24. Emmett #3
“You also thought of this too. Isn’t that why you’ve been working to destroy those connections?
” Grandfather questions with a chuckle. “You made the hope of power become impossible for them, but they kept going for the girl and you kept working for me to increase your power. How could I not realize it’s because you had fallen in love with her and had dedicated your entire life to protecting her? ”
The new heart in my chest beats painfully.
“So you had her brought out,” I start, the anger in my veins starting to intensify. “Why the hell did you do that?”
“You gave your life for that girl, but she wasn’t dating you?
What the fuck is that? Did she reject you?
How dare she reject my grandson!” he snaps, banging his fist on the arm of the chair.
“How dare she not give her heart to you? Of course, I had to skip that dating phase and jump straight to marriage! Now she has no choice but to pay you back for your feelings.”
I gape at him, unable to process what he just said. “You did what?”
“I saved your unrequited love! How dare she not love you back?”
“Grandpa!”
“Don’t ‘Grandpa’ me! You’re a perfectly handsome, tall, in-shape young man! I know that you’re desired by numerous women of great renown and lusted after by drones of girls! Why isn’t she one of them? How dare she ignore your feelings!”
I’m so speechless and shocked, I just stare at him incredulously.
“You…” I trail off, my mind racing. “You did all that just because you thought I was in love with a girl who rejected me?”
“Yes!”
“What the fuck is this?”
He did all the research into my life, my movements, and behavior around Angel… and yet his conclusion is that she rejected me? Seriously?
“Grandpa, she…” I trail off, not knowing what to say now or how to explain it.
Angel never rejected me… but I hurt her deeply.
She’s always been braver than me. She has always been up-front and honest about her feelings, never hiding any of it.
That Christmas two years ago, she even grew the courage to confess to me, but I…
“Why do you look like that? Did I really misjudge the situation?” Grandfather asks quietly, looking at me as I pace in front of the fireplace.
“Oh, you did more than misjudge!” I snap.
“Well, I… I do believe the plan worked very well, Alessio, calm down,” he says, trying to placate my anger. “I was watching her, and it seems she isn’t indifferent to you.”
“How the fuck did you know?” I demand, needing a stiff drink at this point.
“Naturally you aren’t asking about how I found her. You want to know how I knew she was the one you fell for,” he says, eyeing me with a mocking light in his cold eyes. “You are, after all, my grandson. You’re more like me than you realize.”
“I’m nothing like you!” I grit out.
“It’s understandable that you wouldn’t like being like me, but some things can’t be helped,” he says in a tone that suggests resignation.
I frown. “What does that mean?”
He’s silent for a few seconds. When he speaks again, his voice is low and soft, with fond but sad nostalgia clear in his eyes.
“When I saw your grandmother for the first time, I fell for her that very second,” he starts. “That in and of itself is bad news for men like us. Because when us Easton men fall in love, it’s resolute, final, eternal, and immutable.”
Hearing these words feel like a freight train just ran me over.
“It’s only ever that one person that we give our all to but as men standing at the apex of this society, power, influence, wealth, and danger, that love becomes our one weakness.” I watch him shift in his chair as if trying to get comfortable.
Then his eyes train onto me unwaveringly, glowing with a warning. “The curse is that while men like us only have one weakness, that weakness is fatal enough that when exploited or attacked in any way, we lose completely.”
I hold his gaze, knowing exactly what he means.
“I won’t lose,” I state, my entire body coiled with a tension far greater than when I face death.
Grandfather looks at me, maybe with pity, or is it understanding? I don’t know, but the look makes me feel uncomfortable.
“Your resilience and confidence are truly rare. I admire you, Alessio. But I’d be doing a disservice to you as your grandfather if I didn’t remind you that sometimes no matter how you plan, or how much you prepare, how you go all out, you might still fail in the end. And that failure will destroy you.”
This isn’t the first time Grandfather has talked to me like this, but it’s the first time he’s revealed the heavy emotions he’s kept hidden all these years.
I hear the sadness and potent anger in his words, as well as the regret and bitterness.
“All this that we do,” he says, gesturing at the strategy table.
“Where we come from. The blood on our hands. The pile of bones we stand on. The enemies we have… it all makes us unfit for any sort of stability and normalcy for such incredible things like love. We’re unworthy, and so the worst realization of my life was when I knew that I had fallen in love with Narcissa. ”
A very strange feeling falls in the room as he talks about my grandmother who I never knew as she was murdered when my mother was young.
Complicated emotions cross Grandfather’s face, but he doesn’t look away or put on the mask he’s always worn.
“Before I knew it, I became devoted to her and only her. One moment, I was a reckless man who was fearless, and the next, I fell deeply in love and kept falling so much that my life immediately revolved around Narcissa. Her happiness. Her well-being. Her safety. Her comfort… all that became my obsession.”
“Is that why you never married after her?” I finally ask the question that has been nothing but an unspoken rumor in the Italian underbelly.
Grandfather looks at me, and nods. “Narcissa and I struggled to have children, I’m sure you already know that. A child was needed for the next line of succession in the Easton Family so when your great-grandfather brought that woman, I never married her.”
That woman, of course, is Emilio’s mother.
“Is that when you had the big falling out with your father?” I ask silently.
Grandfather’s stare focuses on me once again. “You really do know a lot of things.”
“I do.”
“Yes. There was no way I was going to let go of Narcissa. I was never going to divorce her in favor of a woman my father found, but that woman was also an opportunist.”
The fury that filters through his words is enough to make the toughest of men back off, but I just sit there, knowing where this is going.
“One night, I was so drunk and out of my mind, I didn’t even realize I’d been drugged. That tramp came to my room, dressed as Narcissa…”
“That’s how Emilio came to be,” I mutter, finishing the words for him. It was also after this that Grandfather never touched a drop of alcohol to this day.
“Yes,” he says after a while of tense silence. “Weeks later, I also learned that Narcissa had fallen pregnant with your mother. It was like a blessing and a guillotine had all been granted to me.”
The sudden but sad smile on his face completely transforms his hardened features to someone approachable.
“Actually, the guillotine was always meant for me, but God had remembered the goodness of your grandmother’s heart and blessed her like Hannah in the Bible. Your mother was born and Narcissa was the happiest I’d ever seen her, raised our baby girl with the utmost love and care, but then…”
Grandmother was killed in the most brutal way possible… by Emilio’s mother’s family.
This matter was never hidden, as Grandfather went on a rampage that is still being whispered about in the shadows, decades later.
Emilio’s mother’s family was completely massacred, and while Emilio’s mother was ignored until she killed herself, having seen what became of her family due to greed and jealousy, this act was completely vicious.
Giovanni and Angelo both have different mothers as well.
Neither were loved by Grandfather; it was just their backgrounds and family names he wanted.
“For your grandmother, I went to war with a clan that had been our ally for decades and severed them completely. It’s just that, in the end, I still lost the love of my life and was left with a daughter that cried for her mother every night and a son born out of treachery who resented me for his mother’s plight. ”
The son he’s talking about is Emilio… who went on to partner with his other brother, Giovanni, to kidnap my mother.
“Why didn’t you stop them?” I ask the question that has been tormenting me my whole life. “You knew your sons loathed your daughter, so why didn’t you stop them?”
The pain on his face is severe, the regret evident.
“It wasn’t that simple,” he says after a while. “I thought since Daphne was my firstborn, and how brilliant and kind she had been to them, that they would come to respect her when she took over. Who knew they’d set traps for her like that…”
“Say it clearly,” I snap. “Your sons, together with that shithead Theodore Hughes, kidnapped my mother, drugged her silly, tortured her, and then sold her on a trafficking site. That was the worst form of punishment ever, reducing a powerful woman to such…”
I can’t speak any more, nor can I stand still, so I grab the Japanese-forged sword and strike the war table down.
And this is what’s eating at me.
I found this all out when I met my father three days ago. I woke up and he was there, waiting for me.
“I’m sorry, Alesio,” the old man says soberly. “If I could’ve exchanged my life with hers…”
“What happened to my mother after my wife’s grandfather drowned?”
“Why? Your father didn’t take you to her?”
I pause and stare at him.
“You… you were working with him all along?” I realize.
“Your parents, despite my denial, are childhood sweethearts. Syrus worked like a madman, sacrificing everything to find your mother, partnering with those families you are neighbors with in that little town of yours to pool resources and exchanging favors.”
“I thought you disliked him.”
“Well, when your mother was taken, he was busy taking a smoke break! How can I like him?” Grandfather seethes, then he takes a deep breath as if to calm down. “But he fought me tooth and nail to raise you here in America, or else you would’ve been with me back home.”
Suddenly everything my father did now makes sense.
The weeks he’d disappear from Westbrook Blues.
The research he conducted for my heart… he’s the one behind the organ in my chest now.
Then the deals he made to have me marry Astraea ended up a disaster, and him disappearing…
“You saved my father’s life from Eli Beaumont,” I note as another piece falls in place.
“Eli is a rabid dog! Your father made the mistake of having a hand in the murder of the only woman that man has ever loved and, to be fair, I can sympathize with that feeling, but I couldn’t leave your mother without the one person she could remembered after her trauma.”
Agony like a tide crashes into me at this revelation.
Syrus finally admitted to me that my mother has been recuperating in the south of France all these years… with no more memories of her past life.
“Yes, you hate me for being hard on you but what else would you do when your sole heir was born sick and you find out years later after almost losing your daughter? Of course I went hard on you because I knew you thirsted for vengeance, but if I ignored you, Syrus alone wouldn’t be able to protect you.
I had to bring down the weight of the world so you could grow up with everything you need for what you want to do. ”
We stare at each other, this raw, honest, and open talk filling in all the gaps I’ve always wondered about but never cared to observe carefully.
The old man knew all along that I was sick.
The father I always thought was a coward had been taking care of his wife while working with my own doctors—that I naively thought I had found all by myself—to find me the best suitable solution.
And the girl who I thought was random, cried for my mother, protecting her with her tiny little body when Grandfather’s men took her away, leaving her scared and hurt.
“Alessio, you have always been vastly different from every male heir in this Family. You are detached to this world, looking at it as if it’s dust, meaningless and boring,” he says slowly, looking at me firmly.
“You’ve never been reckless like me, or your mother.
You’ve been steady, calm, calculated, silent, ruthless, and cold-blooded…
but things are different now. They suspect that you know the truth. They’ve been getting ready for years.”
“So have I,” I grit out. “And I intend to finish it.”
He’s silent for a while and then he speaks.
“In a few weeks, it’ll be my birthday. I have invited some important people that must meet you,” he states. “But first, you have to meet some important stakeholders in the coming days. Host the event.”
“I know them all.”
“But they don’t know that you’re now the Don, so don’t try to weasel yourself out of this. Oh, and bring that clever wife of yours. I like her!”
I stare at him, feeling a headache coming on.
“In any case, you’ll have to hold your peace until then.” I get what he means. I can’t go finish what I started tonight.
Just then, there’s a knock on the door and Ripley comes in.
“Young Master, it’s being reported that Theodore Hughes has died in the dungeon.”
Grandfather and I share a look.
The good senator wasn’t being actively tortured. I just had him bandaged and sent down there, and now he’s dead?
“You expect me to hold my peace when they’ve already started tying up loose ends?” I ask the old cripple with a scoff.
“Yes,” he says simply. “And while you do that, you’ll tell me about that sibling of yours you’ve been hiding. Who is she and where is she? I want to see her.”
For the millionth time tonight, I feel like I’ve just been slapped across the face.