Under the Corporate Ladder

June 10, Wednesday, 2109, Nueva York

“I don’t want to be like him.” 

Those were the words he said that made it all so much easier. 

She had been the one to pick him up from school again. The school was already used to just calling her instead of their parents. Thank God they never tried to call Maria. Or maybe they did at one point, but her twin sister was too busy on her trip with her tenth boyfriend to bother answering. 

The walk to her apartment was silent as she gazed down at him. He kept his eyes of two different browns down to look at the sidewalk. She frowned before moving closer to place a soft hand on his shoulder. 

She didn’t know if he was talking about their father or their older brother, but she didn’t want him to turn out like either of them either. It wasn’t such a hard choice, after all. 

A prideful scumbag that got his own family killed or dead because of the former. Of course, she wouldn’t want him to be.

But most of all, she wanted him to be happy. 

He was only eleven, and she could see the heavy toll on his shoulders. He was already trying to live up to the standards their brother had left behind—the same standards their father had imposed on their brother, to begin with. Her gaze went forward, and her own brown eyes scrunched up. 

“… Robert and Sabine are going on business trips soon,” she said after a moment more of silence. She still refused to call their parents ‘papi’ and ‘mamma.’

“You mean they’re going to meet their new affairs they haven’t told the other about?”

She mentally winced at that. Sometimes she liked to forget that he was an observant kid. 

“You’re going to be staying with me for a while longer.” 

She hated they were used to this pattern. She hated that her baby brother was smiling at the thought of living with her for months more. 

She hated that this was their normal. 

But it made the plan easier.

Once they got to her apartment, she went through a list of priorities. She had already been trying to practice making cremafrittas earlier, so she had no problem leaving the platter out for him as he focused on his math. The second thing to do was to get to work on the plan. 

First part of the plan, she needed to take care of the entire living situation.

Her apartment wasn’t much, despite how well off their family was. She’d never been offered any financial help from their parents, and anything their grandparents left her, she had used to pay off her student loans. In some small blessing, it had left her some freedom in how and where she could live. However, her apartment had been rented before she had been the one most responsible for a child, even if not technically her own.

It was a one-bedroom apartment, with a small, closet-sized ‘home office,’ if the side room across from the bathroom could really be called that. It barely fitted a love seat and a shelf in there. A young boy needed his own room, and she couldn’t keep sleeping on the couch. So she’d need to find a better apartment. 

Which also meant finding another job. This apartment alone was charging her rent of thousands per month, not even mentioning the cost of feeding, clothing, school fees, extracurricular activities, transportation, or how he already was on her healthcare insurance, or even the costs to any of that applied to herself or the legal fees she’d eventually need for when their parents would come back.

Needless to say, she’d need something that’d pay more. 

As she went through the various windows on her hologram screen, sitting on the couch next to the boy, she eyed the pay she’d best get with her education. 

It was almost funny how useful her young self’s desperation for any acknowledgment from her parents was now. She hadn’t gone to any of the grander universities, but she had come out of her education with two degrees. The only reason she settled for an office position after university had been that she’d be just a face in a crowd. Anyone who’d known her father wouldn’t so easily make the connection between him and her, even if they’d put two and two together with her last name. 

Her dark honey-brown eyes glanced up and down the list of jobs she was applying to, careful to note locations she’d have to look around. 

“You like your school, ‘Voletto?” she asked, pulling up a window to check around the maps of the city. Nueva York was large. If a job was too far and the best housing wasn’t in the district, that’d be an issue. Then again, it’d be wise to put him in another school to not have anyone else try to collect him once all the forms were ready.

He answered with a simple shrug, attention still on his homework. 

“It’s not bad. It would probably be better without the goons watching in the parking lot.” 

She paused at that. 

“… Goons?” Please let it be him recognizing them from their father’s work.

“Yeah. I think they work for whoever Papa pissed off this month. They had these weird purple vests. Who wears such obvious-looking purple when you’re watching a school? That’s stupid. It’s not like Papa’s here to take notice of them either if he’s still out of the city.” 

…

Well, shock.

“Can they be red? Like a laser?” 

She chuckled at his question as she looked through the many boxes for a color to start with. These store-bought contacts weren’t really what she’d think best, but it’d be a good start to see which color would look best with him. She severely doubted she’d ever find the exact shade of brown either of his eyes were. Curse heterochromia, it made staying low so much more difficult. 

She certainly wouldn’t need them, but it’d be safe to try out after they got him properly unrecognizable since he was the one being watched. 

“The idea is to make you blend into a crowd easier,” she pointed out as she helped him with the drops. She kicked the small trash bin to be next to the stool. No doubt they were going to go through a lot of drop-lenses while they searched for the best color.

“So no pink either? Jammit…” 

“Hey! What I tell you about speaking like that?” 

She was met with a pout before he winced as the contact drop landed on his darker eye. 

“We’re starting with blue.” 

“I don’t want blue. Papa has blue eyes.” 

“Which is why we’re starting with it,” she smiled, quickly using a napkin to wipe away the welled-up tears from the eye. It’d do no good if they couldn’t see the color in full while the lens formed. “Gets it out of the way. Besides. I only got the one blue the store had left.” 

As the color came to its full hue and the lense was finished fitting to his eye, she made a face at how light it was. 

“It sucks, doesn’t it?” He muttered, keeping his face looking up at the ceiling with furrowed eyes.

“Oh yeah, totally,” she tsked as she helped take the fully formed contact lense out. “You got a darker skin tone than I do, so when we get to hair colors, it’ll be even more fun,” she added with a roll of her eyes.

His nose crinkled at the thought.

“Can’t I just wear a wig?” 

“Not unless you want it to fall off during P.E. or someone decides they want to mess with it. Though I do have a few from Serena so that we can see what color would look best.” 

“… Right…” he glanced to the side before grunting when she directed his face to look back up for the next color try. She had taken one hazel now, a brown-green combo according to the box. She already decided any true green was out of the question. Blue was popular, but green stood out the most. Besides, it’d be difficult to find a suitable one that didn’t look artificial. 

It didn’t look too bad… She pulled up a mirror for him to look at, get his opinion. 

A tilt of the head and a thumb not quite all the way up. A contender, but not a first choice. The box went onto the nearby counter.

Hazel amber. Same reaction. 

A light hazel, just nearly the same as his lighter eye. A thumbs up.

A blue-green hazel. Thumbs down.

Gray hazel. Thumbs down.

Both of the two grays she had grabbed were given the thumbs down too.

A nearly black sort of brown was given a thumbs down.

Deep amber. A thumbs up. 

Light amber. She didn’t even let him see it in the mirror. The box went straight into the trash.

A few brown-amber mixes. Most got a thumbs up. 

The boxes of the approved eye colors piled up slowly as she switched between which eye she’d put the try out colors in. It’d do no good if the same eye kept having a lense form over it repeatedly. She was on one amber when he seemed to stare at her a bit more intently, his brows knitted together in just the way she recognized from when he was thinking hard on a problem from his homework.

“If you already have a preference now, ‘Voletto, I’d suggest saying it now. It’d spare your eyes from more of these contacts,” she teased, lightly bopping his nose as she pulled back a bit.

“Did you ever think about doing this?” One of her thick brows raised at the question.

“Do what?” 

“Disguising yourself. Hide away from it all. Did you ever think about doing that? Before… me?” 

Her hands lowered briefly as her gaze fell to watching his face. The way he looked so unsure, the way his eyes had that slight square shape with a slant and his still round, childish-shaped cheeks and jaw sloped into the beginnings of a square chin, his wavy hair… there was a lot she saw in him, a lot that her father, their father, was so blind to, a lot that their mother never even considered observing. The messy, wavy locks of a dark brown with flecks of red and copper were neither exactly like the copper browns of their mother nor the deep, dark auburn that could be mistaken as black that was their father’s. If she tried to imagine how he’d look older, she was sure he’d be more square in the face than the chiseled narrow their older brother had inherited from their father. His lips were shaped the same way their sisters were. He didn’t have the same olive skin of their mother nor the sun-kissed tan of their father, but the in-between that was so much like their eldest sister. His nose, still soft in its bridge, was also showing signs of being the straight upturn one lost sister had.

And it hurt to be reminded of the loss when looking at him like this. 

Their father was so focused on replacing Alexander that all he focused on was the wavy locks her brothers shared alike. Their mother barely looked twice the moment the doctors said her last baby was a boy. 

But her? 

She saw bits of Serena, the sister who got out but saved no one else. She saw Alexander; the brother who had been determined to be the pride of the family, only to pay the price for it. She saw Irene, the sister who never got the chance to achieve her dreams despite being so close. She saw Maria, her twin, who got what was wanted but left with nothing she needed. And in those mismatched eyes, she saw the boy in front of her who was forced to grow up too fast already, left with barely enough knowledge to know what he actually wanted yet enough to know what he didn’t want.

“Sorrellona?” his words barely reached her ears, reminding her he had indeed asked her a question.

“… Sometimes,” she admitted quietly. “Sometimes, patatino.” She brushed back a strand of his hair before taking in a deep breath and dropping the next color into his eye. There was a pause as she waited for the lens to form before stepping back to let him look in the mirror. “Now, what do you think?”

It was another amber brown, not quite deep but not light either. She supposed in the right light, it would look reddish, though not what he’d asked earlier. The box had listed the color as ‘cognac,’ but they hadn’t come out as bright as the label might have implied. Instead, it was softer, more like… an apple glazed in honey, she supposed, if she were to really compare it to something. 

She watched him kick his legs, eyes on the mirror before he smiled softly. 

“This. This is the color. This is the color for my eyes, Jay.”

She smiled, pleased at the brightness that illuminated the boy’s face, even if she was wincing inside. 

That color was going to be a pain to find a hair shade for.

One month later...

“Lyla, any reports and visuals?” His hands moved the holographic screens around, looking over the various fights and confrontations on each before looking to the next. 

“No new anomalies, Miguel! As for in-universe news, Green Goblin’s back from abroad and had a confrontation with some robbers, all taken care of. Flipside’s still off-grid. Vulture’s goons have seemed to be more active lately, but are still on their turf.”

“Make a note on that.”

“Done and done!” 

“Anything else?” 

“Ah, what’s the magic word?” 

“Lyla…” 

“Not quite, but I’ll take it! Hmmm. Looks like there’s a new child missing report made recently.”

Red eyes glanced toward the screen that was pulled up. He squinted at the name displayed. 

“Borrello… any previous records? Events involved? I need information, Lyla.” 

Before he even finished his sentence, more screens were popping up. 

“Results for universe 928B are the following; One of the remaining mafia bosses still existing in our time, though it should be noted last sighting pin Robert Borrello on the European continent currently. There was a drive-by involving an Alexander and Irene Borrello, twins, approximately eleven, nearly twelve, years ago. No canon events seem to be tied to either. Past results are an old governor back in the 2020s of old New York state, another Italian-American criminal involved with a crime family belonging to the old Five, and-”

“Enough. Send me the details of the case to the goober. Who reported it, any other details about the kid, normal schedules, any there is.” 

“Ah, what’s the magic word, Miguel?” 

“LYLA!” 

“Not this time!~~”