Chapter 7 - Strawberry Ice Cream
One year after Noah walked into my dining room, another meeting was interrupted.
This time nobody panicked.
The door opened.
Noah marched inside wearing his school uniform.
He was five now.
He carried two drawings.
My captains automatically moved their paperwork.
They had learned.
Noah placed one drawing in front of Gabriel.
It showed Elena, Gabriel, Noah, and a dog Gabriel had repeatedly said they weren't getting.
They got the dog three weeks later.
Then Noah came to me.
“This one's yours.”
I looked down.
Four stick figures stood beneath an enormous yellow sun.
Elena.
Gabriel.
Noah.
And me.
I was considerably larger than everyone else.
Also covered in black crayon.
“Why do I look like a refrigerator?”
“Because you're big.”
Fair.
Above my stick figure, Noah had written:
UNCLE DOM
I stared at it longer than necessary.
“Do you like it?”
“No.”
His face fell.
I picked up the drawing.
“I'm putting it in my office.”
His smile returned instantly.
“Can we get ice cream?”
“It's raining.”
“So?”
“You already had dessert.”
“So?”
I looked toward Gabriel.
He shrugged.
“You created this monster.”
“I absolutely did not.”
Noah grabbed my hand.
“Strawberry.”
Twenty minutes later, one of Philadelphia's most feared mafia bosses sat inside a tiny ice-cream shop while a five-year-old explained why dinosaurs could defeat sharks.
Gabriel sat across from me.
Elena beside him.
Noah between us.
Outside, two black SUVs waited beneath the rain.
Men still feared my name.
Enemies still watched my territory.
Deals still happened behind locked doors.
Nothing about my world had become softer.
But something inside it had changed.
A year earlier, Noah had entered my secret meeting carrying a red umbrella and asked to borrow me for one day.
He never gave me back.
And somewhere between the preschool pancakes, the swings, Gabriel's secret, and countless bowls of strawberry ice cream, I stopped wanting him to.
For the first time in years, I wasn't surrounded only by men who would die for me.
I was surrounded by people worth living for.
May you like
And that, I eventually learned, was far more dangerous.
It was also far more valuable.
