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14
Luca
“You’re a total disgrace to this family! You let them take what was yours, and you did nothing to stop them! I can’t fucking trust you at all!”
“But, Dad, I—”
My father Frank puts up a hand. “I don’t want to hear any of your bullshit excuses, Luca. I’m sick of watching you fuck up, over and over again. Salvatore would never have let this happen! He was the one I could count on!”
“Sal is dead, Dad!” I pound my fist against the wall. “He’s fucking dead, goddammit, so stop comparing me to him!”
“You’ll never be half the man he would have been,” my father hisses, stretching to his full height, pushing his chest into mine.
I stand my ground, refusing to cower. My heart thumps, rage coursing through my veins because I know what comes next. It always does. He thinks he’s teaching me a lesson, showing me how to be stronger, more fierce, more deadly.
More like him.
But I know it runs deeper than that. He’s trying to turn me into the son he’d always wanted…the son he lost…the son he’ll never get back.
The son he actually loved.
He lost control, and as a result, he lost so much more than that.
We all did. But he doesn’t care about what he has left. His focus is always on the one who is no longer here, his protégé, his shining star.
I’m a disappointment, a liability, always living in Salvatore’s shadow. Even in death, he outshines me like the night sky on the fucking Fourth of July.
“Tommy!” He bellows. “Get in here!”
With a thick finger, Dad pokes me in the chest, backing me toward the fireplace. The logs crackle, spitting orange embers into the air.
“You make me do this to you. Remember that, you little bastard! You bring this upon yourself.”
Heavy footsteps crash on the hardwood floor behind me as Tommy, one of his faithful soldiers, approaches. Dad picks up a poker and hands it to Tommy before turning back to me.
“Maybe next time you’ll remember who you work for, Luca.”
I rub the back of my left shoulder, my fingertips sliding over the length of the scar. It’s only one tiny piece of my father’s legacy. He wanted to toughen me, to breathe the same hate into me that fueled him on a daily basis. It worked, but that hate…fuck, it poisoned me inside and out. Once it infiltrated my insides, it made me do things, sick things, things I should have been punished for. Shit, things I should have been put to death for.
It was all a test to see if I’d finally become a lethal force, the role I’d been groomed to play in this sick and twisted life.
I guess I passed.
The image of Nico Salesi falling to his knees next to the pile of crushed metal that was once his father’s Escalade…I didn’t think I’d feel shit when I witnessed that scene. After all of this time, I figured my soul would be deadened to any emotion.
But for a split second, an emotion flickered somewhere deep inside of me. It wasn’t sadness or remorse, though.
It was envy.
I was jealous, so fucking jealous I couldn’t think straight.
He had something I’d never have, something I’d been after for years and years until I came to realize I’d never get it—no matter what I did, no matter what I said.
His father’s love and respect.
I fucking hate Nico for having that. But I don’t hate him for killing my father.
Hell, I’m actually glad somebody had the balls to blow off Frank’s fucking head. I’d heard enough shit spewed from his mouth over the years, and I was glad someone finally shut him the hell up for good.