In that moment, the gun clicks behind my father’s head as his eyes widen at mine.
His eyes begin to fall once he realizes what position he put himself in.
His tongue clicks. “So, you know?”
I walk toward him and take my gun out, just like Enzo did.
“Boss?” Enzo says.
I shake my head at him. I want to be the one to kill him.
My father laughs. “Boss? Are you serious? Listen, Enzo. Do I need to remind you how the ladder works?”
Enzo’s jaw tightens; he knows that soon he won’t have to listen to his bullshit.
“You won’t kill me,” my father says as I punch him in the middle of his face.
“Is that a challenge?”
He holds his nose, trying to stop the blood from falling like running water.
“I want to hear why you did it.”
“Why I did what?” he practically shouts at me.
My father is beginning to feel threated by me. “Why you killed my mother. Your loving wife. Why you walked over her dead body like it was nothing.”
“I didn’t kill her—you know that.”
“You fucking ordered it, Tommaso.”
“Rightfully so.”
“I am giving you three goddamn seconds to talk, or I promise the bullet that rests in this gun will be in your head.”
“Okay.” He repositions his body so the majority of his weight is on the table. “Your mother.”
I shake my head at his inability to say a sentence. He needs to get on with it—I don’t want to be here forever.
“She had a kind soul. She loved you before you were even born. Hell, she was so in love with the idea of having a family it made me fall in love with her even more. She was the most perfect person, the perfect wife. But not for what I do. She made me look weak.
“I had men from all over trying to tell me how my family would be the thing that got me killed. Look where that’s getting me. I ordered my men to kill her because she was pregnant with another child.”
I lose my balance as my father’s words hit me from afar. He killed my mother because she was expecting another child.
What the fuck?
“Listen, Giovanni. She was pregnant with another man’s child. Your mother was a whore.”
Enzo stiffens his gun, finger pressing down on the trigger. One bump of his arm and my father’s brains would be blown.
“Anyway. If this is my end, then you will hear everything. She made every man around me think I was weak. She was taking my last name, making a name for herself and you, while tearing my own name down. After her death, I made you into a man you never would have been if she’d treated you like a child your whole life.
“You have become smart. I was wondering how much longer I had till you figured it out. When you went to Carlo’s wedding, I assumed you would become suspicious after meeting Kirill. I wanted him to marry Nina so all our families are connected. The Stepanov men are the ones who killed your mother.”
My father lets out a laugh before continuing. “Well, again, I killed her, but they did—make sense?”
As I sit before my failed excuse of a father, I take my gun out and place a bullet in the center of his forehead.