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Listen, Son. Protect your mother, protect yourself, protect la famiglia.
I have faith in you to take out the bad egg.
There's no stronger emotion than pain, use it to keep yourself grounded. That's what being a leader entails.
Chapter Four
BENEDETTO
Hell hath no fury like my fucking soul scorned.
I bite down on my lower lip again, not enough to cause a tear, but enough to send the pain rushing to my brain in a wave that can keep me grounded and present.
He killed my father and married my mother. And as if that is not enough, he moves around as a free man, mocking my competence as heir to the Corte clan.
I have failed for four fucking years.
My mind is already spiraling around this letter and if I don't find a way to pin it, it will slip out of my control and I will only be following my compulsive need to murder him. No rational thinking, just pure rage and blinded fury.
I bite down some more and the quick rush of pain and taste of iron from the cut I've given myself makes my eye twitch and still the spiraling of my mind.
Sweet delicious pain.
There are three ways to go about this nerve-wracking, blood-steaming, and air fucking stifling information I have just been privy to.
One is the “right” way, which would mean seeking justice through the law, which is non-existent in the underworld. What business does a mafioso have with seeking legal justice?
The other is the wrong way, the mafia way. To take justice into my hands and do to him more than he has done to me.
The third is my way. The way of a man who had his father killed by the same man who is fucking his mother and is challenging his place. The perfect combination of the second and first.
I want to kill him.
I must kill him.
I take three deep breaths, because, to hell, I would walk out of this study and march down to gut him out. But if I do that, I would be seen as what he has been trying to make them all see me as. A sick person unfit to rule.
If I show anyone this letter, he would most likely say I've been so engulfed with wanting to tear him down that I would write myself a letter and make my own story. After all, this letter is only just surfacing, and I'm the only one with access to my father’s study.
Everyone is aware of my closeness to my father and they know I knew him down to his signature. I am more than his spitting image, I'm part of his entity. It's only normal for them to think I would be able to forge this and make this story up. After all, I have the right motive to lie.
I left, but he stayed and kept the clan going in my absence. I left them like sheep without a shepherd with no second thought that what my father would have wanted would have been for me to stay. And now that I'm back and he has earned their respect, whatever uncalculated action I take will be perceived as a sheer act of jealousy and greed.
Now it feels too late. Claudio has gained more ground, found his feet with the clan, and has more loyal people because of the facade he wears so easily. He is nothing but a deceitful two-faced dickhead.
“Fuck it!” I growl, pinching the brink of my nose as I grind my teeth against each other.
I made this worse. I shouldn't have left. He said to protect my mother in his letter and I fucking left, although I don't think she needs any protection. She is married to the killer and has slipped into her role as his wife very easily. I will never understand herreason for getting married to Claudio just a few weeks after the man she had called her truest love passed on.
Damn it.
For four fucking years I let my grief and my anger consume me, after my mother told me she would be getting married to Claudio.
The same fucking shit my father said I shouldn't let consume me in his letter is what I allowed to take the fucking wheel and drove me out of Boston to New York City. And no matter how many times she or anyone that was allied with my father tried to reach me, I wouldn't let them talk me out of the suppressing anger and deep-seated grief.
I push myself up from the cushion, feeling the weight of the revelation from the letter in my stomach and my head. It's like my head has suddenly been exchanged for shot put balls and now and then one drops to my stomach.
I strut with a stretched spine to the bar, still holding the letter in hand as I pluck another stronger decanter of whiskey. I have to think of what to do, and how I want to do it. I drop the decanter on the desk and pull off the lid, refusing to let go of the letter to do that. I pick up the decanter to start another attempt at drowning myself in the delightful, bitter, smoky taste of whiskey but I stop mid-air.
