fortune to give her the kind of reception she hadn’t asked for but which he believed she deserved. The Cardinal himself provided the cake as a present, hiring the city’s best baker to design the iced marvel. The band played flawlessly and there wasn’t a single clumsy dancer to be found. The women were beautiful in their designer dresses, the men handsome in their tailored suits. It was a day that made you realize what living was all about.
Their love lasted four wonderful years. Theo still went about his dirty business, burning down houses, breaking limbs, selling drugs, killing when he had to. But he was one of the happiest gangsters the city had ever seen. If you had to be bullied and beaten, there was no finer man than Theo Boratto for the job.
The only thing missing was a child. And that was when it all went to hell.
They didn’t worry about it in the early days. They were certain a child would come in time. Melissa had faith in God and Theo had faith in the fertile Boratto testicles. But as the months became years, their faith wavered and questions were asked.
Doctors said they were fine and advised them to keep trying, not to worry, a baby would come along eventually. But years turned, the world changed, and the nursery stayed empty. They tried faith healers, ancient charms and different sexual positions, read every kind of book on the market and watched the videos, prayed and made promises to God. Finally, when they’d almost given up hope, a sturdy seed broke through and made itself a home.
They threw a wild party when the test came back positive. They moved into a bigger house and bought everything the stores of the city had to offer. Happiness had returned.
It was a brief visit.
There were complications with the delivery. A trembling doctor presented Theo with his options—they could save the woman or the child. No maybes, no mights, no false hopes. One would live and one would die. It was up to Theo to choose.
He nodded slowly, eyes red, heart dead. He had one question—was it a boy or a girl? The doctor told him it was male. “Save the baby,” Theo said, the last words he would utter for many months.
His wife was buried before his child was christened, and Theo’s soul went with her. He was a broken man afterward, prone to fits of depression. The child might have been his savior, the light to bring him through the darkness, but fate robbed him even of that. The baby was a weak, scrawny thing. It came into this world on the shoulders of death, and death hovered ominously over the child. The doctors kept the dark gatherer at bay for a fragile seven months, but then he was returned to his beautiful, cute-eared mother, having spent more of his short life within her womb than without.
Theo let things slide. Money seeped out of his hands and into those of greedy, enterprising others. His house was repossessed, his cars, jewelry, clothes. The last deliberate act he committed in those days of descent was to give the child’s toys away to charity before someone ran off with them. There was that much left in him that gave a damn. That much and no more.
Starvation and harsh winters forced him back into work. He did enough to eat and pay for a moldy single room in the cheapest motel he could find. Nothing which required thought. He gutted fish in factories by the docks until the stench got him evicted from his most humble abode. He sold fruit and vegetables in a cheap street market, sometimes flowers. After five or six years, he returned to a life of crime, going along as an extra on thefts and break-ins. It was a long way from dining with The Cardinal and walking the hallowed halls of Party Central. But Theo didn’t care. It kept him fed and warm. That was enough.
Then, inevitably, a theft went wrong. He was apprehended, tried, sent down for eighteen months. Prison remade him. He took to thinking during his long days of incarceration. He saw where his life was stuck, what he had become, and made up his mind to change. He knew he’d never overcome his grief entirely. He doubted if he could ever be truly happy, or rise as high as he’d been before. But there was middle ground. He didn’t have to be this low. If