The Maid: Mafia Romance (Series)

Forgotten Memories Part 3

Giovanni was in a dream. He saw himself at a park, full of lush green bushes and roses. He was wandering around, lost. He walked and walked until he saw a tall beech tree and heard voices. He rounded the corner and saw himself-no, his younger self, when he was fourteen-talking to a girl with light-brown hair. From behind, she resembled Jay, his lover, but a shorter and younger version of her. His heart pounded and he smiled, glad he’d found her even in his dream.

He walked closer, wanting to get a better look at her younger self, but when he saw her from the front view, she wasn’t his lover. There were similarities within their looks, like the light-brown hair and cupid’s bow lips, but that was it. Their eye colors were different. Jay had deep emerald-green eyes, whereas this young girl’s was amber in color. Who was she? And what was she doing with his younger self?

If he could recall correctly, all the time he’d spent under that beech tree was only with Jennifer, his little friend, who he’d now met again fourteen years later. She was now his lover, whom he’d called Jay.

He watched on, interested to see what part of his memory he was missing.

“She won’t be coming back,” the girl told his younger self. “Stop waiting for her here. She’s not coming back.”

“Why is that any of your business?” his younger self coldly spoke to her.

“Because I don’t want to see you get hurt. Stop waiting for her. Please. She will never come back. She won’t ever come back. Forget her. Stop waiting for her here. Please don’t hurt yourself.”

“Shut up. Shut the fuck up. I don’t care what you say. I’ll wait here every day. I’ll wait here for my friend to come back. She said she’ll come back, and she will. You just fucking go away. I don’t need you to tell me what to do. This is my life. Just fucking go away and stop bothering me.”

“I just want to help.”

“I don’t need your fucking help. Where were you when I needed a friend? Where were you when I was hurt, bleeding, and in need of help? No one fucking helped me except for her. No one wanted to be my friend except for her. She befriended me, and now we are friends for life. I swear I will never forget her. So don’t tell me to forget her. You have no right. Fuck off. Go away. Stop bothering me.”

The girl was crying, and he kept on yelling and yelling, until she couldn’t take the verbal abuse anymore and ran off.

Fuck! Did he make that girl cry? What the fuck did he do that for? She was only trying to help.

Giovanni was shocked at his own behavior. Had he always been that ruthless? He’d thought that that tough exterior he erected was just a façade, but this was not the case. He was brutally honest with her, tearing at her feelings that she had to run off and cry.

Fuck! He was horrible. He was disgusted with his younger self. But when he looked at his younger vision, Giovanni saw that his younger self was also affected by that conversation. He was clenching at his chest, fisting and thumping at it, like his heart was in pain. He curled himself into a ball and started sobbing.

“I have no one else, Jennifer. You’re my only friend. No one wants me. No one loves me. No one cares for me. Jennifer, come back to me. Where have you gone to? I’m waiting here at our promised place. I’ll wait for you every day until you return. Just come back to me, Jennifer. Come back to me.”

Giovanni woke up with a start, his heart drumming wildly in his chest. It was that dream again. He’d always dreamed of himself going back to that scene. That was one of the bleakest moments of his life, when he’d run away from home.

Giovanni had scavenged for food, did anything to survive, but when it came time to meet his friend, he would be sitting there, waiting for her under that beech tree, like a loyal dog. In the rain. In the sun, in all kinds of weather, he would wait for her. But she never came once. He’d waited for three months, until he realized she would never come back. She must have forgotten him. He moved on but he’d never forgotten her. She was one of the most beautiful scenery in his life.

Looking back now, Giovanni viewed his life like a bleak shadow, a misty fog. His future had never contained any beam of bright light, like what most kids his age would experience. If he were to describe his life as a painting, the colors he used would be bold ones, harsh ones, that affected the eyes. Like red, black, and gray. Such painful colors mixed into the painting. There would be no pictures. Just an abstract sort of painting, filled with shapes. There would be sharp jagged edges, no smooth straight lines or soft curves. The texture would be rough, like walking on stony roads without any shoes for miles and miles.

The color red represented the blood he shed, the tears he’d cried, and the pain he’d endured growing up. The black represented his black future, his dark past, and the overcasting shadow of the present. Finally, the color gray represented the overall balance of his life. Gray, the middle ground between black and white. The tipping point between good and evil, and that balance between legal and illegal. Gray was his whole life, his whole world, the mafia world.

Giovanni had lived through life in three different stages. The time before he knew anything about the mafia, the time he was a mafia member, and the time where he was now the mafia ringleader, the boss of all bosses. All those different stages had taught him many valuable lessons in life.

Prior to being a mafia member, he was just a trailer park kid, born to an unknown Italian father, not knowing much of life. His mother was what people called white trash. She worked two jobs. One during the day as a waitress, and one during the night where she brought men back to their trailer. She fucked them. They fucked her. Once the trailer park community knew of her night job, they called him trailer trash kid.

When he turned nine, they met Rocco Bianchi. Rocco fell in love with his mother on first glance. They fucked, they married. They moved to Sacramento, leaving behind their dirt-poor lifestyle in the trailer park van. In Sacramento, where no one knew who she was, his mother ended up living the high life. High on drugs. High on cocaine. He now had a new name, too. They called him the mafia kid.

That name made him famous. That name made other kids run from him in fear. And along with that name, too, came trouble. In abundance. From small fights resulting in small cuts and bruises, to big fights that involved stabbing and bashing.

By the time he’d turned fourteen, he’d had enough of that shit life, too. He wanted out. He’d packed up and moved on. But life on the streets was not much better. If he reflected on it now, it was the most miserable time of his life. He fought every day.

He fought for a chance to survive; he fought for a place to stay. Fuck, he’d even fought with the pigeons for a piece of stale bread. But he learned one important lesson during that phase in his life. That it was a man eats man world. Survival of the fittest. And he was not fit. He got trashed at, bashed at, stabbed at and left to die on the curbside of a ditch. When he thought he could survive no more, old man Dente found him.

He was already fifteen years old then, malnourished, and in need of urgent medical attention. Old man Dente took him under his wing and became his mentor. He gave him shelter. He gave him food. He now had a new lease on life. A glimmer of hope.

Until he found out old man Dente was also mafia. He rejected him, ran away from him, until old man Dente bashed some sense into him.

You go out there again and you will die. You have no prospect of a future; you have no one to support you. You are born to be mafia. Take that name and turn it into something good. Be like a tree. Grow. Become stronger. Do better. Until you reach the top. Where the light of the sun shines only on you. Then you can reform. Change your status. Once you are up there, no one can touch you. You are your own destiny. Choose this path and make it yours.

And that was what he did. He became a tree, absorbing all the nutrients of life, growing up little by little, learning all new life skills, until he’d reached the top, and now, here he was, a fully-grown tree.

He’d amassed great fortune, but he also gave millions away. He’d enabled the economy, but also supported the poor. He walked a fine line between good and evil. During the day, he had the face of an angel, a billionaire, and the star elite of public society. But when darkness hit, that mask came off. In the underground world where it was survival of the fittest, he was a mafia boss, a ruthless one who no one dared fuck with.

This was now his life. And he would live like this until the very end. But now that Jennifer had come back into his life, he wanted to tip this balance. Move more toward the societal side and leave behind his dark world. And he’d been doing that for some time now.

She was his blood life. She was his soul. If anything were to happen to her, he’d fuck the world over to make it right again.

Giovanni’s mind grew distracted. Something on his desk caught his attention. He picked it up. It was that birthday card sent from his mother. She’d sent him roses too, his favorite flowers, but he’d thrown those away. How did the card appear on his desk?

He walked to the trash bin and threw that away too. There was no use thinking of the past.

He was about to head back to work when his phone rang. It was Finnie.

“Boss,” his underling said. “I’m on the way home. Miss Amelia is with me.”

“And?”

“Jenny is not with us.”

“Get to the point. What are you trying to tell me?”

“She’s still at the park. She said she’ll take a taxi home.”

His heart dropped. Not again. Not fucking again!

“Are you fucking kidding me?” He yelled down the line. “Why the fuck would she be at the park. She should still be in class.”

“Boss. The sisters had a chat at this old café. I don’t think it’s too good. Jenny was crying her eyes out.”Còntens bel0ngs to Nô(v)elDr/a/ma.Org

“Fuck-” His heart was racing now, and he was panicking until he saw Finnie’s car coming up the driveway. He raced downstairs, and confronted him, but Amelia came through the door first.

“Amelia, what did you talk to Jay about? Why was she crying? Even though you’re her sister, I will never forgive you if you hurt her.”

“You are still the same, Giovanni. After all this time, you could only think of her.”

Giovanni was taken aback. She spoke like they had met before. Had he met Amelia before? Why couldn’t he remember her?

“You should go to her,” she said to him. “She’s waiting for you.”

“Where is she?”

“The same place where you waited for her, from fourteen years ago.”

Giovanni bolted into his car and drove to the site. By the time he got there, the sky had decided to make a mockery of his feelings by flooding the whole damn place with rain. He pulled open his umbrella, one hand on his phone, when he saw a message from his lover.

Gio. I love you. Come back to me. I’m waiting for you here now. At our promised place.

Giovanni’s heart raced. Where was that place? Where was that fucking tree? It had been long ago since he’d last been here. His memory was grainy at best.

He speed-dialed her number. He heard her pick up.

“Jay!” he shouted into the phone, competing against the sound of the torrential rain. “Where are you?”

But he couldn’t hear her voice. The sound of the pounding rain was so loud, it rang in his ears.

Fuck! He was mad. He was going to give her an earful when he found her and give her a punishment she truly deserved. Until he saw her, bundled up under the tallest beech tree and his heart contracted, and his memory of fourteen years ago came flooding back.

He saw himself sitting and laughing while his little friend Jennifer was making jokes. He saw himself hunched over with bruises on his face when he met her for the first time. He saw himself sitting beside her when she’d offered him coffee. He remembered her slapping his hand when he tried taking a peek at the coffee inside the white foam cup. All their happy memories had been of them sitting under that beech tree. His heart shook.

“Jay!” he shouted, and his voice just dissipated with the sound of the pounding rain. Until he saw her look up.

“Gio.” She gave him the sweetest, warmest smile he’d ever seen, then he saw those tears in her eyes mixing with the raindrops rolling down her face. “I’m here now. I’ve kept our promise. Come back to me.”

His heart was beating faster and faster. Until the sound of the pounding rain ceased and all he could hear was his own heart. It was racing toward her. His Jay. His Jennifer. She’d remembered him.