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Cristo santo. I exhaled, an unwelcome sense of relief coasting through me. I shouldn’t care whether Alessio lived or died . . . and yet I did. “I know you also told Zia and Frankie what happened.”
“You wish to hide these things from your family? The people who love you the most, unconditionally?”
“I want to pretend it never happened, to be honest.”
“No, never do this. You have always been very hard on yourself, even as a boy. But none of us go through life unscathed, nor should we want to. It’s in the hottest fire that the strongest of us are forged.”
I thought over his words as we stood next to one another, the insects buzzing around our heads. Fausto was wise, and I often forgot how much. But it didn’t lessen my pain or humiliation. I wasn’t certain I’d ever recover from Alessio’s betrayal.
“You know who hired him to kill you, no?” my father asked.
“Yes. D’Agostino.”
My father nodded. “That testa di cazzo. I should have killed him when I had the chance.”
“To be fair, it happened before D’Agostino and Gia started dating.”
“I don’t give a fuck about fair, not when it comes to that man.” He blew out a breath, like he was trying to stay calm. “Lucky for us Ricci was so incompetent that day in Siderno.”
“It wasn’t incompetence that caused him to miss.”
“What does that mean?”
“Forget it. It was something he said, but it doesn’t matter now.”
My father angled toward me, leaning on the fence with one hand. “Dimmi.”
“He saw me on the street with you that day. He said he was awestruck and flustered, and it caused him to miss.”
“Awestruck?”
My father sounded like this was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. Maybe it was. Who the fuck even knew anymore? But I couldn’t talk about Alessio. It was too painful to think about. “I don’t wish to discuss this anymore. I’d rather circle back to Màlaga and Nikolai Kuznetsov.”
“We decided that wasn’t going to happen.”
“No, you decided that. I am very much in favor of it happening.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean? To make a lot of money.”
He didn’t believe me. He stared intently into my eyes, like he was trying to solve a puzzle. “I can give you a lot of money and you won’t have to work for it. Tell me the real reason.”
“I told you, I want something that is mine.”
“A business? Or an empire?”
If I was going to aim, why not aim high? I had nothing to lose anymore. “An empire.”
“Va bene. An empire. I understand this need. But why would we make the Bratva money? They use it to traffic women and fund child pornography. You should make money for our ’ndrina. Our family.”
That made sense, I supposed. But I had to do this my way. “I need muscle in Màlaga. You don’t have any men in Spain.”
He slid a hand over his jaw and rubbed. “That doesn’t mean I couldn’t get some there.”
This was quickly sounding like my father planned on taking over. “I want to do this, Papà. If you do it for me, how will anything ever be mine?”
“Do not be so stubborn. They would be your men. You would lead them and be responsible for them. But you need men loyal to us.”
