Monster
Chapter 41
Lorenzo
"Metti via il cellulare, Lorenzo."
Without looking up, I switch my phone off and place it face-down in my lap. After arriving home, it took exactly two minutes before my father ordered me into his private study.
"How many times have I told you to focus?" he continues, twirling an unlit cigar in his right hand.
Behind him, standing rigid like a mannequin, is Kingsley.
His hands are tucked neatly behind his back, his eyes fixed forward. I bet it was him standing by the grand window, watching my car pull up the driveway and reporting my arrival to my father a split second later.
"Padre," I say, my voice flat as I shift my eyes to meet his.
"And why is my son deciding to play the nice guy on the field instead of attending his mandatory meeting?" He strikes a match and lights the cigar. It's a casual, calculated gesture, explicitly designed to break eye contact and make me feel small.
"I don't understand," I answer honestly. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a slick, subtle grin from Kingsley.
What is it this time? What has this rat found out and run to report?
My father makes a sharp signal with his hand. Kingsley immediately pulls an iPad from behind his back, holding it out to my father while angling the screen directly toward me.
Of course.
It's a picture of me carrying Sophia across the field.
Why in the absolute world would he show this to my father?
"And this looks like no distraction to you, my son?"
"Yes," I say flatly, shooting Kingsley a look that should kill him on the spot. "You know what? Maybe you should tell your fucking shadow to stay out of my business." My patience with this man is entirely finished.
I want nothing more than to snatch that stupid iPad and hurl it through the glass window.
"It's in your best interest, Mister Calloway," Kingsley answers, his grin widening into something toxic. "I'm just doing your father a favor."
A favor. Right.
A favor for my fatheror a favor for his own desperate ambition?
He operates under the quiet fantasy that the moment I am out of the picture, my father will hand him my legacy.
"Really? Because last time I checked, you were just fucking upset about my position in this family," I snap.
A loud, violent slam against the mahogany desk jerks my attention back.
"Lorenzo! How dare you speak to my associate like that?"
"Dovrebbe farsi gli affari suoi," I growl, not even bothering to hide the venom in my voice.
"You..." My father points the burning tip of his cigar directly at my chest.
But before he can launch into a lecture, the heavy wooden door creaks open.
"Papi?"
The tiny voice instantly changes the air in the room. My posture straightens immediately.
Standing in the doorway in her white nightdress, clutching a plush rabbit in one hand and a storybook in the other, is Mia. Her wide, innocent eyes are fixed entirely on my father.
"Papi, can you read to me?"
"Not now, Mia. I'm busy," he says coldly, his gaze cutting straight back to me without a second thought.
How can he call himself a father?
How is it possible that a person like him exists?
I don't even know if the man has a beating heart. His own daughter is standing right there, looking up at him, and all she wants is for her dad to read her a goodnight story the way a real father should. My hands clench into white-knuckled fists at my sides.
"Give me five minutes, Mia," I tell her softly, desperately trying to shield her from the heartbreak. "I'll read to you."
"No, you won't," my father barks, cutting his eyes to Kingsley. "Tell the maid to bring her to bed."
Kingsley nods right on cue, walking toward the door and gently leading Mia away. She looks back at me, her tiny shoulders slumped, and a hot, toxic wave of fury surges through my veins.
"Abbi un po' di cuore, porca miseria!" I burst out, slamming my palms against his desk as I stand over him.
"Have some respect!" he roars back, throwing himself out of his chair until we are nose-to-nose. "You are not twelve years old anymore, Lorenzo. I am completely done with you playing games."
"Your daughter just asked you to read her a story, and you pushed her away like an annoying fly!" I shout, the walls of the study echoing with my anger.
"I am not discussing this with you." My father's voice instantly drops back into its usual register—low, controlled, a chilling performance of calm that he wears like a tailored suit.
He slams a thick, heavy white folder onto the desk between us. The sound cuts through the room like a gunshot.
"I want you to read through everything carefully and memorize the important data. Every single number."
He straightens his cuffs and walks slowly toward the door.
Right before he clears the threshold, he stops.
He turns back around, his eyes drilling into mine.
"And my son?" A heavy, suffocating pause.
Just long enough to let the threat sink in. "This is your last warning. "
And then, he walks out.
The door clicks shut.
I am left standing in the center of the room entirely alone.
The acrid smell of cigar smoke still drifts through the air, accompanied by the specific, heavy silence that this house always produces the moment he leaves a room.
It isn't a peaceful quiet. It's a suffocating weight the quiet of expensive walls that have absorbed too much violence and will never say a word back.
I stare down at the folder.
I pick it up, and with a feral shout,
I slam it violently onto the floor.
The bindings crack. Papers explode everywhere, spreading across the dark wood in a wide, useless arc of charts and contracts.
"Fucking Monster " I whisper, the rage burning hot behind my ribs.
But before I can tear anything else apart, the door opens again.
This time, it's my mother.
She stands in the doorway with a fractured, worried look, instantly taking in the scattered papers, the destroyed room, and the hyperventilating state of her son. She steps inside and immediately begins to bend toward the floor to clean up my mess.
"No, Mum." I cross the room in two long strides, my hand gentle against her shoulder as I steer her back upright. "I'll get it. Please.Leave it."
She looks up at me for a long, silent moment. Then, she slowly raises her hand and presses her warm palm flat against my cheek. The gesture is so familiar, so unconditionally loving, that it reaches somewhere raw and broken beneath my ribs.
"Cerca di capire tuo padre," she whispers softly.
I look into her tired eyes.
There is no version of this universe in which I could ever understand that man.
Not after everything.
Not after years of it the physical discipline, the mental warfare, the specific and ongoing damage of being raised by someone who considers control a form of love and fear a reasonable substitute for respect.
Do I blame my mother for being too weak to stop him?
No.
But I will never understand this man . I have never blamed her. I know exactly what she carries. I know what it looks like when a person's world breaks in ways they were never given the tools to repair.
After Mia was born, my mother became... lighter, somehow. As though my little sister gave her something to hold onto that wasn't him—that wasn't the suffocating weight of this family and everything it costs to belong to it.
Mia was her way forward.
Her reason.
And my mother has her own pain.
More than she has ever said out loud. More than she would ever want me to know.
What kind of son would I be if I told her what this man does when she isn't watching?
When the security cameras aren't rolling, when the important people aren't in the room, and when the carefully constructed image of the Calloway family is packed away for the evening?
The name, the legacy, the glossy stories told in newspaper features and architectural magazines—it's all a lie.
The particular reverence of people who only know our address means nothing.
The Calloway family stopped being the picture it presents a long time ago.
What happens behind these expensive walls is something else entirely.
And I carry that. I have always carried that.
Not for him—never for him—but for her. For my sister.
For my mother. I do it for the specific, fragile peace that exists in this house only when my father is elsewhere.
When my mother is laughing at something my sister said, the whole crushing weight of this legacy lifts for a single hour. And I can finally breathe.
I take her hands. Both of them. Carefully.
She looks up at me, searching my face for something, the way she always does. It's the specific maternal attention of a woman who knows her son well enough to recognize when he is hiding the truth, and loves him enough not to push for answers.
"Buona notte," I say quietly.
She squeezes my hands once, a silent understanding passing between us. Then, she lets go.
I watch her leave the room. I am left standing in the absolute silence, with the contracts still scattered across the floor, my father's last warning still vibrating in the air, and the ghost of my sister's voice asking for a bedtime story locked somewhere at the back of my chest.
It's going to stay there for a while.
This is going to be a long night