Chapter Fourteen #3
I don’t hear any more scratching of the pen behind me, but I can’t bring myself to turn around and meet her eyes. Especially not now.
“Not anger?” she asks.
“Anger would’ve been easier.” I stare blindly at the impossibly blue sea in front of me. “No, he was disappointed.”
“Your father,” she clarified.
I keep going because now that it’s moving, stopping would only make it worse.
“He expected better,” I say. “And he should have.”
“Why should he have?” she asks.
Because I’m supposed to know better. Because I’m supposed to keep my head. Because being the heir means the people around me should be safer with me, not less safe.
Because if I can’t manage that, then what the hell good am I? How can I take over?
I say, “Because Nico could’ve died.”
There.
That’s the line under all of it.
Everything else is just debris scattered around that fact.
“Nico could have died because I acted on impulse,” I say.
The room feels heavier somehow after I say it.
Even the air sounds different.
I finally turn away from the window and back to Teresa.
The notebook is closed and in her lap. Her eyes are on me, and even though I know I always have her full attention, the notebook feels like a buffer. But now it’s gone.
“If Nico had died,” I say, “my family would never forgive me, even if they said they did to my face. But it wouldn’t matter if they did or not. Not really.”
When I speak again, my voice is rough. “Because I would never forgive myself.”
She studies me for a long moment after that.
Not scribbling notes.
Not prompting me.
Just observing.
Finally, she says, “So that was the catalyst.”
“Yes, I almost got my brother killed because of my impulsiveness.”
“No,” she says.
That word stops me. For a moment, I’m confused.
“Yes,” I say. “Nico almost died because of a choice I made.”
“Yes, he did,” she confirms, confusing me further. “But that wasn’t the catalyst. The catalyst was the realization that he got hurt because of the choice you made.”
That doesn’t help clear anything up.
“How is that any different than what I said?”
She sets the notebook aside and stands up, but doesn’t come any closer.
“Because, for the very first time, you realized that your actions have real consequences.”
I narrow my eyes.
“You hit your head, Doc? The fuck does that even mean?”
My voice comes out tight and angry. “You think this is the first time we’ve pulled a dangerous job? That I don’t know my actions have consequences?”
My voice comes out harsh, anger coursing through me.
Teresa doesn’t flinch.
“No.” She tips her head slightly. “You want me to say you’re impulsive. Full stop. That this was a simple failure of control. But what I’m telling you is more uncomfortable than that.”
I stare at her.
She continues, “If it were only impulse, you could treat it like something outside yourself. A flaw. A defect. A reflex. Something that takes over. But what actually happened was that you made a decision, and for the first time, you really had to face what one of your decisions could do to someone you love.”
I fold my arms over my chest.
Defensive. Closed off. I know exactly what it looks like, but I don’t stop it.
Let her know she’s not the only one paying attention.
“So what?” I ask. “You’re saying the warehouse didn’t prove I’m reckless?”
“No,” she says. “I’m saying it proved something more useful.”
“Useful to who?”
“To you.”
That answer gets my back up immediately.
I narrow my eyes. “Useful is a funny word for this.”
She doesn’t rise to it.
Of course she doesn’t.
“It’s useful,” she says, “because it tells me what actually shook you. Not the violence. Not the danger. Not even the fact that your brother got hurt in the abstract. What shook you was the realization that your choice put him there.”
My jaw tightens.
“You keep trying to make the catalyst the event itself,” she says. “The warehouse. The pipe. The fight. But that’s not what brought you here.”
“No?”
“No.” Her voice stays calm. “What brought you here was what happened afterward. The part where you had to live with it.”
The truth of the statement blows through me.
The fight was a fight.
The adrenaline, the noise, the blood, the speed of it, the need to finish and get out—those things happened fast. Too fast to feel properly while they were happening.
The real damage came later. In the car. At the house. In the look on Nico’s face when he waved me back.
In my father’s silence. In my own head every night after.
“What brought you here,” she continues, “is that, though you’ve known your whole life that you’re the heir to your family’s legacy, the next Don of the Conti Family, it all just became very real.”
She takes a step closer while my mind tries to deny what she’s saying. But it can’t.
“Tell me, Vito, do people ever dispute your father?”
I drag a hand over my mouth and say, “My uncles. He listens, he trusts their judgment— ”
But she’s shaking her head. “I mean, when he has made a decision or given an order. Do people disobey or argue with him?”
I look at her, jaw tight. “Not if they’re smart.”
“That night in the warehouse, your brother tried to tell you that splitting up was a bad idea, but you walked away and pretended you didn’t hear him. He wasn’t able to object to you, so that decision became yours and yours alone.”
She doesn’t bother to soften her next words.
“And so you realized, for the very first time, that you are capable of causing irreversible harm to the people you care about.”
The words go through me like a blade.
Almost cruel.
Because she’s being honest and accurate.
I look out the window again.
The ocean is impossibly blue today. Bright enough to hurt if I look too long.
Palm fronds move in the breeze. Everything outside this room looks too easy, too beautiful, too far removed from what’s actually happening in here.
I say, “You make it sound like I just woke up one day and discovered I wasn’t bulletproof.”
“In a way, you did.”
That pulls me around to look at her again.
“I’m not some sheltered kid, Doctor.”
“I know that.”
“Then don’t talk to me like one.”
“I’m not.” She folds her hands loosely in front of her. “I’m talking to a man who has spent his whole life in high-risk situations and still managed to keep certain emotional realities at arm’s length until one of them hit him right between the eyes.”
I laugh once under my breath. “There you go again.”
“Doing what?”
“Making it sound academic.”
“It’s not academic.” Her eyes stay on mine. “It’s just easier for you to be angry at the language than at what it means.”
That shuts me up for a second.
I say, “So what, then? That’s it? I finally figured out I’m not untouchable, and suddenly I end up here?”
“No.” She shakes her head once. “Not untouchable. Responsible.”
I go still at that. That word.
Worse than impulsive. Worse than reckless, even.
Responsible.
Because that means it was mine.
Not some hot flash of temper or a bad instinct or some impossible force that moved through me. Mine. My judgment. My choice. My responsibility.
I say, quieter now, “You’re saying I can’t call it impulse because that lets me off too easily.”
“Yes.”
The answer comes without hesitation.
I look at her.
She looks right back.
Blue eyes. Cool voice. Not softening a damn thing.
I should be furious.
Part of me is.
The rest is something harder to name.
Something like dread.
Because if she’s right, then I did not bring her here to fix the correct problem.
Or not the whole problem, anyway. I brought her here believing I needed more control, more restraint, tighter management of whatever burns too hot in me.
But if what happened with Nico was not only about impulse—
If it was also about the simple, ugly fact that I believed I was right and acted accordingly—
Then this goes deeper.
It’s uglier.
It’s harder.
Finally, I say, “That doesn’t help me.”
“Yes, it does.”
“How?”
“Because problems you’ve identified are easier to work on than problems you haven’t.”
I stare at her.
“You really think this is about labeling.”
“I think it matters.”
“Everything matters to you.”
She gives the smallest lift of one shoulder. “That’s generally how my job works.”
I almost smile at that.
But the pressure in my chest doesn’t let it happen.
“What exactly am I supposed to do with that?” I ask. “Walk around saying, sorry, I’m not impulsive, I just make bad choices that nearly get people I love killed?”
Teresa’s expression shifts, not into sympathy, but into something more focused.
“No,” she says. “You’re supposed to stop reducing the problem to something simplistic because simplistic problems feel easier to fix.”
“I’m not the only one calling it impulsive,” I say suddenly, as if I’ve got some sort of gotcha up my sleeve. “My family calls me impulsive as well.”
“You said you’ve been called impulsive all your life, yet I haven’t seen evidence of that,” she says.
“So, what? You calling them liars?” I ask, defensively. “Or you just think you know me better after a week than they do after a lifetime?”
She doesn’t back down at my tone.
“I have a theory,” she says.
“Oh? We’ll go right ahead, Doc.” I’m being a sarcastic ass in defense of the truth she’s telling me, and I know it. Worse, she knows it.
“My theory is that you are impulsive— to them,” she says.
“Ah, well, now we’ve solved it. I am impulsive,” I sneer. “Glad we got there eventually. Maybe next time we skip the scenic route and get right to it?”
She chooses to ignore that and continues. “Sometimes in families, once someone becomes something, like the impulsive one, they stay that way. They’re never given a chance to prove otherwise.
“But it’s not just a word. It’s a label they’ve slapped on you, and it can shape how they treat you.
To them, every reaction or bad decision gets filed under the same heading whether it belongs there or not.
And when that’s all you’ve known, that’s what you come to expect, and it becomes sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. ”
I stare at her.
She holds my gaze and keeps going. “Not because it’s fake. Because it’s familiar. Because people tend to lean into the role they’ve been assigned within a family unit, especially when everyone around them is already expecting it.”
My mouth hardens. “So now this is my family’s fault.”
“No,” she says, still calm and even-toned. “It’s your responsibility. I’m just telling you the script may have been handed to you long before you started performing it.”
I open my mouth.
Close it again.
Because that one hits kind of hard.
Maybe too hard.
I know I’m doing that. Or some part of me does.
Knew it the second she started pushing on the difference between impulse and decision. I wanted the answer to be simple because simple could be solved. Trained out or managed.
She’s telling me it isn’t simple.
She’s telling me the problem lives in the space where my instincts, my values, my doubts, and my judgment all collide.
And somehow that feels worse than any diagnosis she could have given me.
I turn away from her again and brace both hands on the window frame, staring out at the line where water meets sky.
Behind me, she says, “What are you feeling right now?”
I laugh once, sharp. “You really picked now for that?”
“Yes.”
I close my eyes.
“Don’t do that,” she tells me.
“Do what?”
“You keep doing that. Trying to make this clinical.”
“Well, you are a clinical psychologist,” I say, throwing her own words back at her.
“What I mean,” she says, and I hear her take another step closer, “is that you keep trying to distance yourself from it. Every time we delve into your feelings, you take two giant steps back and play the observer.”
I push away from the window and face her again.
“Fine,” I say. “You want to know what I’m feeling?”
“Yes.”
“Pissed off.”
“Why?”
“Because you keep saying things I don’t want to hear.”
“That’s not specific— or particularly helpful.”
I let out a disbelieving breath.
God, she’s relentless.
“Because if you’re right,” I say, “then this is bigger than I thought.”
She doesn’t interrupt. I keep going.
“Because if you’re right, then it wasn’t just that I moved too fast or made a rash decision.
It was that I believed my judgment mattered more in that moment than my brother’s.
It was that I made the call, and it was the wrong one.
And he paid for it. Almost with his life.
” My voice gets rougher and hoarser as I go.
But I don’t stop my tirade. “And if that’s true, then my problem isn’t just control. It’s me. I brought you here so I could learn to be a better Don, only to realize that I’m not fit to be one at all.”