Isabella parked her car.  The cherry red Duesenburg was out of place at the biker bar, but Bella didn't own a bike and she probably never would.  She'd never so much as sat on one of those tiny little death machines.  She loved driving fast, her car was her life's blood, it was how she started in this thing... get-a-way driver and car thief.  Even now she lived for speeding away in a stolen car, though she had little need to steal anything anymore.

The men at the door gave her nods of respect.  The Don from South Philly had come up in Detroit.  These were her old stomping grounds and most made men knew that she still held a place in her heart for the Motor City and the gangsters there.  Few, however, were held in the regard that Giovanni_Ferrari were.  She loved the boy from the moment she met him. 

Thinking she'd never have sons of her own, Giovanni had always been special to her.  She'd watched him grow and was always a mix of proud of him and secretly envious of Rebecca's good fortune.  Of course, in time, William had come into her life and she too knew the great joy and constant aggravation of raising a son.

Today, however, wasn't an irritation... today's visit was prompted by a lack of response & worry.  Kenzi, the sunny-haired associate she'd sent to be a hand for Billy_Mastrosimone had died and not in the way most gangsters went out of the world.  Her death was brutal and without a purpose of any kind.  It gutted her to think of the emotional agony that her 'nephew' must be in.  

She'd sent a note telling him how sorry she was for his loss, that she was here for him and for the first time ever... she didn't get a response.  She'd allowed him to have some time.  She knew he was grieving and so expecting too much from him right away was certainly not the right path.  He needed time.  He needed space.  He needed a great many things that no one could give him... no one but someone who had lost a fiancee to a tragedy at about his age in life.

So, she boarded a plane, hopped in her car and came straight here.  It was time to have a heart to heart and maybe, by the end of the conversation, she would figure out a way to ask for his help with this Billy and Aurora situation she had on her hands... maybe it wasn't the right time, but if he was anything like she was at this point in the grieving process, perhaps something to do was just what he needed?

Bella walked into the bar and ordered a shot of whiskey and a beer chaser, then she made her way towards the back where she knew she would most likely find Joey.

Joey sat in his office and at this point considering he hadn't left it in forever his bedroom at this point with a bottle of whiskey balancing numbers that his drunk mind couldn't make sense of. The young formally charismatic boy(ish) good looking man was an entirely different beast right now, he hadn't shaved or taken remotely any care of himself and looked homeless for lack of a better word. He heard the door open, he drunkenly tried to pull out his revolver knocking over several glasses and falling out of his chair as Isabella-Luciano walked in.

Staggering around on his hands and feet striking at the mental apparitions around him before regaining his balance and seeing who had just walked in. He turned his face back towards the shadows knowing Bella wouldn't like seeing him like this.

"Wot does you want Bella?" He drunkenly managed to slur out as he used the wall to straighten himself up a bit. 

Bella took one look at the young man and was immediately disgusted with all his associates for not stepping up to help their Don through this... they were doing what her own associates had done when she lost Elias.  They were ignoring the problem utterly.  Well, she wouldn't ignore it or him... but she couldn't let them see their Don break down like a child.  Her job here was to repair the boy... not destroy his position of authority utterly.

"Scuse inutili per i soldati! TUTTI VOI, FUORI DALLA MIA VISTA!"  She snapped and snarled like the Dragon people thought she was at all the young wise guys hanging about.  Many of them had no idea what she was saying exactly, but they clearly got the point and they scurried away leaving her to turn and speak to Joey alone.

Once the men were gone she made her way over to him and gave him a sympathetic look, "Joey..."  She picked up a chair that was laying on it's side on the floor - abandoned abruptly by some wise guy who was smart enough to know she wasn't fucking around when she screamed at him.

"I was hoping that maybe we could talk for a bit?  Alone."

Joey straightened up slightly as Bella roared in Italian it was a sound he had learned when he was a kid meant business and even though it wasn't directed at him he still sobered up slightly as a reaction learned long ago. He slid over towards Bella handing her keys to a "home" he had never really lived in or been back to since Kenzi's death.

"Best if you drive I think."

He threw up once before finally being able to use a table around him as leverage to get up and then grabbed his bottle of whiskey and stumbled out the clubhouse to wait by the car. As he walked everyone cleared the way to make room for him as he had been in a shoot first ask questions later mood as of late and that did not seem to be changing. 

Before Bella could follow him a wiseguy approached Bella respectfully before speaking, "He ain't been right since Kenzi, he's never around and when he is he's like this, please help him you might be the only one who can get through to him" He bowed before leaving her.

Bella nodded at the young gangster, appreciative that he had the courage to speak his concerns and ask for help he didn't know how to give.  This wasn't going to be easy for anyone.  Least of all it wasn't going to be easy for Giovanni, but it had to be done.

Bella walked Giovanni over towards her car, praying he wouldn't puke all over her baby's interior as she held the door for him.  She then walked around the side towards the driver's door and opened it to get in.  Turning the engine over, she pulled out, her bodyguards in another car somewhere behind them.  

"Why don't you close your eyes... take a little nap.  We're going to drive for about an hour.  We're heading north.  Out of Detroit.  There's a place I own that I don't take many people to.  I want to show it to you.  I think it'll be a good place for our talk.  Just... close your eyes and rest.  The motion of the car might be too much for you otherwise."

The boy was snoring in no time.  She supposed he wasn't sleeping much.  She didn't sleep much after the funeral.  She kept imaging Elias dying every time she closed her eyes.  It left her a mess.  She wouldn't be surprised if Joey had nightmares too.  She told herself, silently, to be ready for anything.  

She was, of course, shocked when she finally arrived at her home in Port Huron and he hadn't awoken.  Only once she turned off the engine, in the middle of the dense forest - looking at her beautiful home on the shores of Lake Huron, did he stir.

"We're here."  She said getting out and walking around to his door.  Opening it for him and helping him up out of the seat, she led Joey to the door and inside.

The home had the feel of a cabin but instead of being free of anything personal - the sort of place you might check into for a weekend holiday - this place was covered floor to ceiling with trinkets and pictures.  Items of all shapes and sizes ... from matchbooks to coffee mugs, from flyers advertising concerts to hand-drawn photos of dozens and dozens of people ... some he knew like Gavin, William, and Aurora... and others he did not.  Every bit of art in the room bore her signature.  She had drawn these fantastic likenesses and one of them probably stood out most to Joey... a portrait of Kenzi at the train station the day they met.

"Well, you're one of the very few people I've ever let see this place.  It's my... well, my home.  My real home.  I keep all my important things here, far away from my business and work in the major cities.  One day, this will be the only thing left of me in this world and I hope that it will bring those I love some joy."

She motioned to the stairs.

"Just at the top of those is a bathroom.  You can shower and shave.  I took the liberty of calling your mother for your sizes before I came.  I figured she'd still know them..."  She chuckled.  "Presuming I'm right, you can shake off some of the hold which the hand of death has on you and we can start the process of bringing you back to the land of the living."

She held up a hand to forestall his protests, "You're in the middle of nowhere.  You were so damn drunk you didn't bring a single bodyguard with you... don't make the mistake of thinking I can't drag your ass up those stairs and bath you like I used to when you were only up to my knees.  Spare yourself the embarrassment and go wash up.  Food and drink will be waiting for you when you're done."

Joey staggered behind Bella and took in the beautiful house seeing pictures of his cousins and uncle Gavin, until his eyes came to a stop as he saw what he felt was a ghost as he saw the portrait of Kenzi. Perfect, nervous, shy and sweet just like the day they met, Joey slowly walked backwards as tears came to his eyes he fell down remembering the girl who even right when he first met her brought him to a loss for words. 

Bella's words finally cut through and even though he was going to argue she stopped the young man dead in his tracks. There were few people on this planet who knew Joey as well as his Aunt Bella. He climbed up the stairs on his hands and feet to stay steady and showered and got cleaned up as much as he could though he decided to keep some of the scruff.

He descended down the stairs significantly more sober and in a suit because even though Bella was the cool aunt she still stuck to some of her old Italian values, Joey rarely wore suits anymore and it felt weird just another reason why he hated Kenzi's funeral. He approached Bella doing everything he could to avoid the picture of Kenzi so as not to break down again. 

The picture of Kenzi was the first thing Bella took down.  She put it into a box.  A gift for later.  

She put down the cup of coffee and the sandwich in front of Joey and sat across from him.  She smiled at how much better he looked already.  "You should know, I've stocked up on food and drinks.  Figure we can make it a week before I have to send the guys for something."  She chuckled.

"I hope this won't take that long though.  As much as I like it here, we both have business to attend to and I know at some point you're going to pretend like you care about all that to get the fuck out of here... so... the faster you're honest with me.  The faster you get back to life such as it is."

She leaned back in her seat.

"I know this is a weird question... especially because I was there for some of it, but I need you to trust me right now.  Trust me as surely as you would trust me were I lancing an infected bullet wound to drain the poison.  I do know what I'm doing here.  Like you, I lost someone I was going to marry.  About your age actually and while I was just setting up as a new Don.  I was a wreck.  Like you.  And like your people, mine covered for me and tried to ignore the worst of what I was going through but I'm not going to like to you Joey... I seriously thought about eating my damn gun back then."

She drew a breath and looked at him.  She wondered if he'd felt that way too.

"But Gavin helped me and I think what he taught me can help you so... I want you to talk to me about Kenzi.  Let's start with how you met... and the first day you spent together.  What you did.  Where you went.  And most importantly... how she made you feel."

Bella knew the boy wouldn't want to talk about any of this... it was exactly what no one wanted to talk with him about right now.  She had her reasons for it though and if she had to, she'd explain it to him.  BUT, she hoped it wouldn't come to that.  Sometimes if you knew how a trick worked... it didn't.

Joey had heard a little about Bella’s lost love from his father but didn’t know much other than they were supposed to be wed when tradgedy struck the young couple and it wasn’t something he’d ever brought up to her. Hearing her reaction to that unfortunate event Joeys head went up a little and he took a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Bella. Before she could unfold it Joey places a hand on hers first and started to speak.

”The first day I met Kenzi was at the train station with you I had no idea what was going on but as usual I was running away from responsibility back home and wanted to get into some trouble, instead I found a beautiful young girl who instantly took away my words. I don’t know what it was about her but I knew something was wrong and I wanted to help and you trusted her it seemed so I felt obligated too. I checked up on her the next day and I had this whole thing I wanted to say to her but when she opened the door I just stumbled on my words and felt childish. Luckily she didn’t laugh or send me off we went to the zoo and I still remember the wonder in her eyes as she saw the animals for the first time and how excited she was to be out and safe, I knew at that point I would do anything for her and I loved her more than life itself.”

Once he finished speaking Joey took his hand off Bella’s to let her read the crumpled up note.

Bella listened and then uncrumpled the note to read it.  She drew a breath and reminded herself she needed to be calm and not a wreck.  He didn't need to be consoling her, in fact, that might cause him to stop talking and that was the last thing she wanted and he needed.

She nodded.

"Her life was better for having known us."  she shook her head, putting the note down on the coffee table before retaking Joey's hands into her own.  "It's so hard to let go of someone so precious.  I know that feeling you're having now.  There is no magic wand that makes it go away.  No fight that kicks your ass hard enough, no lover sweet enough - even if that can be distracting in the moment it often leads to guilt."

She drew a breath and exhaled.  

"Time is the only cure and even that is sorry one.  I wish I could tell you I don't mourn Elias and Will still.  I do.  Maybe not like I once did, but ... I do.  And maybe that's as it should be?  They were good people and their lives, like Kenzi's should be remembered by someone.  If you're not here telling her story... who would be?"

She looked up to the pictures around the room on her walls.  The faces of so many people dead and gone staring back at her, captured at the height of their happiness in graphite and paper.

"At times I find myself still thinking it's a terrible burden, surviving when those you love go away.  And it is."  She nodded.  "But people who speak about many of the faces on these walls - they tell only the stories of how they died, not how they lived.  People who loved the dead, they speak about how they lived.  Not how they died.  And that's your challenge.  You need watch for that moment when you can stop holding onto how she died and focus more on the girl you met in the train station, the one who lit up at the sight of animals in the zoo.  You need to live so no one ever forgets her Joey.  She lives in you now and the only way her story is remembered is if you tell it so often that others remember it too."

"Maybe cause a little hell in her honor.  Fuck... do you know how good something as stupid as riding down to the Detroit zoo with your crew would feel?"  S

She smirked.  "Some asshole kept Kenzi and her friends in chains and cages too... and Kenzi loved those animals."  

She shrugged.

"Can you imagine the coppers running all over town to catch animals loosed from the zoo and what you could get away with in the meantime?  Hell, do it in another city if you like.  Not Philly." 

She gave him a wink. 

"But you know that girl would look down from Heaven and laugh at all those beautiful animals turned free and given their chance to live as they should.  And she'd smile at you... you and your men, making good on the backs of such a sweet act.  THAT is the sort of way she would want you living.  As the outlaw you are, celebrating her life, not building a monument to her death.  She was a bright brilliant bit of sunshine in a dark ass world... death isn't how you should honor her life.  LIVING is how you should honor her.  Living as free as you can, with a heart wide open.  Taking chances just like she did, laughing quick and easy..."

A bit of emotion could be heard in her tone.  She pulled him into an embrace.

"Talking about the good things hurts right now, but it's like bleeding poison from a wound... it gets the grief out.  Gets you back to where you want to be... remembering the good.  You'll miss her, but it won't feel like swallowing glass forever, sweetie.  I swear it to you."

She held him for a time, for as long as he needed, before eventually bringing herself to ask, "Have you talked with Don Mastrosimone since it happened?  I think, maybe, you and he could do something to honor her life - together.  It could be helpful to you both.  I have it on good account from a little bird that her death hit him very hard as well.  Much harder than even I realized."

Joey nodded fighting back the tears, he wouldn't break down again not right now. Bella was right though, people depended on Joey and he needed to get back to the world whether he wanted to or not. He held on to Bella like he was grasping at his very life, heart, and soul. He trembled as he slowly broke away before speaking again.

"Aunt Bella I need a job or something, you want me out of this mess and to come back to the living give me a job, give me something where I can get some of this pain and anger out. I don't care what it is just something to do where I don't have to plan it so my own issues don't cloud me and fuck things up! The only thing I ask is no partner.......I'm beyond scared to lose someone else..... first Rayne.....then Kenzi......."

The boy stood up slowly and god some food and awaited if he would indeed get a job from Bella like the good ol days.

Bella sighed.

"No amount of blood, no job well-done is going to make you feel better for more than just a moment."  she looked at him with empathy, but then, something alit in her eyes.  A thought.  It wasn't a good thought.  It was a bad thought and yet... it was a bad thing for a good reason.  Maybe for everyone involved.

Did she dare?

"You know though... maybe it is best you figure that out for yourself.  Get some of this out of your system.  I could give you a job, but your mother would never forgive me for putting her little bambino in harm's way while your head is in this place.  Of course, I could probably get away with it if you'd accept some help... maybe from my own child?"

She tilted her head to the side, "Would you be willing to do a job with Aurora?  I've recently taken her on as an associate in my crew and it would be just the sort of work she's always begging me to let her do..."

Joey's head tilted and his brows frowned at the mention of help, did he really look like he couldn't handle himself anymore? But that was nothing compared to how far those eyebrows shot up at the mention of....Aurora?!?! His cousin?! What was Bella's angle here, he knew it wasn't sinister to either of them but she definitely had a plan if she was sending her along with him. Aurora and Joey were relatively close in age, grew up together and had always been fairly close.

"Aurora? My cousin your Daughter Aurora? Now what kind of job would this be that you would even feel remotely comfortable sending Roe with me" 

Joey referred to Aurora by his nickname for her since they were kids as he almost never referred to her as Aurora even though it still kinda drove her nuts that he still called her that. 

Bella crossed one leg over her other.  "Well, while you and your family were up here in Detroit building yourselves a nice little empire... Aurora has grown up and acquired a great many of her father's talents.  That is to say... and I know you're not likely to accept this easily... but your cousin, she's an assassin."

Bella shook her head, "I know... I know... you probably have questions but I think it's best the two of you discuss them together.  I want you to fly to Philadelphia.  You can meet up with her and take my plane to out to LA.  I have a small headache who fled to the west coast to try and escape my reach... I want you to make sure that everyone knows that it's not so easy to fuck me over and get away with it."

She arched an eyebrow, "Before I get into the details... are you SURE you're up for this?  It could take you a few days to track him down and it could get very messy."

"I....she....what?! Roe?"

Joey's face was a mixture of shock and disbelief as he heard about his favorite little cousin.

"Little Roe is an assassin? I'm not sure if you're saying this to cheer me up and give me a laugh or if you're serious but either way I'll baby sit my little cousin, where do I meet her and does she know about this already? You know I'm more than comfortable being muscle and tracking down to take care of people, I'll take care of your headache have I ever failed you yet Bella? Do you have some supplies I can grab so I can head out to meet with Roe?" 

"Well... you might want to watch it with those Little Roe comments.  These days she's very resentful of anyone reminding her of how young she really is.  And, I fear she's going through some things of her own.  You might end up on the wrong side of her knives if you poke our little lioness too much."

She shakes her head.

"Aurora doesn't know.  In fact, I'll have to have someone give her the details.  I'll call Gavin.  He knows what she'll need to know.  The target's name is Ray Chavez.  He's got ties with the Mexican Cartels.  He ran off with a LOT of money and product.  That money should have helped me launch a crew ... instead, I had to take a loan to make things happen.  I'm not proud of it, but there it is.  Mr. Chavez, or Razor as some call him, thinks he can hide out with his old friends back in the 'hood where he grew up.  Likely the locals won't want to give him up and you and Aurora will stand out among them - but I know you can handle it."

She crosses her arms in front of her chest, "Gavin has a dossier about Ray he can give to you.  Get your things, take a flight to Philly, and go to Hollowood.  Aurora, the dossier and my plane will be waiting for you there.  Me... I have some business to finish up here in Detroit and it make take a day or so before I can return home."