Page 65 of Spice and Revenge

I always sensed my father's dealings were shady. I knew his source of income wasn’t all legitimate. The winery wasn’t what made us the richest family in Sicily like every other person liked to believe. I knew he associated with grimy people and engaged in illicit activities, but I never fathomed the extent of his depravity.

Until that day.

Somewhere in my deluded brain, I thought that if I behaved as the perfect son he wanted, he would come back to my mother. He would come back to us.

What a lie that was. Things only spiraled further downhill after that gruesome night.

When he informed me of our “important” journey, that I would prove myself as his true son, I was filled with excitement. At that age, pleasing my father was the only thing I lived for.

As he picked me up from the shabby apartment my mother and I lived in that morning, I pictured a grand outing, perhaps an introduction to his affluent friends.

The last thing I had expected was for him to take me to an underground cell on the outskirts of town. I was traumatized by the sounds of distant wailing as we walked past. I refused to think about what was being done to them. And when the prisoners looked at us walking past with terror in their eyes, I ignored them. I trusted my father.

We finally got to the room at the end of the hallway. The space was dim, with high windows and only a flickering light from a lantern somewhere in the room. But that wasn’t my focus. It was on the people on the ground. The girl who was already dead, the second girl who was crying, the woman who had fear in her eyes, and the man who scowled at my father.

He shot the woman first, deriving joy from Enzo’s cries as he watched his wife die. The movement was so swift that I almost didn’t believe my father was the one who shot her. I watched as her eyes became lifeless, and she collapsed against the floor with a hole in the middle of her head.

My father had turned to look at me at that moment. When he saw the fear in my eyes, he laughed and told me that this was who he truly was. He shot Enzo next, and I watched his dead body drop beside his wife whose blood was already pooling on the floor.

“Your turn,” he had said, and I felt the whole room spin. I wanted to throw up, but I pressed my tongue against the roof of my mouth, a trick my mother had taught me whenever I felt sick.

He handed the gun over to me and told me to shoot the weeping girl.

I took the gun with shaky hands. It was heavy, heavier than what I’d expected a pistol to weigh. I pointed it to her head as my father had instructed. A cold sweat broke out on my face, the beads trailing down my back. I placed a finger on the trigger, knowing that if I simply pulled, the girl would drop dead like her parents.

The silence in the room was suffocating, and I felt a heavy tension on my shoulders as my father waited for me to pull the trigger. As the seconds passed, I knew I wouldn’t kill her. I couldn’t.

I’d looked up to my father. His dark eyes burned into mine, and whatever he saw in mine made him snatch the gun from my hand and shoot the girl.

“You are a disgrace,” he spat before storming out of the room, leaving me with the dead bodies.

Seeing that hatred in his eyes, I knew he wished he could kill me too.

My weakness made us suffer at the hands of my father until he died. I say ‘us’, because my mother also suffered for my sins. When he wasn't torturing and starving me, he was battering my mother. I'd intervene, shielding her until his rage until he started hitting me too.

I had no one. My mother passed when I turned eighteen, likely a consequence of the relentless abuse she endured. I had no friends, alternating between school and training. The teachers at school never asked questions. They never asked why I had new bruises on my body every day, or why I kept losing weight gradually. They never asked why I was always tired in school and slept off in class due to the endless nights of training. They never asked why I completely skipped school on some days.

The older I grew, the older I realized that maybe they knew too.

“My father was the one who killed Enzo Rodriguez,” I growl, looking into Pedro’s piercing eyes.

The bastard smiled slowly. “I orchestrated that.”

He then sighs when he sees the look of confusion on my face.

“I suppose I owe you the whole story before I end you,” he says with a smirk that quickly fades.

“I've always aspired to lead the Cuban mafia,” Pedro begins. “It was my dream, stolen by Enzo simply for being the eldest.”

“He didn’t steal anything from you,” I grind out. “It was his birthright.”

“Birthrights are archaic notions, don’t you think?”

When I remain silent, he continues.

“Enzo was not fit to be a leader. When our father trained us as boys, he would come late to training and fight sloppily, but my father loved him, so he never complained,” Pedro says, and I catch the edge in his voice.

“Enzo was reckless and impatient, always making decisions based on anger instead of common sense. But, he had me to clean his messes whenever he made mistakes…”

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