Page 16 of The Mob: Shio Cuppacio
Get my brother rich.
Health and wellness.
Stay on top of my mob shit.
Keep Hobo alive.
Find a wife.
Chapter 4
Shio Cuppacio
Pain radiated in my legs, arms, and seemed to intensify behind my cranium. At my age, there was no way I should be experiencing this type of pain unless I’d been pushed too hard on someone’s peewee team. But there was no peewee, there was no team, and there weren’t any limits. Day after day, I’d been dragged from my home to endure one ridiculous thing after the next, and all I could do was obey. The only thing that kept me going was what happened at the end of the day. No matter how hard I was beaten, degraded, or mistreated, none of that mattered when I got home.
“Corinthians 16:13-14. We studied that last week. Recite it.”
My chest was on fire from Niccoli punching me in it one too many times yesterday, just because he could. Bendino, my little cousin Scarlett’s father and the Don of the Cuppacios, was away on business. He’d made it clear that we wouldn’t be having any “mafia training” while he was gone, so the plan was to go to Nel and Vello’s house since they lived the closest to me, and the three of us would spend the night at Ezio’s house. I was supposed to be on my way out the door, but I’d been stopped as soon as I left my bedroom.
My mother appeared in the hallway. “Sandro, let him go. He is going over Enri’s to hang out with his cousins.”
She’d just showered, so she was wrapped in her favorite green silk robe that stopped at her calves. The sweet smell of her body wash danced in the air while she stood next to the man with whom she’d gone half to create me. Turning slightly so I could see the beautiful face of my favorite person on the planet, I noticed that she’d washed her hair. Water droplets landed on her shoulders as her wavy hair glistened underneath the dull hall lighting.
My father faced my mother, and the serious expression he’d been harboring vanished with one look at her. She shrank just from his glare alone. In this home, when it was just the three of us, my father treated my mother as if she were the only soul who mattered to him. One could believe from seeing his expressions toward her that she was the only woman he’d ever loved; I believed she was.
“I just want to make sure he pays attention to his old man. Nothing more, sweetheart,” he assured.
My mother’s smile dropped, and her body went stiff. That was another thing I’d been beginning to notice. They’d be so in love, and all of a sudden, my mother would pull back out of nowhere. When I was much younger, their emotions would give me whiplash. But now that I was getting older, I knew the reason. I’d seen the reason countless times.
My mother still wasn’t convinced, so my father pulled her to his side and placed a gentle kiss on her forehead, causing her to sigh and retreat.
“I can’t teach him how to be a Black man. I’ll never know what that feels like. What I can do is teach him how to have a relationship with God, and with the Higher up on his side, it will make his journey outside of these walls an easier one,” myfather explained to my mother while running the back of his knuckles down her cheek.
Had it not been for the actions I’d seen in this house, I wouldn’t know what love was or what it looked like. Here in this home, when it was just our trio, my father loved my mother as if his life depended on it. An Italian man had married a Black woman. My skin was the color of melted dark chocolate, and my father’s was the opposite, holding no pigment, even when he’d go away on business trips and return with a sunburn. I’d been born to a man who hadn’t experienced the dangers men like me faced in the real world. God was a big part of our homelife when it was just us because, let my father tell it, God was the only way I’d be able to get through the hell that resided on the opposite side of the door. At first, I thought it was all smoke and mirrors. There was no way a man in the sky who no one has ever seen or met had these set of rules we had to obey, or else we were deemed to Hell.
Do good and God does unto you.
I didn’t believe a word of it. But, after years of abuse and my cousins and I still being able to stand and breathe, I knew it had to be God.
“You’re a good woman, Shannon, and you deserve so much more.”
With my mother still in his arms, my father looked at me. He wasn’t in his usual suit and tie. Instead, he was clothed in black slacks, a white dress shirt that he had rolled at the sleeves with the first three buttons undone, and a pair of house shoes that he’d probably stuffed his feet in after taking off his loafers.
“Shio. You still have some good in you. Hold on to it.”
My father was always pouring into us and saying the most bizarre things. This was another common occurrence in our house. I didn’t acknowledge his request; I just stood in thehallway, ready to move around them so I could go play, but I knew better than to voice that.
It took more forehead kisses and body rubs for my mother to surrender and return to her other self. Another thing I’d learned from my parents, which I knew for a fact they didn’t mean to teach me, was that most people, if not all, wore two masks. Both Shannon and Sandro did.
Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom
My mother stiffened again, and instead of my father comforting her, he almost pushed her out of his arms as if he was allergic and whoever was on the other side of the door would shoot him dead if they’d witnessed him loving on his wife. Sandro’s expression hardened, and he didn’t spare her a second glance as he turned on his heels and walked to the door. Before he could reach the front door, he stopped at the slender hall table and removed the top from the only item resting on it. I sucked in a wad of air as I watched him pull out the white baggie full of devil’s powder. When I first witnessed the substance, I thought it was baby powder. But people didn’t chop baby powder up on a surface and stuff it up their noses. My mother held her arms out, and I slowly walked into them, keeping my eyes on my father. My heart started to race, and my fingers twitched. My cousins were expecting me, not the other way around, so I knew it wasn’t them at the door.
Grabbing my face, my mother placed a kiss on my jaw, then the other, before tucking me behind her. Even at seven years old, I was up to her shoulders. My father was six feet and three to four inches on a good day, and I was proving I’d take after his height. It was all I had from him—everything else was Shannon.
Where we stood, I had a clear shot of my father’s side and the door. My mother was trying to shield my view and guard me from the viewer, but it was inevitable. Even if I’d beenlocked in my room, I’d have to answer to whatever it was demanded of me when it came to the guests we’d get. I blinked hard, watching my father take a long sniff of the drug that turned him into the person I despised as the doorbell continued to chime. My mother was trembling and praying under her breath while my father pinched his nostrils as the drug took him to a new height.
My father opened the door, and one of the people I dreamed about killing appeared. My father started unrolling his sleeves and straightening his posture. Just that fast, he’d gone from loving husband and doting father to mobster. The drug and the mob did that to him.
