Chapter 31 Cesare
The taxi hit a pothole, and I was jostled against the door. In the front seat, the driver glanced back as if expecting me to be upset, but I wasn’t. Honestly, I didn’t feel anything at all but… drunk.
I pulled out my phone. Rafael had left at least twenty more text messages and had called me five times. I hadn’t answered. The last text was the one that had done the most damage.
Rafael: I’m worried about you… Please come home.
It sounded so sincere. As if he gave a fuck about me when I knew he didn’t.
That was the price of the life I lived. No one ever really gave a fuck.
They used me. They toyed with me. And at the end of the day?
I was still going home, alone, to a place where no one cared if I never woke up the next day.
That was my reality. It was the only one that mattered.
My thumb swiped over the screen as I exited back out into the other text messages. Blake’s name popped up, and I clicked on it.
Blake: How can you keep doing this?
My chest tightened. I had no idea what he was talking about, and for once, I couldn’t play it cool. My fingers tapped across the screen.
Cesare: Doing what? I haven’t done anything lately.
The dots appeared on the screen and then disappeared. My breath held when they popped back up again, and he started typing.
Blake: You’re not doing anything?
Blake: For real? Nothing?
Cesare: What exactly am I being accused of?
Blake: We’ve been having some issues with the kids…
I stared at my phone. The kids? What kids? It clicked into place in my cloudy brain that he was talking about the family kids. All the ones they’d started families with. I frowned.
He thinks I had something to do with their kids? I don’t fucking mess with children.
Cesare: Whatever issues you’re having ain’t because of me. I have never put a child in danger directly. Never. I don’t know what bullshit Benito is filling your head with, but you are barking up the wrong goddamn tree. I wouldn’t mess with kids. Ever.
I stared angrily at the screen. What the hell were they trying to accuse me of? Nothing I aimed their way could hurt any of those kids unless it was maybe getting one less toy the next time Christmas came around because I’d fucked up the parents money.
Cesare: Blake, do you really think I would pull that shit?
The bubbles danced and then died. That broke me. It meant on some level, yeah, he thought I was capable of it. And he wasn’t sure if I was telling the truth or not. My stomach tightened. Blake had been the last son that didn’t hate me, and now I was pretty sure he was well on his way.
Good. Let them keep their distance. They have their own lives to live. That’s the way things go.
I told myself it was strength. That they didn’t need me anymore, not in that way at least. Not for comfort and hand holding. But I kept the business alive. I gave them the world.
Sighing, I pushed my fingers through my hair. “They all think I’m a shit dad.”
The driver glanced back at me. “Kid trouble?”
I stiffened. Normally, I would tell him to fuck off, but I wasn’t in the telling someone to fuck off mood. Instead, I nodded once.
“Yeah,” I said, my words dipping into one another from the drinks. “My boys. I have five of them.”
He whistled. “That’s a lot of boys.”
“Apprently it’s all I make,” I grunted. “I wanted a girl, always hoped for one. Daddy’s princess, you know?
Never got one.” I stared out the window.
“They all think I’m a piece of shit, but let me tell you something, I was good to those boys.
I clothed them, fed them, bathed them. They wanted for nothing. Not a damn thing.”
The driver nodded. “So what went wrong?”
I shrugged. “I’m a dick,” I said. “I was always hard on them, but that’s because I knew life would be harder.
If they could survive me? They could survive anything.
” I shook my head. “I taught them to fight, to succeed. Never put my hands on them. Ever. Not once,” I said.
“Unless we were sparring. Which was better than what my old man gave me.”
“Shit,” the driver called back. "That's rough. But maybe they’ll come around?”
“Nah,” I said as I lit a cigarette and rolled the window down a bit. “We’re well past that by now.” I inhaled sharply and exhaled with smoke curling from my nose. “They’re never going to see eye to eye with me. They don’t want to.”
“Never say never, man,” the guy called back. “A lot of times, we think something’s over when it’s not. You should talk to them.”
Goddamn. That was the third person who said I should call my sons. Didn’t they get it? I had no idea what I would say to them anymore. They were already where they were. They hated me. What more was there to say?
The taxi pulled up to my building. For a long while, I stared up at it, my eyes on the penthouse with its lights glowing even from here, where I knew Rafael was. Where I knew this was all about to be over.
“Keep the change,” I muttered, shoving a hundred toward him. I paused. “Thanks.”
Nothing loosened the knot in my chest. There was no happy ending where everything worked out for me.
I’d seen those signs when my boys were still…
boys. When they looked up at me like I mattered.
Like I might be something to them other than an old fucking bastard that couldn’t quit. Because quitting meant death.
And I wasn’t ready to go yet. I couldn’t go. I might never fix things with them, but at least I could still be part of their lives even if they thought I was scum.
The elevator rose through the floors. I caught a glimpse of myself in the silver doorways.
Shit. I just looked old. Like the world sat on my shoulders and I didn’t have anything but what I clung too.
But wasn’t that the truth? I had nothing without the life that I had fought and clawed for.
I had nothing but the career that I had bled for until there was nothing left and then still, I drug myself back to my feet, and I fought.
For them. For me. For everything. I pushed my fingers through my hair and sucked in a breath that sounded entirely too close to shuddering.
I didn’t fucking cry. I wasn’t going to do it. I wasn’t.
The bell dinged, and I stepped off into my home.
It smelled like warmth. Like a home. The smell of food cooking, the tinny sound of the TV, the high-pitched meow of the kitten I’d stumbled home with.
It almost felt normal. But it was a lie.
All of it was a lie. I’d replaced the silence with bullshit, and then I was surprised when the bullshit smelled bad.
“Old fool.”
“Cesare?”
I glanced toward that voice. Rafael was still mid-step, but he stopped when he saw me.
His eyes softened before he took another step toward me.
I held up a hand. There was so much I thought I would do to him.
Fuck him until he cried and told the truth.
Strap him to the bed and get every answer.
But when I saw him in my fucking button-up, his brown thighs strong and soft, his lips parted, his eyes watering, it all just disappeared.
“Tell me you’re not a fucking rat,” I said, my voice catching. “Say it to me with a straight face so I don’t have to kill the only goddamn thing I have left in this world.”
Please. Please don’t tell me you did this. Give me a reason to not do this. Give me one chance to not be a fucking monster. I can’t be a fucking monster tonight. I can’t. Don’t make me.
Rafael looked away from me, and my heart hardened. It had to. What was the alternative? Breaking down? Losing it? Showing one more fucking person that I was human so they could use it against me in the end?
“Rafael,” I snapped.
“I’m sorry,” he said as his eyes slid back to me. “God, I’m so fucking sorry.”
All the air was knocked out of my lungs.
I stumbled back as if someone had struck me.
But it was just the person I had let in.
The guy I let near me who put up with all my shit, good and bad, but not because he wanted to.
All because he needed information. I reached into the back of my pants and pulled out my gun.
“Cesare, no,” he begged as he moved toward me, his hands shaking. “Let me explain. Please. I swear to god it’s not what you think.”
“You’re not working for my son?” I asked.
Rafael’s eyes watered. “I am.”
“You haven’t been feeding him information on me?”
He choked. “I am.”
I clicked off the safety. “Don’t cry now because you got caught,” I said evenly even as my voice cracked on the last syllable. “You won’t get any sympathy from me. Get on your knees.”
Rafael choked again, on a sob this time. “It’s not like that," he said as he lowered himself to the ground, his knees hitting the floor sharply. I knew it had to hurt. I had to stop myself from asking if he was an idiot, if he was okay. “Please just let me explain it.”
“So you can lie again?” I asked. My voice was too soft. I hated it. This was weakness. This was disease that took stronger men than me.
“I’m not lying,” Rafael pressed. “Not anymore. I’m sorry. Getting close and letting Benito hire me? It was the only way I could reach it. It was my only way in. I wouldn’t have taken it if I’d known it would be this hard.” He shook his head. “That’s my mistake, Cesare. I fucked up. I admit it.”
“You think admitting it makes you safe?” I laughed, but it was choked and dry. “Nothing is going to save you now.”
“I know,” he whispered, his hands pressed to the floor. “I know. But I never meant for it to go this far.”
“Who the fuck are you?” I asked. “I had you looked into and nothing came up.”