He takes me in as I stand from his seat. I look him over, pick up the tumbler of whiskey and finish it. It’s not my brand, but it’ll do.
“What the fuck, Cristiano?”
“Close the door,” I tell him.
“Oh, I should close the door to my own office behind me? I’ll ask you again. What. The. Fuck?”
But he enters and closes the door.
“And where’s Morgan?”
“Morgan?”
“The butler.”
“Oh.” I always forget his name. But seriously? A fucking butler? “He’s having coffee.” With my men in the kitchen for the last hour. I didn’t want to lose the element of surprise.
My uncle’s gaze shifts to the photo album on the desk. I pour us both a drink.
“Your brand is in the cabinet underneath,” he says.
“This will do.” I hand him his and lean on the desk as he takes a seat on the armchair along the wall.
“What’s going on?”
“I didn’t know the doctor who had treated me all those years had been killed.”
“Excuse me?”
“The doctor. When I was in the coma.”’
“Oh, him. Yeah, it was tragic. I heard about it the morning after it happened.”
“Why didn’t you mention it?”
“You had more important things to worry about. Besides, I found you a new doctor. Why are you here? Like this? What’s this about, Cristiano?”
“Did you know the drug he gave me would cause me to lose my memories?”
He exhales, shakes his head and sips his drink. “It was a possibility, yes. I knew that. But it was the only option. Your life was what mattered at that point. You were barely holding on. Did you want me to take a chance with your life when your brother was counting on you?”
Guilt. I drink more whiskey. “I don’t remember them,” I say.
He sighs deeply. “It’s possible you’ll remember someday.”
“I doubt it.” I walk around the desk and open the album again to look at the photo of mom on her own. She’s lying back on a pool chair, huge hat on her head, legs strewn over the arm of the chair as she reads. I get the feeling she didn’t know she was being observed or that someone had taken the photo. She was always skittish when the camera came out. Said she didn’t look like herself in pictures.
My uncle is beside me then. “She was a beautiful woman.” He brushes dust I don’t see off the image.
I shift just my gaze to study him, hearing something strange in his words, remembering what Charlie said.
Was I blind?
His eyes meet mine and for the briefest of moments, I see something foreign. Something cold.
But he blinks and it’s gone. And he’s the man he’s always been to me. He smiles and the familiar lines crease the skin around his eyes. It’s just my imagination.
“Sometimes it’s better to forget, Cristiano.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I’ll tell you about her. About all of them.”
“What did the couple you had me kill do to support the massacre of my family?”
“You mean the massacre of our family.”
I wait for his answer.
“Let me show you,” he says, moving around his desk to unlock a drawer. “I didn’t want you to see these. I didn’t want to bring up old pain. Forgotten pain. But someone’s put a bug in your ear, and you’re determined, I see.”
He takes out a manila envelope, opens it to glance at whatever is on the first page before turning to me.
“Are you sure?” he asks.
I nod. My heart is racing, my gut twisted. But honestly, I don’t know what he could show me that could overwrite what Charlie has shown me.
“Here.” He hands over the envelope and sits down to rifle through the drawer again.
I sit, too, and look through the few pages. They’re bank statements, several lines highlighted. The amounts transferred from one account to the other make up a generous sum. There’s a photo before that. Several. They’re of my father and the man I killed. They’re arguing, it’s apparent from the image. I check the date. It’s a year before the murders. I compare to the date on the bank transfers. Three months prior.
“He and your father had a… falling out,” my uncle says when I look at him. “When your father blackmailed him.”
“Blackmail?”
He nods. “I told you, there was a reason I didn’t give you these.” He hands me the next folder. “I wouldn’t want you to lose respect for your father.”
Something dark tightens in my gut at his words. “My father didn’t blackmail anyone.”
“You didn’t know the business yet, Cristiano. You were too young. Michael knew. Michael was being groomed.”
I look through the next folder. Again, a transfer of funds to the same account as the previous.
“Your father wasn’t the man you thought, perhaps. But maybe you forget that he was a criminal. As are you. He chose that life. As have you.”
Something about how he says it hits me the wrong way. I’m not sure what it is, the tone or the words or maybe just the look in his eyes.