His bushy eyebrows pulled toward the center of his face. Lines from years of stress deepened across his forehead. “You’re my son, Rome. Just like Cade and Bastian, huh? Tell me what’s got you this way with me.”
He probably could have pulled at Cade’s heartstrings with that one. Bastian and I had always been more distant from Mario. Bastian had to live up to being the heir to the family, and so Mario hardened him with constant pressure and gruesome work. I’d been his right-hand man, the one he turned to for most things. I knew too much to have heartstrings.
When I didn’t answer him right away, his right hand started twitching. He’d risk jumping out of a moving vehicle because Mario had stared death in the face enough times to know he was in trouble.
“Don’t spend your last moments being a coward, Mario. Stay put.” I punched the door lock for good measure.
Mario gulped loudly but didn’t respond. He leaned over and turned on his favorite oldies station, cranked up the music, and shrugged when I looked over at him. “One for the road, huh?”
5
Rome
He wasn’t begging; he wasn’t really even shaking. From the middle of the room, Mario stared at his sons, at me, at his bloodline and the world he’d built, like a god looking down on his creation.
“I won’t apologize,” he said.
“It wouldn’t help now, anyway,” Bastian said from one of the chairs encircling him.
Dante cracked his knuckles, next to him. “You should have been stopped long ago.”
“The only people willing to stop me were the people I made strong enough to do so.” Mario stared at the arm that always had my chain coiled under the sleeve. “Are you going to do it, Rome?”
I shook my head. He’d been more of a father figure to me than my own, and he was the father figure of the mob, of the family. “I don’t understand how you could do all this.”
“You do what you have to for the family. Katie was a piece we needed.”
“Tell me that placing her at Marvin’s was coincidence.” I shook with a wrath I couldn’t contain and circled him like a shark ready to rip apart a wounded animal.
“Do you want me to lie?” Mario asked and then picked at his teeth. “Deals were made. That wasn’t the only one. We got a lot of protection out of me agreeing to a lot of things over the years.”
I raised my head to make eye contact with Bastian, and he nodded along with Cade, who sat by his side. I swung my fist fast hard into Mario’s jaw. The old man crumbled in the chair. He breathed in and out quickly, sucking on air as if he were trying to get his bearings.
Then the man laughed, hard and loud. “Wow. That’s real. That’s some real shit I’ve given my enemies over the years. The monster in you doesn’t come to play.”
“I never did play when it came to the family, when it came to her.”
“She always was able to hook every man she came in contact with, huh?” Mario rubbed his jaw in thought. “I’ve always been proud of that girl. Tell her I was proud, will you?”
“Marvin raped her. He tortured her. Katie was just a girl. You want me to tell her you placed her there knowing that he would?” As I said the words, acid rose so high in my throat, I contemplated spitting on him.
“I’d do it again, Rome. Let me be clear to you all here and now. I don’t have a single regret, not one. Katie is ours. I did what I had to do to get her. Being the boss”—he looked at his son—“means making the hard choices. I made them over and over again. You all know by now we have money from drugs and trafficking. I halted other families from doing it.”
When I turned to stare at Mario’s boys, Cade’s face was ashen. Bastian was vibrating with another emotion. We’d all been duped into thinking we’d been cleaning up when really Mario had fooled us all.
“You made our family a lie,” Bastian responded quietly, but his words held malice.
“I made us untouchable,” said Mario. “Look what we have now. I got Katalina here with us. So she had to sleep with Marvin and Jimmy. She’s fine now. She’s the heir to billions in the bratva. Just marry her, son.”
Bastian’s eyes flared at his father’s admission, but I’d already known. Mario had moved Katalina like a chess piece, willing to have her fall victim time and time again. He’d used her like she felt she’d been used, and he’d made her feelings about the mob true.
Bastian walked up to his dad, bent down to look him in the eye, and said without an ounce of emotion, “Blow this man’s goddamn head off.”
“No!” Katalina stood in the doorway, hair tied up on her head, exposing the sharp features of her face. She was free of makeup, in combat boots and a plain tank top hanging over her jeans. In her simplest attire, she exuded with the most power I’d ever seen from her. “Don’t any of you listen? I said let me go and stop what you're doing for once.”
“Oh, Katalina,” Mario groaned. “Now’s not the time. We’ve already decided what becomes of me.”
“Without me? Because my choice doesn’t matter even when the choice is about me?” She stalked forward. “I don’t want death, Mario. I want life. I want all of you to see this can be different.”