“What have you done Silvio? Just look at you and poor Pietro. Just look at poor, poor Pietro! How can you do this to me, to your mother?

  After all your father did and your brothers just like him. This is more shame for the family. Your poor mother, your poor grandmother, how are we gonna show our faces outside now eh?

  Silvio’s Nonna had been raging at him for almost an hour. Poor Pietro….my god, if she only knew what that little monster could do when he was able to get away with it.

  “Nonna please, I can explain, lemme tell you “

  “Silenzio Non parlare. Silenzio”.

  The old woman glared at Silvio. Her right hand held palm up in front of Silvio, the loose flesh on the back of her upper arm still trembled from her angry outburst. A small but stout woman, she was dressed all in black as befitted a woman of her culture, still in mourning after her husband’s death over twenty years ago.

  She would wear black to her grave. Nonna Conti thrived on drama and conflict. She looked for it every waking minute of the day and seized upon whatever she could find.

  Her friends well, she had not had any real friends in over a half century. But a few people allowed her to call them friends because to reject her and have her insulted

  and angry instead would be much more horrible than having to listen to her rantings as a friend.

  Her family was controlled and manipulated by the old woman and all of them had become so accustomed to this way of life they knew no other way of functioning.

  Silvio’s mother had been an extremely beautiful young woman but could not attract any potential husbands as the reputation of her Nonna Conti scared them all away.

  Silvio’s father had been brash enough, and as many said, dumb enough to try to wed Nonna Conti’s daughter and take control over the old woman as the man of the house.

  The next decade was an absolute horror for the entire family until the sudden disappearance of Silvio’s fathers and his two older bothers.

  Nonna accused them of plotting against her and said that they had fled after trying to poison her.

  Most people had privately joked that Nonna was so poisoned already that there was almost nothing else that anyone could give her to harm her,

  that arsenic would just freshen her breath and that rat poison would help her arthritis.

  No one would dare to say it within one hundred feet of Nonna but it was believed that she had done something wicked to her son in law and his two older boys for rebelling against her. What happened to them no one knew but everyone had to pretend that Nonna was telling the truth and that the father and sons should never be spoken of again.

  “A shame upon the family name, just like your father….” Nonna droned on and on.

  Silvio had to stand there and take it. He could not leave, could not speak until Nonna was done. He felt shame and anger and his head hurt terribly. Poor little Pietro was fine, he just looked awful caked in white powdery residue with long tear streaks cutting through the mess and down to his chin.

  He had blown it. He had been so close, he had them. God damn it! He had them and that bastard, that thin little bastard had rammed

  the car ahead and then sprayed him in the face with some kind of foam. He had gotten three shots off at him but Nonna would not be impressed at all about that.

  Perhaps she would if he had managed to kill or wound someone and especially if it was some regular kid but otherwise missing his shots was just another failure to her. She didn’t care at all that he did this to try to restore the family name and get the reward for those two that ripped off the Famigli, the sacred sons of the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta.

  As the old woman shouted and shook, rolled her eyes and paused for deep breaths through flaring nostrils Silvio was struck by how much this woman thrived on conflict. She would never, ever be pleased or happy with anything or anyone. She loved the fight, to claim personal injury and pain only so she had reason to inflict it.

  Nonna never loved his mom or her beauty, she was used as bait, to ensnare his father and to extend the family so Nonna would have more power and influence to control and torment.

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  He was so stupid to think that Nonna would ever want him to succeed in restoring the Conti family name.

  No, she loved wielding the shame of his father’s disappearance over them all, as if she was the victim, she would never let go of it.

  Silvio thought of the money and the papers he had swiped from the boy along with the gun. He still had those items, and he had planned to give them to

  Nonna but now he had a change of heart. All was not lost, he would go to the sons of the Famigli and tell them what happened, what he saw and give them what he had swiped from that little rat.

  At least they would appreciate his bravery and his effort. He hoped that they would at least, it was certainly a better option than Nonna would ever be.

  The old woman paused, she could sense that Silvio had shifted from a state of fear into a more guarded, contemplative state.

  This angered her but she pushed aside the anger for now. Despite her years, her eyes were still sharp as was her mind.

  Her intense, unblinking gaze stared hard at Silvio from underneath ancient looking eyelids surrounded by the deep wrinkles etched in her tan skin.

  He was hiding something, he hadn’t told her everything.

  The old woman kept staring, eyes searching, her mind listening and seeing in its own way, looking for the answer. The boy shifted on his feet, moving his right hip ever so slightly, instinctively protecting the pocket on the side maybe?

  “Show me your pockets boy. Show me right now.”

  Silvio hesitated, no even a full second but that was enough.

  “Fallo Adesso. Right now.”

  He had messed it up again. He should never have come to the old woman. As his shoulders slumped forwards.

  Nonna Conti smiled slightly for the first time and held out her hand, palm up, ready to claim her victory.

  Silvio handed over the cash and the folded papers watching the long fingers with the yellowed nails curl around the items like the Venus flytrap slowly consuming a trapped housefly. It didn’t take the old woman long to discard the cash on the floor in front of Silvio.

  She had plenty of money and it did nothing for her. It was far more worthwhile for her to know that Silvio would have to grub up the money after she had left on his hands and knees and maybe fight off Pietro in the process. She would remember to listen to see what came of that exchange.

  The folded papers were far more valuable. They were receipts for eggs, milk bottles and bottle returns. There was an address and phone number for the farm as well.

  She would look up exactly where it was but she suspected that it wouldn’t be far.

  Nonna Conti left the kitchen without another word. Her concern for Pietro was long forgotten, she would figure out how to hold this new shame over these two boys for years to come.

  A she went up the stairs she heard the sound of the table being pushed aside and Silvio swearing at Pietro in hushed tones and this brought another faint smile to Nonna Conti.

  The worn wooden plank hallway at the top of the stairs creaked and groaned as she made her way down the familiar hallway.

  The old woman had enough funds to remodel the home many times over or to even buy a much bigger house but she would have none of it.

  This old house with its old walls, open heat registers and creaky floors kept no secrets from her and told her the movements of all who were inside of it. She allowed no cel phones or computers in the home or any televisions. The old woman only permitted what she could either control or in the case of the telephone, eavesdrop on.

  She sat down heavily at her small table in her bedroom, just in front of the window that had the best view of the street and called her daughter Alessia who was at work.

  “Alessia, you must come home now, I need your help at once.” “Can’t it wait Mamma, we are busy here at the bar, Tony will be upset if I have to leave early”.

  “You tell Anthony that Nonna Conti needs her daughter, who is he to deny an old woman some help, who is he…”

  “Mama, Mama please, he has said nothing, I have not said anything to him. I will come home of… just wait, I am coming now ok, just wait please”.

  The old woman hung up her old green rotary dial phone with a smile. She loved how the threat of her name, her anger would be enough to

  push aside the need of a man like Tony. Even if he was her daughter’s boss he would not dare cross Nonna Conti.

  Most parents would have wanted better options for their daughters than but not Alessia’s mom.

  Alessia was still a strikingly beautiful woman and most men were pleased to be in her company. This benefited the bar as well as Nonna Conti who expected

  every bit of gossip and news to be relayed to her the moment Alessia came home.

  She sat back and waited and while she waited, she thought about what she would do next. Perhaps Silvio would think that her anger was all for just show.

  Perhaps he felt that she did not really care about that boy getting the better of him and that she played up her anger just to hold it over Silvio.

  He was wrong. Nonna Conti was furious. Even though both her mind and memory were still quite sharp, her suspicions, her fears were starting to manifest into the beginnings of a psychosis.

  In the years to come she would be consumed by this psychosis and for a brief period, she would terrorize all around her until the sons of the Famigli had to step in with their one solution to these sorts of problems.

  Like Silvio, the old woman could not stand the idea that this solitary, normal kid and a young girl too, could outwit her grandson, her own nipote so easily.

  She saw this as an attack on her even if she had never met this boy. It didn’t matter that Silvio had brought the conflict to the boy either.

  What mattered was the conflict, the insult to her name and this was a serious afront to her.

  This boy had bested her grandson, bloodied her grandson, and dumped him and his cousin on the street like sacks of trash.

  Word would get out, this story would find its way back to the old neighborhood and they would start to whisper behind her back about her family, her children and how they had failed. She couldn’t have that. The old woman depended on fear and intimidation as her primary currency in life and she had been like this for as long as she could remember.

  She was getting older but she wasn’t going to give up yet and let her name be the ridicolo of the neighborhood. She needed to take a heavy toll on this boy and to have a witness.

  The old woman thought long and hard. She would curse this boy. A good curse was scare and hard to cast. Once the black magic was used it was no longer yours to control. Nonna Conti had been fortunate, or perhaps unfortunate, to have had more than a few curses to use in her day.

  If used properly they were devastating to the victim but what was even more important and more effective over time was to have the reputation of casting the curse.

  This is what built a currency of fear. Good curses were fewer and fewer in these modern times. So scarce in the new world that most of the younger generations did not believe in the stories of the dark magic.

  Nonna Conti would show them. She had one good curse left.

  One she had saved and treasured for many years but now, this was a chance to use it. A young boy like this, the curse would take for sure and after this, her reputation would most certainly outlive her.

  She allowed herself the joy of imagining her funeral.

  The large church, all of the priests and the Bishop in attendance and the whole neighborhood.

  All attending would do so out of fear.

  They would not ever dare to mock her or to even to speak openly with joy or relief about her death after this.