Despite losing my consigliere, I somehow manage to bring the situation in New York under control in about a week.
Gino Ferraro comes to see the burned safe house and collects the bodies as expected. A few days later, I get a call from him saying he’s confirmed the corpses belonged to Nero and Sandro and that now things are even. Well, they’ll be even once I send him the twenty million dollars he asked for, which I do that same afternoon.
The feud between the Messeros and the Ferraros officially comes to an end.
With Vince Garzolo flying to New York and showing his support for me, the Garzolos accept me as their permanent new don. It helps that their old don died because he tried to kill his own daughter. Whoever wasn’t convinced Garzolo was a piece of shit before finally gets on board after that revelation.
There are many questions about Cleo and her whereabouts. There, I mostly stick to the truth. She’s with her sisters, recovering from what happened.
I tell no one about the impending divorce. In fact, I haven’t even called up my lawyer. Every time I dial his number, something holds me back. Something I haven’t been able to exorcise no matter how much I push my body at the boxing gym or how much I drink in the evenings.
It’s been twelve days since she left. Twelve days since I kicked her out of this house and out of my life.
Our last few conversations are a blur. When I try to remember the details, a gaping hole opens in the pit of my stomach. I’m starting to believe I said things I shouldn’t have, and that terrifies me.
I thought that without her here, I’d regain control over my emotions, but despite my face betraying nothing, it’s still complete chaos inside my head.
Something broke in me that day. Something I have no idea how to fix.
It’s after dinner time, and I wander through the empty house, my second glass of whiskey in hand. My feet carry me upstairs to our bedroom, where I can try and pretend she hasn’t left. Her purse is on the ottoman. A T-shirt that she used to sleep in, one of mine, is thrown over a chair. In the bathroom, her makeup is scattered all over her side of the vanity like she was just there, getting made up for an evening out.
Her clothes still hang in the closet. I haven’t been able to pack them away. My fingers brush over the soft satin of that black dress she tried on for me. I grasp the fabric and bring it to my nose. There’s a faint hint of her familiar scent.
My fist tightens, and I bury my face in the dress and breathe her in.
In. Out.
In. Out.
I do it for so long that I lose it. My senses get accustomed to it and it disappears.
Pressure builds behind my eyes. That’s been happening more often in the past week.
The longer Cleo’s gone, the less I recognize the Rafaele that told her to leave. I was so angry. So fucking out of control. And now without her here, I’m lost, wandering like a ghost through a house filled with memories.
There’s a shallow drawer in the closet where she kept her jewelry. I pull it open and find most of it still there. She didn’t take the necklace I got for her birthday with her. Why would she? Why would she want a reminder of me when she can start with a blank slate?
A folded piece of paper is wedged between the velvet insert and the edge of the drawer. I pull it out and unfold it.
“Cleo’s plan for ruining Rafaele’s life.”
There are devil horns above my name. I read the bullet points beneath and huff out an amused breath. At first, it’s no more than a chuckle, and then it builds and builds until I’m laughing like a fucking lunatic. She’s always managed to make me laugh.
It feels good, and it hurts. God, how it hurts.
Eventually, I quiet down. I brush my thumb over her writing and the little doodles she drew on the page. She didn’t go through with her plan. She gave up on the first bullet point.
“You did it anyway, tesoro,” I mutter and take a swig from my glass.
I leave the bedroom and head back downstairs, tapping my glass against the wooden banister as I go down the steps.
Clank, clank, clank.
It’s so fucking quiet in here. Has it always been this quiet in this house?
The doorbell rings.
Cleo.
That’s an insane idea. She’s too proud for that. She’ll never come back here, not after how I treated her. That’s what I wanted, wasn’t it?
There’s another knock, louder this time. Why isn’t anyone opening the door? Then I remember I dismissed all the staff. I couldn’t bear the questioning looks they kept giving me as I roamed the halls. Luca was the only one brave enough to utter her name. He asked if I knew how she was. I roared at him to get out. Roared at all of them to leave for three weeks. As if that will be long enough for me to forget her and glue myself back together.
What a fucking joke.
I turn the lock and open the front door. My sisters stand in front of a black car.
I frown. “What are you doing here?”
“Let us in,” Elena demands, tossing her blonde hair over her shoulder with an angry flick of her hand. “You’ve kept us waiting out here long enough.”
I step aside, letting her and Fabi pass.
The second I close the door, Elena whirls around and gives me a scathing look. “You look like shit.”
I catch my reflection in the mirror hanging on the wall. She’s right. I look like I haven’t slept in weeks. Truth is, I don’t think I’ve gotten more than three hours a night since Nero and Cleo left.
“I’ve had trouble sleeping.”
“Yeah, I wonder why,” she says, her tone accusing.
Fabi touches my arm. Her gaze drops to the glass in my hand. Worry flashes across her features, and for a second, I think she’s going to embrace me.
Thankfully, she holds herself back. We never hug. It’s not the kind of affection I’ve ever welcomed.
“We want to talk,” Fabi says. “Let’s sit down.”
The alcohol is making my brain sluggish. I’m still trying to process the fact that they’re here. “When did you get in?”
“We came straight from the airport.” She tugs on my sleeve. “Come.”
I follow her, feeling like a stranger in my own home. Elena walks behind us. We spread out in the living room. I sink into the sofa and finish off half of my whiskey in one gulp. Fabi and Elena sit down across from me. An expectant air fills the room, the kind that precedes a difficult conversation.
My sisters and I don’t have those kinds of conversations though. In fact, we barely talk. They don’t like me very much. And I don’t know them very well. We’re family, but we aren’t friends. I’d die for them, but I’d never go to them for help.
I place my glass on the side table. “You said you want to talk. So talk.”
Elena clenches her fists in her lap. “We heard what happened to Cleo and her father. We heard Nero is gone.”
“Correct.”
Fabi swallows “When you say gone, you mean…”
“Gone gone.”
A stunned silence permeates through the room. My sisters have known Nero for most of their lives, but they weren’t close with him either. And yet Fabi starts crying. Elena swears and turns to comfort her. I watch them embrace, Fabi tucking her face against Elena’s shoulder.
Must be nice to have someone hold you when you’re upset.
I stand up. I don’t know what to do with myself. Every movement feels wrong, like I’m an actor on stage but I’ve lost the script.
“I’ll get you some water,” I mutter.
Elena shoots me a glare over her shoulder. “She doesn’t need water. Sit down.”
It’s like she wants me to witness this. Why? “I don’t understand. You weren’t friends with Nero.”
“Damn it, Rafe. So what? We still cared for him. And Fabi’s not just crying over Nero. She’s crying over you. He was your best friend, wasn’t he? Is it true that you gave the order to kill him?”
“Yes.” The next part comes easily. It’s rehearsed and memorized. “I had to. It was the only way to avoid war with the Ferraros.”
Fabi pulls away from Elena and sniffles. “It’s so horrible. How are you feeling? Are you all right?”
How do I explain the mix of anger, sadness, and regret inside of me? I don’t know how to put it into words.
“Of course, he’s all right,” Elena snaps. “He doesn’t care about anyone but himself. One day, he nearly loses his wife. The next day, he kills his consigliere. Tomorrow, he’ll execute some poor bastard for looking at him wrong. It’s all the same to him, Fabi. He’s just like our dad was. Empty.”
“Stop it,” Fabi begs. “You’re being cruel.”
“Cruel?” Elena demands. “I’m not the cruel one here. I’m stating facts. Aren’t I, Rafe?”
I meet Fabi’s teary gaze, and it touches me somewhere deep. A place I’ve tried to ignore so fiercely and for so long, but I don’t think I can ignore it anymore.
Sinking back down on the sofa, I hang my head. I’ve never felt more alone.
“Cleo is gone,” I rasp. “I told her I want a divorce.” It’s hard to speak when my throat is this tight.
“Why?” Elena demands.
I force myself to look up at my sisters. Whatever Elena sees in my expression makes her sneer waver. Her eyes widen. They’re the exact same shade of blue as mine.
“Because I can’t handle having her around. She made me into someone I was never meant to be. She made me weak.”
Elena’s brows furrow. “How did she make you weak?”
“She made me feel things. I’m not fucking good at feeling things. I was trained not to.”
“Trained? By who?” Fabi asks, her voice small.
How could they be this clueless? “Do you think I was born like this?” I ask. “Who do you think?”
A storm is brewing inside Elena’s eyes. “If you’re asking for pity, you won’t get it from me. I saw you there that night.”
My head is starting to pound. “What night?”
“The night our father beat our mother,” Elena hisses, fury flashing across her features. “It was a few days before Christmas. The last one we spent at the house before we moved to the Hamptons. You were in their bedroom, and he was hurting her, and you just stood there and watched.”
What the fuck. She’s known all along?
Elena leans forward. “From where I was, I could see your expression. I could see that you felt nothing. Your face was blank. It’s haunted me ever since. How could you just fucking stand there, Rafe? Our own mother? Did you enjoy seeing it?”
I recoil, stunned. She thinks she knows, but it’s clear she doesn’t understand what actually happened that night.
So this is why she hates me. By the way Fabi’s looking at me, I can tell this isn’t news to her. Elena told her.
Whatever grip I had on myself falls apart piece by piece. The weight of the secret I’ve been carrying all these years is suddenly impossible to bear.
I promised myself I’d never tell them the truth. That I’d protect them from the horrors of our father’s depravity. But I can’t keep this from them anymore. I need to make them understand that I wasn’t born a monster.
I was made into one.
“You’ve got it wrong,” I whisper.
Elena cocks her head. “Did I? Explain it then, Rafe.”
I wrap both palms around my glass, my pulse loud inside my ears. “Our father forced me to watch. That time wasn’t the first time either. The first time it happened, I was far from calm. I tried to stop him, Elena. I cried and screamed and fought him until he punched me so hard I blacked out.”
Fabi winces, listening to me intently. Elena is still glaring at me, her arms crossed over her chest, but a flicker of uncertainty appears inside her eyes.
“Father didn’t like that I was so upset about what he was doing to Mamma. I was only ten, but as his successor, I was supposed to be strong, even as a child. So he decided to teach me a lesson. He’d bring me into the room, and then he’d hurt her. If I cried or showed any emotions at all, he’d keep going. He would stop only when I managed to calm down. When I managed to pretend like I felt nothing.”
Elena’s expression goes slack.
“It took me a long time to be able to do what he wanted from me. Every time I’d start crying, unable to control myself, he’d grab Mamma by the throat and say, ‘You see? We can’t rely on anyone to save us but ourselves.’ He repeated that phrase to her often. I don’t know if it was to taunt her into fighting back, but she never did. Maybe she knew she didn’t stand a chance against him, and so she didn’t want to risk provoking him any further. But every time I heard it, it made me desperate to prove him wrong. I would gain control over my emotions. I would save Mamma. It took me months.”
“Months?” Fabi breathes. “How many times…”
“How many times did he do it? I don’t know. Every few days.” Too many. It took me too damn long. “The day I managed to keep my mask in place the entire time was the hardest day of my life. He only beat her for fifteen minutes before he stopped. He left her on the floor and walked over to me. He grabbed my chin and turned my face one way and then the other. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘You’ve learned.’ I was relieved. I thought that was the end of it and that I’d saved Mamma.”
My sisters stare at me in mute horror. They don’t realize the worst of the story is still coming.
“But there was one final test.” I close my eyes and allow the memory of that gruesome night to unfurl. A wave of nausea hits me, so strong that for a moment I wonder if I’ll be able to get the words out. If I even should.
I breathe through it, forcing the sensation down. When I open my eyes again, my sisters’ faces are drained of blood. There’s no irritation left in Elena’s expression. Only dread.
“He raped her in front of me.”
Fabi’s moan is guttural, filled with raw pain and disbelief. Elena chokes and presses her palm to her lips.
“I barely remember that night—a small blessing. I think I disassociated. Somehow, I managed not to move a single muscle. I stood as still as a statue while our mother tried to be as quiet as possible so that her screams wouldn’t upset me.”
Fabi starts to cry, her entire body shaking.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Elena whispers.
“Because I couldn’t.” My voice is hoarse. “There were times when I’d do anything to forget what happened. I hope you never understand firsthand the depth of helplessness I felt while I watched him hurt her.”
Elena’s gaze flickers with emotions—revulsion, astonishment, regret. She stares at me like she’s seeing me for the first time. “This is why Mom always tells us to go easy on you. I never understood how she could defend you after what I thought you did.”
“Father broke both of us during those nights. I couldn’t look at Mamma without being reminded of how I failed her. She probably couldn’t look at me without feeling shame. Shame that wasn’t deserved, that wasn’t hers to own, but shame that she still carries to this day.”
I see it in her eyes when she talks to me. It’s a darkness that I don’t think will ever go away.
“Our father adored you.” Elena’s face is as colorless as a blank canvas. “He was proud of you.”
“Adored? No. He was proud of me. Once I passed his final test, I was finally a worthy heir in his eyes. It was his idea to make me a made man at thirteen. I went along with it because I realized it would help Mamma. With Father’s attention focused on training me, he ignored her. He even allowed her to move to the Hamptons with the two of you. But he never loved me the way a normal man loves his son. He didn’t love anyone. And he trained me to be the same.”
“I remember the day we left,” Elena says. “You didn’t seem to care that we were leaving.”
I peer into my glass. It’s nearly empty. “By then, I knew very well how to keep my feelings hidden.”
“So you never lost control of your emotions since?” Fabi asks quietly, her cheeks wet.
“Not for a long time. They were entombed deep inside. Locked away and forgotten. But someone found the key.”
Fabi sucks in a low breath. “Cleo.”
I nod. “I lost my mind when I thought she was in danger. It’s my fault Nero’s gone. I made so many mistakes in the time from when I got the call about her being kidnapped to when I was finally sure she was safe. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
Fabi shakes her head. “You did all that, and then you let her go? Why?”
“Because with her around, I can’t be the don I have to be.”
“And what kind of don is that? The same as our father?” Elena wipes away an errant tear with her sleeve. “God, Rafe. He was a fucking monster. I’ve spent more than a decade thinking you were cut from the same cloth as him, but now that you told us what really happened, I can see that I was wrong. You are not him. What he put you through as a child is deplorable, and even with all of his sick ‘training,’ you would never do the things he did to someone you’re supposed to love and protect.”
“Of course, I wouldn’t.”
“Then why are you still measuring yourself up to the ridiculous, fucked-up standard he set?”
Her words press down on me, branding themselves on my skin with a harsh burn. I’ve rejected many things about my father, but his lessons have stayed with me. I’ve allowed them to define me.
“Cleo compromises me.”
“How? Because she makes you feel emotions? Because she makes you give a shit about something other than strength and power?”
“Yes.”
“Then let yourself be compromised. Accept it. Work with it. Get stronger because of it. You know which man fights the hardest? The man who’s got something real to lose.”
I think back to Gino Ferraro. There was a time when his family was far weaker than ours, but in the past decade, they’ve managed to surpass us. Only now it dawns on me why that is. He’s got people he loves in his life. People he wants to protect.
“Our father tried to stomp out your humanity, but thankfully, he failed. He died without ever having lived, Rafe. Can’t you see it? Nothing he had was real.” She stands up and spreads her arms, gesturing at the lavish living room, at the house from which our father ran his kingdom. “This? This isn’t real. Our father thought he had everything, and yet, how did he die?”
“He died alone.” My sisters never came home to say goodbye to him and I didn’t force them. Mamma stayed at the Hamptons the entire time he was ill. He was cared for by nurses who hated his guts for speaking to them like they were subhuman.
Elena nods. “He died alone. Despite his millions, he was the poorest man I’d ever known.”
My sisters are right. Why would I continue down the path of a man I hated? He may have been the only teacher I’ve ever had, but I don’t have to keep his lessons with me any longer. I can choose my own path as don.
Elena studies me. “I’ll admit, I thought the marriage between you and Cleo was another soulless match, much like our parents’. But I’m starting to think otherwise.”
Fabi’s lips form a sad smile. “What you have with Cleo is real. Isn’t it?”
Slowly, I rake my fingers through my hair. I thought being with Cleo would end with me losing it all. But I was wrong.
I lost it all when I sent her away.
I love her. Fuck, I’m a fool.
I place my elbows on my knees and press my forehead into my palms. A moment later, the sofa dips. My sisters appear beside me, one on either side of me. For the first time I can remember, they wrap their arms around me and hold me tightly.
The ache in the back of my throat spreads through my chest. Slowly, hesitantly, I return their embrace. “I’ve made a terrible mistake, haven’t I?”
“You can fix it,” Elena says against my hair. “Go after her.”
Can I? Can I undo all the damage I caused when I was trying so hard to deny my own feelings that I showed no concern for her own?
Elena pulls back and looks me in the eye. “Tell her what you told us and allow yourself to feel all the pain that comes with that. Open up to her the way you finally opened up to us.”
I only wish I’d done it sooner instead of waiting for so long. My relationship with Elena and Fabi suffered terribly because I refused to be even a little vulnerable around them.
I squeeze Elena’s shoulder, grateful for her support. “I’m not sure it will be enough.”
Fabi slides a comforting palm down my back. “Don’t you think that if anyone knows what it’s like to have a messed-up dad, it’s her?”
There’s a chance Cleo will understand. I’d be a coward not to take that chance.
It won’t be as easy as just showing up and telling her I’m sorry.
But that’s a good place to start.
