Page 60 of Powerful Deception

18

It’s close to ten at night when I make it back to the house.

After my meeting with Gallo, where he told me what to do, I finished my small batch of laundry and went about my day.

The day I had planned all along.

My first stop was the bar.

When I got the job with Dante, I called Jimmy and told him that an opportunity had come up and that I was going to take it. He told me that he hated to see me leave but that he understood and wished me luck.

The bar and everyone working there was my family at one point, so I wanted to go and catch up for a bit. But going to the bar was just a diversion, just like my second stop.

My second stop was Tommy’s. When I knocked at his door, he was a little surprised because in the time since my father’s funeral, I hadn’t called or stopped by once. He gave me a big hug and invited me in for a late lunch.

Tommy and I talked a bit, I even told him that I had gotten a new job, I just didn’t tell him with whom. Like Jimmy, Tommy was excited for me and even told me that he was glad that I left the bar because it wasn’t the place for me.

I bet if I had told him who I was working for, he wouldn’t be saying the same thing.

After lunch, we took me to the garage to show me the progress on the car. The same car that my dad was trying to rebuild before he passed.

A few days after the funeral, I asked Tommy if he wanted it. I told him that I was trying to figure out what to do with the house but that the car should go to someone who would finish it. So, he took it, and in the time since then, he has made a lot of progress on it. It doesn’t look like crap of junk that it did when my dad had it.

I left after that, wanting to give him time to work on the piece of metal before the darkness came.

Then I was onto my last stop. The stop that I had been avoiding all day. The stop I have been avoiding for weeks.

The cemetery.

The plot still locked fresh, the only difference was installation of the simple gravestone that I had bought for him. It was small and simple and the only thing that I could afford.

Maybe now with the paycheck I’m getting from Dante and the money I have from the donation, I can replace it and give him something better.

It hurt to be there, but I had to do it. I had to visit him, visit them because if I didn’t, I was never going to have the courage to do it in the future.

I cried the second I saw his gravestone next to my mom’s. I cried until my eyes hurt and tears were no longer forming.

I sat there in front of their graves for a lot longer than I thought I would, until well past sundown.

For most of the time there, I stayed quiet, but eventually I started talking about nothing the small plates with names on it.

I talked about what I was doing and who I was going after and why. I told the headstone just how I needed to clear my head because it was being clouded by two young children that I was starting to love more than anything. How it was also being clouded by the children’s father and I didn’t know how I was going to finish the job.

The question wasn’t if I was going to do it, but how, because I was going to finish what I started. I was going to bring down every down my father’s killer one way or another.

Because they needed to pay for their actions.

It was just the how that was stopping me, but I was going to figure it out.

I was also going to figure out how to make Dante trust me.

I told all of this to my parents and the only reason that I left was because the night guard came by and told me that I had to go.

Much like my father’s funeral, he called me a car and I was on my way home.

It was in the car that I realized that my head was no longer crowded, and I had a clear picture of what I wanted to do.

At least I think I do.

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