Page 76 of Tito
“Me too,” Rocky agreed.
“Then one day, I was watching an old movie,” Tito explained. “And there was a line in it.”
“The Godfather?” Rocky asked Tito with a grin.
“No, it was Star Wars. Yoda in fact.”
“What?” Rocky laughed. “How could Uncle Stephano be equated with freakin’ Yoda?”
Tito shrugged. “It’s only what you see… it is. That’s the line. There I was binge-watching all the Star Wars I could find and when I heard this, I had a sudden epiphany. It really blew me away. What he meant was… It is all in how you look at it. Uncle Stephano saw it as something we had to do; we had no choice. Those menchoseto aim their weapons at us and they chose wrongly. They caused their own demise by their choices.”
I nodded as I concluded, “So in essence, you did not kill them, they did it to themselves.”
“Exactly,” Tito said. “And I finally understood Uncle Stephano’s take on it.”
Rocky laughed. “Yoda and Uncle Stephano? Nahhh.”
We all laughed.
“He coulda been Jabba The Hutt though,” Tito joked.
We all paused as we pictured the ugly creature with all the belly roll fat and the long, large tongue.
“Nah, can you imagine Jabba in Armani or Louis Vuitton?” I suggested.
“That suit would need a helluva lot of material,” Rocky concluded. “And lots of buttons, holy shit!”
Again, we broke into laughter…Then we all shook our heads.
“Darth Vader,” I suggested. “Dark suit, non emotional, deadly.”
Rocky looked over at me. “Wow, you watch old films too?”
“Heck, yeah.” I nodded.
Tito looked proud as he said, “Like Uncle Stephano said… I chose correctly.” He raised my hand up and kissed my knuckles as we walked along the hall.
I bit at my lip as I admitted, “But it was because of Deacon. He loved watching the 80’s and 90’s films. Well, whenever he was home. So I would sit next to him and we would have like movie nights.”
Tito actually slowed down and stopped in the hallway. Keeping a hold of my hand he said, “Babe, he is your brother. He has been there since you were five years old. You cannot keep apologizing for that. You said it yourself. It was never something you chose.”
“So, how am I gonna feel when…” I choked up a bit and did not say it aloud. When or if Stephano killed him.
He let out a heavy breath and took me into his arms. “I know this is hard.”
“Yes and it’s harder because I know for sure that I am a Walker now too. And the whole Walker family hates Deaconwith a passion. From what they told me, he has terrorized them. Threatened them, kidnapped some of them. Then you know what happened when I asked Stephano if he would just let him go.”
“I bet that went over well,” Rocky said with an eye roll.
“Surprisingly, Uncle Stephano remained calm,” Tito explained. “But he practically told her fat chance.”
“I’m hoping…” My voice fell away. I wanted to say that I hoped Deacon had been able to leave the country. Yet, it would be disloyal to him if I told anyone here about his plans. Even Tito. Dang, this was hard. Julianna wasn’t even loyal to him as she never knew him. She met him a couple of times but that wasn’t a sibling attachment. Like who do I be loyal to?
Tito rubbed my back with his hands. Then he pulled back to ask me, “Babe, you wanna just go to my room? Skip visiting my uncle?”
I looked into his eyes. “No, you had questions for him, right?”
“None that he would like,” Tito replied with a shrug. “I’m not sure he would know why your parents are so afraid of him.
