Chapter Thirty
To err is human,
to forgive, divine.
Alexander Pope
twenty-four years old
I don’t mind the hard punch to the stomach.
In fact, I welcome the physical pain. I relish it. I just wish my brother’s smug fucking face could be anywhere else but here, gleefully witnessing my brutal beating, as one of his soldiers rains punch after punch on my already sore and bruised body.
Ranie’s eyes are full of triumph, as if he caught me, when in reality, I didn’t bother hiding. Perhaps it was a mistake to attend my father’s funeral, but the old man had been a good father to me before everything went to shit. Four years of banishment didn’t erase twenty years of decent parenting, so I figured I’d pay my respects.
And I wasn’t going to do it hiding from afar like a fucking coward.
Instead, I arrived to the funeral in the car my father had bought me on my sixteenth birthday, a black 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS 396. A car I stole back from the Andretti compound an hour before the funeral.
It wasn’t exactly hard.
Almost everyone was either preparing to leave for the funeral or was already on their way to it. And when I stepped out of the car at the cemetery, slipping on black aviators that matched my fitted black suit, I saw several slack-jawed faces turn my way.
Not much had changed since I left, and I could immediately tell everyone’s rank by their reaction to my presence. The soldiers tensed, their hands automatically reaching for the weapons they undoubtedly had holstered underneath their suits.
The caporegimes, while tense, put a considerable amount of effort into not reacting, which was a telltale reaction itself. They’re ambitious little fucks, and any display of fear regarding my appearance would be tantamount to cowardice.
And finally, standing beside my father’s closed casket was Ranieri; my dad’s old consiglieri, or chief advisor; and the new capo bastone, the underboss or second-in-command of the Romano family.
The latter two had stoic but resigned expressions on their somber faces, but Ranie graced me with a slight, devilish smirk, which was entirely inappropriate for the occasion and therefore a very Ranieri thing to do.
A murder, an excommunication, and four years later, and all I got from Ranie was a damn smirk.
He made a sweeping gesture with his arm, welcoming me to join him beside our father’s grandiose gold- and marble-embedded, jet black-stained casket, a lavish and colossal thing, which was the pretentious variety of shit my father had been known to prefer while he was still alive. I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that my father had chosen it long before he croaked, unwilling to let us mere mortals fuck up choosing one for him.
If my brother and I were on better terms, I would have whispered some witty joke about it in his ear, and we’d make a competition out of hiding our laughter in front of the thousand strong crowd that came out for my father’s funeral today.
Instead, I was greeted with a mocking smile and the immense pleasure of a murderous glint in Ranie’s eyes. I suspected that he was letting me attend Dad’s funeral out of respect for our father, but I had no doubt that, after the funeral was finished, he had plans for me that involved a cathartic spilling of my blood.
Which brings me to now.
Not even a quarter of an hour has passed since the funeral ended, and I’m already in the basement of the funeral home, kneeling in a pool of my own blood, the blood loss causing my vision to go blurry and my head to pound.
“Release him,” Ranie demands, a surprising level of self-confidence in his voice that hadn’t existed when I last saw him.
“Why?” I ask crossly, looking a gift horse in the face and not giving a damn that I’m spitting on it.
I study Ranieri, taking in the tense set of his shoulders and the grim line of his mouth. Behind him stands Luigi, my father’s consiglieri, and Mattia, my older cousin and the new capo bastone, thanks to Ranie’s promotion to capo famiglia.
Mattia’s discomfort at the proximity between him and my blood is clear on his face, but he’s always had a queasy stomach. My father always said that he wasn’t cut out for this life, but Dad, Uncle Luca, and Uncle Gabriele, who passed shortly after Mattia was born, are all gone. And aside from Mattia, we don’t have any other cousins. That means that Ranie doesn’t have very many choices for capo bastone if he wants to stay within the dwindling gene pool.
In his place beside Mattia, Luigi has a stern look on his face, one that’s fixated directly onto Ranie. Interesting. Luigi’s presence means that there’s still business my dad wanted complete before he died. Otherwise, Luigi would already have been replaced, given a ridiculous sum of money, and peacefully retired in a lavish Floridian mansion by now—per Andretti tradition for a consiglieri that has served his boss and family well, which I have no doubt Luigi has.
I study the body language between Ranie and Luigi, quickly surmising that there’s a secret they’re keeping from me. A big one. One that, given the situation and date, likely involves my father and most definitely involves me.
Unable to help myself, the corners of my lips turn up into a smirk. “What did Dad say that’s got you so pissed off, Ranie?” The glower Ranie sends my way is confirmation enough, so I continue to goad, “Did he tell you I’m his favorite son? Admit it to you on his deathbed?” I feign disbelief. “Are you jealous, Ranie?”
Of course, I know it’s nothing of that sort. Dad would never make a declaration like that. Ranie was always Dad’s favorite and I was Mom’s, but Ranie never knew that, and I doubt that Dad ever told him. But I suspect that if I piss Ranie off enough, he’ll let what my father said to him slip. At least the young Ranie from four years ago would have. I am curious to see how Ranie has grown up since I’ve been gone.
Ranie impresses me by brushing off my remarks and saying, “You never know when to shut up, do you, Niccolaio?”
Mattia chimes in, a nostalgic smile on his face, “We all know you’re the talker, Ranie.”
I snort, the sound coming out like a pig’s oink, given the present condition of my face. But pain aside, for a brief moment, everything feels normal. I’m not getting beat up in front of my family in my childhood home by men that used to serve me. I’m not on the run from the people I love, and my dad hasn’t died. I’m just a guy, laughing at a joke his cousin told, one that speaks of a familiarity, a kinship between the three of us.
And damn if that doesn’t blow up my walls into a million sharp pieces.
I suspect that Ranie feels the past trickling in, too, because his face is a conflicting mixture of pain, humor, and anger. He takes a deep breathe before his resolve visibly hardens, and I watch him overcome whatever internal turmoil he was struggling with.
“Clear the room,” he commands, and the lone soldier and two caporegimes that were carrying out my beating immediately leave.
Luigi and Mattia, however, remain in the room.
Ranie doesn’t bother turning his body when he repeats, “Clear the room.”
Mattia leaves, but Luigi remains. I narrow my eyes at the unspoken implication. Whatever Dad told Luigi to make happen, involves what’s happening right now. Ranie’s treatment of me. I’m sure of it. The curiosity is eating at me, and I wonder yet again what my dad told Ranie. The man sent a clear message when he excommunicated me, so I doubt it was anything good. But still…
“What did Dad say?” I repeat.
Ranie ignores me and turns to Luigi. “I won’t repeat myself,” he warns.
It dawns upon me that I might not know the Ranie in front of me. The Ranie I knew would never have talked to Luigi like that. While I was never particularly close with Luigi, Ranie was. At least they had been when I left. The revelation that I no longer know my little brother is far more painful than the cuts and bruises on my body.
“La Volontà del re,” Luigi begins, saying the Italian phrase for “The King’s Will,” “follows the predecessor, even in death.”
And with that, Luigi leaves, parting one last stern look at Ranie and sparing me a sympathetic glance. But clearly not sympathetic enough to remove my binds, though Ranie did say that I could go earlier.
I study Ranie carefully. The King’s Will refers to the last wishes of a mafia boss, a list of things or even a single wish that is forced upon his predecessor. Not every mafia boss gives his predecessor a King’s Will. Some die before they get the chance to. But my dad died slowly in a hospital bed after a car crash, of all mortal ways to die. There had to have been plenty of time to dictate a King’s Will. Given what I’ve seen, whatever he said has to do with me. And judging by Ranie’s reluctance, he doesn’t want to do it.
My heart quickens at my sudden, painful realization—Dad’s King’s Will was to order my death. It has to have been.
“What’s eating at you, Ranie?” I soften my voice, because as much as I hate this situation right now, I have to sympathize with my brother.
He lost his father, and now the man who took his uncle from him is in the same room as him. And perhaps he’s been given the directive to be his own brother’s executioner. I know I wouldn’t be able to do it.
“You don’t have to do it,” I tell him quietly. “You don’t have to kill me. No matter what anyone tells you.”
I’m urging him to go against the King’s Will. I shouldn’t be doing this, but I’m not doing it for me. I’m not begging for my life. I’m begging for the boy I knew four years ago. The one whose sleepy eyes flashed with heartbreak at the sight of his older brother’s betrayal. The Ranieri I knew back then could never do this, and I don’t want him to have to.
But again, Ranie surprises me when his eyes flash with cold anger and he says, “It may not be today, but you will die. It can be tomorrow or ten years from now, but you’ll die, Niccolaio, and it’ll be from my hands. Make no mistake, you’ll answer for your sins.”
My eyes widen. “The King’s Wi—”
He cuts me off, “He was your uncle.”
“And I’m your brother.”
“I have no brother.”