“That’s not true,” my father argues, and I rush down the stairs as Carlo and Bruno enter. Zane now closely follows as promised.
“Oh, it is,” Enzo scolds, laughing mirthlessly. “I was here for my brothers and sister and now one of them is dead because of that action. So, I’m doing what I should have done years ago... I’m finally giving them the life no one bothered to fight to give me.”
“Fight to give you nothing?” my father mocks, disbelief being a mortal enemy to him.
I go and stand beside my brothers, a union of warriors who have fought the biggest battle of their lives and are ready to retire for a better life. He seems to think that after this, once the grief has wallowed itself away, we’ll be the family he fooled himself into believing was perfect and happy. However, as silence hangs around us, it’s now that my father sees we mean what we’re here to. He now sees us as the alliance we always remained beneath the blood and guts exterior of the Dio Lavoro.
“So, you’re leaving,” my father begins, pausing to breathe through his mounting anger, “What is this in aid of?” he asks, confused by his son’s sudden wayward logics. “What will you gain from leaving everything to get nothing?!”
“A revolution,” Enzo states, no derision in his voice.
“A revolution,” my father retorts, parroting Enzo’s words. “You wouldn’t know a revolution if it came and smacked you in the face! You only know what I have told you, what I have given you, what I have spent your entire lives spoiling you with!”
“Now, that’s where this all changes,” Enzo snaps.
“How do you propose to do that?”
“With the help of Gino,” Bruno speaks up, not saying grandfather just to effect purposes. “Did you know that man has accrued quite the establishment after the devastation you forced upon him. He also knows full well about how Madre died... the whole truth. He’s also well aware of the activities of Enzo and Carlo over the past few years and how Amelia tried to make a run, but you stopped her by sending her to Italy.”
“You have no secrets,” Carlo finalizes.
The final nail hits our father’s face as realization dawns in the darkest of clouds.
“There’s nothing keeping us here,” Carlo adds, no emotion to carry his words.
“I’ll give you your inheritance now, I’ll let you live free, work for someone else, but you don’t have to leave.” My father begins to look wildly back and forth between us all, fighting for a response, begging us to reconsider. “I’ll give you anything. I’ll break all my businesses, we’ll change. But you-don’t-have-to-leave,” he punctuates his words.
“We do,” I comment, adding to a hefty weight of truths. “This isn’t our home anymore. It’s been our personal hell for years, and we have all decided to leave it behind.”
“We aren’t surviving anymore,” Enzo states, comfortably stepping into his place as the new leader of this family. “And it’s time you realized what you have done to this family, Sal.”
It’s now that my father’s face begins to ashen. The extent of deceit run just as deep as his own and betrayal is something he has lived many close encounters with.
Enzo shakes his head sadly; an end of an era is just about to explode. “I really hope you love having this house to yourself, Sal. At the very least this is what you deserve.”
“You don’t mean it,” my father desperately says. “You’ll be back!”
I laugh, even hearing the men beside me chuckling along. Our father has no idea just how planned and plotted this is. He hasn’t a clue how long in the making this end result has taken, but he will.
“We’re leaving and we won’t be back,” I state, forcing myself to be the bearer of bad news and fuck me, it felt good! “We’re finally fixing our lives.”
“You have only yourself to thank for everything that’s happened,” Bruno comments, offering one of his final jabs at our father. “They’re finally getting the life you could never give them.”
“How is this fair that this is what I get?” our father asks, his eyes now doleful, listless.
“You also get to watch us leave,” Enzo comments, his tone sharp and rugged. “Remember it well because it’s all you’re going to have of us now.”
With that, he begins the march out. Carlo and Bruno follow, Zane and I do, too. We walk toward the blistering heat waiting just outside the door, promises of utter bliss hanging in wait, happiness begging us to enjoy it. There’s a new life just on the other side of this brick and mortar, but my old life is still one that bellows and howls and attempts every whisper to lure me back.
And stupidly, I listen.