DeLuca (Mafia Romance)

“What changed though? You weren’t scared of your father in that basement three years ago.”

I laughed without humor, “No, I suppose I wasn’t. I guess part of me knew that he couldn’t hurt me anymore and the rage I’d been holding in bubbled to the surface. It’s not like I was never angry before, I was, but I was also smart enough to know that I couldn’t do anything about it when it came to him. My father used physical force to obtain emotional and psychological power over others. I know that now, thanks to my psych studies in college, but back then I didn’t know why he did it. I blamed myself for not being good enough.

“Things changed for me when my mom lost the baby, I think my dad felt guilty so he stopped taking his anger out on her and turned to me. I was used to the occasional backhand and the not so occasional put down, but what I hadn’t experienced before was the brutality he could inflict when he was really angry. I was about fourteen at the time and I stayed my course for about two years, keeping my head down and avoiding him at all costs, but by the time I was sixteen the disgust I felt for him was indescribable. I started lashing out at others, taking my frustrations from home out on anyone I could.

“It kind of came to a head at this party Gina and I went to the summer before junior year. I ended up getting into a fight with a girl that was talking shit about Gina and I messed her up pretty bad. At the time it felt good, great even, to finally release some of that shit I’d been holding in, but afterwards the guilt set in. I was terrified that I was turning into my father, that I somehow inherited his sadistic qualities and was one step away from becoming just like him. After that I went back to being the quiet one, trying desperately to keep a hold on this anger that I had gotten a taste of. I was doing well until you decided to have me dragged into that basement.”

“I should say I’m sorry about that, but I’m not,” Carlo said, a grin pulling at the corner of his mouth.

“I’m not either, you got me out of that situation. You gave me a home, a family. But I still struggle with the idea of becoming like him.”

“You’re not like your father, Mia. You’re compassionate and thoughtful. You care deeply about the people in your life, and he didn’t give a shit about anyone but himself. Yes, you have a temper, but you don’t dole out unnecessary punishment, you don’t take your anger out on innocent people. Sometimes we need to be brutal, and sometimes we need to be soft. You can’t be one or the other all the time and survive in the world, there has to be balance.”

“I guess you’re right,” I sighed.

“I’m always right, you’d do well to remember that,” he laughed.

“What about you? You never talk about your past, tell me something.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Tell me about your parents,” I said, knowing full well that a drunk Carlo was the only way I was going to get any sort of insight into his past.

He let out a long sigh before he started, “I was an only child so that meant that one day I would inherit the empire that my grandfather had built. My father, the bastard he was, took that to mean that I needed to be groomed for this life. To become the mirror image of himself, ruthless and uncaring. He called them lessons, but it was just cruelty. If I argued with him or contradicted him in any way he would beat me until I submitted to his will.

“I was eight years old the first time I witnessed him murder a man. When I cried, because I was an eight year old boy with no clue what was going on, he beat me. Told me men don’t cry and that I needed to grow up because one day I would have to do exactly what he did, that one day I would be exactly like him. I fought it though, I vowed to myself that I would never be like him, even when I was forced to do unspeakable things I would never be as depraved as him.”I knew my father was a bad man. My mother had tried to protect me for as long as she could but Vincenzo DeLuca was an intolerant man. Time and time again I watched as he backhanded my mother, and screamed filthy names at her, and time and time again I watched her pick herself up just in time to get knocked back down. She was a strong woman, my mother. She tried to offset the bad with good. Tried to undo some of the teachings of my father, and I loved her for it. She tried to teach me that just because you had to do bad things didn’t mean you had to be a bad person. She would take me to church and charity events in an attempt to save my soul, I think, but she couldn’t change the course I had been on since birth.

“The first man I ever killed had borrowed money from my father, indirectly of course, and when it came time to pay he refused and even went so far as to threaten my father. That was cause for immediate termination, and my father thought that it was the perfect opportunity for his latest lesson. He didn’t tell me where we were going, just saying we had some business to take care of and demanding me to get in the car. I had just turned sixteen. When we got into town he took me in the back entrance to one of his clubs and down into a basement where a man was tied to a chair and surrounded by several of my father’s men,” he scoffed, “I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree does it?” When I didn’t respond he continued, “My father explained what the man had done as he placed a revolver in my hand, telling me to ‘take care of it’. Inside I was terrified. Despite the things my father had demanded of me over the years I still felt like I was me, but I knew as soon as I pulled that trigger I would forever be the man he made me.”