Sold to the mafia boss

“What exactly do you plan on doing to Jamie Templeman when you catch him?” Martello cuts through the thick fog, much to my father’s sake “we hear he’s the one you presumed is behind his death”

“He’s the one, Martello and be rest assured he will get the justice he deserves” I replied, grabbing my wine and chunking it down my dried throat.

Looking back at my father, my eyes burning lasers at him, I continued “do I need remind you, father, that you have locked away my fair share of my grandfather’s properties? You’d rather those money rot away than give it to the rightful owner”

“What do you know to use all those money to do, Logan?”

“Ah, interesting question. You see unlike you, I have a lot to do with it. Instead of giving away the money to every woman around the world for mere sex, cheating endlessly and shamelessly on your one true wife, I’d give it out…..”

“Logan!” My mother cuts me off angrily, accompanied by Elina’s and a couple other warning voices. But I didn’t care.

“I told you Logan and I’ll tell you again,” my father speaks ” you and I, we’re a lot more alike ”

“That’s where you’re wrong, father. We merely just share blood. I’m nothing like you. And deep down, you know it. All you’re doing and have always been doing is looking for someone to pin your wrongdoings on, to put the blame of your misfortune on. I was the perfect victim, you showed me that at my younger age. You tore me apart before I knew what this cold world was all about and you never looked back. So you see, you and I are very different”

“Are we truly that different, Logan, hmm?” My father pushes, giving me a sly smile like he had a comeback I didn’t know of and couldn’t beat “have you forgotten what you did to Nigel?”

My lips hung lose at the mention of my former best friend. My father knew this was a sensitive matter to me and he brought it up. He wanted to play it like that? I had every time in the world to drag him down, uncover his hidden dirty secrets and ruin the little family he thinks he brought together tonight. But while having the thought, another kept eating at me. The face of Nigel Moretti kept coming in flashes.

Nigel Moretti was my one true friend, the one I ever trusted. He was there throughout my mad and normal days. Nigel and I had known each other since I was a kid. We grew up here together. He was light coffee skinned but he wasn’t African. He was a half Italian half Canadian. Nigel was a fine man who unlike me grew up from a poor family. We always did everything together, he was the nicest kid and thus his family background never bothered me. We would practice stealing together as kids, share my dinners and breakfast at school. When my father had me arrested he had begged my father endlessly to have me released but instead my father threatened to have him arrested for putting me into school gangs. But my father always had the spots for him.

A few days before my imprisonment, he lost his only parent, his mother to cancer. Nigel was alone in the world and my father took him under his care. When I got arrested, my father tore us apart, sending him off to Morocco to take care of his businesses.

And why does the mention of his name hurts me so much now? A couple of years spent with Santiago. I was becoming a changed man, having had my first kill. Then there comes Nigel, seemingly grown up like I was, dressed in suits, walking in through the doors of my office. He still got the smile on his lips but they didn’t reach his eyes or reach out to me. We settled down and had a few talk. Then he said my father had set us up to meet, to catch up he’d said. I knew we could never be the same again. We’d grown up in different worlds, too differently to understand each other’s points of views.

But when Nigel spoke, with all the critics, I saw my father’s face behind every word he altered. And I understood immediately.

Driven by anger, I asked one of my men to follow him as he left, to kill him. But Nigel had surprised me by killing him instead, sending me a message about how he’d never forget about my attempted assassination of him. I’d been driven by the anger that my father had turned the one person I ever loved and trusted against me. I’d taken it to extreme ends but no amount of regret would ever make that day disappear. It’s been eight years since that day and Nigel and I never set eyes on each other again.

“That meeting was your design, father and I fell right to your plans” I replied.

“No,” he shakes his head “that was all you, Logan. You think you’re avenging my brother’s death but in reality you’re just driven by self anger and self pity. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”

His words stung and I hadn’t realized everyone stopped eating to watch us until the silence seemed to tear my ears, mismatching my hearing of his painful voice. I couldn’t let him get the upper hand tonight, not again so I leant into the table and held his gaze firmly.

“I know what you’re doing, father. You’re driven by so much hate for no other person but yourself that you turn around to hurt those around you. Do you know why I’m always the perfect victim for you? Because I never gave you that pity. I was the son who dared to stand up to you. Who dared to speak the truth, who didn’t fear you. I was the son who was all you’ve ever wanted to be and now you regret ever sending me away. But you’re too much of a coward and too proud to admit that”