Not Too Long Before His Death…
The moment my daughter wrapped her tiny hand around my thumb, I knew there was nothing I wouldn’t do for her. No matter what. Like my wife and son, she would be protected, spoiled, and turned into the best type of woman I could make her. I would kill for her, die for her. Everything in between. I would do it with a smile on my face and no fear in my heart because she was more important than me. More important than anything I could ever do in my life.
That was why, decades after her birth, I would be naming her as my heir. My replacement. The one who could grow and take the Red Diamonds further than I ever had. The one who I prayed for each night, to be safe and fair and to break the curse that had plagued my family line.
I prayed for her to reach old age. To die after a fulfilling life of natural causes, surrounded by those she loved.
I prayed for her to find happiness regardless of what it looked like for her.
God had been kind to me in my life, almost as often as he had been cruel. Though I ought to have renounced him for his sins – the worst sorts of things he had allowed to happen - I couldn’t. Because renouncing God meant renouncing the idea of heaven. Renouncing the idea that the love of my life was in a paradise waiting for me to be reunited with her when I left the mortal coil that had been tormenting me since she left it. It would mean that my prayers for my daughter were not answered and I would never think of that.
Iwouldget what I wanted. There was no other option.
With a sigh, I stepped through the large double front doors of my home. The combination of storming weather and sunshine made for a pretty sky that I was almost sad to leave. Golden streaks of light drifted through the windows, illuminating things that the bitter kiss of cold and damp weather could not quite touch.
The house was quiet. Truthfully, it had been quiet for years. My daughter rarely lived in it, out of fear for her safety and the nightmares of the horrors she’d faced inside the walls. My son couldn’t handle being inside the place that had broken him when designed to keep him safe. My wife wasn’t laughing here. She wasn’t wandering around with her heels clacking against the floor, perfume lingering on the breeze. She wasn’t calling out to me to eagerly speak of whatever adventure she’d been up to that day.
She wasn’t evenhere.
I hated the silence. The peace. The lack of life.
This house had taken everything from me. One by one. Parents, sister, wife, children. It had taken it all, and I hated it more than I hated the fact that I had been forced to keep living after Lucia left. When the day came that my daughterwas supposed to move into it and start a new life, I hoped she decided not to.
I prayed she went somewhere happier. Somewhere that the walls only ever knew peace and love, not death and pain and the worst things in life.
I prayed the entire damn thing had hellfire rained down upon it and turned to nothing but ash and old memories, never allowed to haunt the world again.
Slowly sauntering through the halls, I made my way toward my office. My keys were latched on the hook by the door. Shoes slid off on the mat. My coat hung on the rack and with each step I took, my heart grew heavier with a furious bout of sadness and regret.
I knew what I had to do, and I was at peace with my decision.
I was at peace knowing I would finally, oh so finally, get to die. Get to leave this place and join those I needed to see.
It still hurt, though. It still made me sad.
The home office I had was a sanctuary of sorts, filled with books, papers, and the scent of old leather and ink. It was here that I had spent countless hours working, planning, and dreaming of ways to improve my companies and gang. Where I had once ruled with my wife by my side, as we dreamed of a future we could build together…
Where I had sat the same night I’d lost her, drinking until I could no longer think of how she was gone, and my daughter was in a hospital bed, Beau by her side, not me.
Because I had been too much of a coward to face her then. Not that she remembered. She barely remembered anything of the weeks that followed, when I did nothing but kill and drink and cry, as I left her in the care of the father she ought to have had. The one that was far better than I.
Today, however, my task was different from all the violence that occurred in my office. Not anything to do with my gangsters, or petty things, or something so pointless as earning more money. No. Today, I would do the last things on my list before my inevitable doom; write letters for my children. Put my affairs in order. And make sure I recorded every ounce of confession I needed to get off my chest.
Sitting down at my oak desk, the wood polished smooth from years of use; I loosened my tie. The chair creaked slightly as I settled into it, pulling a stack of crisp, white paper towards myself. I reached for my fountain pen, a gift from Lucia on our first anniversary. One she thought I’d like because I had a mild obsession with stationary and it wrote ever so smoothly.
The pen felt cool and familiar in my hand, a steady companion for the difficult task ahead that had been the instrument with which I had felled empires and grew them anew.
The thing that I had used to sign the parental rights of my granddaughter over to myself and my wife.
The thing I used to write my signature on my wife’s final documents, as I settled all her affairs.
I took a deep breath, closing my eyes for a moment as I gathered my thoughts. Then, with a steady hand, or as steady as one could be when writing after death notes, I began to write.
Over and over and over again. Letter after letter. For every event, both good and bad. For rainy days and sunshine ones. For life advice and simply love. I didn’t stop until my hand cramped.
Until I couldn’t physically find another word to say.
Only then did I carefully fold the letters, placing them in envelopes marked with the occasions for which they were intended. I tied Sapphire’s letters together with a delicate blue ribbon; the color reminding me of her eyes that she had inherited both from her father and me. Beau’s letters werebound with a similar ribbon, but ruby red this time. It had been his favorite color since he was young, and he’d always had an obsession with rubies. They were his favorite and though it may have been silly; I liked the idea of wrapping up my final words to him in something that he liked.
