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His lips are chapped, the skin broken in places, and when he slowly opens his eyes and looks across at me, his tongue comes out to wet his bottom lip, but no moisture comes.
This man abused me my entire fucking childhood. He beat me, tormented me, belittled me, and later, ordered me killed.
I’m the fourth of five sons. Three waited in line ahead of me to lead the family upon his passing. I wasn’t even a spare to the heir, I was simply… useless.
So now, though he appears pathetic and weak, I don’t pity him. As I stand over his bed and ignore the machines surrounding it—those that beep and announce his heart still beats, and those that drip fluids into his veins—I look down at him with a vile hatred that sets my blood on fire.
“You deserve this,” I murmur when his eyes roll across and meet mine.
Once sharp green and all-seeing, they now carry that milky prelude to death.
“Does it hurt?” I ask. I don’t watch my brothers file in. I don’t watch them watch me. I stare straight down at the man who deserves hellfire after the life he’s led. “Does it hurt to even exist at this point?”
“He can’t really speak,” Felix answers for him. “It hurts. Cato says he stopped about a week ago.”
“No last words, Tim?” I allow my gaze to flicker from his cracked lips to his terrified eyes, and in my hand, I flex and feel my gun. “Nothing you’d like to say, now that you’re at the fucking end?”
He remains silent.
“No ‘sorry’ for the things you did?” I demand. “No apology for putting a hit out on your own son?”
A silent, rolling tear escapes the corner of his eye and dribbles down to his temple.
“You can’t even muster the strength to say sorry for what you did to Jill?” Tears or not, I feel no pity for him. Just disgust. Just anger. “I should put a bullet between your eyes and be the one who gets to end you.”
As rage pulses through my body, I breathe through the torment and bring my gun up. As memories rush back, and this room, which once belonged to a cook, reminds me that my only true caretaker was a woman who had been paid—probablythreatened—to be here, I carefully set the muzzle between his brows and flick the safety.
I’m threatening the head of a fierce mafia family, yet no one steps forward to stop me. People only watch. His sons, apathetic at best, and his guards, turning their eyes away, their attention on anything except the man they’re sworn to protect.
“You’ve already lost everything.” A humorless laugh escapes my throat on a bark that makes him startle in bed. “No one is saving you. No one will protect you.” Then I laugh again, louder this time, and bordering on hysteria. “You’re already dead to them. You’re a nobody. They’re just waiting for your heart to stop so they can put you in the ground.”
“Do it,” he rasps, visibly twitching from the pain that slides along his throat. “End it.”
“So you can escape this agony?” I scoff. “So you can skip straight to the gates of hell and avoid the cancer that karma decided you should experience?Everyone,” I spit out, “at some point, must pay a price for their crimes.”
Flicking the safety back in place, I drop my gun-holding hand and shake my head for my father to see. “There’s nothing you could say that would tempt me to make this easy on you.”
Taking a step back, I turn away and leave him to rot for the rest of his miserable life. Whether it’s hours or weeks, this is where he’ll stay as each of his organs systematically shuts down.
Passing my brothers, I head toward the hall. “Where’s Cato? I wanna see him.”
“Your old bedroom,” Felix answers. He doesn’t follow me, but he keeps his distance from the bed. “He moved in there after you left.”
“Good.”
I pass a line of men—soldiers, really—who each carry military-grade automatic weapons, but I don’t consider myself unsafe. My father has already lost his hold on power. He’s a nobody. A rotting fucking weed they can’t wait to stomp out of the garden. Which means, despite orders in the past that had my name at the top of a hit list, these men are no longer a threat to me.
Maybe I won’t be the one heading our family table, but my lineage won’t be ignored. To step on me would be to commit suicide by firing squad.
Turning at the ornate marble stairs, I head up and use the railing to guide my way. My phone remains silent in my pocket, the vibrations still after Minka had her say.
Soon, I’ll find a bed and stay there till dawn. I’ll call my wife and see her face while she dozes, and hope that my presence via video chat will somehow fulfill the promise I made about never sleeping apart.
I reach the top landing and turn right, walking a path I took a million times in my youth. Now, all these years later, it feels both foreign and old hand.
The color on the walls is different, and the rug I step on is softer. Prettier. But my footsteps are the same. Thirty-five paces from the top of the stairs, I pass Tim’s old bedroom door. Another twenty-five after that, I pass Felix’s. Bathrooms. Closets that made perfect hiding places when we were young and playing hide-and-seek.
Most of the bedrooms have internal, adjoining doors. But mine didn’t. Mine was a haven of privacy, the smallest of the lot, the furthest from everyone else.
