66. Dante
66
DANTE
I have serious concerns for my father’s health. This looks like it is more than he can take. I’m glad to finally know exactly what split Durian and Maddog up, and I am even more surprised that the woman my father had been in love with ended up being Kingsley’s mother. I mean, what were the odds?
“Should I go?” Kingsley asks, looking from me to my father. He doesn’t reply; I think he wants to go on but he doesn’t know if he’d be able to handle what’s to come. And Kingsley, martyring herself by asking if she should leave her own home so we could be more comfortable. I urge her on, wanting this to end sooner rather than later. Whatever is in that letter has to come out now; I don’t want to be going through this again ever. Kingsley picks up the letter and looks down at it, breathes deeply, then starts reading again.
* * *
“We stood outside the Quick-E-Mart chatting, when all of a sudden, Rollo grabbed my arms and pushed me through the door into the store. My brain didn’t comprehend what was happening until the gunshots rang out and Rollo went sprawling to the ground, his body riddled with bullets. He died instantly and the gunmen were gone by the time I made my way back outside. I didn’t know who or why, but all I knew was that one of us was dead when it could have so easily been the two of us. I didn’t know who the bullets were meant for, but I did know that Rollo saved my life that day. It damn near destroyed me knowing that he had died and I had lived.
There was nothing I could do to bring Rollo back, but there was something I had in my possession that I knew the Accardis wanted. That’s why I gave them the waterfront. If Rollo Accardi hadn’t died that day, I would have given it to him. But he died that day, trying to save me. If that was his last selfless act while he was alive, I wanted my last act to mirror his. That one act, even knowing there was bad blood between his own father and me, didn’t deter Rollo from pushing me out of harm’s way, and it was a testament to the man that you had raised, Durian. You raised a wonderful son, as I’m sure your second son is also.”
* * *
Kingsley stops reading and looks up at us, her hands shaking. The letter goes fluttering from her hand and lands at her feet, her eyes wet with moisture. This couldn’t be easy for her, realizing my brother had given his life in place of her father’s. And the look on my father’s face, as he sits there, bereft and motionless, as though wishing time to stand still. Like he wishes he could turn back the clock and do so many things differently.
“Go on,” I tell her, my voice maybe harsher than I meant it to be. I lift the letter and thrust it back into her hand. I can’t deny there isn’t a momentary lapse of judgment in the way I am toward her when I realize that Rollo died in place of Maddog Murray. So many things would have been different had Rollo not died seven years ago.
My life would have been different.
But then…
I wouldn’t be sitting here with Kingsley now.
* * *
I signed the docks over to the Accardis seven years ago. Willingly and happily, without a regret in the world. It was the least I could do for the act of heroism Rollo Accardi performed, saving my life.
Then recently, something extraordinary happened, and that is the reason for this letter. The information that has come into my possession has poisoned my blood slowly as I think about what to do with it. I can’t tell Durian and Dante and risk an all out war, for that’s what there would be. Nor can I let the matter go so easily without doing what I know must be done. I have set in motion the necessary steps to rid myself of Tate, knowing that this could very well be the end for me. I have written him out of my will. And I mean to kill him… slowly but surely… for ordering the hit on me which ultimately killed Rollo Accardi.”
* * *
Kingsley gasps and lets the letter flutter to the ground again. She sways on her feet, almost losing her balance had it not been for a nearby chair on which she rests her hand. My father isn’t doing much better as he sits staring through me, shock veiling his face.
“Tate killed your brother,” Kingsley whispers, her face paling as she finally grasps how dangerous Tate is. “I don’t understand why he kept him around after knowing that.”
“He didn’t,” my father says, his voice a strangled mutation of his normal self. “He wouldn’t. But your father has been sick for almost that long, so obviously he was unable to do anything about Tate. There’s no way he would have willingly left you in his care.”
“But Tate’s been in the picture,” she argues. "He picked me up from Switzerland.”
“I dare say he was working to his own agenda.”
So many things make sense now, down to the visit that my father paid Maddog before he passed. I look at my father, recall that Maddog had told him to look after his son, but what else had he told my father? Why wouldn’t Maddog have told my father about the danger that Tate posed?
“Maddog didn’t tell you anything about Tate when you met him in the hospital?” I ask, turning in my father’s direction.
“Like I said, he was at times not altogether lucid, so I couldn’t always make out what he was trying to say. But he definitely did mention taking care of Kingsley. Although I can’t imagine why he didn’t tell me she’s a girl. He had me believe, to the very end, that he had a son. So maybe he was more delusional toward the end than we actually thought he was. Maybe he thought he was seeing things?”
I find that hard to believe. Maddog had always been an astute man; nothing could have ruffled his feathers more than knowing his child was in certain danger.
“You’re taking this extremely calmly, considering what you’ve just learned.” I don’t know whether to be angry or crazy or just downright psychopathic considering Tate was responsible for my brother’s death. Someone who King had known all her life. A man that now technically worked for her. I don’t know how I feel about that, even knowing that she hates the man even more than I do.
“Now I know, this gives me some measure of closure,” my father says. “But neither of us can fall apart here – Tate is the objective and if we’re falling over ourselves with hatred and grief, Kingsley’s going to get hurt. And I won’t have that.”
My father rakes his eyes over Kingsley, much in the way I think he would do had he been lucky enough to have a daughter. If I was protective of her, my father was damn near territorial.
“Nothing will happen to me as long as I have you both by my side,” Kingsley says, raising her chin defiantly. She has been complying with all our orders down to the letter. Never leaving the building on her own and going off on a tangent. This is what will keep her safe. And I realize, with a sense of pride I had never known I’d be possible of, how far she has come in her transition from man child to rebel to woman. Kingsley, my very own bag of contradictions.