And even in high school, I knew why the unbeatable lure of Benny Bianchi was beatable for me.

My half-Italian, half-Irish father had a kid—my brother, Dino—from some chick he knocked up before he knocked up my mother with me.

Enzo Concetti, my dad, was hot (still). He was rough. He was crazy. He was adventure-seeking. And he got a kick out of my ma. So after he knocked her up, he took her ball and chain and they enjoyed themselves immensely for the next five years. I knew this because Ma squeezed out both my sisters, Catarina and Natalia, and my baby brother, Enzo Junior, in that time.

Unfortunately, as time went by with marriage and family in the mix, neither Dad nor Ma stopped being crazy or thinking life was about having a really f**king great time as often as you could get it, and if life didn’t give it to you, you made it. The drag of a family and a spouse was just that: a drag.

So things went as they were bound to go when my parents were faced with something like responsibility, which, no getting away from it (though they tried), kids were. It got ugly and my parents weren’t about ugly. They also weren’t about fixing things that were broken, even if those things were important. And, being how they were, they didn’t let it stay ugly for long before they bailed.

Dad never got remarried. Dad spent the next decades doing what he liked most: having a great time. Dad was currently fifty-six and living with his latest piece, who was four years older than me.

Ma did get remarried, three more times. All of them had been to good guys that I liked. All of them had failed because those guys were good guys who eventually wanted to settle down, or who were settled and thought they could have fun with Ma for a while and then settle her down. When they failed, they bailed. Or, more to the point, she bailed or made it so they had no choice but to do the same. She was currently living in Florida and had a rock on her finger, setting up plans to get hitched to number five.

This was obviously not conducive to a stable childhood home. Ma and Dad got along, yucked it up when they were together, and it was not unusual in times when they both were unattached (or even times when they were) when we woke up to Ma at Dad’s house or Dad at Ma’s, seeing as they frequently hooked up for a trip down memory lane.

During all this, they did not have a formal custody agreement.

Well, actually, they did. They just didn’t adhere to it. They went with their flow. Therefore, we were bounced from one to the other, to aunts, uncles, grandparents, boyfriends, girlfriends, wherever they were or whenever they needed to be quit of us, all of this at random. When we got older, we just went wherever we wanted. They didn’t really care, as long as we eventually came home breathing.

Through this, I’d developed a deep jealousy I never told a single soul about toward my brother Dino. His mom got her shit together, got married to a stand-up guy, gave Dino a brother and sister, a lot of love, a solid family, and a good home.

So by the time I hit high school, I knew that was what I wanted. I didn’t want a guy out for a good time with the mission to get laid and drunk as often as he could, participating in the parking lot fist fights and bar brawls that came along the way.

I wanted a solid family. I wanted to be part of building a good home. After that, I wanted to spend my energy making it stay good.

How that led me to Vinnie, I had no idea, except for the fact that Ma’s eye eventually turned to him for me.

And Vinnie was a Bianchi.

Vinnie was good-looking. Vinnie was loud. Vinnie was the life of any party. Vinnie never met anyone he didn’t like. That was, unless you rubbed him the wrong way. Then he didn’t have any problem letting you know you did and acting on it if he felt that kind of attention was deserved.

Vinnie had one life plan: to live large. He just didn’t know how to get that.

So he saw a good thing—the thriving success of his father’s restaurant—and tried to convince Vinnie Senior into franchising the pizzeria, telling his father it would make them millionaires.

That didn’t go over too good. Vinnie Senior was vehemently against it, feeling Vinnie’s Pizzeria was about quality and tradition, both of which would no doubt get lost in an attempt at nationwide franchising. Vinnie Senior went so far as to be disappointed (openly) that his son didn’t get that and would even suggest franchising.

In order to show his father, Vinnie Junior washed his hands of the pizzeria and opened his own sandwich business. He had no idea what he was doing, even though I told him he should learn before he dumped his time and limited money into that kind of thing. In the end, unsurprisingly, it failed.

A dozen other schemes, all half-baked, either died an ugly death or never left the starting gate.

Enter Sal and his business, something that Vinnie took to with scary ease, something I should have read as what it was when it happened.

Through all this, the Bianchis cast their eyes to me as the woman behind the man pushing Vinnie to do stupid shit in order to hand her the world. They didn’t judge outright. They didn’t say shit. But as time went on, I felt the blame I didn’t deserve.

I didn’t say a word.

I didn’t say a word because I loved their pizzeria. I loved what it represented. The solidity of their family. Their history. Their loyalty. Their teasing. Their warmth with each other. Their spice when one of them would get pissed, but it was okay because it was based in love and loyalty and it felt good to be around, rather than shaky and dysfunctional.

So I held on when I knew I should’ve let go. I held on thinking that Vinnie would eventually get his head out of his ass and give me what I wanted. I held on because I loved being a part of the Bianchis, something I always wanted.

And I held on because I loved Vinnie. He was loud and loved life and I understood that. I’d lived it with my parents. I felt comfortable there, even though I knew it was dangerous.

I held on.

Then there was nothing to hold on to.

I was too young to recognize I’d found my father.

I also had no clue at the time that I’d picked the wrong brother. I had no clue I’d be forced to watch from up close, and then afar, as Benny started to settle down.

First, he quit his job in construction and went to work at the pizzeria. This meant he stopped carousing at night because he was working at night.

Then he bought that house.

A row house in the middle of the row, built up from the sidewalk. Front stoop. Back stoop. Nonexistent front yard. Backyard big enough to play catch in and house a two-car garage and another spot for family parking. There were four bedrooms in all the other houses, but Benny’s was three, with a converted master bath. Living room/dining room up front. Kitchen, den, utility room in the back. Small powder room downstairs. Family bathroom upstairs.