Carmine
10 YEARS AGO
“Snap out of it, already. I’m tired of you acting like a prissy bitch,” my father mocks as I sit at the kitchen table, wondering what the hell I did to deserve a man like him to be my father.
“She’s lucky she is even alive to experience grief. That’s her punishment,” he says with a smug chuckle I would like nothing more than to smack off his face.
“Her punishment for what? Being born into a family she had no fucking say in?” I ask, curious as to why my father builds these vendettas that he has against everyone.
He grabs a smoke, laughing at my question, only fueling my rage. I know more than anyone what it means to be born into a family that drags you down. My father drags down everyone in his midst.
“Just because you have a hard-on for her doesn’t mean you can save her. She doesn’t even know you exist, so don’t be a fucking creep. You’ll get over her once you let another broad get under you. That’s how it works.” My father sneers. Clearly, heart-to-heart interactions are not his forte. Most interactions that require him to have one iota of compassion are beyond him
“Oh, that’s how it works, huh?” I roll my eyes, tired of my father’s disregard for, well, everyone and everything.
“Listen, don’t be a fucking smart-ass. I’m your father, I’m telling you that’s how it works. Plenty more pussy where that hoe came from. You can’t trust women, keep them at a distance, but close enough to suck you off when needed.”
Wow, what fucking riveting, heartfelt advice, Father.
I get in his face, seething with anger. How dare he talk about her like that, after what he did to her.
“You don’t get to talk about her like that.” I spit in his face, unintentionally, but I don’t regret it either.
“Oh yea, what are you going to do about it? You don’t exist to her,” he reminds me, only fueling my anger.
He continues. “One day, Son, you will thank me. When this empire I have built is yours, you will sit back and thank your old man for teaching you difficult life lessons.”
I roll my eyes and laugh.
“Something amusing you?” he asks, irritated at my demeanor.
“Difficult lessons? You haven’t taught me anything, you have created almost every difficult situation that I have ever been in.”
This man is a literal walking, breathing cancer, he sucks the life out of anyone in his presence. The longer I am in his presence, the more I feel myself slowly withering away from who I need to be.
“How so?” he asks, with a confused look on his face.
God, this man is so dense, it’s pathetic.
“I’m not playing games with you, Father. You are a disaster, and you leave a bloody trail everywhere you go, expecting the clean-up crew to pick up after you.”
“Yep, damn right, and it makes me a better man,” he says with pride, not realizing how delusional he is.
“That’s rich, coming from the man who slaughtered my mother because she had a bigger set of balls than you could ever have.”
Rage is filling his fat mug, making him turn fire engine red. “Don’t you dare disrespect me in my house!” he roars
He cuts me off. “You know why I did what I did. She didn’t want to uphold her end of the bargain.”
“Bargain? How could any situation that results in being stuck with you be a bargain?”
“Listen, Carmine, marrying a made man means you take a back seat as a woman, you stand there and look pretty, you do as you are fucking told. She couldn’t do that. Even worse, she didn’t want you to fulfill your birthright, to become a king in our world. Being a made man is a privilege, your mother just couldn’t see that. So, I did what had to be done,” he says with such a false sense of pride it disgusts me.
“This was never meant for me. It was supposed to be—”
He cuts me off. Pain masked as rage takes over his trembling voice. “Don’t you dare speak his name in this house.”
“Why? You had two sons, why can’t we fucking talk about him?” I provoke him.
