Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83776 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83776 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
“I don’t even like the fucking ocean,” I mutter as a gull cries nearby and rises to steal a hotdog from a little kid’s hands. “Fucking sky rats.”
“It’s not the ocean,” Simon points out. “It’s a goddamn lake.”
“Same thing.” I take a deep breath and blow it out. “Alright, I know it’s not, but it’s a huge body of water. And I’m feeling introspective, so fuck off.”
Simon grunts and his smile fades away. He knows what this meeting means to me. I haven’t seen Santoro in a very long time, not since the incident all those years ago, and it’s not a small thing trying to face him down now. I’m doing my best to keep all these emotions deep inside but it isn’t easy.
“You remember going out on the water with Dad when we were younger?” Simon turns and leans on his elbows. “Do you remember why it stopped?”
I snort and nod, squinting at the sunlight playing on the waves. “Angelo jumped off the boat because he thought he saw a dolphin.”
“Dad flipped the hell out and shouted at him for like ten minutes.”
“Not that Angelo cared.” I smile at the memory of my crazy brother. We all missed him like hell—he’s been in prison for three years and he’s got another two before he’s eligible for parole.
“Everyone always thought Angelo was the brave one,” Simon said, looking at me. “But I knew that was bullshit. If Angelo went through what you went through, he would’ve been a fucking catatonic wreck. He’d be rocking back and forth hugging himself and mumbling gibberish in some asylum somewhere.”
I give my older brother a dubious look. “I’m not sure how to take that, honestly.”
He rubs the back of his neck. “I’m just saying, you don’t have shit to prove to anyone, alright? You don’t have to stay here and face down Santoro if you don’t want to. Nobody would look down on you.”
I give him a look then punch him hard in the arm. He grunts and rubs himself, glaring.
“I’m not here for anyone but my fucking self,” I say then glance in Dad’s direction. “And for him a little bit. But you’re right, I don’t have shit to prove to anyone.”
Except I have been proving myself for a long time. I’ll never admit it, but after what happened with Santoro, I came back and I was deeply changed. I was afraid of everything, terrified of the dark, couldn’t even be around fire, and hated the idea of being in an enclosed space. I used to sleep in the back yard just so I wouldn’t feel claustrophobic.
But then I started noticing the way people looked at me and all the damn whispers. Crazy, they said, I lost my fucking mind because of what I went through. People called me a weirdo, bizarre, strange, fucked up. They were absolutely right. I was fucked up. I still am. But I decided back when I was young to double down on what I thought would make me strong, and I threw myself into the Famiglia.
That’s why I took every dangerous job nobody else wanted. I became a killer for my father, not because I wanted to, but because I thought it was the only way I could fight back from whatever dark hell I’d been locked inside. I forced myself to be twice as tough and worked ten times harder than anyone else, and even if that killed me, I didn’t care.
I clawed my way back into the world, and in the process, I became this.
“Boys,” Dad said and by the tone of his voice, I knew Santoro was here.
I didn’t see him at first as I stood by my father. Simon took the other side. I scanned the crowd, trying to spot the man I remembered, the man that still haunted my dreams. Nightmares inevitably turn back to that night: the smell of smoke and ash, the heat of the bars as they burned my hand, Santoro’s face looking at me in the darkness, his lips pulled back in a snarl.
It took a moment to recognize him. It’d been a long time since I last saw him, and in my memory he was enormous, but that was the recollection of a little boy. The man in front of me was old, in his sixties, with thin gray hair and sharp eyes. He was thin, no longer as muscled as he used to be, and wore an impeccable gray suit. He moved with a slight limp, and the glasses he wore were the tinted kind that changed from indoors to out. He seemed smaller, hollower, someone only a simulacrum of the man I used to know, and I couldn’t understand how this person had broken me so deeply, when he was almost nothing himself.
Santoro stood before us, entirely alone.