Family Business

CHAPTER 2

We've been in the car for about 20 minutes and my father hasn't said a word; I knew he wouldn't. After a job, he doesn't speak unless something went wrong; since all I have gotten from him is a commending statement and impending silence I know I have done something good but I also know that our captor is in for a very rude awakening once he comes to.

I'm not the one to follow through with the murder and torture aspect of my family's job, though I know it happens.

I know that no matter what I do, my family has my back and I have theirs and that will never change, unless I consciously make an effort to change it. And that is something that I really don't plan on doing.

I'm Sofia Angelis and I am a part of the Mafia.

The Mafia is a lifestyle that I was born into; we don't have many members that aren't family. Everyone knows we exist, but not a lot of people know exactly who we are or how to get to us. My family is Italian and so we are all very close knit in a way that only Italian families seem to be. I have never met a family member that I truly hated or disliked, hatred is just not something that exists in my family.

I have never gone to school and I don't have any outside friends. My mother married my father right before she went to college; as a wedding present to her, he paid her college tuition in full. Needless to say my mother is very educated and is quite overqualified to homeschool us all. By now, we have all finished our schooling and know nearly everything about everything thanks to my mother's ways.

Her name is Liliana. She is a very quiet, put together woman. She has told me stories of when she was in school and how she was always the good girl. She was there everyday, completing each mundane and pointless task to the best of her ability.

She went to school with my father for seven years; from the start of junior high to the end of high school. She told me that she fell in love with him at the end of junior high but once they hit high school, they almost grew apart completely. My father suffered tragedy and heartbreak at a young age; this in turn hardened his heart and he has never fully healed (or at least I don't think he has). Lucky for us, they reconnected halfway through their final year of high school and knew that they never wanted to spend another moment apart from one another.

My dad always wanted my mother to be his partner in crime, the Bonnie to his Clyde, but I really don't know if there is anyone in the world that could change my mother's nurturing ways. She is so caring and motherly to my siblings and me. She has a heart of innocence and pure gold and I doubt that even my father could change that despite the many laws he breaks.

The reason they married so quickly after high school is because my dad committed a crime.

He actually robbed a bank. Not just a small town bank either but I'm talking about a massive one. Only one person ever found out about my father's crime, a man that worked for the bank.

One night, shortly after the crime was committed the man came to my father's home while my mother was there. He snuck into my father's house and hid until my father left the room. When he came back, the man was holding a gun to my mother's head, saying that if he wanted her to live, he would not only give him over half of the money but he would also forget that this ever happened. He explained how he had found out what my father had done but how he also wanted out of working for the bank, it was corrupt and he had had enough of working for the government.

With much reluctance my father agreed and went to go "get things in order" to make the trade. When he came back, the man barely had time to blink before my father had shot him in the head.

Shortly after, my mother and father married so she would not have to testify against him in court and he was able to pay his wife's way through college.