50. Dante
DANTE
One Year Ago
I’ve known Angelo has been sick for a while now and trying to hide it from his inner circle, which is why I’ve spent the last week tailing him.
Now that I’ve seen him leave the chemo clinic he has been visiting, I plan to confront him after our meeting this evening.
If he is as sick as I suspect, we need to have a plan in place for the organization if something were to happen to him.
I guess we all thought he’d just die of old age or from a rival's bullet, but never something like this. And with those scenarios, there are already contingencies in place. But those contingencies always felt so far away that no one took them seriously. He is only in his late sixties, for god’s sake.
This is going to make my request to exit the organization even more difficult.
I know Angelo always intended for me to take over, but this isn’t my legacy.
I’m just a street kid from the Bronx who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and took the only way out of the situation—either join his ranks or die in that alley—and I wasn’t ready to die.
Even though I’m his second, the organization respects blood over most things, and as much as I wish I could call Angelo my blood, I can’t change my parentage.
And once Angelo isn’t the head of the family, I don’t know if I’d have the same security and respect he has afforded me all these years.
First, I need to speak with Angelo and then we can figure out next steps together, while planning my exit at the same time.
Present Day
Walking out of the meeting with Angelo, I can’t stop thinking back to when we met all those months ago in this same place when I found out Angelo had a granddaughter named Violetta and that she would be the one to take over the organization.
What I wasn’t prepared for was finding out Angelo didn’t know she even existed until recently.
Apparently, Lily had left a note for Angelo in the event something happened to her, and she told him everything.
She pleaded in the letter to let Violetta live a normal life and not look for her.
Lily didn’t want her daughter to grow up under constant supervision and fear like she had.
I know it hurt Angelo to read those words because, besides Liliana’s funeral, watching him discuss the letter was the only other time I’ve seen tears in his eyes.
But knowing that the life Lily was raised in ultimately was responsible for her untimely death, Angelo had followed her instructions and didn’t look for his granddaughter—until now.