Chapter 15: Mob and Pop

After reestablishing themselves in their son's life, Giulio and Elena take the next step in reuniting their family, but Hank might be getting more than he bargained for.

Not much happened with the Lloyds ever since Hank's abrupt reunion with his birth parents, who had gone rather quiet after their last goodbye. Most of him was itching to see them again since they'd abruptly left the dinner party that night, but at the same time, he knew they had lives outside of him. When you've just entered someone's life, you can't just expect them to suddenly have all the time in the world to devote to you, after all. Still, a phone call or even another chance encounter would've been nice, in Hank's eyes, but he had to remain realistic. He had commitments of his own, just like Giulio and Elena did, and he had no intention of letting them fall by the wayside.

It had been about a week since Hank's last moment of contact with his parents, and it was his turn to spend the daylight shifts on waiting and bussing duty. Unlike most days, that mysterious strawberry-blonde wasn't there to check him out. Normally, he wouldn't waste his brain cells on a complete stranger, but he couldn't help but feel a little curious. That woman had seemingly figured out his entire work schedule, always knowing when he was downstairs and working the waiting shifts. A part of him wanted to discuss this phenomenon with the others, but he decided against it, not wanting to come off as obsessive, especially over someone he hadn't even spoken to beyond taking her orders and giving her compliments to the chef.

That little oddity aside, things carried on as per usual. Today was Hank and Xander's day to run the restaurant, and they spent that time swapping between the kitchen and dining area each shift, preparing and serving whatever unorthodox twist on a classic favorite each customer had ordered. All the while, Mary would occasionally come downstairs to supervise, sometimes chatting with customers or even more rarely, helping with the cooking and bussing. It was only when things got quiet when they got more interesting, and Hank was more than familiar with instances like these. He busied himself cleaning the kitchen after he'd spent the lunch shift mucking it up, and it was right before he could finish when it happened.

"Uh, guys?" Xander spoke up, already done disinfecting the tables. The rest of the staff had already left, leaving just the three of them behind. "Do either of you know anyone who drives an off-white stretch? And why off-white? That's like one of the ugliest colors imaginable, especially for a car!"

Hank didn't respond, but peeked through the pickup window to see what his friend was talking about. A limousine modeled after a Rolls-Royce Cullinan had pulled up on the curb outside the restaurant, painted in the color of condensed milk and sporting gold bumpers and rims, alongside eggplant purple tinted windows. In his eyes, those additions almost cheapened the look of such an expensive car.

"Not to my knowledge." Mary shrugged. "…then again, I'm not complaining. It isn't everyday when we get an important customer. We could really use the exposure."

"Implyin' we don't already get tons a'that," Hank replied, stepping out into the dining area.

Nobody said anything more as the limo's driver stepped out and opened the door for… none other than Giulio? A mixture of excitement and shock swirled around in Hank's head, at the sight of his father coming back into his life again. Only questions he had were why he'd abruptly turned up once more, and whether he'd stay for good this time. He had the same questions for his mother too, but it didn't appear she was present this time.

"Ey, if it ain't my boy, Hank!" Giulio grinned, panning his arms out as he entered the front doors.

"Was wonderin' when you'd show back up, pops," Hank replied, hugging him as tightly as possible. His dad put a little too much pressure on his back, so he gently freed himself, letting out a pained groan that instantly let him know it was sensitive. "But yeah, where've ya' been all week?"

"Well da' truth is, your mother and I've just been preparin' a little somethin' for ya'. To make sure ya' make a big, grand entrance when ya' officially come back into our lives."

"Whoa, really?"

"Something tells me we should be on our guard…" Xander muttered.

"Oh, hush, you man-child." Mary nudged him in the ribs. "Feel free to take his offer, Hank! We'll cover your chores while you're gone."

"Ya' mean it?" Hank turned back to them.

"Of course I do. Who am I to bar someone from reconciling with their long-lost family? I'm more of a softie than I let on."

"Well then, shall we get goin'?" Giulio asked, holding the door open for his son.

"Absolutely," Hank grinned, following him outside.

"Now as for your suspicious a*s." Mary turned back to Xander after they left, poking him in the chest as a devilish smirk contorted her right cheek. "Are you ready to do double-duty tomorrow night?"

Xander just rolled his eyes with a huff.

---

Meanwhile, Giulio's limo, in spite of its striking appearance, was able to easily glide out of town and cruise through a portion of the countryside. Hank hadn't gotten the chance to ask about it before, but he had an underlying suspicion that his parents were not only wealthy, but also didn't reside within the city limits of Burlington. It would certainly explain the way they presented themselves, as well as the reason why he'd never seen them around until now. Nonetheless, the father and son remained mostly quiet for the duration of the ride, "Padrino" by Smash Mouth playing on the radio all the while, until the front gates of a sprawling mansion squeaked open and the limousine passed through. They eventually pulled up at the grand front entrance, allowing Hank to step out and check the place out in all its extravagant glory.

The front yard was expansive, containing boxwood shrubbery arranged in various patterns, some of the gaps occupied with wire arches decorated in flowers. A fountain and a few birdbaths, gnomes, and tomato plants dotted the flatly-trimmed lawn, an olive garden barely visible off to the side of the house. A pair of marble fountains were on either side of the walkway leading up to the door, each one full of koi and plastic flamingos, and surrounded by rose bushes and bluebells.

When Hank rang the doorbell, he could somehow hear it echoing throughout the interior, giving him an idea of just how big the foyer could be. When the front door opened, he was disappointed to see that it wasn't Elena, but rather some elderly, unfamiliar butler, whose face didn't change as he laid eyes on Hank.

"Chi diavolo é quest'uomo?" he asked in a cautious whisper.

"A proprio agio. Questo é mio figlio, Hank," Giulio replied, before reverting to English as he escorted Hank into the building. "That's Rodrigo. His memory ain't as sharp as it used to be, but ya' did briefly interact wit'im when you was wee little."

Rodrigo said nothing more as he watched the two men walk by, before shutting the door and wandering off to parts unknown. They followed the sound of slow, ominous Italian music, layers of strings and woodwinds, all accented by a Type-A mandolin melody and a free styling harp, with some light percussion and the occasional solo from one of the background instruments. The source of the sound was a phonograph over in the dimly-lit study, where Elena was located. She silently sorted through her collection of vinyls, occasionally taking a drag from her shrinking cigar. The only sound other than the music was the crackling fireplace. A panda-skin rug adorned the weathered wooden floor, and the desk came with a red-cushioned chair that looked like it belonged to a politician. The only item to offset the room's old-school appearance was the current model of laptop, which rested on top of the desk.

Without warning, the cracked door full of window-like glass panels squeaked open, and in came Giulio and Hank, the latter seeming especially elated to be here.

"Ah, mi figlio! Come sei stato?" Elena hurried over to hug him, once again putting a bit of a strain on his permanently injured back.

"Sto bene," Hank replied through his pained groans, not being the most well-versed in Italian. Thank god his parents were also fluent in English.

"And I trust you're familiar with Bianca?"

Hank turned in the direction of his mother's extended arm, and felt instantly petrified. Sitting calmly on the nearby loveseat, made with the same material as the chair, was that same woman that Hank had been sparsely interacting with for all this time; not even the absence of her trademark shades had made her any harder to recognize. Her lips were painted a vermilion red as they stretched into a gentle, courteous smile. Her body-type was hard to determine given her attire, consisting of a mini-skirted suit over a lace bralette, with thigh stockings and high-heels that let her equal Hank's height.

"So nice to properly meet you, Hank." Bianca stood up to shake his hand. Unlike either of his parents, her accent was completely Italian, something he'd failed to notice until now.

"You too," Hank simply replied.

"Now then, let's get down to business, shall we?" Giulio stepped behind his desk and removed his sport coat, sinking into his chair as he leaned forward with clasped fingers.

"Business?"

"We'll explain everything soon enough. But for now, do you have any questions?" Elena sat on the edge of her husband's desk, balanced on a sliver of her rear end as she pressed her cigar stub into the ashtray.

"Oh, I got plenty. For starters, how are you guys even alive right now?" Hank asked.

The more time he'd spent with his parents recently, the more old memories of his days in the mob came back to him. He distinctly remembered one night, when he overheard plans for a troop being sent out to kill the Russos. He'd been too young to go with them, but later on, he saw those mobsters come back, confirming their deaths. Could it have just been them fulfilling their promise of seeking revenge on their child recruits' parents? If so, then why was he standing face-to-face with a pair of supposedly dead folks? Hank explained everything about his side of the story, which brought intrigued expressions to everyone else's faces.

"Simply put, Maria's goons never actually laid a finger on us," Giulio explained. "And we didn't just have no mere body-doubles either. See, we sorta' dabbled in this illegal clonin' experiment, ensurin' that they'd believe they'd got us."

"Ilegal…?" Hank muttered, though this went unnoticed by the others.

"And I take it you're probably wonderin' why we dropped you off at Maria's," Elena interjected. "Fact is, we had no clue we even did that. When you came along, we weren't ready for a kid, so we dropped you off at what we thought was a foster home."

"And boy were we lucky to be wrong," Giulio chuckled, though it only served to put his son more on edge.

"Alright, that's it! What's your angle… father?" Hank narrowed his eyes, tempted to retrieve his concealed gun, but ultimately deciding against it.

"Oh, trust me. We ain't lyin' about ya' bein' our son… but we also ain't been entirely truthful about our profession," Elena replied. "See, your father and I… we're mob bosses."

"We were once the top dogs a'the organized crime underworld, before dat' no-count Maria Giovanni came along." Giulio panned his hands up, cueing his son to look towards the upper half of the room. Across the walls near the ceiling were countless framed newspaper clippings detailing his and his wife's exploits, barely legible under the fireplace's glow. "After her failed attempt to take us out, we kept hidden until she was confirmed dead and her whole operation disbanded."

"Now dat' the top spot is up for grabs again, we've been strivin' to reclaim it, and then we heard you were not only alive, but had also been brought up by Maria of all people. So we thought it'd be a good idea to find you and resume our legacy as a family!"

"I see…" Hank said after remaining silent for a bit. "And one last question: where does Bianca factor into all this? Cause I've been seein' her around an abnormal amount of times lately."

"Oh, her? She's just our longtime spy and information broker." Giulio stood from his seat, strutting over to wrap an arm around his son. "We sorta' took her in after we accidentally offed her parents."

"Accidentally?!" Bianca scoffed, hearing that last part despite it having been whispered. "Oh, please! We all know you took them out because they were lobbying for a politician who would have cracked down on you guys!"

"Sta 'zitto!" Elena barked, pressing a small button in her hand and causing her to recoil in pain.

"So… ya' got anymore questions for us?" Giulio calmly turned away from the commotion.

"Nope." Hank shook his head.

"Now given everything you've learned, whaddaya think? Are you in, or out?" Elena asked, ignoring Bianca, who slowly recovered from writhing on the floor.

Everything in Hank wanted to scream and curse his parents out. He felt betrayed, like a student whose dog died while he was away at college, and wasn't told about it by his family until he got back. All this time, he'd been wondering what his birth parents were like, and later on, he'd even assumed they were dead. Now they'd had the nerve to come back into his life, and the first thing they did was reveal not only their reprehensible past to him, but also try soliciting his help to bring it back? Hank all but felt like pouncing on his parents and pummeling them to death, but he restrained himself.

"Hate to break it to ya', but I've left the mobster life behind me," he said. "Besides, my life's great now. Got a girl, a wonderful son, a fun job, and some new pals. As cool as it is to know my parents are alive, I'm afraid I can't take part in this."

There was nothing but silence for a few seconds.

"Well alright then." Giulio shrugged.

"Wait, what?"

"You heard me, we completely understand. As your folks, all we want is what's best for our son, and if it ain't to follow in our footsteps, then so be it."

"And as an added bonus, we promise not to lay a finger on you, anyone, or anything else ya' hold dear in this new life a'yours." Elena raised her hand like she was taking an oath.

But Hank did not answer, instead choosing to fast-walk out of the study and out of the house, briskly strolling down the expansive driveway and past the iron gates. Neither of his parents followed him, but Bianca attempted to before she was shocked again, screaming as she held her back.

"I c-c-can't… b-believe you guys… aaaggghhh!" she groaned, trying to resist the electrical pain coursing through her spine. "I don't know why I ever agreed to join this… this cult of a family business you have here!"

"Sure is amazin' what desperate lengths a child will go to when they got nowhere else to run," Giulio let out a throaty chuckle as he momentarily released the button, letting his victim catch her breath. "Now den', we want ya' to go after him, and find a way to infiltrate that new family he's in."

"I shall do no such thing- gyaaahhhh!"

"I didn't ask for your opinion, did I? Now scram!"

"Ugghhh! Y-You can't keep doing this forever!"

"Pfft, try me!"

"Rrrrgggghhhh!"

With some effort, Bianca managed to stand up despite the shocks, trembling as she staggered out of the study, moving to the front door as quickly as she could. Giulio kept pressing the button, but Elena gently placed a hand on top of his.

"Patience, dearie," she spoke, a twisted smirk forming across her taut jawline. "If there's one thing we learned from our little run-in wit' the Giovannis, it's that sometimes playin' the long game can be a winnin' strategy."

"Yeah, you're right." Giulio nodded, releasing the button for good. "You're so right."

It was then that the couple traded some sinister looks, before they each wrapped an arm around each other and shared a fearsome evil laugh.