Page 23 of Vega

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

Then Roman nodded. “Bring her to me unharmed, and you’ll be paid.”

I stood and tucked the folder under my arm.

On my way to the door, I thought about Sonnet’s picture again.

I had accepted plenty of jobs that started with lies. Usually, I didn’t care as long as the money was right. But this time, the lie had a beautiful face. And something told me Sonnet knew far more than Roman wanted me to believe.

5

VEGARRO “VEGA” MORETTI

According to my mother and aunt, in order for the family to stay connected, we had to sit around the same table, eat food prepared by our elders, and tolerate being embarrassed for at least two hours.

That Saturday afternoon, Aunt Denise hosted at the house she shared with Prodigy’s stepfather, Marcus. By the time I arrived, the dining room table was covered with fried chicken, baked macaroni, greens, sweet potatoes, spaghetti, cornbread, and enough food to feed twice the number of people invited.

My mother, Renee, stood near the kitchen island arguing with Denise over whether the macaroni needed more cheese.

“It’s already cheese on top,” Denise argued.

“That doesn’t mean there’s enough inside.”

“You haven’t even tasted it.”

“I can tell by looking.”

“That is not how tasting works, Renee.”

Aunt Carla laughed from her seat at the island. She was Lux’s mother and my mother’s first cousin. Though she wasn’t Lowe’s mother, she treated him like a son. So, Prodigy had no blood connection to Lux and Lowe, but he had never treated them as anything except family, and vice versa.

“You two have been arguing about food since the nineties,” Carla laughed.

“Denise just gets off on disagreeing with me,” my mother replied.

Denise rolled her eyes. “I do not.”

“You still swear you can speak Italian more fluently than me.”

Denise turned toward her. “I can. You ordered laundry detergent at La Dolce Notte last week.”

My mother sucked her teeth while waving off her best friend of over thirty years.

Wise, Prodigy, Lux, Lowe, and I were already seated, listening to the women interrupt one another while my father and Marcus stood near the bar discussing basketball.

This was normal for us. My mother and Aunt Denise had been best friends before any of us existed. They had gone to Italy together to teach English and met two Italian brothers who had no money, influence, or impressive last name. My father and his brother had been regular middle-class men. They worked, paid bills, and came from a family that expected them to live ordinary lives. My father, Sal, had worked in logistics. His brother, Renzo, had been an electrician.

They hadn’t expected to fall in love with two Black women from Chicago. Living in Italy had not always been easy for my mother and Aunt Denise. They dealt with staring, rude questions, strangers touching their hair, and people assuming they were temporary, paid entertainment instead of women their husbands planned to marry. Some people treated my father and his brother like dating Black women was an act of rebellion. Others acted as though my mother and Aunt Denise should have been grateful Italian men found them attractive.

Neither woman had ever been built to tolerate disrespect. So, they created a life there anyway.

The families returned to the States when Wise was five because my mother and Aunt Denise wanted their sons raised in Chicago, close to family and away from the prejudices Black people often faced in Italy. My father and his brother followed because that was where their wives wanted to live.

We had grown up middle-class. Sometimes, we were comfortable. Others, we were barely keeping everything together. Wise, Prodigy, and I got involved in the streets as teenagers because we saw other guys our age making fast money. They had cars, clothes, jewelry, and cash, while we were asking our parents for a few dollars. At that age, we didn’t see the risk, and the reward was parked directly in front of us on twenty-six-inch rims.

Eventually, our parents became more financially stable, but the Street Kings were already too deep in the game to stop. Yet, no matter how big and bad we were in the streets, we never told our parents what we really did. We couldn’t break their hearts like that, so we had them convinced we were successful entrepreneurs.

When Denise got with Marcus, her finances changed. Marcus was a successful businessman who owned several commercial properties and made sure she never struggled again.