And when I step inside… my world tilts, spins right off-axis. The harsh lighting disorganizes me. Retracing the same path I made all those months ago when I knew my wife was trapped within these walls, I come upon her cell.
I have to grip the wall to remain upright.
A surgical table has been added to the confining space, a clear tarp spread across the floor. My father lies unconscious against the slab, down to his drawers.
I’ll make you watch.
She called out for you.
You still want that soiled woman?
My eyes squeeze shut, reliving the worst moments of my life, moments I’d sell my soul to forget. I see him placing the camera monitor in front of me. I see him calling more men to restrain me as I beat them senselessly, trying to reach my wife before they could touch her.
Pleading like a goddamn idiot. I begged as no man had ever begged before, to the point where his men—mymen—grimaced at the sight of a man forced to his knees. My chest cracked wide open when they entered the prison. Some men I’ve known my entire life. I saw her scramble. I saw Thomas Ritchey attempt to protect her, beat unconscious for it.
I implored my father, begged him for mercy.
“I’ll do whatever you want me to do!” I screamed, experiencing true desperation for the first time in my life. “I’ll be whatever you want me to be. Papa, please, don’t. Don’t do this to her. This was my doing, my fault!”
I still remember how violently I recoiled when they took her, the strangled cry of despair that erupted from my chest as I turned my face away, trying to drown out her cries. The sheer rage that took me over—beastly, as if my heart had suddenly spoiled black in my chest. The way I pulled at his guards, some who were as horrified as I was, managing to freemyself. My father stumbled back when I seized Antonio by the skull, slamming him into the pillar with all the force I possessed. Everyone heard the crack he’d never get up from.
But there were too many. They brought me down to my knees, as they were ordered to do, forcing me to endure it until it was done. The tears that had dried up in me for years spilled from my eyes as I watched her struggle to lift herself, noticing how badly she trembled even through the small monitor.
When my eyes reopen, back in the present, finding Arturo stirring on the cold slab, I could actually be the devil.
I stalk into the cell he put her in, the cell that tookeverythingfrom me, until I'm gazing down upon him. Eerie silence fills the space as I place black latex over my hands, grabbing the ammonia, pouring it onto a rag. With one inhale, my father’s eyes fly open, darting around in fear.
His gaze clamps on mine, visibly struggling to digest the suit I'm wearing, the infected wounds on display for him, the rag in my hands, the tray of my favored equipment behind me. He tries to move, to lift his arms to run, but he’s strapped down.
My soul darkens with a smile.
I'm sure whoever he’s looking at isn’t me. Isn’t his son.
I'm someone else entirely right now.
“Xavier—”
“At this moment, every man who didn’t turn against you is dead. Your yacht exploded off the coast. Your consigliere is dead, as is your acting underboss. Every vehicle, home, business, and man you control has fallen into my lap. The family renounced you the moment they took a look at me.”
I let him see it, really see his handiwork. The broken capillaries in my eyes, the left eye that swelled shut and had to be cut open. The bruises, the welts, the places he carved deep. While he’s laid out, unable to do a thing, I watch his pride dissipate into horror.
“Xavier, please.”
“Do you recognize where you are?”
He winces, coming to realizations quickly for a man so near death. “I went too far?—”
“With me, with my body, I could have overlooked it. For your love, I could’ve forgiven this. But you didn’t just go after me… You went after my heart.”
He has never, and could never, understand what that means. How much I mean it. For years, he’s rewired me to his liking whenever I didn’t meet his standards. I was never given the choice, but I would have done anything for him. Even let him rewrite my DNA. As long as he let me have her—my fuckingdream—I would have gone to my grave as a Capo dei Capi and never regretted the choice.
But this man cannot stand that I have a weakness. “She has turned you into someone else, Xavier! Are you fucking blind? Can’t you see it?”
“She didn’t make this monster. You did. You won. You got me in the chair. You stripped me of everything. My youth. My innocence. This has beenyearsin the making, Arturo.”
“You are my son,” he chokes out.
“You left me for dead.”
