Looking down at the shoe that her son had handed her as the only piece of evidence they had for the witness who had gotten away from them, Elena Evans felt a rush of emotions go through her. She kept it off her face, remaining outwardly impassive. She knew Simon had not picked up on the truth. Given the way he had presented the shoe, he clearly had no idea what it really meant. In most cases, she would have reprimanded him for bringing evidence into their home. But, right then, she was far too distracted by her own thoughts. Holding the shoe, she gestured. “Go on inside and sleep, mio figlio. We shall speak more about this in the morning.”
Simon, for his part, seemed a bit confused. He had clearly expected more of a reprimand. But he did as he was told, giving one last look at her over his shoulder before heading in, with a quiet, “Good night, Mother.”
“I love you, my boy,” Elena absently murmured while she turned the shoe over in her hand. Then she straightened up, and turned a bit, her gaze passing over the grounds of their enormous home. A soft sigh escaped her. This… this was going to take some work to deal with.
As those thoughts passed through her mind, the woman spoke up, voice filling the air. She tried to make it as gentle as possible, but knew that it would still be startling. “You can come out now. It’s alright.” After a brief pause where nothing happened, she added, “I love you, mia principessa. You are safe here, I promise you. You will always be safe here. And...” She gave the shoe a light toss, watching as it landed on the ground. “I feel you might need this back.”
For another few moments, nothing happened. The air was silent. Still, Elena waited patiently. She knew what a big thing this was, and had thought of several different ways to handle it. But this seemed to be the best in her mind. The last thing she wanted was for her daughter to feel afraid of her own home, let alone afraid of her own family. The thought of her child being afraid of what she would do was… one of the worst thoughts she could ever remember having. No, she would not allow that. Whatever came next, they would handle the situation properly.
Eventually, after the silence had gone on for even longer, there was a soft sound in one of the nearby bushes. As Elena’s gaze moved that way, she saw her daughter slowly emerge. She was clearly on guard, watching her mother carefully. It was an expression which made a hard, cold fist close around Elena’s heart. A part of her wanted to step that way and wrap the girl in a tight embrace, yet she stopped herself. She knew just how badly that could go, particularly if she forced the issue.
Instead, she spoke softly, voice tender and gentle. “My princess. Please, take your shoe back. They were a gift from your father, after all. He would not like to think that you had lost them.”
Cassidy remained still for a moment longer, continuing to watch her mother warily. Then she slowly moved forward, putting her foot in the shoe before pulling it back. She still didn’t take her eyes off Elena. Her mouth opened as though to say something, only to stop. Then she tried again. “You… you knew. You knew about Simon.” Her voice cracked partway through that, and she seemed to reflexively flinch backward. When she spoke again, it was even softer. “You knew about him killing those people. He… he did it for you. For you and Dad. You… you’re all..” She cringed slightly before adding in a forlorn tone, “He’s a murderer. You’re all murderers, aren’t you?” There was accusation in her voice, but also pain. And fear. None of which Elena wanted to hear coming from her daughter.
Feeling the pain from that, the woman inhaled slowly before letting it out, her mind working its way through many different options once more. Finally, she spoke. “What, and who, we are is very complicated, Cassidy.” She thought it best not to use any endearing nicknames or fond terms at that moment. This was a time to show her daughter that she was taking this, and her, seriously. “But no matter what, I want you to know that we love you. None of us would ever do anything to hurt you. As I said, you are always safe here. The rest we can discuss. I will tell you anything and everything you wish to know. I will explain everything I can. Please, take a walk with me?” She paused, then offered her hand to the girl.
Cassidy, for her part, hesitated slightly. Then she spoke, her voice catching a little. It was obviously hard for her to say it. “I can… walk with you. But like this.” She stayed several feet away, which pained Elena, but was understandable.
“This is not how we wanted you to find out the truth,” the woman informed her child as she turned to walk around the side of the mansion. A guard was approaching from that way, but he hastily stepped aside and remained silent at a look from Elena.
Soon, Cassidy was following at a cautious distance, the two of them making their way along the side of the enormous house and toward one of the pools in the back. Specifically, toward the poolhouse. As they walked, Elena spoke as calmly as she could manage under the circumstances. “I assume you were in the car your brother took to the motel, and rode it back here, getting out somewhere along the way without him noticing.”
There was a slight pause before Cassidy replied, “I didn’t ride back in the car. I took an Uber.” Her voice was flat, sounding slightly detached. Or perhaps still in disbelief.
Absorbing that, Elena nodded before speaking again. “I…” That single word came before she realized she had no idea what she wanted to say. More words were there, but they caught in her throat. None seemed adequate. None seemed proper, given the circumstances. Of all the ways she had thought of explaining the truth of their family to her daughter, none were like this.
But then, at least it wasn’t as bad as the first time Cassidy had learned the truth, at poor Anthony’s party.
Finally, she forced herself to continue, to say something. “This may sound impossible, and as though I am simply forcing some sort of connection. But I want you to know that it is the absolute truth. I have been in your position. I know how you are feeling, because I have been there. I have felt the things you are feeling right now.”
Cassidy made a noise in the back of her throat, before stammering out a confused, “H-how could you know that? How--what?”
Pausing her walk, Elena turned that way. She made no move to step toward her daughter, though so much of her wanted to. “You know that, before I married your father, my name was Elena Russo.” As Cassidy gave a slow, uncertain nod, the woman continued. “My father was Jacopo Russo. But he was more known by his title for much of his life.” She swallowed. “The Shaitan. It’s another word for an evil spirit, or demon. That was what he was called. Because the crimes he was responsible for, the murders he both committed and ordered done, were so evil, so monstrous, that the police said they could only have been done by a demon from hell. Thus, he became known as the Shaitan. It was a title he held proudly.”
She went quiet again for a moment, allowing her mind to work through those memories. Even today, they made her flinch slightly. “When I was a child, I grew up in a mansion as well. My father never allowed me to go around in public, however. He wanted me… sealed away. I was only allowed to play with the children of his close subordinates, or business contacts. I was tutored for much of my life, before convincing him to let me attend school. Even then, it was a very closed-off and restricted private school and the other students generally avoided me. I had no idea what my father did for a living, only that we were rich, and I had to ‘set an example’ by being an obedient, dutiful daughter who excelled in all of her classes, yet did not sully herself by mingling with others who were beneath me.
“That is the life I did not wish for you. It’s why I have tried in every possible way to ensure you are free to come and go as you please, to have any friends you wish to have. It is why I… why I want you to feel safe here.”
After saying that, Elena sighed softly. “In any case, when I was younger than you, only thirteen years old, I wished more than anything to attend my first middle school dance. I wasn’t allowed, of course. That was far too dangerous and… common, to my father. Still, I was desperate. So, I did something I had never done before. I snuck out of our house and went to the dance anyway.”
Cassidy‘s mouth opened, likely to ask what this had to do with the current situation. But she stopped herself and simply folded her arms tightly and uncomfortably across her chest. It made the cold hand around Elena‘s heart squeeze a little tighter to see her daughter react to her like that, but she pressed on. “I had so much fun that night. It was the first time I could remember where I did what I wanted to do instead of what my father told me to. I felt free, like… like a normal teenage girl.”
She glanced away, reliving those blissful hours in her mind before swallowing. “But eventually, I had to go home. I took a cab and got out a couple blocks away. When I got to the edge of my family's estate, I saw lights on in the front driveway. I thought I was in trouble. I thought my father was going to ground me forever, or even take me out of my school and force me to go back to private tutors again.”
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With a snort, she shook her head at her own naivety. “I snuck over the fence and went closer to the lights. I wanted to see what sort of mood he was in before I gave myself up. That was important, to know if it was better to hide until he calmed down or not. I heard his voice, but he wasn’t out there for me. There were three trucks in the driveway all side-by-side with their headlights on, all facing the main garage.”
Yet again, Elena stopped talking for a few seconds. The memories, though decades-old, were still painful. “There were four men in that open garage, lit up by those headlights. My father, two people I didn’t recognize but… but found out were police detectives, and another man.”
A soft sigh escaped the woman once more. She did not want to tell her daughter the rest of this story. But she had to. At the very least, she could avoid going into too many details. “The man owed my father money. But rather than pay up, he went to the police for help. He offered to, ah, as they say, snitch about my father‘s business. But the police officers he spoke to were on my father’s take. They turned him in. They were the cops who were standing there watching. And they kept watching while my father beat that man to death. He used fists, brass knuckles, and a metal baseball bat. And he didn’t do it quickly. He took his time. Those police officers watched and said nothing while my father tortured that man to death, and the screams I heard from him…” Her eyes closed and she gave a physical shiver.
“I hid in those bushes and watched as my father brutally murdered a man for betraying him. He murdered him in a way that was meant to send a message. That’s what he was doing. The dirty cops would spread it, as would his body when it was found. It was the first time I really understood what my family was. We were Mafia. My father was one of the highest ranking members of the family here in America. And he had a reputation as a demon for a reason. They didn’t call him Shaitan by accident. I learned that night, and over the subsequent days, that my father controlled the police, the mayor’s office, the district attorney, even a substantial portion of the media. Through bribes, blackmail, threats, and more, he held tight control over the city, even as it was falling apart around him.”
Squeezing her hand tightly shut for a moment, Elena studied her fist before continuing. “So, when I tell you that I know how you feel, I am not just saying that. I have been in your position. It is… a position I never wanted you to be in.”
There was a brief pause as the younger girl swallowed audibly before quietly asking, “Are we Mafia?”
“We are… not exactly that,” Elena carefully informed her. Taking a breath, she turned to walk once more. “Come, please, Cassidy. As I said, you are always safe with us. We will never do anything to hurt you. We…” She paused, thinking of the time they had taken the decision of what to do about what their daughter knew out of her hands. But that was different, and a part of Elena had always thought it had been a mistake, since the moment they did it. That was not something they would do again. It had been one thing to erase the trauma that Cassidy had gone through as a child in witnessing the murder of her best friend and his family. It had left her all-but catatonic. Erasing her memory now, simply because she knew something she shouldn’t? It had been on her mind as a possibility if they had shown her what their family was and it became something she couldn’t handle. But now, seeing the way her daughter reacted to having stumbled across the truth by accident… no. No, she could not do that to her. They would find a way to get through it, whatever it took. She would not violate her child’s mind again.
To Elena’s relief, Cassidy followed her as they walked toward the poolhouse. They still had a lot to work on and get through, but at least things hadn’t fallen apart that much. Not yet, anyway. On the way, she took out her phone and hit a single button before speaking into it. “Yellowbrick, would you please give my daughter and me a bridge from the poolhouse to the downtown office? Yes. That’s right. Thank you.”
Once she put the phone away, her eyes shifted to where Cassidy was staring at her in confusion. “It’s okay. We’re just taking a little walk. It’ll be quicker this way.” By that point, they had reached the building, and she reached out to take the door open, revealing the open black void beyond, with the glowing amber colored bridge leading out to apparently nothing.
“Uhh… wh-has… has our pool house always done that?” Cassidy stammered, taking a reflexive step back. “Cuz I feel like I would’ve noticed. I mean, I--I…” She stared that way, mouth opening and shutting a few times.
With a soft smile, Elena shook her head. “It’s alright, Cassidy.” Part of the woman urgently wanted to call her principessa again, or my girl, or any other affectionate term. But no, it was important, in that moment, to speak to her as… if not an adult, at least close to one. After everything that had happened, and what she had seen, she deserved to be treated and spoken to that way. "Come, I promise, it is--” In mid-sentence, as she was about to assure the girl it was safe, Elena abruptly noticed that Cassidy wasn’t there anymore. She blinked at the empty spot where the girl had been, looked one way, then the other, and finally turned to the doorway.
Cassidy was already on the bridge. She had gone straight past Elena in the time it took her to start to reassure the girl, without any care about whether the doorway was actually safe or not. Before Elena could so much as finish a sentence of reassurance, her daughter had gone right into the void and was hopping up and down on the bridge itself as though to test its sturdiness for herself.
She had walked into the void she didn’t know anything about, and was jumping up and down on the bridge to see if it was sturdy. This… this was Elena’s daughter.
Smiling softly with amusement and wonder, the woman stepped onto the bridge herself, letting the door close behind her. As she and Cassidy stood on the bridge, Elena explained, “We have a friend. She goes by the name of Yellowbrick. You… well, you’ll officially meet her soon enough. She makes these bridges, connecting one doorway to another. It’s how we get around so quickly. We can take a plane as ourselves over to Europe, then take one of Yellowbrick’s bridges back here so we have a…” She trailed off, only realizing what she was actually saying as the last word came to mind.
“An alibi,” Cassidy finished for her, staring intently. “So you have an alibi for whatever bad thing is going on. Whatever bad thing you and Dad are doing.”
“It’s…” Elena considered her words before simply going with, “It’s a complicated situation. Come, please.” With that, she started to walk while continuing. “As I said before, I witnessed my father murdering that man. That was my first realization of what my family truly was, but I had many more reminders over the years. I played my part as a quiet, obedient daughter, and watched everything. I watched and learned all that I could. And when I fell in love with your dad, my father… he forbade us from seeing one another. Your dad was an accountant in one of Papa’s more legitimate businesses. One of his cover companies. We planned on running away together, on changing our identities and being on our own. I knew how the Mafia worked, I knew how to avoid their searches. We would have disappeared.
“But then your father gained his powers--”
“Wait, what?” Cassidy interrupted, eyes widening.
Stopping by the second door, Elena cleared her throat. “Ah, right. I--yes, your father is also Silversmith. You should know that, while we are getting everything out into the open.”
“Dad… Silversmith… but I--he--” Cassidy reeled backward, absorbing that. “Dad’s Silversm--but he’s my--but--oh.”
“Touched in general were just becoming known,” Elena continued. “But we both knew one thing, this was an opportunity. We saw the way superpowers were developing, the way people were reacting to them and how much of a benefit they could be. My father, and the Mafia in general, were slow to react, slow to change and adjust. We took advantage of that. We turned his people against him, created a second identity of Silversmith as one of those brand new, ahh… superheroes who could hit the Mafia using information we both had, while allowing those we could turn to our own side to escape, or even triumph in apparently driving Silversmith away. We used Silversmith as a way of eliminating threats, and giving our own people opportunities to rise in the ranks. Eventually, we managed to turn enough of my father’s people, and get rid of enough of the ones we couldn’t turn, in order to drive him out of the city entirely. He was supposed to be gone forever, but…” She paused, grimacing before shaking her head. “The point is, he was gone and the system he left behind was ours.
“We had used the authority of Silversmith as a fledgling superhero to make it happen, and we kept that going. We were in on the ground floor of making the city a better place, of fixing everything that had gone wrong in Detroit for so long. And we took advantage of that. We met--well, the details will come later. Some will still shock you. But what matters is that we met a man who can erase or adjust memories. We used that to solidify our power, to make everyone who could have been a threat to us, who knew my identity as a daughter of the mob, forget who I truly was. We used my father’s hold over the law enforcement in the city to compromise them ourselves, to create… to create what we call the Ministry. We have our reasons for that, our reasons for wanting to create this structure. And I will get into that, we both will, to answer everything we can about any questions you have. But what matters, Cassidy, is that we believe this is the way to maintain order and create progress in this city, in all of Michigan.”
That said, Elena opened the second door, ushering her daughter into one of the penthouse offices downtown. Once they were through and the door closed behind them, she walked to the window overlooking the city. “There is so much more to talk about, so much I want to tell you, Cassidy, my… my daughter. We have wanted to tell you the truth for so long, just… it never felt like the right time. But now, well, now it clearly is.” Staring out over the skyline, she fell silent for a few seconds, feeling Cassidy watching her from behind. “But first, before we get into all of that, is there anything you want to say?”
There was a long moment of silence as her daughter considered the question, weighing it in her mind. Elena could see her reflection in the glass as the girl’s face twisted in thought. Finally, she shook her head. “No, Mom. I… don’t have anything I want to say.
“But I sure have a hell of a lot more questions.”