Mafia Baby: Varuk

The baby was beautiful. Blue eyes flecked with amber, rimmed with full dark lashes that kissed his pale cheeks; he captured what was left of his mother’s beauty. He already had too much hair, the wild curls so black they shined with a sapphire hue- the very reflection of my own unruly locks he gripped in his tiny hands.

“What are you going to do with him?”

I was reminded of my company, and I frowned across the old wooden table at the young man in his monkey-suit. I brought the swaddled bundle up to my chest, leaning back to glare at the messenger.

I hadn’t appreciated the “wellness visit”. David Varuk could shove his courtesy up his own ass. It was too little, too late.

“That’s none of your boss’s business.”

“It is if it means you’re changing how you do business, Mr. Raouk.”

I sighed, holding onto my precious comfort. The bow in his lips, I hoped he never grew out of her face. “If your boss believes I’m no longer capable of completing my work, he can put out a contract on my head. I assure you, I’m very capable of maintaining a work–life balance.” I spit the words with a plastic smile and kicked the duffle bag of body parts under the table for good measure. “Tell him what he paid for is done, I expect the other half at the usual spot.” The gore of men who had died for stupid reasons, to pay my bills and prove I wasn’t rendered incompetent by fatherhood. It was unfair, really, but I’d consigned myself to complete the task.

The Varuks survived because of me, because I kept them all in line. This latest job had cleared a house. The sounds of the bullets still a haunting melody in my ears.

I wasn’t sure how long I’d survive, and the kid would need money. I’d do any job I could.

His mother would have taken the sweetest care of him, but fate had resigned him to my care alone- and I couldn’t bear to part with him. He was her memory, the last piece of my beautiful Lizette, and he would make her proud. The rest of the Family be damned.

The messenger shifted, the cheap fabric of his ill-fitting suit rustling in the otherwise silent room. My cabin was small, even by backwoods standards, but it was mine. Or, rather, it had been Lizette’s, and now it was her son’s. The scent of pine and woodsmoke clung to everything, a constant reminder of the life we’d built, the life that had been so violently stolen away.

He was young, fresh-faced, undoubtedly dreaming of climbing the ladder in the sadistic organization of my father’s creation. He wouldn’t understand. How could he? He was no one, with less energy around him than the baby in my arms. He wasn’t born into this life- his stupid decisions had earned him that poorly fitting suit and the task of running out into the woods to hunt down a hitman on impromptu paternity ‘leave.’ This wasn’t his fault. My father no doubt saw a problem, a liability. I saw my past, my future, everything I had left.

“Mr. Raouk,” he began again, his voice laced with a forced politeness that grated on my nerves, “with all due respect, your… extracurricular activities… are a concern. Mr. Varuk is worried about your focus.” About my availability, in truth. A demon wasn’t as much of a threat if they could only be summoned during business hours. He still made it a point to prove that he owned me- that I bore the weight of cursed blood, as if I could ever forget.

I chuckled, a hollow, humorless sound that echoed in the small space. “Focus? Is that what the old man called it?” The kid looked like he was about to start sweating bullets. “I’m sharper than I’ve ever been. Every move I make, every breath I take, is for him.” I tightened my hold on the baby, feeling the warmth of his small body against mine.

“He’s just concerned, Mr. Raouk,” the messenger repeated, his voice taking on a placating tone. “Things have been...unpredictable, lately. He needs to know he can rely on you.”

I scoffed. Unpredictable was an understatement. My brother had been thinking with his dick for a year too many, and now a turf war was brewing, gangs vying for control of the city’s underbelly like vultures circling a fresh kill.

Varuk didn’t mean the war was unpredictable. He meant me, and- admittedly- I hadn’t been myself recently.

I’d tried, desperately, to hang onto the familiar routines of my life- but nothing was the same.

Lizette and I had been in hiding for months, though in the end it counted for naught. It didn’t save her. She couldn’t hide from the cruel realities of a birth that was never meant to be gone through alone. She couldn’t take back the betrayal that she had served her husband.

I killed my brother’s wife, with my love, with my absence, and with my own selfishness.

The infighting meant more work for me, more blood on my hands, and a foreign, gnawing fear that I would walk back through this cabin door to find another dead body.

“This changes nothing. Understand?” I spoke slowly, my voice low and gravelly as I fought not to scream at the messenger my father sent to persuade me. “I have no plans of rejoining the family. My son will be Raouk, not Varuk, make that clear to him.”

The messenger nodded, his eyes darting nervously to the bundle in my arms. He clearly didn’t know what to make of the situation. A notorious demon summoned to do the family’s dirty work, the second son of the head of the Varuk Family, a man known for his ruthlessness and efficiency, cradling a baby? It didn’t exactly fit the image my father had made for me.

My image was honed by design, credited to years of practiced personas and a lifetime of concealment: a hardened man, a collector of debts and enforcer of deals, a demon summoned in the darkness. My face was not meant for the light. My father made sure I knew that.

“Understood, sir. But Mr. Varuk suggests a nanny, or a wife- if you’d prefer. Someone to assist you.”

The messenger’s suggestion hung in the air, as thick and cloying as the scent of pine needles in the cabin. A nanny. A wife. The words tasted like ash in my mouth.

“Tell Varuk I appreciate the offer,” I said, my grip tightening imperceptibly on Caspian. “But I’m perfectly capable of handling my responsibilities. I’m not Ceasare, I can’t be managed with pussy.”

The suggestion hung in the air, heavy with unspoken meaning. My son’s care could never be my priority, in Varuk’s eyes I was a weapon. Whatever life I constructed to keep myself from detonating before it was the designated time had to support the family. The women took care of the children. My son was no use to him until he could hold a gun. I knew the family well enough to imagine his own sick plans.

Our father hadn’t liked Lizette, with her blunt words and sharp wit, but her family owned Red Rose Farms- and the botanical empire that came with it. He’d been more than eager to secure connections between our families. The Rose’s had two daughters, and he had two sons to throw at them. Mr. Rose was no better, signing away Lizette’s hand in marriage before she was even eighteen. She was my brother’s trophy, knocked up before she could finish school and quickly ushered away to the family estate. For those first few months, I really thought he loved her, but we both changed after our mother was killed.

He began a collection- of women, among other things- and he grew obsessive. You could say he took after our father’s entrepreneurial side. Power was his pleasure.

I became more of a monster than I already was, killing just to see the blood. Death brought me release. I chased it on a high.

Lizette took over my mother’s store, a gesture given with love for the memory of the woman she had likely known better than I was allowed. That stupid store that was filled with nonsense and smelled like too much incense. That store that served as a perfect drop, a perfect hideout, and my own personal oasis.

“I’m not replacing his mother,” I said, my voice low and dangerous. “I don’t need another woman. I can handle this.”

He didn’t argue, just nodded stiffly. “Very well, Mr. Raouk. I’ll inform Mr. Varuk of your decision.”

“Right,” he said, backing towards the door. “I’ll let him know. Take care, Mr. Raouk.” He bowed again, a hasty, awkward movement, and practically tripped over himself getting out the door. Watching him disappear down the snowy path, I sighed. Varuk meant well, in his own twisted, Mafia-boss kind of way. He was just worried. The Varuk family was built on loyalty and stability, and the storm that had clouded both of his heirs was troubling to a father who believed in legacy.

I turned back inside, the warmth of the cabin a welcome contrast to the biting wind. Caspian stirred in my arms, his tiny face scrunched up in a miniature frown. He was a constant reminder, a living, breathing embodiment of everything I had lost. Lizette. My beautiful, vibrant Lizette, gone too soon, stolen by the very act of bringing him into the world. Sometimes, when I looked at him, I saw her eyes staring back at me, filled with a silent question I couldn’t answer.

I hated him for it. God, I hated him.

A hate that burned until I could do nothing but love him, fiercely and protectively, with a desperation that scared me. He was all I had left. The intensity of the emotions he spurred in my chest were a weapon, one she had given him with those pretty sea-glass eyes. I had tried to paint them a thousand times with no success, yet here they were, once again in flesh. It was torture. A beating from forces more profound than fists.

His tiny face was relaxed, wide eyes staring up at the world in wonder, untempered by the harsh realities of the world’s unyielding furnace. Yet to understand the curse in our veins that made it far easier for me to keep him soothed than another human, the power we all paid for in blood.

The sight of my own son reminded me of the training, the rituals, the drugs.

“We’ll be okay, little man,” I whispered, brushing a stray curl from his forehead. “I promise you, I won’t let them take you. I’ll tear down the whole world if I have to.”

It was a task unlike any I had taken on before, but I was determined. I knew the risks involved in my line of work, the risks involved with carrying this cursed blood, and the challenges both presented in the world. I would trust no one else to raise my son.

Our bodies were designed to be dangerous, to dominate the masses, to manipulate and lead. The Varuk’s all had an enhanced physical form, our bodies produced a vast and powerful array of pheromones that were expressed with our emotions, and, with training, intentions. We bound them with the spirits of our sacred ancestors, with the gods, and they became greater patterns that brought mobs to heel. They were used to earn trust, to push the limits of others, to drive them into states where they were puppets on our strings- my father was obsessed with ordering the world, and he was good at it. Other families respected the Varuk lineage, the crafting of human weapons.

I was my father’s greatest success, for better or worse. A living weapon with an appetite for blood. I’d always taken my orders without question, eager to fulfill my purpose, hungry for the carnage and the chaos. I had enjoyed the savage profession, devouring the gore and basking in the glory of the rituals like an idol. Now, with my own son in the game, the stakes were infinitely higher. I couldn’t afford to make a mistake. Everything had been given new purpose.

She had been my muse, my passion for existence beyond the pride of violence and dominance that had steered my life, and he was her inheritance. Her only son, and he was mine. There was no wonder why my brother hated me. He had been gifted a beautiful thing, sweet and wild and still dripping with innocence, but he was too obsessed with the size and power of his own house to see it.

He cared about the garden, not the flowers, and my Lizette was a forgotten rose.

My father and brother were going to learn the true extent of my wrath; I would stop them from using my son, from hurting him, from turning him into a miniature version of themselves.

“You’re going to be the good one, my little prince.” I brought him to my chest, content to feel his weight against me. “Even if Daddy has to kill for it.”