Page 109 of Where Quiet Hearts Scream
It did nothing for my father’s credibility but it changed me overnight. After that, I became a heartless, unfeeling machine. I carried out my father’s orders without a second thought, but I absorbed details like a sponge. Details like how to hold a gun properly, not the way my father taught me. How to lie convincingly, how to steal and commit fraud. I became the criminal I admired, not the criminal my father wanted.
When his men began to look tomefor direction, not him, he put a knife to my throat. The vacant look in his eye confirmed he would have killed me had I not shoved him backward with more strength than he possessed. That was when I left. He didn’t have the same jealousy toward my brother, so I wasn’t worried for Benito, but I kept watch nonetheless.
His eyes are still vacant as they look at me now, but there’s a spark of triumph behind them, like he wanted it to come to this.
I turn slowly to my wife and whisper in her ear. She nods once then leaves the room.
“Is there anything you’d like to say to us before I snuff out your lights?”
A corner of his mouth curls up. “Your… mother would have been proud,” he grits out.
I feel Benito’s gaze on my face. Neither of us were expecting that.
“You take after her,” he continues in a sinister tone. “Weak and spineless. Fucking pussies who need the support of a ‘family’ instead of having the strength to command a city on your own.”
I narrow my eyes. “You hardly commanded the city,” I say with a scowl.
As if I haven’t said a word, he lets his mouth run.
“And just like her, you’re no fucking use to anyone. You’re parasites, sucking the blood out of life underground just so you can sit pretty in your little mansions with your little Castellano women.”
I hear the sound of grinding jaw bone and realize just how hard Benito is holding back from squeezing the life out of our father’s lungs. “Don’t you dare speak about Mom, or our wives and girlfriends in that way,” he snarls.
“Look at you,” he spits. “You can’t even see beyond those short skirts and posh pussies, can you? You think you havevision…” he cackles and almost chokes on the blood pooling in his mouth from where Benito clearly gave him a beating. He’s barely recovered before he continues. “Yet, you can’t see further than your next fucking lay.
“Yeah,” he coughs. “You’re as much use as yourmother was. She deserved to die, just like the two of you.”
I flash a glance at Benito. His glass-sharp jaw tells me he’s thinking the same thing.
“Mom didn’t die from a seizure, did she?” Every word strikes a blow to my heart, to the soul of my eight-year-old self.
His laugh is acrid and malicious. “No.”
“You killed her,” Benito grits out, his hand tightening around the old man’s scrawny bicep.
Sera appears at my side, her soft presence filling me with warmth and conviction. She hands me what I asked for and I hold it up for my father to see.
His eyes narrow, trying to focus.
It must be sixty years old now. The gold plating is beginning to fade, the bone handle slightly chipped. But other than that, my father’s prized antique Browning Hi-Power 9mm is a beautiful specimen in perfect working order.
His eyes round when he realizes what I’m holding.
“The truth,” I demand, turning the beautiful carved metal in my hands. “Did you kill our mother?”
“You’re going to kill me withmyfavorite pistol?”
I glance up to see his eyes glaze over with what can only be described as madness.
“Answer me,” I growl.
His lids lower and he regards me with a bitter sneer. “She died from a seizure,” he says slowly.
My heart pumps for a short second. I don’t want to believe she was killed at the hands of this beast, but atthe same time, I want as many reasons as I can get to end this man’s life with zero regrets.
“A seizure brought on by deprivation of oxygen.” His lips curl upward as he waits for the penny to drop.
“You strangled her?” Benito sounds faraway, as though he’s confronting this in a world away from here.
