurora are getting ready to leave for the restaurant. Their mother already left an hour ago to go help with the setup, and the Barone family is already there, judging by Vinnie’s “where are you?” texts and Isabella’s Instagram story.

“Come on Aurora what’s taking you so long?” Matteo yells up the stairs.

“In a minute!!” she screams back.

“Every fucking time.” Matteo scoffs and looks at his brother in the mirror.

They both look like they put some effort in looking presentable. They’re wearing their special occasion tailor-made suits that they get done once a year every January, black Italian dress shoes and their hair is gelled back, like his father taught them to at a young age.

“We do look stupid.” Marco jokes as he checks himself out in the mirror.

They would never dress like this anywhere outside the family, but tradition and customs are very important to their parents, so they go along with it on special occasions.

“We look like dad.” Matteo says. The suit and gelled back hair with a strand poking out are his father’s signature look. Throw in a hat if it gets cold and you’ve nailed it.

“And I look like Nonna Angie.” Aurora whines, and the boys turn their heads towards the stairs. She’s wearing a green long-sleeved dress that goes down over the knees, which is their grandma Angelina’s signature look.

They used to see her more often when they were kids living in Palermo where the restaurant is, because she had an apartment across the street. Now they only see her occasionally or when they’re in town, but she’s always very well dressed and tops it off a fur coat. She also wears makeup and looks ten years younger than her actual sixty-five years.

She had their father, Lorenzo, when she was twenty-three, and Matteo was born when his father was only twenty. Matteo is pretty sure that their grandmother was against abortion, otherwise he wouldn’t have been born. But the occasion never came up to really ask her point-blank, and he hasn’t seen her in over a year because he’s always been somewhere else on vacation. He feels bad and knows the proper thing to do is apologize for missing out on her birthday, Easter, and Liberation Day.

Maybe part of the reason Matteo has so much love and respect for his grandmother is because she is the only person in the world that can control his father.

“You look fine.” Marco tells her and takes one more look at himself in the mirror.

Aurora is still on her phone by the time they get into the car. It’s a small van with tainted bulletproof glass that has six seats facing each other in the back.

“Who are you talking to?” Marco teases, trying to get a look at his phone. She pulls her phone away towards her chest. “None of your business.”

“Are you hiding something?” Marco continues, trying to get to her phone. Matteo watches the two of them as they struggle for the phone.

“I don’t check your phone, leave me alone.” Aurora pouts and Marco pulls back, handing over the phone.

Their whole extended family from all across the globe is already there by the time the three of them greet security outside. Grandma Angie is already sitting at one end of the table across from their father, chatting to one of their aunts on their mother’s side. Her expression tells Matteo that she’s gossiping. The Altieri’s are also present, and Matteo looks towards the adolescenti table, as their grandma likes to call it, happy to see Isabella already sitting there.

They go over to their grandmother first, kissing her on both cheeks, telling her she looks like she just stepped off a runway in Milan.

“You all love to kiss my ass at Christmastime, don’t you?” She laughs and smacks Matteo over his arm. “You didn’t come see me for my birthday, Matteo.” Her voice isn’t serious, because she’s a fair woman, but Matteo still feels bad.

“Sorry nonna, I’ll come to your next one. What are you turning, fifty?” he asks, smirking at the obvious flattery, which makes her exclaim and smack him in a loving way once again.

“Go away before I stand up!” she threatens, eyes glimmering. She’s happy to see him. “Now go, say hello to everyone.”

Ten minutes later he sits down next to Vinnie and grabs a glass and the bottle of red wine from the table. It’s that table at the family functions where Matteo and his siblings always sit together with the Barone kids and Isabella, ever since they were classified as teenagers and not children. Besides, the kids table has also slowly been filled over the past decade with a bunch of second- and third-degree cousins Matteo is always obliged to talk to even though he only sees them a few days a year.

“What happened today?” Vinnie asks, lowering his voice. Matteo knows Isabella is listening and checks to see if their younger siblings are too. They aren’t.

“Had some sanitation business to do for my dad.” He explains.

“Bullshit.” Isabella hisses and leans over the table so she can whisper without being heard. “I heard that shot on Facetime.”

Matteo looks at Vinnie, then at her. “That was a car backfiring, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She rolls her eyes. “I’m not stupid, you know. I’m aware of what’s going on in our house.” She speaks out the last words, casa nostra, in a way that makes the first ‘a’ sound like an ‘o’.

Matteo chooses to change the subject, pretending that he didn’t even understand her innuendo. She always thinks she’s so clever.

“Let’s talk about New Year’s plans, shall we?” Matteo smiles.

The annual Christmas dinner always starts when Lorenzo stands up from his long twenty person table filled with the adults of the family he considers close, facing the rest of the packed restaurant as he raises his cognac glass and gives his recap-of-the-year speech. Matteo never listens, because it’s always mostly the same, and it’s not directed at their table anyway.

It’s directed at the other part of the restaurant, filled with people who work for him and who have been there since Matteo became aware of his existence. They make up the extended family of his father, which he treats (almost) equally to his blood relatives.

“Who came from Sanitation?” Vinnie asks, leaning back in his chair when people start applauding.

So, he knows.

“Paulo.”

Vinnie nods. He knows.

“Did you know before?” Vinnie asks.

“Know what?”

Vinnie tilts his head towards him with a ‘bitch please’ look.

“Let’s go for a cigarette.” Matteo suggests, standing up and grabbing his wine glass.

There’s a special smoking room inside the restaurant but there’s always someone there so they go outside, a far enough away from the security guy until they’re sure he’s out of earshot. No one says a word until they’ve both lit their cigarettes and are completely focused on each other.

“Did you know before?” Vinnie asks.

“Know what? Explain.”

“That they kill people and then make the bodies disappear.”

Matteo shakes his head. “Never.”

“Have you ever wondered what’s in those shipments we’ve done recently?” Of course he has.

“It’s either drugs or something valuable but illegal, right? Otherwise they wouldn’t have us do it.”

‘They’ was the entire organization, and even though Matteo’s father was the boss, there were thousands of people who were willingly choosing to get involved and made their own decisions because they had the authority and have been doing so for decades. No one genuinely even thought about blaming Lorenzo Giudice, not even Matteo.

“Is this bad, you think?” Vinnie continues, anxiously puffing on his cigarette.

Matteo sighs. “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think this is the first time this happened, and it won’t be the last. The only thing that’s changed is that now we’re consciously aware of it. If

you’re talking about the guy who died, then yes, it’s bad.” He’s trying to joke about it, as he always does when the discussion is more serious than comfortable. “Do you feel guilty?”

“Me?” Vinnie asks, surprised. “No.”

“In a weird way, neither do I.”

Vinnie looks at the couple passing them by, so engrossed in each other that they don’t even look at the two of them.

“The only thing-nevermind.”

Vinnie makes a face. “Tell me.”

“The only thing that bothers me is that it doesn’t bother me. A man died, Vinnie. He was murdered, and now he’s probably on a way to a crematorium to never be found.”

“Yes, but didn’t they also have guns on them? Weren’t they the ones who pulled the gun on Francesco? My dad showed me the footage from the store because I asked him the exact same thing.”

So Vinnie does know everything, and Matteo could just as well go and talk to his father. The problem is that sometimes ever since he turned sixteen, the line between father and boss became very thin and Matteo decides to let his father come to him rather than the other way around.

“You’re right.”

Maybe I don’t feel guilty because I always knew this was my reality.

They put their cigarettes out on a trashcan nearby, then throw them in the trash.

“Hey.” Vinnie says and points at him, making sure Matteo is listening. “No matter what, we always have each other’s back, okay?”

Matteo holds out his hand without hesitating and Vinnie shakes it, looking up at Matteo’s gelled back hair, styled exactly like his own.

“We look like assholes.” Matteo concludes the conversation.

They look at each other for a moment before they both start laughing, taking the last steps towards the entrance.

***

The party goes on until the early hours in the morning, with people dancing and excitedly screaming over the music while drinking wine. Matteo gets bored a bit after 2am because Isabella already left, leaving him alone with a drunk Vinnie at their table. Their younger

siblings left an hour ago with their grandma to go home, and soon enough Matteo notices that only a few men are left in the restaurant, including him and Vinnie.

His father is always the last one to leave these kinds of events, but it’s the first time Matteo has ever stayed long enough for them to go back home together. Sometime around 3am, his father comes over and tells him they’re about to leave. Matteo is relieved. With no cocaine or any other drugs to keep his body awake, the red wine is getting to his head.

The car ride home is silent, and Matteo feels like he wants to talk to his father about what he witnessed yesterday but doesn’t bring himself to it if the driver can hear them, so he decides to wait until they’re back home.

“What’s going to happen to the body?” he asks his father as soon as they set foot inside their house, closing the double doors at the entrance behind them.

His father looks taken by surprise by the question. “What do you mean?” “The guy Paulo killed. What’s going to happen to him?”

“Why do you care?” his father asks as he takes off his dinner jacket by the door and places it on the coat hanger. The question makes Matteo angry.

“What do you mean, why the fuck do I care?” he raises his voice, which furthers seems to baffle his father. “A man was killed, stuffed in a trunk, and now you won’t tell me what’s going to happen to him.”

“You didn’t answer my question: why do you care?”

“Because killing a man and getting rid of his body is not what I thought your business was about.”

“Take off your shoes, let’s talk in my office.”

Matteo huffs but listens anyway. He’s tipsy but nevertheless, he’s going to stand up to his father. He gets handed a glass of whiskey and proceeds to sit down on one of the chairs in front of the desk.

“What do you think my business is about?”

“Sanitation? Construction? Real estate? I don’t know, but not killing people.” “And you’re right.”

“So why is that man dead?”

“Because he chose his fate the moment he pointed that gun at Francesco and threatened to kill him if he didn’t hand over the store. Paulo reacted correctly when he chose to shoot first.”

“What if that man had a family?”

“He was-“

“I don’t give a shit if he was a gangster or whatever. You’re an Italian gangster and you have a family as well.”

His father looks at him and Matteo can’t say for sure whether it’s with pride or disappointment. His father is a difficult man to read.

“If someone came into my office one day and threatened me to take our house away with a gun to my face, what would you do?” Matteo’s silence is everything that his father needs to continue. “Those two Russians that have been causing problems in Palermo are part of a very dangerous organized crime family, they were there to take the store owned by one of our companies by force. They had revolvers so they didn’t come to play. If Paulo hadn’t reacted when he did, Vinnie wouldn’t have a father and our company would be involved in a very long police investigation that would lead nowhere.”

“So it’s not the first time you killed someone.” Matteo concludes, trying to ignore the feeling that he understands why that man had to die. When his father doesn’t answer, he goes on. “I don’t want to be involved in anything bad. And how do you know they were Russians?”

“We found their IDs.”

Matteo shakes his head. “Did you at least contact their families? Do you even care about that?”

“There’s no good or evil in this world. People make it so.”