The death of the senior Waynes has spurred the wealthy and powerful of Gotham to more philanthropic pursuits, and it was felt in no place more than in The Narrows. Laws which affected positive social change were fast tracked through the legal system, and the throngs of people living on the streets diminished as large and relatively well built condominiums rose like sunflowers, their faces determinedly facing toward the sun of a brighter day.
While most of the parts of The Narrows were benefited by the surge of goodwill, the restaurant "Carmine's" had suffered a famine of customers, and Giulietta Falcone had started to take in the laundry of her neighbors in order to keep her fast-growing daughter in her required uniform for school. Giulietta soon learned what it was to take charity, as the housewives surrounding the small restaurant and overhead home sent over dresses to be cleaned and recleaned, shirts with stains that couldn't possibly have been put there by accident, and undergarments that, at the customers' insistence, could still be saved from becoming rags. Giulietta had the magic touch with clothes, the women proclaimed, and they went only to her in a show of quiet gratitude and sympathy in her unfortunate choice of husband.
Things were different everywhere for Rosalie, it seemed. The practice that she had had when she was very young of spurning the favoritism of her teachers was now useful, as no instructor at her private school continued to show it. It seemed as if she and Rachel had changed places – now, Rachel was the only connection to the heir to the entire Wayne fortune; now, Rosalie was the daughter of a man who had for years committed heinous crimes. It was difficult for both of them to no longer have the support that a friend could provide.
It was Rachel who extended the olive branch in the summer before their fifth grade year. Rosalie was a tall and gawky twelve, tripping over shoes that were bought for practicality, not comfort. She had been sitting on a swing, twirling and untwirling in the seat, when she felt a pair of small hands at her back.
"Rosie?" an equally small voice said from behind her.
It was just a quick look into each others' eyes, and the best friend collided together, throwing their arms around each other.
"I missed you so much!" Rachel said through a veil of tears.
"You had Bruce to play with though, didn't you?" Rosalie grimaced at the memory of the squat boy with the broken arm.
"Yeah but… he's a boy!" Rachel wrinkled her nose, and Rosalie nodded in understanding. Boys, they had recently come to realize, were the most incredibly stupid beings on the planet and should be avoided at all costs.
They both looked up then, to see a policeman walking past the iron gate that ran the perimeter of the playground.
"I don't see them very often anymore," Rosalie stated as he went out of sight. "I guess they don't like coming here."
In fact, the police force and other fair weather do-gooders had begun to disappear from The Narrows. Rosalie had made a game of counting them out of her bedroom window. At first, there had been more than she could keep track of, but as she eased into teenagerdom, Rosalie Falcone noticed that she could count the number of policemen protecting the area around Carmine's on one hand.
There was one man that was always there, though, even if he was the sole officer for a week running. He was a tall, lean man, with closely cropped hair and a small mustache sprouting from his upper lip. He wore square-rimmed glasses that he would often take off to polish on his dark blue policeman's shirt, and his mouth was always set in a grim line. It seemed to Rosalie that he knew that the time for goodness was coming to an end – he frequently came during the day, speaking politely to the families who lived around the restaurant Carmine's, even giving free safety inspection tours of any living space that he was asked to. He always pointed out a weak spot – a window that never quite shut here, a door with a jammed lock there. By the time she was thirteen, that officer was the only one still coming to The Narrows.
Rosalie couldn't have known it then, but he was preparing for the return of Carmine Falcone.
ooooo
Carmine Falcone, by anyone's standards, was a very evil man. There wasn't a commodity that he didn't deal in – drugs, alcohol, weapons, sex trafficking… the man knew every kind of shady business, and did them all with a ruthless precision that even his enemies had to admire. It was, after all, this same ruthlessness that caused him to become the most feared and notorious mob boss in the city of Gotham.
In jail for embezzlement, Carmine Falcone was put on parole after eight years, which was, in his opinion, much too long. The first thing he planned on doing after being set free from prison was to ensure that he never had to go back there. It would take some time to set things in Gotham back to the way they were before the Wayne murders, but Carmine Falcone was nothing if not patient.
He arrived back at the restaurant he had founded for making business deals late in the afternoon. Rosalie was home from school, and was in the living room doing her homework. Giulietta was also there, her huge ironing board out and the iron steaming, folding clothes carefully on the creases. Occasionally, she would help Rosalie with an especially hard arithmetic problem, but she suddenly stopped in the middle of an answer, hearing something Rosalie did not.
"Dio mio!" Giulietta whispered harshly. "Rosalie, take the clothes. He cannot see me working!"
Rosalie grabbed the clothes from a nearby chair and ran into her room, stashing them under the bed. Only then did she hear what she knew her mother had – the tapping of well-made shoes on a wooden floor. The wooden floor of the restaurant downstairs.
Carmine walked in the front door like he had never been gone, his beady eyes looking out of his face, red from exertion, as he surveyed the almost-empty restaurant. One waiter was bending down to give an order to a customer, and another was pushing past the swinging doors into the kitchen, his order pad secure in his belt. A bus boy walked straight past Carmine, carrying a tray piled high with dirty dishes.
Suddenly, Carmine stuck out his foot, and the busboy fell to the ground, the dishes skittering over the floor, broken glass shattering everywhere. Horrified, the teenaged busboy looked up at Carmine, who glanced down, and then smiled widely.
"I'm back," he shouted, his deep voice rumbling over the sounds of clinking cutlery and jostled ice. Carmine spread his arms out as if to embrace the entire restaurant, and from the few people sitting down, a cheer rose.
"Now, where is my family? Where is my beautiful wife and my little princess?"
Through the floorboards, Rosalie heard her father shouting and glanced over at her mother. She hardly looked up to the task of being a "beautiful wife," and was her father really expecting her to look and act like a "little princess" when she hadn't seen him since she was five years old? She'd known Bruce Wayne longer!
Her mouth set in a rebellious line, Rosalie stamped down the stairs before Giulietta could stop her.
"I'm hardly a little princess anymore," she said with acid in her voice, staring up at the man who wasn't much taller than her, placing her hands firmly on her hips. "And I don't think…"
Carmine cut her off with a gust of laughter. "Turned into a little spitfire, haven't you? You're going to grow up to look just like your mother, you are. Thank the Lord," he added, "'cause God knows my looks wouldn't suit a girl any!"
There was more uproarious laughter from the patrons in the restaurant, but Rosalie stared at her father, her mouth in a hard line.
"Aw, come on now, where's a smile for your daddy?" Carmine teased, and leant down to pinch his daughter's cheek.
"It's probably gone the same way as the broken dishes," Rosalie snapped, looking over her father's shoulder to the busboy who was still on the ground, starting to try and clean up some of the mess of the smashed utensils.
Carmine's smile suddenly flattened, and his face went from jolly to menacing. "Look here, kid. There's a fine line between spitfire and disrespect, and you're walking it."
Rosalie wasn't sure where she got the courage to speak to her father like this – she had always been deathly afraid of him when hearing stories about him. Perhaps it was seeing her mother change from a confident woman to a huddled mess when she heard his voice, or maybe it was how he so carelessly made the busboy crash to the floor. Whatever the trigger was, though, thirteen-year-old Rosalie Falcone made a choice standing there in front of that man that she was never going to be scared of him again.
"I'd say I've gone straight to disrespect, actually," she hissed.
Silence coated the restaurant like a thick marinara, and Carmine Falcone stared down at the gawky girl standing not two feet away from him.
"I'd say," he said softly, "that you'd better get out of my sight before I do something I regret, Rosalie."
She would have stood there forever if it had not been for the faint tug at her school uniform's sleeve. Turning around sharply, Rosalie met the face of Angelo the cook, and before she could respond he took her by the arms and half walked, half dragged her to the kitchen.
Before the kitchen door swung shut, Rosalie looked back at her father straight in the eyes. And she knew that Thomas Wayne, wherever he was, would have been proud of her.
ooooo
"C'mon kiddo, let's get you something to eat," Angelo bustled around the kitchen, lifting pasta out of boiling pans of water and setting fresh batches in. With one hand he stirred some alfredo sauce, and with another, began sorting some risotto out for lasagna.
"You've got some mouth on you, kid," he said as he finally stopped moving around to sit down across the table from Rosalie. "But I think you'd better watch out how you use it around your father."
"I'm not afraid of him," Rosalie said vehemently.
"That's the point," Angelo sighed. "You're not afraid. But he can make you afraid, little Rosie, there are so many ways he can make you afraid." Angelo took off his white chef's hat and ran his fingers through his blond hair. "So let's not just make him do that, okay kiddo?"
Rosalie opened her mouth, then nodded sullenly.
"Great," Angelo sprang up again, grabbing a plate and spreading some marinara over its contents. "Here, your favorite," he said, placing it on the table in front of Rosalie. "Ooh, wait honey, don't put your plate on the table like that, here, use a placemat," Angelo added, lifting the plate up again and placing a newspaper under it. "Go on, dig in."
Rosalie looked down to take a forkful of food, then gasped as she saw the picture above the fold.
A sullen Bruce Wayne looked up at me, his arms crossed, his mouth pressed grimly shut. Alfred stood beside him, an arm on Bruce's shoulder. The caption under the picture read : "Fourteen-year-old Bruce Wayne, heir to the Wayne company and fortune, pictured here with servant at his parent's grave. Yesterday was the seventh anniversary of his parents' deaths."
Rosalie looked at the picture again. Bruce had grown from the small, squat boy he had been at seven, stretching out till he met Alfred's elbow. His chubby face was lengthened, his dark hair was shaggy. He was wearing a black suit with a tie that seemed overlong for him, and with a shock of recognition, she placed it as Thomas Wayne's tie, the tie he had been wearing when he drove Giulietta and Roaslie to the train station seven years ago. Rosalie let her fingers stray over the tie, remembering the man…
You can't help where you're born, but you can help where your path takes you from there.
Thinking of Thomas Wayne, Rosalie knew then hearing the sound of her father's harsh laughter from the dining room, and knowing her mother was upstairs, huddled in a chair, that she had no intention of following her father's path in life.
"Il mio percorso," Rosalie whispered out loud. My own path.
"What was that, Rosie?" Angelo's booming voice came from over the stove.
"Nothing – nothing at all," Rosalie responded as she curled her fist over the picture of the grieving Bruce Wayne.
