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I felt worse when Cordelia called Dad and told him what happened.
She spoke to him, not me, but I heard what she said and saw from her reaction that she wasn’t happy with the direction the conversation took.
She finished talking to Dad outside the room where I couldn’t hear, and when she returned, she told me to try and sleep. She said we’d talk in the morning, and it was getting late.
That told me everything I already knew.
Peter said it well when he reminded her who he was. He’s the asshole my father places on a pedestal above me.
What I do want to know is what Dad said to Cordelia. I want to know what words he said to her when she told him what happened.
I roll onto my back, and I think of that moment when I first knew Peter wasn’t what he appeared to be.
It was a feeling I got after I heard him arguing with my brother.
It was the same night I last saw Dante.
The argument was unlike any they’d had because Peter was saying all sort of shit about Dante. The argument came after a family lunch a little like the dinner we had the other night. Dad announced he was going to allow Dante to work with him at the bank while he was finishing his last year at Northwestern. Both he and Peter had been doing their Accounting and Business degrees there.
Dad made the proposal with a view to Dante running the bank after graduation. Dad would oversee Dante until it was time to retire, and Peter would be Dante’s assistant.
I was so proud of my brother, and he was proud of himself. Peter, however, seemed furious at the arrangement. It was clear he didn’t think my brother was deserving of such an accomplishment. Of the two, I knew Peter worked harder, and Dad was lenient on Dante because my brother was the kind of guy who didn’t have to try hard to do anything. He was naturally talented. He was that guy who could take off for the whole semester and show up for the exams and ace them. What appeared to be laziness to others was him just making use of his time in other ways.
I never usually take note of anything to do with business, but I did then. I saw how Peter looked.
I took note, too, when I heard Peter and Dante arguing by the poolside later that night. Dad was away on business, so it gave Peter the perfect opportunity to call my brother an incompetent trust fund prick without my father hearing.
Peter stormed off, but Dante saw me watching. I tried to ask him what was going on, but he wouldn’t tell me. I always got on really well with my brother, but that was an example of him not confiding in me because of our differences in age. I was fifteen, and at the time, he’d just turned twenty-two.
The next night, in the later hours, I was woken up by more arguing. This time Dante was on the phone, but I heard him mention Peter’s name.
The same bad feeling I always have came to get me, so I snuck out of my room to listen in on the conversation.
Dante ended the call before I could take note of what was being said, but then he left the house.
It was when I saw him walk into the woods that I decided to follow. That woodland area was part of the grounds of our home we shared with the public footpaths. The section we owned was beautiful, and I often went running there when I wasn’t at school. The public pathway, however, always creeped me out, even during the daytime.
I knew what route to take to get past the guards, so I did, and I followed Dante to the river.
Foolishly I gave my position away when I stepped on a branch, and all stealth went out the window when he saw me.
He was so furious that I’d followed and started to tell me off when we heard footsteps.
He called out Peter’s name, and that’s the thing that stuck in my mind.
There was no answer, however.
Dante hid me behind a tree and told me to stay there and keep quiet.
I didn’t. When he walked away to search the area, I looked on from where I was. I must have been twenty feet away. Near but far.
Dante called for Peter again, and not even a minute later, three men stepped out of the thicket of trees.
One was older than the others. The fear of God took me when I saw them and froze me to the spot.
Just as Dante was going to say something, the older man pulled out a gun and shot him twice. In the sliver of the moonlight, all I could see was the man’s face and a tattoo of a black snake on the man’s hand as he raised the gun and killed my brother.
Fear robbed me of screaming, and until this day, I don’t know how it was I didn’t scream.
