40. Luca
Iwatch Ara arrive home through the cameras I’d planted in her apartment. She’s awkwardly carrying the box of twinkies I had delivered to her office, impressed it is so far the only thing she hasn’t thrown out that I sent her this week.
I send her a text message.
Me: Glad to see the Twinkies are worth your attention.
She fishes her phone out of her pocket. Skeptically she looks into each room, trying to find me. Satisfaction fills me. Until of course, she refuses to reply.
I have to punish her again, I realize.
I’m back at the family mansion looking through old contracts and papers. It was bold of her to assume she could find anything here, but her instinct is not entirely misplaced. Where my father and I differed was he liked trophies and so I am aware of a few secure locations he hid contracts on his dealings. I kept them for peculiar situations such as this and if I ever needed them for blackmail.
Lorenzo pours me a whisky just as Dario stops at the entrance of the office. He looks disheveled and I have no interest as to why.
“Can we have a moment?” he asks and pointedly looks at Lorenzo as if requesting for him to leave.
“I don’t know what we could possibly have to talk about.” I say as I continue flicking through the papers.
“Please,”he adds. Slowly, I look up at my brother. Any form of conversation with him would only be a waste of time and most likely put me in a sour mood. But it’s the please that has me offering him the seat across. Perhaps because of a certain little viper, I was softening. Lorenzo excuses himself from the room.
I cover the papers of interest and take a sip of the whisky as Dario settles himself in.
“I know you hate me,” Dario begins. An understatement. “But I want to help you with whatever mess is happening here.”
“What could you possibly know about the mess that’s happening right now?” I ask. “You haven’t grown up, Dario. From then or now.”
His jaw grinds. “Is this what you want? Me and everyone scared of you?!”
“Yes.”
It isn’t so much the need to have Dario fear me but the boundary to keep him out of clear sight in case I decide to kill him when I reach a bad mood at any given day. But I also have to keep him close enough to ensure he’s not a liability to the family name once again. Perhaps it makes me weak for not yet being able to dispose of my brother. That a tether of sentiment remains of not wanting to be entirely alone. It is the blood we share that has kept him alive. For now.
“I don’t know how else I can explain to you how sorry I am for that night. I know I had too much to drink and you had to take responsibility for me, but I can help now!”
Rage fuels my bloodstream at how flippant he is about his actions. Even now he’s shown no amount of responsibility for the ruin he almost put us in.
I seethe under my breath so only he can hear, a reminder of his shame and sin. “You put a bullet in our father’s chest. You think you can take responsibility for that now? Do you want to tell those who work for us? See who takes votes? See who comes for you and me for covering it up.”
He flinches under the harshness of my tone. “I didn’t mean to do it.”
A child’s excuse. One I’m tired of covering for because it was detrimental to my own survival and the loyalty of my men.
“You might be able to drown out your sorrows every night for your failures but it’s been me that’s kept this business running. That saved your sorry ass. And you don’t understand why I despise your very presence? You think I’m being unfair?”
He’s quieter now. “I’m the laughingstock of our family. No one takes me seriously. I’m just a spoilt brat to everyone.”
“Because that’s exactly how you act. Better they see you for that then your true colors.”
It takes all of my efforts to not lunge across and choke my brother for his naivety. I think back to that night. Hearing the gunshot come from this very room and being the first to walk onto the scene. Dario standing over our father with a gun, confused bloodshot eyes staring over him and the inability to comprehend what he’d done. They’d gotten into a fight about Dario’s drinking and drug abuse.
By the time I’d got to them, my father was already dead. Everything else that evolved afterward was chaos. Only few knew the truth. Some suspected. So we’d claimed it was from a heart attack and within the same night I was head of the Armani family.
I’d been forced into the role prematurely, covering up the filthy lie of his existence so we both weren’t taken out in the process. This fucker hasn’t changed a bit. Drowning his demons in pussy, alcohol, and drugs. “You’re nothing but a liability,” I remind him.
He seems taken aback but still tries his hardest to say, “What if I could show you otherwise.”
I scoff, irked by his genuine plead. “You cannot change your nature, Dario. How many times have you already tried and failed? I won’t let you bring down our name because of it. I mean it, Dario, you fuck up one more time and you’re going back to Italy.”
“As if this is any less a prison in this mansion where you still have Ivan treating me like a child being babysat. Unless of course you’re here instead of him so you scrutinize my every action.” He shoots out of the chair angrily.
“You should be grateful in your prison that you have so much of the money I earned for you to spend, rather than in the grave.”
He pauses at the door. He considers his next words carefully. “I really used to look up to you.”
“And our father was once alive.”
“Fuck you, Luca,” he dares to say as tears well in his eyes and he opens the door to storm out.
My jaw grinds and Lorenzo’s smart enough to close the door to leave me deep in my raging thoughts. I throw back the whisky furiously enjoying its burn.
All these years I had to prove myself, stepping up as the head of the family. All Dario continued doing was drugs and partying. He put me in the position where I had to choose whether I betray the very code we were raised on by covering for my brother or killing him instead as example. Family loyalty is everything and yet where had my loyalty gone the moment my father lay dead?
I don’t care for many things. But it is something that still boils my blood because at any point the truth could be revealed which is why I have made sure everyone is so terrified of me that they’d never rebel even with the truth exposed.
I pull out Ara’s delicate necklace I’d stolen and stare at the cross as it dangles from my fingers. Ara was the greatest contender for who might be looking to exploit my secrets. And I still can’t stay away. I should’ve dealt with her like I did everyone else. Killed her first ask questions later.
Yet I am transfixed.
Knowing full well she is chaos in a bottle.
One I seem to happily be sipping from daily.