Closer to the Edge

“The doctors are checking him over now,” Nicolo told his daughter as he sat down on the edge of her bed.

Rowan glanced away from the window, briefly making eye contact with her father, before shifting her eyes back out towards the woods. “Good to know.”

Nicolo watched his daughter; he knew her actions, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why she was upset. “He’s going to be okay.”

“I know he will,” Rowan said. “He’s been through far worse.”

“Did he…tell you what happened?”

Rowan looked back at her father, a small smirk on her lips. “No. He said it wasn’t important,” she muttered with a roll of her eyes. “Who is he to decide what’s important?”

“He doesn’t want you to worry,” Nicolo told her. “I would do the same to your mother.”

“That’s not right, father, and you know it. You and mother are married—she deserves to know,” Rowan said with a sigh. “I just don’t think Paul realizes that it hurts more to not know what happened than it does to know.”

“Rowan—“

“How does mom do it?” she asked, more to herself than to her father.

“Do what?”

Rowan shrugged. “She knows what you do, she doesn’t get involved. You can be gone for days at a time, and she doesn’t know what’s wrong because you don’t tell her anything. You could die out there and she wouldn’t know for days; and whoever did it would never be caught because that’s just how our world works. And I don’t. I don’t know how she does it,” she explained, shaking her head.

Nicolo stood up and walked over to where his daughter was standing by the window. He rested a hand on her shoulder and realized that this might have been the first moment where he was actually able to comfort her. “I know you like him, Rowan—“

“Dad,” Rowan said, shaking her head again, “don’t say ‘like’—it’s too juvenile.”

Nicolo smiled softly.

“It makes me feel like a teenager,” she muttered.

“You are a teenager, Rowan, though you haven’t been afforded the average life that most people your age have had.”

Rowan sighed. “Dad, does anything about me scream average?”

“Good point,” he said with a nod.

“I don’t care that life hasn’t been normal for me. I expected that from a young age when I realized exactly what the family business was,” she told him. “I just…”

“He knows this life,” Nicolo finished for her. “That’s why you find it easy to like him.”

“It’s not easy to like anyone,” she mumbled, “especially him.”

Nicolo smiled softly. “I said the same thing about your mother. Isn’t that funny?”

Rowan shrugged; normally she probably would have smiled or laughed, but for some reason, her heart just wasn’t in it. And she couldn’t explain why.

“I’m going to go check on Paul, unless you would like to?” Nicolo asked.

She shook her head. “No, thanks.”

“Okay,” her father said before starting to walk towards the door.

“Hey, dad?”

Nicolo stopped and turned to face his daughter. “Yes?”

“How long… Do you, I mean… How much longer is this going to last?” she asked.

“Everything with the DiGiovannis or business in general?”

“Everything with Paul,” she told him.

“Hopefully not long,” Nicolo told her. “And hopefully it’s something we can take care of ourselves.”

“You mean, without the authorities?”

Nicolo nodded. “Yes. Once they get involved, we could go down as well.”

Rowan let a curse slip past her lips and she ran her hands through her hair. “Do you ever…” she shook her head, cutting herself off.

“Do I ever what, Rowan?”

“Wish you could get out?” she asked, meeting his eyes. “I know I said I could handle this, dad, but I really don’t know if I can.”

Nicolo understood exactly what she meant. When he was growing up, he didn’t have a choice—that’s the way it worked in his world: the sons took over, the daughters were married off. But when his son had been killed, Rowan was all he had left, and she had grown up assuming the duty that her brother had left behind. But now, now that she was old enough to fully understand what was going on, he understood why she doubted herself. And while Nicolo knew that Rowan could handle it, he also knew that she should have a choice, a choice that he never had.

+

“Are you ever gonna stop letting your old man beat up on you?” Martin asked as the doctor walked out of the room.

Paul glared over at his best friend. “Don’t go there, Martin.”

Martin shrugged, picking up an ice pack and carrying it over to his friend, handing it over. “I was just asking.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Should be. Just punch him next time,” Martin told him.

“He’s my father. It’s not that easy,” he repeated.

Martin sighed and sat down on the floor in front of the couch. “Why are you being all pissy?”

“I have a headache,” Paul lied, resting his head on the pillow and putting the ice-pack on his bruised eye.

“You’re a bad liar,” Martin commented.

Paul groaned. “I have a fucking headache, Martin, okay? I got punched in the goddamn eye, thrown against a wall, had my already-broken and semi-healing ribs kicked again, and I sprained my ankle jumping out of a two story window. So, yes, I have a headache and I’m not in the mood for your voice.”

Martin held his hands up in surrender. “Alright, my bad. Sorry, bro.”

Paul sighed. “And Rowan won’t talk to me,” he added quietly.

“What makes you say that?”

“Have you seen her since we got back?” he asked.

Martin shook his head.

“Exactly. She just…ran upstairs and didn’t even look back.”

“She’s a girl. Girls are temperamental,” Martin said with a shrug.

Paul sighed. “She’s pissed at me and I don’t know why.”

“Maybe she—“

“Let’s dissect my daughter later and focus on your father for now,” Nicolo interrupted, walking into the den. “Does that sound like a plan?”

Paul nodded, he wasn’t exactly in the mood but he wasn’t going to argue with Nicolo—after all, he was risking his life and reputation to help Paul. So he wasn’t going to argue, even if he really wanted to. “Yeah.”

“What did you find out?” Nicolo asked, taking a seat in the winged-back chair next to Paul.

“I don’t know. Rowan has everything on the USB drive,” Paul said with a shrug. “She got all of the information easily enough. Where is she?”

“She needs a couple of minutes,” Nicolo told him.

“I don’t need anything but to take the bastard down,” Rowan snapped, her combat boots scuffing the hardwood floor as she walked into the room. She dug the small, black USB out of her pocket and handed it to her father.

“Can you get me my laptop from the desk, please?” Nicolo asked, pointing towards the desk.

Rowan did so and watched as her father plugged in the USB and opened up its contents.

“What all did you copy on here, Rowan?” Nicolo asked his voice quiet and she wasn’t sure if it was in awe or not.

“As much as I could fit on sixteen gigabytes,” she told him. “Why?”

“What files did you copy?”

“All the ones that were password protected, encrypted, or that looked important,” Rowan said, growing agitated. “Why?”

Nicolo looked up at him and smiled. “I’ve never been more proud of you than I am at this moment, Rowan,” he told her.

Rowan couldn’t stop the smile that made its way onto her face. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

“It has his private files on here; documents about trade deals, scanned agreements, maps, future deals, bank account statements, everything,” Nicolo said.

“Enough to take him down?” Paul asked, sitting up slowly.

“Lay down, bro, you have a concussion,” Martin said.

“Let him learn the hard way,” Rowan snapped, walking past Paul to lean against the side of her father’s chair.

“I think so,” Nicolo said. “It just depends on what direction you want to go, Paul.”

“I don’t really care. Just take him down,” Paul said with a wave of his hand.

Nicolo sighed. “It’s not that easy. There are many ways this could go down, Paul, and we have to be smart about it.”

“I don’t care if we’re smart. Let’s just kill him and get it over it,” Paul grumbled.

“Don’t be a fucking idiot,” Rowan said.

“Rowan—“

Rowan rolled her eyes. “Some other time, father, you can grill me for swearing, but not right now,” she snapped.

Nicolo’s eyes widened but he didn’t respond. His daughter might have inherited his anger but, well, it was a little worse since she was a woman. And he knew better than to push her when she was already upset.

“What’s your problem?” Paul asked, sitting up. He winced slightly, his free hand grabbing his ribs; he was still in pain but adrenaline was an amazing thing.

“You’re my problem, Paul! You don’t think things through,” Rowan said. “It’d be very easy to just kill your family but you have to think about the damn consequences. If we do it the wrong way, if we slip up even once, then my family is at risk. And if my family is at risk, I will put you at risk.”

Paul frowned. “What is wrong with you? We were fine yesterday—“

“If you don’t trust me, how am I supposed to trust you?” Rowan snapped. “My father is putting everything on the line to help you because I asked him to. And if you ruin this for him, or hurt anyone in my family—“

“We’re on the same side!” Paul exclaimed, sitting up and ignoring the pain. “I’m not trying to put anyone’s life on the line besides my father.”

“Then you have got to think things through!” Rowan told him. “We can’t just storm into your house, guns blazing, and fire at fucking will! If we’re caught, we’re all going down. And then it won’t matter if your father got what was coming to him or not because we’ll all be fucked!”

Paul frowned. She was right; he knew that. He just had a problem admitting it.

“Are you even listening?!” she yelled.

Paul nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m listening,” he told her, his voice quiet. “And you’re right.”

Rowan frowned. “I know I am,” she told him. Her tone had lost its hard edge and she stared at him for a minute. “Get your rest. We’ll work more on this after dinner.”

Nicolo nodded. “Dinner’s at six thirty. We’ll meet in my office at eight. If all of these documents are accurate, our time is coming up sooner than we thought.”

“What are you talking about?” Rowan asked, voice exasperated, and her thumb and forefinger pinched the bridge of her nose. She could feel a migraine coming on and all she wanted to do was take a hot bath and get away from people for a few minutes.

“We’ll talk after dinner. Get some rest, Rowan,” Nicolo told her.

Normally Rowan would’ve argued—she had a thing about being told what to do. This time, she didn’t. She just nodded and left the room slowly, arms crossed over her chest. She hated yelling at Paul, but she refused to put her family at risk because he was suffering from a concussion and refusing to think things through. And she really thought that she had gotten through to him. And that was good enough for the time being.