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“Don’t try and twist history in your favor,” I grunted, both his words and the fact that my wife was no longer nestled into my side making me dip into a darkness too wild to control.
“I knew that Don of yours would make up his own version of what happened, but let me straighten things up for you.” He took a step towards me and every soldier in this room mimicked him, closing the circle around me until he held up a hand for them to stop. “Your father was a Battaglia soldier. My sottocapo who’d infiltrated the enemy with false information about one of my shippings. When Moretti found out, he burnt your house to the ground with your parents inside and took you and your brother in like pets. A token to remind every one of his men what it meant to cross him.”
My hands balled into fists at the mention of my parents and brother. The venom in his tale threatening to seep through my skin and I couldn’t allow it.
“You’ve taken your Omertà,” he said, gesturing to the thick signet ring on my finger. “You know that involving family in the mafia’s retribution is a cardinal sin for a Man of Honor. That’s the Don you serve.”
Elena flinched at the meaning of her father’s words. They were spoken about another man but directed at me, too. What he didn’t understand was that forcing Elena to marry me had nothing to do with revenge. It was something else. An obsession. An idolatry. A reverence that beat in my chest like fucking thunder.
“Don Moretti killed your parents, Giancarlo. Not me.”
It couldn’t be true. Don Battaglia had to be lying. If not, my whole existence was nothing but a fucking lie. Every breath of revenge I took was false, spoon-fed and rotten.
“I don’t believe a single word coming out of your mouth.” I reeled in my anger, not wanting to show a hand I didn’t know I had been dealt. I had no idea how to even begin to process this information if, by some sick fate, it was the truth.
“Your mother’s name was Teresa. Your father was called Salvatore di Angelo. Antonio, your brother, he’s only a minute older than you. And you? You’re the runt of the litter. So small you shouldn’t have survived your premature birth. I should know. I was there the night you were born.”
A million emotions coursed through me. Anger, hate, betrayal, bitterness. All the same ones that had blinded me to the truth for twenty-five years.
That’s why Tony and I had never evolved into more than the dirty-work soldati. We were destined to be at the bottom of the food chain for life because of the blood that pumped through our veins.
“No. I don’t believe you.” I shook my head from left to right, over and over again, my hands covering my ears as if that would stop the whirlwind of thoughts blowing through my brain at the speed of fucking light.
In a blink of an eye I was that six year old boy again, being told that my parents had died at the hand of the enemy. Burnt to death. Resumed to a pile of ash blown away by the winter wind. Some Christmas morning that was.
“You’ve been serving your loyalty to the man you’ve been dreaming to kill since that bloody night. What are you going to do now, Giancarlo?” Don Battaglia tortured me further with his words, knowing exactly how they were hitting me – like blades on fire slashing straight through my soul. “You came to kill the man who orphaned you, but you’re knocking on the wrong fucking door.”
“You’re lying.” I shouted.
“You don’t need to take my word for it. Go see your Don. Ask him and see for yourself. When you learn the truth, you’ll see how all this,” he said, motioning between Elena and me, “Was a big mistake.”
“This is all a lie to get me to walk away.”
“It’s not. But I’ll make you a deal. I’ll grant you free passage until you cross those red tracks, and if you find that I’m lying, I’ll open those iron gates for you myself, give you my name and my daughter. If not, if you see for yourself that what I’m saying is the truth, word for word, you will never come back. I’ll get the marriage annulled and deal with the rest.”
Elena’s eyes bulged, her gaze piercing me like thunder. I shut my eyes as tight as possible so I couldn’t see her, my mind still stuck on the information that had my whole world imploding.
“Deal,” I said, shooting my eyes open again. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, Elena’s shoulders slumped, her face falling into a pale sadness etched with disappointment.
I didn’t know what stung more, that look on her face or the fact that everything about my life was a fucking lie.
Chapter 6
Elena
Illusions are a stale reproduction of your heart's desires.
My illusion had stars as bright as the winter sun, blinding me to the truth — I was a pawn, never the queen.
All I wanted was to be swept off my feet. To be wanted. To be… loved.
How foolish of me to think that a stranger could have seen beyond the treasures my last name carried.
In reality I’d never be more than the daughter of the most notorious Don in the American Mafia. An item to exchange. Every Made Man in the damn country wanted me, and yet I’d never felt more disposable in my whole life.
At least all the other men were truthful with their intentions. Giancarlo tricked me into thinking he didn’t care who my father was. He had me thinking he wanted me for who I was. Reality stung too much. To know that my worth was materialistic and political, intrinsic to someone else but me. Contracting, to say the least, but the bottom line was that I didn’t matter.
I’d fallen for the way he sang to my illusion like a viper’s master, dancing to the rhythm of the false tune he fed me.
