Page 51 of Cruel Tyrant

“I don’t think it was part of his original plan, but the day after he got caught, Uncle Luciano showed up at my school. I figured Dad had sent him to pick me up, which wasn’t out of the ordinary, and I got into the car with him. But instead of driving me home, he took me to a house on the edge of town.” He closes his eyes and his whole body goes tense. His voice loses its emotional tenor, and he starts talking in a strange monotone. “There was a cage in the basement like something you’d put a very large dog in. Uncle Luciano locked me in there and kept saying he was sorry it had to be like that. He kept saying it, over and over again, how sorry he was, and how he never wanted any of this to happen. I cried and begged him to let me out, but?—”

He takes a steadying breath. I watch him as cold horror creeps into my body, trying to picture how he must have felt, getting locked in a cage by a man he looked up to and who he had loved.

“He fed me twice a day, but I was in that cage for almost a week. I found out later that Father was scouring the city for me, killing indiscriminately, basically causing mayhem as he tore the place apart, but Santoro wouldn’t come out of hiding. At least until Father got a tip from a former associate that spotted Santoro leaving the house where he was keeping me, and that’s when Father and his men burned the place down.”

My mouth opens and I reach for his hand. “No,” I whisper, stroking the scars with my thumb.

His smile is weak and distant. “They didn’t know I was in the basement. Apparently, there was a guard staying upstairs and they killed the guy then torched the place, and I was locked in the cage the whole time as it filled with fire and smoke. Dad told me later that Santoro showed up as the house was ablaze, totally out of his mind, and he’s the one that ran inside to save me. But something happened, and it was Dad that finally got to me, while Santoro ended up barely escaping. I was half dead when Dad dragged me out of the house and my left arm was severely burned, but I was alive, and Uncle Luciano was gone.”

I try to process the story. A young boy locked in a cage nearly burning to death in a fire his own father set.

“You don’t hate him, do you?” I ask, touching his cheek. “The way you talk about him?—”

“He came back for me.” His body shudders as he closes his eyes. “I know he kidnapped me and kept me in a cage, but he came back for me. I’ve been ashamed of this for a very long time, Stefania, so fucking ashamed, because if I were a real man, I would hate Uncle Luciano with every fiber of my being. He hurt me in a way I’ll never recover from. He broke me. He’s the reason I’m like this.” Davide peels himself from my grip and pits space between us, staring down at his burned skin.

“You’re not broken,” I say firmly and follow him across the room. “And you have nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I can kill, dolcezza, I can fight, I can face terrible things. I’ve looked death in the eyes without blinking a dozen times over the years. But sitting down face to face with Uncle Luciano scares me more than any of that, because I don’t hate him, because there’s still a part of me that’s the twelve-year-old boy, and I still love him in some twisted, horrible way. I can face almost any danger, but why the fuck can’t I get over this? Why am I so goddamn weak?”

He slumps against the back of the couch, leaning forward and gripping it hard, and I stare at him as emotions rack my body. I hate that he’s hurting and I had no idea that he was holding so much of this inside. I knew he’d been hiding something—but I never imagined it was something so huge, so torturous, and it was never fair to do this to himself.

I wrap my arms around his middle and hug him tight, bury my face in his back. “You’re not weak.”

“You have no idea, baby. I can do so much, but I can’t even master my own emotions.”

“You’re a person,” I say and it comes out harder than I meant, but I keep going. “Forget all this crap about being a man, about being strong. You are a man, and you are strong. Something terrible happened to you, Davide, and you expect yourself to just get over it? When most people would have crumbled into dust? And here you are, fighting your own wounds, your own pain, and you think you’re not strong? God, if I were you, I’d be a blubbering mess all the freaking time. I don’t know how you stand it.”

He laughs softly. “Yes, you’re right. It’s very painful being me.”

“That’s not what I mean.” I come around the side of him and kneel down so I can see his face. He glances at me, his eyes brimming with pain. “You’re strong, Davide, and nobody would ever say otherwise.”

“When it comes to Uncle Luciano, I don’t feel that way.”

“Then how about you just trust me? I’ve known a lot of men in our world, and you’re by far one of the best.”

He kneels down in front of me until we’re nearly eye level. He leans forward and kisses me gently. “I’d like to take your word for it, but I still have this darkness in me, and I don’t know what I can do about it.”

“You can just keep on going.” I touch his face, trembling slightly. I hate that he went through this, and I hate that he’s still dealing with it every day. I mean it when I say he’s strong—what happened to him would’ve ruined anyone else. Instead, it seems to have compelled him to close himself off from the world, but it didn’t destroy him, and that’s a kind of strength very few people have.

“If you think I can keep on going, then I’ll do it.” He kisses me again and pulls me close against him.

“It doesn’t have to define you if you don’t want it to. It just doesn’t.”

He grunts and hugs me tighter, and I hold him like that on the floor of his house, breathing in his smell and trying not to cry for a boy trapped in a cage, taken and used by a man he once cared about more than anything in the world.

Chapter 31

Davide

It’d been a long time since I last told that story and spilling it that way was cathartic. Once she understood what had happened to me, I could tell a lot suddenly made more sense. Especially why I don’t like tight, enclosed spaces.

I make plans with Simon and my father. We bring in some of the other Capos and more of our trusted lieutenants. Elena asks me what’s going on, and even Angelo wants to discuss everything when he calls from prison, but we decided to keep everything in a very tight circle.

“I have a surprise for you,” I tell Stefania about a week after Santoro’s call. We’re walking down the oasis together, holding hands. It’s strangely natural, though a month ago I wouldn’t have been able to imagine this level of intimacy with her. Fucking her was one thing—but strolling along like an actual married couple seemed absurd.

And now here we are, walking around like a couple of middle-class yuppies on the prowl for frozen yogurt.

“Let me guess. We’re moving to Canada? You decided to learn French because you’ve always dreamed of becoming Quebecois?”

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