Chapter 3 #3
My arms quake as I raise them to slide the tie over my head, pulling the knot right to my throat.
Then the buckle, the cuff links, socks, and Italian shoes that dig into unhealed welts.
As I pull on the jacket, I notice blood already seeping through the Oxford shirt.
The last object at the end of the pile is a petite wedding ring, a reminder of who I am at this very moment—and who I will no longer be after today.
Dante must have known I’d need this.
My hand shakes as I grab the ring, feeling the weight of my agony all at once.
I could scream. Go insane. Kill .
That’s how badly they’ve destroyed me.
“X.”
My eyes open, her ring of promise to me pressed against my mouth. Any tears I could produce are forced back before I turn, pushing my devastated limbs towards the door.
One foot in front of the other.
One minute at a time.
That’s how you survive something like this.
Dario props the door open, letting the sunlight seep into the room onto my unnaturally pale skin.
The heat of the summer months caresses my skin.
As gentle as it is, the slightest breeze is painful.
Stepping out of the warehouse is when it becomes real.
My father’s men have gathered by the docks.
Their eyes narrow and fixate on one another while stalking my path through the shipyard, a palpable tension in the air. His most trusted, of all ranks. I grab the door to the family car that’s been taken off our grounds without Arturo’s knowledge and slide inside, looking at Dante.
After tonight, our lives are going to change.
Death in the Mafia is typically a silent affair.
It’s rare someone admits what atrocities they’re about to carry out… because it’s never personal, it’s business. It’s calculated—orchestrated ahead of time.
A bullet to the head, a wire to the throat. It’s usually quick business.
The rare occurrence is this.
Where a betrayal awakens the monster that secretly lives within all human beings.
The moon casts a shadow over the estate tonight. Guards have made themselves scarce. My mother has been moved to the Manhattan apartment, still in the dark as to what’s occurring. In our private underground, this will follow me, what I'm about to do.
My name forever tied to his.
Some men will never find it in them to understand.
The Family is life. It is everything .
Engrained in my head from birth, I once believed that, too. I did as my father bid me to, desperate to earn his respect, his love. My childhood was stolen, my soul corrupted. Everything I could have been turned to ash the moment he thrusted a gun into my grasp.
Standing in the shadows, under tree cover, my eyes remain fixed on the prison door.
He’s where you wanted him, the soldier said .
By now, the media is reporting his death.
By now, my mother is wailing in despair.
By now, every man in the city’s radius is planning a counterattack on this family.
As I approach the door, memories of escaping this place with Sophie in my arms make my insides recoil.
Sweating through a vicious fever, I vomit onto the grass, my heart pounding through my chest.
And when I step inside… my world tilts, spins right off-axis. The harsh lighting disorganizes me. Retracing the same path I made all those months ago when I knew my wife was trapped within these walls, I come upon her cell.
I have to grip the wall to remain upright.
A surgical table has been added to the confining space, a clear tarp spread across the floor. My father lies unconscious against the slab, down to his drawers.
I’ll make you watch.
She called out for you.
You still want that soiled woman?
My eyes squeeze shut, reliving the worst moments of my life, moments I’d sell my soul to forget. I see him placing the camera monitor in front of me. I see him calling more men to restrain me as I beat them senselessly, trying to reach my wife before they could touch her.
Pleading like a goddamn idiot. I begged as no man had ever begged before, to the point where his men— my men—grimaced at the sight of a man forced to his knees.
My chest cracked wide open when they entered the prison.
Some men I’ve known my entire life. I saw her scramble.
I saw Thomas Ritchey attempt to protect her, beat unconscious for it.
I implored my father, begged him for mercy.
“I’ll do whatever you want me to do!” I screamed, experiencing true desperation for the first time in my life. “I’ll be whatever you want me to be. Papa, please, don’t. Don’t do this to her. This was my doing, my fault!”
I still remember how violently I recoiled when they took her, the strangled cry of despair that erupted from my chest as I turned my face away, trying to drown out her cries.
The sheer rage that took me over—beastly, as if my heart had suddenly spoiled black in my chest. The way I pulled at his guards, some who were as horrified as I was, managing to free myself.
My father stumbled back when I seized Antonio by the skull, slamming him into the pillar with all the force I possessed.
Everyone heard the crack he’d never get up from.
But there were too many. They brought me down to my knees, as they were ordered to do, forcing me to endure it until it was done.
The tears that had dried up in me for years spilled from my eyes as I watched her struggle to lift herself, noticing how badly she trembled even through the small monitor.
When my eyes reopen, back in the present, finding Arturo stirring on the cold slab, I could actually be the devil.
I stalk into the cell he put her in, the cell that took everything from me, until I'm gazing down upon him. Eerie silence fills the space as I place black latex over my hands, grabbing the ammonia, pouring it onto a rag. With one inhale, my father’s eyes fly open, darting around in fear.
His gaze clamps on mine, visibly struggling to digest the suit I'm wearing, the infected wounds on display for him, the rag in my hands, the tray of my favored equipment behind me. He tries to move, to lift his arms to run, but he’s strapped down.
My soul darkens with a smile.
I'm sure whoever he’s looking at isn’t me. Isn’t his son.
I'm someone else entirely right now.
“Xavier—”
“At this moment, every man who didn’t turn against you is dead. Your yacht exploded off the coast. Your consigliere is dead, as is your acting underboss. Every vehicle, home, business, and man you control has fallen into my lap. The family renounced you the moment they took a look at me.”
I let him see it, really see his handiwork. The broken capillaries in my eyes, the left eye that swelled shut and had to be cut open. The bruises, the welts, the places he carved deep. While he’s laid out, unable to do a thing, I watch his pride dissipate into horror .
“Xavier, please.”
“Do you recognize where you are?”
He winces, coming to realizations quickly for a man so near death. “I went too far?—”
“With me, with my body, I could have overlooked it. For your love, I could’ve forgiven this. But you didn’t just go after me… You went after my heart.”
He has never, and could never, understand what that means.
How much I mean it. For years, he’s rewired me to his liking whenever I didn’t meet his standards.
I was never given the choice, but I would have done anything for him.
Even let him rewrite my DNA. As long as he let me have her—my fucking dream —I would have gone to my grave as a Capo dei Capi and never regretted the choice.
But this man cannot stand that I have a weakness. “She has turned you into someone else, Xavier! Are you fucking blind? Can’t you see it?”
“She didn’t make this monster. You did. You won. You got me in the chair. You stripped me of everything. My youth. My innocence. This has been years in the making, Arturo.”
“You are my son,” he chokes out.
“You left me for dead.”
“No, I didn’t. I sent for the Doc. I knew I took it too far, but you said—” He closes his eyes, fighting for breath. “For generations, our men have held power. We have a duty to our traditions, to those that came before us…”
“My wife is gone. The possibility of children left with her.”
He lays his head back. “That’s… not true.”
Placing a hand over a curved blade, my eye twitches. “Your generations die with me.”
“You have a child, just not one that means anything.”
Rearing back, I stare down at him, my blood slowing.
Adrenaline is the only bolster rooting my feet to this floor. This floor that’s stained with Thomas Ritchey’s blood… My wife’s blood. “ What ?”
He swallows a disbelieving laugh, as if he cannot fathom how he arrived in this predicament. A laugh that makes me think he doesn’t actually believe I’m capable of this. His thickset fingers twitch. “Rosa. Bellarosa Barbieri.”
My heart plummets to the fucking ground.
The man half-smiles, pleased to have landed another devastating blow, not needing fists. “I bet your mind is going back, far back. The wedding. The objection that girl made. Her desperation at the bridal dinner. Her father tugging her out of your sight… It’s all falling into place, isn’t it?”
My voice is a weak thing, falling from my lips with bated breath. “You’re lying.”
“You have a daughter. A little girl. Isabella. Named after her. The damn bitch refused to get rid of it.”
I gape in horror, conflicted by a torrent of emotions.
Anger.
Disbelief.
Doubt.
Confusion.
I don’t even know what I'm going to say until the words have left my mouth. “You knew… all along?”
The little boy within me is still there. Painfully still there. Somehow, this man has shocked me again, his viciousness knowing no bounds.
“It was my duty to know, but you? No. Knowing about that girl wouldn’t do you any good. You were married and planning to start a family of your own.”
“You only say that because she had a girl.”
His tongue rims his bloody bottom lip, nodding arrogantly. “You’re right. If it had been a boy, I wouldn’t have had to go as far as I have. I could have done better work with him than I’ve done on you. ”
The information he just laid on me can’t be unspoken. My eyes close, imagining my wife’s lips against my shoulder as a train barreled us towards North Dakota, our doomed location.
I didn’t know you thought about children, I said.
She was still trembling, her touch full of electricity when she laid her hands on me. I didn’t at first.
What changed your mind?
Her answer filled me with hope, ignited dreams within me that I’d never dared to imagine.
You… you changed everything.
The blade in my hand seeps into his flesh without warning, my grip dragging it deeper until I hit bone. A unique crevasse that won’t drain him instantly. He wails as I’ve never heard him wail, banging his hands against the restraints. I gaze down at him, unfazed.
This man is no longer my father.
I renounce relation.
To me… he is just another traitor.
“ Xavier !”
“I won’t gag you,” I seethe, shaking violently as something utterly evil overtakes my body. “I want to hear you scream . I want to watch the blood drain out of your veins, see the life leave your eyes.”
He’s horrified, crying out as I twist the blade before tearing it out. I turn my face, but not before a wetness splatters across my skin. I don’t bother to wipe it. Tears leak down his cheeks. He can’t bear to look at me.
“ Son , stop! Stop this now!”
“I'm not your son.” I shake my head. “Your son died. He died years ago. Months ago. Yesterday. The man you see now carefully planned this moment while you lost your grip, and he did it with pleasure.”
Arturo Marcello lets out a sob, his leg twitching as I glide the blade over his chest, leaning close to him. “This is what you always wanted. This is what you sought so hard to get. All of the agony you put me through. How does it feel? Was it worth it? Is this the end you saw for yourself?”
My father begins to pray. It’s almost laughable. That such a monster would resort to the Divine in a moment as sinful as this.
“God won’t save you. Not from me.”
His eyes meet mine, swarmed with rage and terror in equal measure. “If only your precious Sophia could see you now…”
My lips dip with disgust.
He chose words that would cut deep, pull me from the depths. I turn from him to the array of blunt objects, closing my eyes, forbidding her face from my mind.
Murderous enough that breathing is difficult to manage, I cast Sophie Marcello from my thoughts and switch to my weapon of choice. A cleaver.
His eyes widen.
His wrists shake against the restraints.
His legs buckle.
He begins to scream for help.
If only your precious Sophia could see you now …
“She isn’t here,” I whisper. “You made sure of that.”