Exclusive Excerpt from LUCKY SEVENS print Edition

LUCKY SEVENS, the crime thriller about a Las Vegas casino and the treachery that takes place there, makes its debut in print!

The print version is the only place to get the short story Famiglia Per Sempre included. Here now is a special excerpt from that story seen only here at Goddess Fish.

FAMIGLIA PER SEMPRE (Family Forever)
by Cynthia Vespia

I never knew being the head of the family would bring so much heartache. Many nights I would catch my father sitting alone in his room, head in his hands, with my mother’s rosary dangling between his fingers.

He worried about keeping us safe and keeping us as a family. That worry fell to me now. The grief and the greed had gotten to Cristoph.  I knew that when word spread that the Currelli brothers had split there would be claim jumpers coming out of the woodwork, all trying to get a piece of the action while the side was weakened. I needed a united front. That seemed easier said than done.

When I reached out to Cecile she was nowhere to be found. Word came back to me that members of The Heretics had been seen in her neighborhood. I worried that my baby sis had taken a hit as some sort of a message to the family. I should’ve had eyes on her.

Now it was my turn to sit with my head hanging heavy. We had buried Ma’s rosary with Pop so I pulled the cross from my own neck and let it dangle from my fingers.

The darkness of the room fell over me like a heavy cloak but I was thankful it shrouded the tears that fell from my eyes. I looked up to a blank ceiling trying hard to see past it into an afterlife I wasn’t even sure existed.

“I’m sorry, father.” The words stumbled through my lips at first. Not until I owned them, not until I fully embraced what I knew needed to be done, did my strength return to me. “I won’t fail you again.”

My first order of business, as reluctant as I was to take it, was to get back the shares of merchandise that had gone to Cristoph.  He was an honorary Yakuza now.  Currelli blood or not, if I were to allow him to keep his holdings it would only prove detriment to the family as the Yakuza gained favored odds.

I knew he would never agree to just hand them over willingly so I told him I wanted to meet and discuss terms on joining forces with the Yakuza. It was a setup and knew Cristoph wouldn’t come alone. Neither would I. However this played out a part of me still hoped that Cristoph would see the error of his ways…even in death.

In a twenty-four seven town like Vegas it was tough to find an area without a lot of spectators, even at three in the morning.  Both sides wound up agreeing on a small parking structure back behind the Crazy Horse Saloon.

I like to think of Vegas as having a midnight sun.  Even at the darkest of night you can still feel the heat biting down on you. 

I was lickin’ my chops as Cris approached me, wondering how my little brother had become the bad seed.  We were dead center, just the two of us looking eye to eye.

“So it’s come to this?” Cristoph asked.

Somewhere in the deepest part of me, the part that still remembered the two of us play wrestling in the backyard and going to see the latest movie together, I wanted to see remorse in Cristoph’s eyes. Any tiny spark that told me he didn’t feel right about what he was doing. Instead,  I felt a shakedown in the works as the back splash of headlights washed the blackened parking lot.  In that instant I knew there would be no settling it with words.

Like a scene straight out of the old west, Cristoph and I took to our guns.  I was doing everything in my power to keep from being hit, dropping Yakuza members on dime turns as I avoided narrow misses myself.

Firing at my own blood was something I couldn’t bring myself to do.  But Cristoph didn’t have any qualms about it.  In his race for power and glory he capped off every round from his automatic straight at me.

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