Chapter Twenty-Four
Leonardo
Pedro’s message sends a wave of shock throughout my body.
He orchestrated his own brother's death?
Surely, there was more to the story, because I can still vividly remember that night. The memory of my father gunning down Enzo Rodriguez and his wife remains etched in my mind. It was my first time seeing him kill a man, my first time knowing that he could even kill a man.
My first glimpse into his dark world.
I always sensed my father's dealings were shady. I knew his source of income wasn’t all legitimate. The winery wasn’t what made us the richest family in Sicily like every other person liked to believe. I knew he associated with grimy people and engaged in illicit activities, but I never fathomed the extent of his depravity.
Until that day.
Somewhere in my deluded brain, I thought that if I behaved as the perfect son he wanted, he would come back to my mother. He would come back to us.
What a lie that was. Things only spiraled further downhill after that gruesome night.
When he informed me of our “important” journey, that I would prove myself as his true son, I was filled with excitement. At that age, pleasing my father was the only thing I lived for.
As he picked me up from the shabby apartment my mother and I lived in that morning, I pictured a grand outing, perhaps an introduction to his affluent friends.
The last thing I had expected was for him to take me to an underground cell on the outskirts of town. I was traumatized by the sounds of distant wailing as we walked past. I refused to think about what was being done to them. And when the prisoners looked at us walking past with terror in their eyes, I ignored them. I trusted my father.
We finally got to the room at the end of the hallway. The space was dim, with high windows and only a flickering light from a lantern somewhere in the room. But that wasn’t my focus. It was on the people on the ground. The girl who was already dead, the second girl who was crying, the woman who had fear in her eyes, and the man who scowled at my father.
He shot the woman first, deriving joy from Enzo’s cries as he watched his wife die. The movement was so swift that I almost didn’t believe my father was the one who shot her. I watched as her eyes became lifeless, and she collapsed against the floor with a hole in the middle of her head.
My father had turned to look at me at that moment. When he saw the fear in my eyes, he laughed and told me that this was who he truly was. He shot Enzo next, and I watched his dead body drop beside his wife whose blood was already pooling on the floor.
“Your turn,” he had said, and I felt the whole room spin. I wanted to throw up, but I pressed my tongue against the roof of my mouth, a trick my mother had taught me whenever I felt sick.
He handed the gun over to me and told me to shoot the weeping girl.
I took the gun with shaky hands. It was heavy, heavier than what I’d expected a pistol to weigh. I pointed it to her head as my father had instructed. A cold sweat broke out on my face, the beads trailing down my back. I placed a finger on the trigger, knowing that if I simply pulled, the girl would drop dead like her parents.
The silence in the room was suffocating, and I felt a heavy tension on my shoulders as my father waited for me to pull the trigger. As the seconds passed, I knew I wouldn’t kill her. I couldn’t.
I’d looked up to my father. His dark eyes burned into mine, and whatever he saw in mine made him snatch the gun from my hand and shoot the girl.
“You are a disgrace,” he spat before storming out of the room, leaving me with the dead bodies.
Seeing that hatred in his eyes, I knew he wished he could kill me too.
My weakness made us suffer at the hands of my father until he died. I say ‘us’, because my mother also suffered for my sins. When he wasn't torturing and starving me, he was battering my mother. I'd intervene, shielding her until his rage until he started hitting me too.
I had no one. My mother passed when I turned eighteen, likely a consequence of the relentless abuse she endured. I had no friends, alternating between school and training. The teachers at school never asked questions. They never asked why I had new bruises on my body every day, or why I kept losing weight gradually. They never asked why I was always tired in school and slept off in class due to the endless nights of training. They never asked why I completely skipped school on some days.
The older I grew, the older I realized that maybe they knew too.
“My father was the one who killed Enzo Rodriguez,” I growl, looking into Pedro’s piercing eyes.
The bastard smiled slowly. “I orchestrated that.”
He then sighs when he sees the look of confusion on my face.
“I suppose I owe you the whole story before I end you,” he says with a smirk that quickly fades.
“I've always aspired to lead the Cuban mafia,” Pedro begins. “It was my dream, stolen by Enzo simply for being the eldest.”
“He didn’t steal anything from you,” I grind out. “It was his birthright.”
“Birthrights are archaic notions, don’t you think?”
When I remain silent, he continues.
“Enzo was not fit to be a leader. When our father trained us as boys, he would come late to training and fight sloppily, but my father loved him, so he never complained,” Pedro says, and I catch the edge in his voice.
“Enzo was reckless and impatient, always making decisions based on anger instead of common sense. But, he had me to clean his messes whenever he made mistakes…”
“So, you became resentful?” I say.
Pedro doesn’t deny it.
“He had everything easy, without having to do the hard work. He took the position that I loved, the woman I loved, and had the family that I always wanted.”
I see him clench his jaw.
Pedro is a calm, jovial man who never loses his temper. Or rather, he never lets anyone see him lose his temper. He’s cunning and calculating, always having a plan and a backup plan for every situation.
Yet, as I watch him tell this story, I see a glimpse of his true emotions which he hides from everyone, including himself.
“He stole your lover. Is that why you never had a family?” I ask, wanting to prod, to stoke his fire.
Pedro surprises me by chuckling.
“I decided to not have children when my brother and his family were wiped out. I saw how easy it would be for my enemies to kill all my offspring. I didn’t want any weaknesses.”
“So, you'll let the Cuban empire die with you?” I question.
“You haven’t been paying attention,” he tsks. “I don’t believe in birthrights or inheritance based on blood. I believe in merit—every man has to prove himself worthy.”
He doesn’t say who he will hand it over to, but I can assume it would be the most loyal among his men.
“I used Ares Rizzo to wipe out my brother’s family. Then, I pretended to come to the rescue after I was sure they would have died. The youngest daughter, Laura, wasn’t dead. She fooled you all by playing dead,” he chuckles to himself. “Laura was always the clever one.”
Laura.
Laura Rodriguez, not Lorena Romano.
My chest squeezes painfully from her betrayal. She has been fooling me all this while, pretending to have a thing for me while planning to kill me. And she would have killed me. I would have been a dead man if Lorena—Laura had found the opportunity to end my life.
“Enzo always taught the girls what to do if they were ever captured. He taught them to play dead. It wasn’t a guarantee of not getting killed, but it could give them leverage to think of a plan. I thought it was stupid advice until I busted into the room that day and saw that Laura was the only one with a pulse. Her eyes and fists were tightly shut, and when I touched her body, it was shaking.”
He runs a tongue over his teeth before continuing.
“I would have killed her there, but I didn’t. I took her, and I trained her. Maybe it was because I saw myself in her—the younger, yet smarter child. I treated her as my own…”
“And yet, she ran away from you,” I say.
It takes a lot to successfully run away and hide one’s identity from a mafia group as big as the Cuban Mafia. I refuse to think of Pedro’s idea of training, and what he did to prompt Lorena to plot her escape.
“Some traits are hereditary,” he muses. “She inherited her cowardice from her father. She could have been the biggest assassin in the mafia world, a threat to clans spread far and wide, my trusted confidant…”
But he would have never given her the throne.
“You were using her as a mere weapon. She clocked that and ran away. That’s smart of her,” I say instead.
A hint of humor dances in Pedro’s eyes as he regards me.
“You are defending the same woman that tried to kill you,” he chuckles. “Don’t tell me you’re in love with my niece.”
I only clench my jaw in response, and that makes him chuckle.
“Ah. You must be as stupid as your father was, then. I mean, I managed to make the man do all the hard work for me in the pretense of forming an alliance— exploiting him for years, then disposing of him when the opportunity arose.”
His eyes turn into slits as he snarls. “I never knew he had an illegitimate son somewhere old enough to take over. I already planned how I would kill his three little children and make his young wife my whore.”
I want to kill him. I want to kill him so bad but doing that now would be stupid of me.
“Well, your silly love story is about to end,” Pedro’s voice brings me back from my raging thoughts. “Since Laura betrayed me by refusing to kill you, my men are already tracking her, awaiting my command to end her life...”
The dagger in my pocket feels heavier, and I'm tempted to slit his throat this instant. But the timing isn't right yet. I have to wait, and wait, and…
Something clatters outside the door. Pedro's head whips toward the noise and he snaps his fingers, signaling one of the four men surrounding us to investigate.
That's when I make my move.
I grab Pedro's gun, plunging my dagger into his shoulder. I don’t have time to enjoy his howl of pain, though. I jump the man nearest to me, stabbing him in the throat before spinning around with his body in front of mine as a makeshift shield.A bullet lodges into his chest a second later. I retrieve the gun from the dead guy’s shoulder holster and shoot the other men in the room.
“I didn't see anyone, boss...”
The words die on the man's lips as I shoot him between the eyes.
Just then, I hear more gunshots outside, indicating the arrival of my reinforcements.
“Talking too much really does get one killed,” I chuckle deeply. “You made a mistake underestimating me, Pedro.”
I look at the man in question as he presses a hand frantically to his bleeding shoulder.
“Go ahead and kill me. You’ve won already,” he spits out, gaze furious.
I shake my head, chuckling, “I don’t take instructions from you, Pedro, I’m not one of your minions. I’m not going to kill you. Your death belongs to someone else.”
With that, I holster my gun and walk away, ignoring his raging tirade behind me. Pedro isn’t walking out of here alive, that much I know. And if by some miracle he does, he had best believe that I will haunt him to the ends of the earth.
The only thing left for me now, is to finish what Lorena started.