Page 54 of Cruel Tyrant

Simon grunts and his smile fades away. He knows what this meeting means to me. I haven’t seen Santoro in a very long time, not since the incident all those years ago, and it’s not a small thing trying to face him down now. I’m doing my best to keep all these emotions deep inside but it isn’t easy.

“You remember going out on the water with Dad when we were younger?” Simon turns and leans on his elbows. “Do you remember why it stopped?”

I snort and nod, squinting at the sunlight playing on the waves. “Angelo jumped off the boat because he thought he saw a dolphin.”

“Dad flipped the hell out and shouted at him for like ten minutes.”

“Not that Angelo cared.” I smile at the memory of my crazy brother. We all missed him like hell—he’s been in prison for three years and he’s got another two before he’s eligible for parole.

“Everyone always thought Angelo was the brave one,” Simon said, looking at me. “But I knew that was bullshit. If Angelo went through what you went through, he would’ve been a fucking catatonic wreck. He’d be rocking back and forth hugging himself and mumbling gibberish in some asylum somewhere.”

I give my older brother a dubious look. “I’m not sure how to take that, honestly.”

He rubs the back of his neck. “I’m just saying, you don’t have shit to prove to anyone, alright? You don’t have to stay here and face down Santoro if you don’t want to. Nobody would look down on you.”

I give him a look then punch him hard in the arm. He grunts and rubs himself, glaring.

“I’m not here for anyone but my fucking self,” I say then glance in Dad’s direction. “And for him a little bit. But you’re right, I don’t have shit to prove to anyone.”

Except I have been proving myself for a long time. I’ll never admit it, but after what happened with Santoro, I came back and I was deeply changed. I was afraid of everything, terrified of the dark, couldn’t even be around fire, and hated the idea of being in an enclosed space. I used to sleep in the back yard just so I wouldn’t feel claustrophobic.

But then I started noticing the way people looked at me and all the damn whispers. Crazy, they said, I lost my fucking mind because of what I went through. People called me a weirdo, bizarre, strange, fucked up. They were absolutely right. I was fucked up. I still am. But I decided back when I was young to double down on what I thought would make me strong, and I threw myself into the Famiglia.

That’s why I took every dangerous job nobody else wanted. I became a killer for my father, not because I wanted to, but because I thought it was the only way I could fight back from whatever dark hell I’d been locked inside. I forced myself to be twice as tough and worked ten times harder than anyone else, and even if that killed me, I didn’t care.

I clawed my way back into the world, and in the process, I became this.

“Boys,” Dad said and by the tone of his voice, I knew Santoro was here.

I didn’t see him at first as I stood by my father. Simon took the other side. I scanned the crowd, trying to spot the man I remembered, the man that still haunted my dreams. Nightmares inevitably turn back to that night: the smell of smoke and ash, the heat of the bars as they burned my hand, Santoro’s face looking at me in the darkness, his lips pulled back in a snarl.

It took a moment to recognize him. It’d been a long time since I last saw him, and in my memory he was enormous, but that was the recollection of a little boy. The man in front of me was old, in his sixties, with thin gray hair and sharp eyes. He was thin, no longer as muscled as he used to be, and wore an impeccable gray suit. He moved with a slight limp, and the glasses he wore were the tinted kind that changed from indoors to out. He seemed smaller, hollower, someone only a simulacrum of the man I used to know, and I couldn’t understand how this person had broken me so deeply, when he was almost nothing himself.

Santoro stood before us, entirely alone.

“Alessandro,” he said, greeting my father.

“Luciano.” Dad grunted the name. “I want to make this fast.”

“Why, old friend?” Santoro’s smile was sneering and entirely too confident. My eyes strayed from the old man and began to scrutinize every person nearby, but there were too many. Kids weaved through the crowd, running from their parents. Others shouted and laughed nearby.

“I wanted you gone from my city.” Dad’s voice is pure venom. “I should have killed you when I had the chance. You deserved death and so much worse for what you did to my family. And now you’re stealing from me.”

Santoro shook his head. “I’m stealing guns you plan on using to kill me. Come now, Alessandro, don’t act like you’re the aggrieved party here. What happened between us was purely business. Your boys were never meant to be a part of that.”

“And yet they were.” Dad stepped forward, trembling, and I’m amazed at how angry he seems. I thought I’d be the one losing my mind, except I feel calm.

Santoro’s just a man. He’s been a fifty-foot giant in my dreams for so long, but now that I’m seeing him in person, it feels as though the fear’s blown away like mist. He doesn’t have power over me—and he hasn’t for a long time. I could break him if I wanted to.

“I’m sorry, Alessandro. I didn’t come here to litigate the past with you. I’m here because your family’s time as de facto rulers of Chicago is coming to an end, only you don’t realize that yet. You got too big, old friend, and you got much too complacent.”

“Threats?” Dad laughs as he shakes his head. “You were always so ambitious, but look at you now? Running a small, meaningless family, and nibbling at our feet like a bottom-feeding fish. I’ll make this conversation easy on you then. Give us our guns back, or I will make sure my men hunt you down and ruin every single member of your organization.”

Santoro sighs and shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I really am.” He takes a few steps back. “But you never learn, do you?”

“Don’t you walk away,” I bark at him and move forward, pushing past Dad. All my rage comes back without any of the old fear. I might not see him as a mythical creature anymore, but I still hate him for what he did to me. “Come here, Uncle Luciano. Don’t you want to talk about the old days?”

He looks at me for the first time and it’s like there’s no recognition in his eyes. I’m the boy he kidnapped, the boy he kept in a cage, the boy that nearly died in the fire that was meant for him. And he doesn’t care. I’m probably no more than a footnote to him.

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