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“Mr. Calimeris—” Adrienne starts, but my hand grabs her leg under the table and squeezes. She stops talking and looks at me with surprise, but I’m staring at my father, unwilling to break away.
She has to keep her mouth shut. If she says the wrong thing and Father realizes that she’s much more deeply involved than it seems on the surface then he might not care if he makes Luca and Kacia angry. He might be willing to sacrifice that relationship if it means sending a message to the world.
Don’t fuck with the Calimeris.
It’s not a risk I’m willing to take. I need Adrienne to be quiet and to survive, no matter what.
“You know what I keep thinking about?” I tilt my head and pause, making sure I have his attention. Rastus puffs away, looking amused. “I keep thinking about all my dead friends.”
“Peter,” Father says warningly.
“I think about how they died in a war against the Italians, a war which you and Uncle Andro started and none of us wanted, but a war fought in the streets by me and all my guys. I think of Carlos and Dymek and Christopher and Kal. I think of a dozen more and all their families and their girls and their children, all the people left behind, dead in a meaningless war. A fight you abandoned when it suited you.”
“We take care of them,” Father says sharply. “I don’t need you to remind me. You think I don’t mourn them?”
“I think you were perfectly willing to send them to die and just as willing to turn your back on their sacrifice the moment it was easy and politically smart.” I slam the ouzo glass down with a loud clack.
“Peter,” Adrienne whispers in alarm.
But I’ve come too far to stop now. I push my chair back and stand. The Filo thugs nearby come closer, but Rastus waves them back.
Keep their attention on me. Keep them hating me.
Make sure Adrienne’s tiny and invisible.
I stare down my father as my rage runs rampant.
“You started the war and you let my friends die. I did what you asked without question because that’s what a good son and soldier does. But then you decided the war was over, even though nothing had been gained from all the fighting. You decided it was time to give in, and where does that leave everyone else? Where does that leave me? I’m done blindly obeying your orders. You can tell Uncle Andro that I’m a traitor if that’s what you want. You can hang me here and now. But I’m done.”
Father stares at me with sorrow deep in his eyes and he doesn’t have to speak his decision out loud. I’ve dug my grave and thrown myself into it already, and now it’s his turn to start filling in the dirt.
He can’t tolerate dissent, not like this. Not in front of Rastus. Maybe,maybe,if the head of the Filo family weren’t here—but even then, I think my father would have a hard time letting me survive after hearing all that.
No, he’s only got one choice now. Bury me, leave me in the dark, leave me there to die.
At least Adrienne will be okay. All because my father is too much of a coward to risk his precious new alliance. I can count on that, at least.
“I understand you lost friends,” Father says and clears his throat. “We all lost. But there comes a day when the fighting has to end. Do you really want more people to lose their lives?”
“I want it all to mean something.”
“Then you’re in the wrong fucking business.” Father takes a deep breath and calms himself. He looks down at Rastus. “What do you do with traitors in your family?”
Rastus strokes his chin. “For something like this? A beating, perhaps a fine. Perhaps we’d cut off a finger or two. He went against your orders and took a job behind your back, but—” He shrugs a bit. “However, after what he just said? That’s a different story. That’s a more serious offense. He seems to think he’s above the law. Above the family. And nobody’s above the family.”
Father comes toward me. “It isn’t just that you took a job, Peter. It’s that the job you took put the family’s standing in jeopardy. You knew it was wrong and you did it anyway, and I’m sorry, son. It breaks my heart, but I’m sorry.”
He raises the gun. I straighten my back and face my father. Thousands of memories flash through my mind, some of them good, some of them happy. I always looked up to my father—he was a titan in my mind, the biggest man alive, the strongest and best father imaginable. I did everything for him and for the family.
And now I’m done.
At least I’ll die on my feet, like a man. I stare at my father and it’s strange. Despite everything, I don’t feel surprised. I wonder if I’ve always felt like he was going to kill me one day, ever since I was a boy and he’d shout me down when I made a mistake in my training. I was terrified of him back then, so terrified, and no matter how old I get that terror is still inside of me, etched into my skin, lodged into my body. What happens when we’re young echoes throughout our whole lives, no matter how far away we get.
A moment passes. An eternity. The gun aims at my head. My father meets my gaze and he hesitates. There are tears at the rims of his eyelids. In the end, he’s still my father. Still the man that raised me.
I grab the ouzo glass and fling it at his face as hard as I can.
It whizzes through the air and hits him in the forehead. He grunts in pain and the gun goes off, shooting wide. I turn and slam into the first guard, barreling my shoulder into him and grabbing the gun at his waist. I rip it from the holster and I fire at the second guard, hit him in the chest twice, and turn the barrel on the guard I’m grappling with. He grunts in surprise as I shoot him in the chin, blowing a hole in the back of his skull.
