CHAPTER 30 ROCCO
Mauro is here. I know it. For years he thought I was an idiot who had no idea what he was doing. They all think they can outsmart me.
But those motherfuckers are wrong. I’ll hunt them down and kill them all…
Hate, anger, hate, anger—they flow in my veins, and I love to live like this. That’s how I was molded.
I run my finger across the screen of my phone, where I see a photo showing my brother’s tall figure slipping along the wall of Renato’s house.
A chuckle escapes me. All it took was a few drones, and tada! I had him.
I start the car, hesitating for a moment over whether I should take the boys with me or handle this myself, but this is personal.
My brothers betrayed me at the exact moment when the fate of our family hung in the balance. The FBI raided us, and Anzo was arrested. That same day, Mauro and Eliano disappeared.
I don’t know where Eliano is hiding at the moment, but it’s only a matter of time before I find out. Mauro, however, turned out to be very predictable.
Of course, he ran to Renato! That old forest geezer!
Mauro’s always been drawn to him… our weird uncle and his obsession with the woodlands. Ugh, he just irritated me.
I pull into the driveway, and Renato’s mansion, hidden among the dense vegetation of a large garden, comes into view.
I get out and walk up to the door and ring the bell as if I were some ordinary guest, but hey, showing a little good manners can be amusing sometimes.
After a moment, Gianni opens the door.
His eyes, hidden behind his glasses, grow even wider until they start to look comical, and I can’t help snorting with laughter.
Then, before he can slam the door in my face, I shove it open brutally and force my way inside, driving him backward.
Gianni hits the wall from the force of it, letting out a small squeak that sounds like a little mouse. Well, I really enjoy making omegas produce sounds like that, as long as they’re pretty ones and not aging nerds with thick glasses.
"That’s a little rude, closing the door in someone’s face, don’t you think?"
Then I shove past him so hard that he falls to the floor, while I head deeper into the house, making my way toward the living room.
Uncle Renato and Granddad Silvio are, of course, there. When they see me, they react with astonishing calm, simply looking at me.
I’m disappointed to notice that Mauro isn’t here. Apparently, he managed to slip out through the back somehow, but whatever. He will know that I have my eye on him…
"Ahhh, Granddad, Uncle, how nice to see you after all these years."
I haven’t been here in a good fifteen years, but they haven’t changed all that much…
They don’t answer me. They simply continue staring at me.
"What’s the problem?" I grin. "I came because someone whispered in my ear that my dear little brother Mauro is staying here. I hope you don’t mind if I wait here for him."
"I’ll admit that your visit is not welcome. Over all these years, we’ve heard about the way you’ve been living your life, Rocco, and I want you to know that we cannot support such behavior."
My rage explodes.
"I’ve got your fucking support deep up my ass with the shit!" I snarl.
I stride toward them, and Renato gets to his feet, with Granddad Silvio rising as well. Now we’re standing directly across from each other.
"But one thing is certain. Family or not, you’re going to talk or you’ll face consequences. Where’s the traitor Mauro?!"
"And what consequences are you talking about, nephew?" Renato’s voice is weirdly calm.
"Deadly serious ones," I add with a murderous grin.
Then, unexpectedly, Granddad Silvio speaks.
"You know, when you were seven, you were such a sweet and cheerful boy.
Sometimes we would walk through the garden together, and you loved stopping by the flower beds.
You were especially fond of snapdragons.
I had quite a few of them back then, and you liked making them snap, pretending they were real little dragons… "
I raise a hand to my mouth and make a yawning gesture.
"Your point exactly?"
"When you went home after your vacation that year, Tito took you under his wing. The following year, when you came back… you were like a different child. It was as if someone had replaced you, taken away that cheerful, carefree little boy."
I don’t say a word. I’m certainly not going to tell them what happened that year. I don’t think about it anymore, either. I haven’t for years. Tito taught me to accept that it was a necessary part of my hardening process.
"Do you still have this boy hidden inside you?" Silvio whispers.
I pull a disgusted, contemptuous grimace, just so he knows exactly what I think of his sentimental, fucking idiotic bullshit.
But his eyes are fixed on me, and that fucking magic of his makes my mind falter, even if only slightly, because I’m immune to his stupid magic. Mostly. A part of me trembles faintly, and the memory comes back. Against my will.
Tito…
When he first took me to those men and said that to make someone, you first have to break him, I didn’t understand what he meant, but I think Tito was right in the end.
There’s a deep wisdom in that. Yes, he had to break me; he promised me strength and resilience in return once I grew up.
He had to weed that sobbing, feeble little boy out of me and replace him with a made man, a mafia man.
And it’s a good thing he did, because I was pathetic.
As a child, it was hard for me to understand why I had to be handed over to those men one after another; back then, I fought against it, but now I don’t care about the past anymore. Screw it all.
Silvio watches my face, his head tilted, forcing me to go back into the past, the fucker.
Yeah. I remember him, his warm hand holding mine as we walked through the garden, among the flower beds…
"No!" I growl.
I have no desire to reminisce about the time before Tito took me to them. It is what it is. No more crying, that’s for weaklings. Tito taught me that.
But Granddad keeps talking.
"I had planted additional varieties of snapdragons especially for you because I knew how much joy they brought you. The next day, I came into the garden and saw that every single one of them had been trampled and broken on the ground…"
He smiles sadly.
"That was when I knew that something had changed and couldn’t be undone. It may have been a small thing, but it was like the first sign of the coming winter…"
"I’m still waiting for your point, Granddad, because I’m getting more and more bored…" I roll my eyes. This sentimental old man pisses me off, dragging up some bullshit from a time that means nothing.
Then Renato starts talking, "He chose you as his successor and decided to mold you the same way his own father had molded him. Your brothers, however, were left alone to grow up like normal kids. You weren’t. It had to hurt so much. But do you know why your parents gave you to Tito?"
I pretend to yawn again. My heart starts to throb, and I fight the temptation to rub my temples hard. I don’t want to think about it. I’m not a victim, I’m a victor, and he won’t change that!
Those two old fucks are shoving their bullshit into my head, thinking their fucking magic is going to make any difference, but they’re in for a surprise.
"Because you were the price your parents had to pay to be released from their obligations to the mafia. To live a normal life. If they hadn’t given you to Tito, all your brothers would have had to go through what you went through. So they sacrificed one for the other three."
I start to fake another yawn, but I’m no longer in the mood for it. I feel anger, immense rage, and it’s becoming harder and harder to keep it under control.
No, fuck, no. I won’t be talking about the past anymore. I learned to shove all my feelings deep inside what I call my Shadow.
The pathetic weakling I trapped inside me, lurking in the depths of my mind, scratching at my subconscious with his doubts every time I did something Tito would have been proud of.
Shadow.
Who now listens to them, feeding on Silvio’s crap stories.
The stupid remnant of my conscience, which I had fought so successfully for the past twenty years that his voice had become nothing more than a faint echo, almost impossible to recognize.
"You need to know that’s why we cut Aldo off, disowned him. Because he gave you, our grandson, up to be sacrificed instead of looking for another way. He could have run away with all of you to the other side of the world. We never accepted what was done to you. We want you to know that, Rocco."
Instead of listening to Silvio’s mumbles, I pick up my gun and casually toy with it as I say, "Well, my parents did it the right way, buying their freedom from the mafia. Good for them."
"But was it good for you?" Renato says quietly.
"Can’t complain. I wouldn’t be the man I am today if not for Tito. But back to the point. My dear brother Mauro didn’t properly ask to be released from his mafia obligations like our parents did. He left our family without permission. I came here to punish him, and you’re standing in my way."
"And we will, or at the very least, we’ll do everything we can to stop you."
The next moment, my uncle’s body changes, glowing with a green light.
Granddad Silvio changes too, taking on his strange magical form. It’s not like I’m unaware of their nature. My dad has hinted more than once that they were magical ABOs… that his bloodline was an unusual one, but I didn’t care.
So I just snort. "I don’t give a shit about your magic tricks. I only wonder if you can withstand lead. Where’s Mauro? He’s a traitor, I repeat. No one leaves the mafia without the capo’s blessing! And now… that would be me."
I raise my gun and point it at Renato’s head.
"Why have you never gotten rid of that scar on your face, Rocco?" he asks with astonishing calm.
"I’m counting to ten, and then I shoot," I say as I click the safety off.
Then, unexpectedly, Grandpa Silvio takes a step toward me and says, "The snapdragons, grandson… do you remember how many of them can grow from a single stem?"
"What the fuck are you talking about, those stupid flowers again?" I snarl, but as I turn my head toward Granddad, I don’t see Renato grab my wrist at the same moment.
Damn. His grip is astonishingly strong as he twists my gun toward the ceiling.
My finger instinctively pulls the trigger, and the sound of a gunshot rings out.
Suddenly, I realize I can’t move.
His grip is powerful and paralyzing, leaving me standing completely motionless, as if I’ve been turned to wood by a spell.
What the fuck!
Then Granddad grabs my other wrist… and a wave of fury floods through me. How dare they! I’m a new capo. I’ll destroy them…
Renato speaks slowly.
"We lost you when Tito took you. One part of you can no longer be saved, but there is still another part we can try to rescue. You’re from our Silvari lineage, and this gives us the possibility to do so."
I want to say something, laugh, tell them that I don’t have any other ‘part’, that I am what Tito created, and I intend to be proud of it.
"Do you know what the most important power of nature is, Rocco?"
Silvio’s face, so different now, glowing with light and transformed to resemble tree bark, moves a little closer to me, and his wooden lips whisper,
"It separates the wheat from the chaff…"
The next moment, my body is ripped apart by a violent wave of brutal, cold, relentless energy.
When I collapse to the ground, I am no longer alone.
I glance to the side and see my own face, now without the scar, blinking in shock, lost and confused.
That last expression is one I share too…
"We will not be able to save you, because you chose your path, your fate.
Yet we believe that the little boy who used to walk with me along the garden paths, who cried when he saw a grasshopper with a broken leg, who cared for his younger brothers with such love, and who had the most tender heart of a good gardener, may still be saved. "
"What the fucking hell did you do?!" I blurt out…
That other version of me, my mirror double, the doppelganger… looks toward me with wide, shocked eyes.
What the fuck just happened?!
A deep silence falls.
Then, Renato leans forward slightly, and says, "Don't come back here again, Rocco. Ever. Because if you return, within two days, you will die. This is the deal with Fate we're making today."
Shaking with rage, overwhelmed by the absurdity of it all and the sting of defeat, I bolt for the door, already thinking about how I'm going to get revenge on those bastards…
But then I hear footsteps pounding behind me.
Like my… Shadow.
And in my head, I hear,
Don't even think about it…
Fuck!
Not that idiot!