Page 42 of A Capo’s Love: Featuring A Don’s Love

I stepped out my Maybach slowly, the cold night air brushed against my face while my eyes traveled over the mansion. The smell of gardenias, Lucille’s favorite flowers, hit me before I even reached the doors. The front doors opened soon as I landed on the last step. Her staff lowered their eyes immediately when I walked inside as the head of staff approached me with tear filled eyes.

“She’s been in bed since yesterday, sir,” Nubian spoke lowly.

“Okay,” I whispered carefully. “I sent a nurse⁠—”

“Ye-yes! A nurse came and highly recommended for her to be checked into a hospital. Lucille refused, I’m really worried about her.” A tear escaped Nubian’s left eye followed by another tear from her right.

I swallowed down the spit that gathered in my mouth and tried to keep my face neutral. Nubian had been with Lucille since a teenager. She was another rescue off the streets. To me, Lucille groomed her to be her lap dog. I thought about putting Nubian out of her misery when all of this was said and done. But it would be a waste of time. Nubian was afraid to lose her mentor, a woman that she looked up to as a mother she never had.

Lucille raised the perfect lapdog out of Nubian. It was mother’s specialty. She excelled in getting people to love and worship the ground she walked on.

“Designated people have been put in place for tonight, Nubian. Take a couple days off to rest.” I signed sharply to her.

If she refused me, I’d kill her ass just for being in the way. Her beady eyes casted downward. Seconds later she wiped her tears and nodded her head with her shoulders dropped in defeat. I eyed the expensive artwork that my father spent millions on collecting just to impress Lucille. The house still smelled like his favorite cigars mixed with polished wood.

For a second, my chest tightened so hard as I looked down the hallway like I expected him to walk around the corner barking orders at one of his house staff with his favorite whiskey in one hand. Reality of what tonight would be about came slamming into every vein inside my body.

After tonight… I’ll officially be parentless. I told myself, accepting my new reality. I’ll have the twins, my other two nieces and nephew… and now I have a child of my own… Novae Bonetti. I soothed my own reservations because there was no backing out now.

“You know what the hardest part about being a man like me is?”

I was seventeen when my father asked me that. At the time, I was angry at the world, very reckless. Anybody disrespecting him, I handled them in the coldest way possible. I believed that power meant fear.

“The hardest part, son, is me living… after making decisions I had no choice to make.”

For a moment, I saw sadness flicker in my father’s eyes and wanted to ask him what those decisions were.

“Some decisions gon’ crush your soul whether you right or wrong. And the dangerous part ain’t the decision making.” He placed his heavy hand on my shoulder. “It’s waking up every day afterward and learning how to live with it.”

“A man can survive pain. What destroys him is regret,” I whispered to myself as I loosened my tie slightly while moving through the hallway toward the dining room. My throat felt tight as my father’s words replayed in my mind. The scar across my neck throbbed inwardly as I thought about my old injury behind these same expensive walls.

I stepped into the dining room and it almost knocked the air out of me. I tried to blink the fogginess of my mind away, and rid my thoughts of my father because I felt him inside of here. The long mahogany table stretched through the center of the room, gleaming under low chandelier light. Crystal glasses sat beside gold-plated silverware arranged perfectly enough to look like it was just for decoration.

I looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the back gardens where my father smoked his cigars and entertained his table of men that loved to talk mafia politics until they argued over it. I stopped walking because my mind betrayed me instantly.

I could hear Kentrell laughing loud as hell, telling on himself after sneaking liquor before dinner. Lucille used to scold him about it like she was mad in front of my father while secretly smiling behind her wine glass. My father would tell Lucille that he’s just mimicking the wrong of what they display to us while cutting into his medium-rare steak.

I used to love family dinners… I guess that realization hurt worse than I expected. Back then I’d sit at this table excited to hear my father speak. I loved to feel included, important, and chosen by my parents and even my brother. I had so much hopefulness locked inside of me that it crippled me in the long run. I didn’t realize that power ate families alive from the inside out.

I swallowed down the lump of sadness before I reached for my father’s seat. My fingers brushed against it before I pulled it out then sat down in it, feeling sick. I leaned back slowly while staring around the empty table. Dead memories sat in each empty chair, I allowed myself to feel the sting of it all.

Kentrell was gone by the hands of me.

My father buried… La’Nova pulled the trigger.

My mother was about to die by my hands before dessert touched the table. The poison had slowly spread throughout her entire body that was mixed carefully into the wine she loved. I was giving her a peaceful death. More mercy than she ever gave anybody else. It was more mercy than she deserved. The same mercy that she wouldn’t have given me when it came time to her plotting out my death.

Despite everything, including her lies and her turning motherhood into manipulation every chance she got, some pathetic broken part of me still remembered her fingers rubbing my scalp when I was sick as a kid. I still vividly remembered her kissing my forehead after my throat surgery while I cried in frustration because I couldn’t speak right anymore. I still remembered being young enough to think when I smelled her floral perfume it meant I was home and safe.

That’s what made this moment the hardest for me. It wasn’t love, because that died a long time ago. But my grief? Grief stayed breathing inside of me long after the love I had for her rotted away.

Hearing heavy footsteps, I fixed my sunken posture and sat up straight in my seat. Roy entered, already watching me carefully from the entrance. His black suit fit perfectly against his tall broad frame. Tonight, he didn’t wear any of his most expensive pieces of jewelry. A simple gold watch stood out against his black threads of clothing.

I could see the tightness around his eyes as he nodded his head once and took a seat to the side of me. Too much had been going on at once, but like the thorough Capo he was, he kept up and stayed on top of everything.

“You straight?” He signed smoothly.

“No, but I will be after I get out of here,” I admitted, signing back slowly.