"He wasn’t perfect—"
"Damn straight he wasn’t."
"—and he fucked with his sons’ heads, but—"
"But, what, Savvie? What’s to miss? The guy who’d crucify people in his warehouse? Who spent half his life beating on his kids to try to make men out of them? Who—"
She pressed a hand to my shoulder. "Aidan, your father wasn’t a monster. He was an animal. I judge him as an animal, and not as a man."
A choked laugh escaped me. "What the hell?"
"Think about it. He acted without thought, reacting purely on instinct. He was the top of the food chain, and he had to stay up there. He’d do whatever it took, kill whoever it took, to maintain that standing.
"Lions will kill their own sons, did you know that? If the sons challenge them, I mean. Your father would never have done that. Lions also have a harem of women, and we both know that Senior was cured of that mentality a long time ago.
"In everything that was related to the Five Points, he was an animal. But where it counted, he wasn’t. I respect that, and I understand what it took to stay at the top amid the turmoil of the seventies, eighties, and nineties. It was a brutal place, but he did it."
"I was there for most of it," I grumbled, not liking her stance but somehow able to understand where she was coming from.
My wife had a way of doing that—tilting my perspective.
"You were, but you weren’t. You’ll never know what it took for him to remain top dog during those decades because he lived that, not you.
"Your reign will be different. Difficult in some matters, but it won’t be the same."
"How do you know? There are still drug wars and—"
"There are, yes, but he consolidated your position. He left you the city, and you can do with it what you will. What you eventually do to it is down to you."
Her eyes were soft and compassionate as she stared into mine.
I didn’t understand why.
Until she reached up and stroked her thumb over my cheek.
It was then that I realized I’d been crying.
What a fucking pussy.
"He made me hate him," I rasped.
"You loved him too," she countered. "It wasn’t an easy love, but it was love, nonetheless. That shone through in your eulogy." Her lips twisted. "I thought Lena was going to have a heart attack when you started thanking him for teaching you how not to do stuff, but, and I know you’ve been struggling with this, Aidan, there’s a reason they say there’s a fine line between love and hate."
I gritted my teeth. "He was a bastard. He treated us like toy soldiers."
"He wanted you to survive. He wanted you to have the tools that would allow you to live a long life.
"Do you know how many mob bosses lived to his age?"
"Not many."
"Exactly. You don’t have to like him to love him, Aidan. And you don’t have to agree with him to know that he reared you in his image. He had to learn the hard way, and so did you."
"I won’t do that to our kid."
She arched a brow at me. "Kid?"
"Yeah. Kid." I grunted. "Not putting you through that more than once."