Page 40 of Marcellus: House of Drakos
“That was my best friend’s husband. He’s her ex-husband now, but back then they were married. She had rushed over and he came too. I didn’t know you had come to my apartment.”
“I didn’t stay. I thought I had the wrong apartment number and left.”
“Oh.”
Marcellus felt like every kind of horrible. Here he was angry with her for not saying goodbye when she was grieving the most important person in her life. “I’m sorry that happened to you, Savannah. And I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”
She smiled. “Thanks.” It was a kind thing for him to say, and Savannah found herself staring at him and studying him too.
But then she could see that look come over his face, and that sense of dread overtook her too.
“You’re thinking about that video?”
Marcellus nodded. “I can’t help but think about it.”
“They could have killed him. That Dodge Durango came out of nowhere and could have killed him.”
Marcellus frowned. “Yes. It could have.”
“But why Niko? Why would they take him? He wouldn’t harm a flea.”
“He was mixed up with some unsavory characters apparently. Do you know why? Is his business in trouble?”
Savannah nodded. “He was doing well. At least from what I could see. And then when Covid hit the whole fashion industry went into a tailspin. Niko was at the top of his game for the most part, but he wasn’t immune to the setbacks. He lost a lot of money. All of us took pay cuts, which really hurt me since I wasn’t making that much to begin with. But we understood it had to be done.”
Then her looked turned somber. “But I never knew anything about the finances. That wasn’t my lane at all. He would tell me there were some problems with this vendor or that designer, and that all those mini-mergers he was doing wasn’t helping him much at all.”
“But you knew there was a big merger in the works?”
“A really big one from what he was saying, yes. But I didn’t know the extent of it or what company was involved. I especially didn’t know he was turning to the Mafia. He told me a lot of things, but he never even mentioned that.”
What she said interested Marcellus on a different level. “Did he ever mention me?”
“All the time.”
“What did he say? That I’m his awful absent father?”
“He actually said just the opposite. He said you weren’t an absent parent at all. He said every single month since they were little kids you would bring all of them together under one roof, with their mothers too, for a family dinner.”
“Yes, we still get together. It’s my chance to come to America, check out my businesses, and get caught up with my children.”
“That’s what he said. Every single month like clockwork they could look forward to that dinner. He said it’s the only time you all got together. And he said you still, to this day, took financial care of their mothers, which he seemed to appreciate. He said you were very much involved in the financial and professional parts of their lives.”
“But?” Marcellus knew there was always abutwhen it came to him and his children.
“He just said all of his siblings worked for you.”
“All positive press from my son? Surely there was some negative.”
“I didn’t say it was all positive. It wasn’t. It was more like fifty-fifty. Because he also said that although you weren’t an absent father, you were a very distant one. And not because you lived in France most of the time. But because you were emotionally distant. You never asked about their personal lives. If they had a personal problem they couldn’t just go to you and ask for advice because they felt you would judge them as weak or insufficient or some other negative label. He said it was like they knew you, but they didn’t really know you at all. And you never tried to know them. You kept a wall up between you and them, was how he put it. But Niko is an emotional man. He needs that fatherly figure in his personal life more than in his professional life. But he spoke as if he never got that from you. And you’re the only one he wants it from. He said his siblings feel the same way. Even their mothers, he said, feel the sameway. They all want you to be emotionally attached to them too. Not just financially and professionally. That’s what he told me.”
It was an indictment against him, and Savannah expected him to do as any other man would do and deny it or try to make excuses. He did neither.
“His ass told you a lot,” he said.
Savannah smiled. “He did, yes. Some of the models at his fashion house said I was like a mother to him.”
“A mother? You’re in his same age group.”
