AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You quiet down my thoughts. When you’re around, I don’t care whose son I am, all I think about is you. You have a way of taking my worries away, I knew it from the first time we were together.”
“When Grazia was…”almost dead.
“Yes. I couldn’t help and it drove me insane. There was rage boiling inside me and I took it out on you, but when I had you in that closet, Pina, I felt more at peace than I did in years.”
She blushed, her cheeks bright red, and she cleared her throat before talking.
“You want to know what I think?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t get drunk to forget and you didn’t sleep with women to stop feeling, I think it was a test.”
“A test?” She lost me.
“Garon, you could have sat home and drowned yourself in booze and drugs without anyone knowing. You could have called your contacts to send you prostitutes and be discreet about it, but instead you made a spectacle out of your life. You are amafiosi, and I know you’ve been taught to stay in the shadows because it’s better than being on the radar, but you went ahead and did the opposite.”
“I’m not following you,Piccolina.”
“I think you did all that to see how much your family could tolerate it.” The moment she said it out loud, it echoed inside me. “You pushed against everyone in your family to see if they’d eventually give up on you.”
Did I? I’ve been saying over and over that all I want is to be left alone, but I never wanted to lose my family. I couldn’t deny the truth in Pina’s words, but I wasn’t sure what to do with it either.
“And to piss off Father.” I added.
“It worked; he was pissed. You resented him for killing your biological father?”
I laughed. “No, I resented him because he spent half his life torturing me.”
Pina frowned. “How?”
“Beatings, mostly, but to be honest, I was happier with being his punching bag than listening to him talk about how I was nothing, just the mistake of a loose woman who couldn’t keep her knees close, or how he should have punched mom in the stomach hard enough to get rid of me when she was pregnant.”
“Lord…” she shivered, “he hit you?”
“Yes.”
“But I’ve never…”
“No one knows, Pina, because if anyone would know he was beating one of his sons, they’d ask why. He had to pretend to love me in front of the entire world and it fucking killed him because I was his biggest failure. The day I turned eighteen he loaded my accounts, just like he did for all my brothers. It’s also the day he broke three of my ribs.”
I felt Pina shivering next to me.
“Why would anyone do something like that?”
“Because I was a stranger taking his money. I was not his son. I tried to refuse, but that would have raised too many questions.”
“No one noticed? No one saw what he was doing to you?”
“Who? My brothers? Oh, they saw, but I was always a wild guy with a short fuse. It didn’t take much to convince them that I got into a brawl and got a few bruises.” I confessed. “You have to understand, I was as desperate to keep the truth from them as Fabiano was, because I never wanted to be his son, but I wanted to be their brother.”
“You are, Garon!” She yelled in my face. “I will fight anyone that says otherwise, including your brothers.”
“Piccolina…”
“You love your family and still share the same mother. Whoever holds the circumstances of your birth against you, has no place in your life anyway.” She took a deep breath to calm her outburst. “You should tell them.”
“W-what?” My voice cracked.
