If Only

Chapter 11 - To Be A Star

Casimiro

There was no way this was happening.

No way Bianca just threatened to shoot me.

My father pulled his gun immediately. So did my mother. They aimed at Bianca while she was aiming at me. Almost twenty years of friendship, and twenty years of alliance and my parents were ready to end it all within seconds.

I could feel Mariella holding onto the ends of my shirt as she stood in front of me, protecting me from her mother. She was protecting me. She would risk her life...for me. My heart couldn't handle this situation. Being threatened by Bianca, or being protected by the girl I was madly in love with.

Bianca's face was unrecognizable. She didn't look like herself, but an altered version filled with more rage than humanly possible. Almost like a monster who fed on the pain and misery of others. A monster who couldn't believe her daughter wanted to be different.

But she was always like this, wasn't she? Maybe she got older, got better, and made better choices, but that didn't mean she changed at all. That didn't mean she still wasn't that girl who robbed a corner store to prove herself to her father, or that girl who shot a man in cold blood just because daddy told her no.

"Please, don't shoot." Raphael stood in front of Bianca, shielding her like Mariella was shielding me. His voice was wavering, I could see the fear in his gray eyes. "She just needs a minute. She's not thinking straight...she needs to calm down."

"She needs a minute? To what? To think about if she's going to shoot my son or not?" My mother was just as angry but in a different way. She was probably more shocked than anything, to see her best friend reacting like this. "What is wrong with you, Bianca?"

Bianca's head turned to respond to my mother. As she was distracted, I took the opportunity to inch backward as slowly as I could so she wouldn't notice. I grabbed Mariella's hand and pulled her with me. I made sure my steps were light so I didn't draw any attention. The door was close enough...we could make it if we were careful.

"She can't go...I–I need her...he can't take her from me." Bianca's voice began to crack. The wall of rage she put up started to crumble in front of everyone. Just for a moment, I saw the real reason why she had acted this way. But as fast as it came, it went. She caught herself as a tear fell from her hazel-green eyes. "I'll stop him by any means necessary."

Bianca wasn't mad...she was afraid.

She was afraid that her daughter finally saw her for who she was. A liar, a thief, a killer, a monster.

It was a wake-up call because this sort of thing didn't happen. If you were born into the mafia, you were in it and you didn't get a choice. You were raised as if it was regular life and as if there was no other way to live it. But Bianca wasn't raised to work for her father one day, because he didn't think she could do it. Because she was a woman, he didn't think she was capable. So Bianca decided to prove him wrong.

Although she didn't honestly realize what she had fought for, what she had truly proven to her father. Bianca probably only became aware of what she signed up for when it was too late. When she had already made too much money....when she had already murdered too many people...when she finally became the person her father may have been trying to save her from.