Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 109562 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 438(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109562 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 438(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
After a quick shower, I dress in a pair of jeans and a sweater. As no one can know that Giorgio and I will be in Boston, I booked a private helicopter with a pilot I trust. We don’t want the cops to make a connection between Lewis’s murder and the men we’re about to execute.
While I pull on my boots, I send Giorgio a message to let him know I’ll pick him up. I won’t rely on him to make it to the helipad on his own. I missed enough flights due to his tardiness. No wonder Luigi needs me to babysit him. Giorgio is a loose cannon. He’s untrustworthy and unpredictable, incapable of taking responsibility for his actions. Putting your faith in him is a mistake. The only person Luigi can trust is me. As much as he respects me, he also resents me a little for that. He hates that Giorgio isn’t more like me, because I’m more like Luigi than his own son will ever be.
Luigi saw the qualities in me he recognized in himself when Giorgio befriended me in middle school. The private school was expensive, but I made well above average grades in the public school I attended, and the principal recommended me for a scholarship at the posh establishment. Giorgio got picked on for being stupid and behaving like a brute until I taught him how to use his fists.
My mother was always sick, and despite the fact that my father worked around the clock, there was never enough money for food and medicine. That’s why I started stealing, first shoplifting and later pickpocketing. I told my father I earned the food and money with casual jobs after school.
Every penny I took from the purses of well-dressed people with fancy cars went into taking care of my mother and putting another meal on the table. All I wanted was to lighten my father’s burden and make my mother well again.
The more money I made, the more reckless I became. I started buying myself snazzy clothes and hanging out with Giorgio’s friends. I never told Giorgio the real reason I stayed more at his house than at my own. From the minute I saw his younger sister with her black hair and red lips, I was smitten. I’d set my target on Rachele as far back as then, trying to win Luigi’s approval in any way I could, working toward the day he’d give me his permission to court his daughter.
My efforts paid off. Luigi took a liking to me. At the same time, he couldn’t help comparing Giorgio and me, and Giorgio always came up short. For that, Luigi begrudged me. He’s always had these conflicting feelings toward me—respecting and liking me while hating and resenting me at the same time. It’s like a grenade living in his chest. I never know when it’s going to blow.
During our adolescent years, before Giorgio had to get involved in the business and the conflict warring inside Luigi was easier to ignore, he took us to high-end restaurants and parties where the women wore enough diamonds to fill a jewelry store. Luigi took it upon himself to teach me how to dress. On our fifteenth birthdays, he took Giorgio and me to his tailor. It was the first suit I owned, a proper three-piece with a double-breasted jacket. I became someone I never thought I’d be. For once, I was popular, a part of the in-crowd. I had no shortage of female attention or proposals, not that I wanted it. I only had eyes for Rachele. I was on my way to the top, and I thought I was invincible. Until, one day, I got myself caught.
I used the phone the cops gave me to call my father. He hung up on me and never called back.
Luigi bailed me out. He gave me a pat on the back and organized a party to celebrate my inauguration. That’s the first time Rachele looked at me as if I were someone and not just a poor kid with no prospects or wealth.
When my mother found out where the money came from, she turned her face away and said she never wanted to see me again. My father took the news that I was working for Luigi as if he’d learned I had cancer. He told me I was dead to him and ordered me in a flat, dejected voice to leave the house and to never come back.
Once again, Luigi came to the rescue. He took me in. Giorgi and I grew up like brothers. The men respected me as a part of the family. The rest is history.
I continued to send money to my parents, making monthly transfers to my father’s bank account, but he always returned the funds. And then my mother died without giving me a chance to say goodbye. To this day, my father lives in that house. I drive by there from time to time. The yard is still messy, and the paint on the walls is forever flaking. He looks older than his age, stooped and used up from working his hands to the bone. There’s no one to lend him a hand, no one who visits.