Page 165 of Unravel Me

"Yes. A true degenerate, depraved man, and a murderer."

There’s another moment of silence. I already knew a little about all this from the time of my horrible encounter with Rocco, but yesterday, while scrolling through articles about the mafia, I managed to dig up even more about the Ferro crime family.

But one thing is still a mystery to me.

"Why was Rocco’s upbringing so different from Mauro’s?"

Emilio sighs deeply, then leans toward me slightly and says, "There’s something behind that, something no one in this family talks about, and everyone pushes out of their minds."

He glances at Gianni, who sits quietly, having brought some extra figurines for Tommy.

He’s arranging them in a circle now, while Tommy munches on pieces of bread with one hand and uses the other to make a buck charge at a wooden bear figurine.

"You see, my late brother Aldo was an exceptionally beautiful omega. Black curls, dark green eyes. He could almost have rivaled you! When he was nineteen, he wanted to experience life, so he left for Florida, hoping to work as a model, but he fell in with the wrong crowd. The Ring didn’t exist yet in its current form, but there were people who operated in similar ways, and one of them was Tito. In exchange for a good contract with a famous brand, Aldo agreed to do more than he should have."

My breathing hitches, and I feel a sudden chill as I realize Aldo did something very similar to what I did…

How well I understand this mindset. I was eighteen, naively believing that the fame and glitter I saw on the surface would be mine, without any of the filth underneath. Apparently, I wasn’t the first to believe that.

Emilio is silent for a moment, staring at his hands.

"My brother was a boy from a small town, sweet and full of dreams, and what he was forced to do drove him to the brink of suicide. One day, Tito brought him to the fortress, and there in the hallway, Tito’s younger brother, Paolo, noticed him."

Another cold shiver runs down my spine because this story is almost a mirror image of my own. Is it some strange joke of Fate that this keeps happening?

Emilio gives a bitter, sad smile.

"Paolo and Aldo knew immediately that they were True Mates… and Paolo rushed to their father, the capo at the time. Angelo wasn’t happy, but he made the right decision. He forbade Tito from going near Aldo. But Tito was the kind of man who couldn’t easily let something go. He told Paolo he would leave Aldo alone, but only if Paolo gave him something he had that he didn’t even know he possessed."

I raise my eyebrows, a bit puzzled.

"Isn’t that one of those popular tricks witches use in fairy tales? You know, a guy goes off to war, meets a sorcerer who helps him, and the sorcerer tells him he has to give him something he doesn’t know he possesses, something waiting for him at home, and it turns out to be a child?"

Emilio makes a sour snort. "Yes, and that’s exactly how it happened. It worked almost like magic."

"So Aldo was pregnant?"

"Yes, and even after it became known, no one suspected the child could be Tito’s. Aldo once confided in me that when Paolo took him to his part of the fortress, Aldo went into heat about three days later, and they spent it together. Rocco was born nine months later, so nothing seemed suspicious."

"Damn, did Aldo and Paolo never… do the math?"

"Well, sperm can survive for up to seven days, and Tito, before Paolo took him away, certainly didn’t hold back with Aldo. But who thinks about stuff like that, right?"

"So how did they eventually find out?"

"They had no idea at first. They raised him as if he were their son, but Tito somehow knew from the start. Intuition or something. When Paolo and Aldo decided a few years later to permanently leave the mafia, Angelo was furious. He saw it as a betrayal, but then, unexpectedly, Tito came to their aid. He stood up for them, but not for free."

"Why am I not surprised," I mutter grimly.

"The price was that Rocco would be trained by him, and that he would eventually take the position of the next capo. He would still mostly live with Aldo and Paolo, but he would also spend days being molded into a perfect mafioso."

"And they couldn’t refuse because that was the… original promise, right?"

"Yes. Tito took Paolo aside and said, ‘You didn’t know about him when you took Aldo, but he already existed back then. Do you want to take a DNA test?’ Paolo had little choice. If he refused to give Rocco away, they would all have to stay in the mafia and all their kids would be forced into the same training process. So seven-year-old Rocco became the price they paid for their freedom, handed over to that degenerate."

I clench my jaw. "That’s… tragic, but it’s not as if we exist like islands, completely unaware of what good and evil are. Rocco could try to resist…"

Emilio shrugs. "Well, I think Rocco didn’t want to feel any weakness, the pain that would have come with knowing he was the disposable child who had been traded for the freedom of his parents and his brothers… handed over to the monster. He was born from rape, and he must have realized that, in the end, he wasn’t wanted."