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“Whatever the risk?”
“Yes, Dad. Whatever the risk,” Alessandro insisted. “Whatever the cost, I’m willing to pay it.”
“Oh really? And you’re sure about that?” Carmine inquired.
“Yes, I’m willing as long as they get theirs.”
“So, you would risk arrest, incarceration, even your life?”
“Whatever the cost,” Alessandro seethed. He squared up with his father, staring him in the eyes, not backing down.
“I thought that way, too.”
Gabriel’s ears piqued.
“What do you mean?” Alessandro asked. “You got revenge?”
“Yes, I did.” Carmine got a distant look in his eyes as he told the story. Both of his sons were tuned in.
“I was a little younger than you are,” Carmine began. The more he spoke, the more he looked off into the distance, not focusing on the present but reliving the past. “I was eighteen, full of myself, cocky, arrogant, and entitled. Someone crossed me. It doesn’t matter what their offense was. What matters is my response to their offense. To think about it now, I was ignorant, even if my desire to prove a point was not to be taken lightly. But I was full of vim and vigor and a wave of insatiable anger. I only saw red. I didn’t express my anger to anyone, not directly, because I felt like nobody would understand, that they would take his side over me, and I would be stuck with the feelings I had.”
Carmine paused, the anger and pain he felt reswelling in his belly. He thought he had gotten over the hurt he experienced at the hands of a family friend, but clearly, thinking about it, talking about it, remembering it brought up all the old feelings.
“I was intent on hurting him as badly as he hurt me,” Carmine continued.
His sons saw how his brow seemed to thicken and knock together. Even though his voice was softer, they could still hear the rage and pain. Gabriel leaned in even more. He was learning something new about his father.
“I was determined and without restraint. So, I set a plan in place to end him before he could end me.”
“He was going to hurt you, kill you?” Alessandro asked. His voice was truly inquisitive. The anger he felt had been put on temporary hold.
Carmine didn’t intend to reveal more than he needed to in order to get his point across, but if it meant revealing everything, then he would do it to save his sons.
“He hurt me,” Carmine said, finally looking back at his son. His anger brewed up even higher in his belly and started to spill over into the rest of him. Carmine could no longer contain it. He had stepped back in time and relived all the hurt and pain he had experienced.
“He violated me when I was innocent and continued to do so for years. I told my parents. I told his parents my extended family. But they didn’t believe me. They said it was child’s play, my imagination. They never blamed him for what he did to me.”
Their father didn’t need to say more. He didn’t need to say specifically what happened to him. They put the pieces together. Each of them felt the pain their father spoke of and continued to listen intently as he continued to share.
“I had a plan, a way of letting my actions speak for me since nobody wanted to hear the words I said. I knew he was going to try again. It had become habit, old hat. It’s just what we did together when we were together. But I had a plan to change that. And so, I did. I waited until he approached me with the same line he always approached me with. I didn’t care that our families were in the next room. He never cared. He threatened me. Made me be quiet and endure.”
A creepy smile crossed their father’s lips. It was only there for a split-second, and then their father continued.
“I was on my knees in front of him, like he always made me do before.”
Carmine paused. He remembered all too well how that predicament made him feel, and he nearly gagged in response to the memory.
“He held his hand behind my head, and he forced me to… He forced me to do something I hated doing, all the while telling me how much he loved me. All the while telling me how much he cared about me and how important our little secret was. All the while threatening to threaten me and my family. And so I played along until he got so caught up he lost focus on me and just enjoyed.
That’s when I struck.”
Both Alessandro and Gabriel were on edge. They were both in wide-eyed suspense, wanting to hear what happened but also not wanting to hear.
“So, when his head was back, dropped between his shoulders, I pulled the blade I had hidden in my back pocket. I pulled it out. I wasn’t afraid. I wanted to end him. And I cut him. I cut the very thing he offended me with. I tried to cut it all the way off, but I cut him enough to make him bleed… bad.”
Their father fell silent. Both wanted to know what happened next, what made him tell the story now when he talked about consequences. But neither of them asked. They waited with bated breath until their father was ready to speak.
“He screamed. He screamed so loud. I relished in his scream. But I wasn’t done. I wanted to do even more damage for all the things he’d done to me. But his screams alerted the other people in the house, and before I could kill him, they came in. They saved him.”
