Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 85569 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85569 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
She was a wretched figure and as a child, I knew I was the reason she was trapped. Without me, she would have been more nimble and more courageous. So I was fiercely protective of her, even if there was not much I could do to help her. From early on she had insisted that I should learn to protect myself so she sent me to self-defense classes. By the time I was fourteen, I was already the owner of the black belt, but it was of no benefit to her. The harm that was being done to her was not physical or even visible to the casual observer.
To all intents and purposes, my father was a model husband and father. By anybody’s estimation, my mother’s fear of him would be classed as irrational or a construct of her own imagination.
Once, I’d come home from school and found her slumped at the kitchen table with her head in her hands, and I said to her. “Let’s go, Mama. Let’s go where no one can find us.”
“He’ll find us,” she said sadly. As long as I lived, I would never forget the look of utter defeat in her eyes.
Her distress and panic were such that it even changed her physical body. She once told me that at the age of twenty, shortly after giving birth to me, she stopped having periods. When she turned forty-two the unrelenting fear started to affect her mind. At first, it was nothing serious. She would forget to add potatoes or onions to her shopping list, but in a few months her decline became obvious, then rapid and aggressive.
The drugs didn’t help.
Eventually, came the day she called me from the supermarket because she couldn’t remember where she lived. After that incident, she withdrew completely into herself. She wouldn’t look anyone in the eye, not even me. Her dementia became so severe she could no longer take care of herself. I told my father I wanted to care for her. I had just finished university and started working so I could afford a private nurse for her at home, but he refused point blank. I had my life to live and she needed the proper care that only a specialized care home could provide. It was almost surreal to pack her clothes and some of her personal items into her olive-green suitcase.
My father checked her into a reputable mental asylum.
I visited her every month, but she hardly responded to my presence. Although, sometimes, just for an instant, I would see the old her again in her eyes. I would see her love for me shining in her eyes and I would eagerly call out to her with hope, but almost instantly her gaze would become blank again.
Five years almost to the day after he checked mother into her care home, my father was found guilty of racketeering and money laundering and sentenced to ten years in Sing Sing Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison. His lawyers told him good behavior could reduce his punishment to seven years, but in fact, with the enemies my father had made, he was looking at the very real possibility he would come out much earlier in a body bag.
As I walked down the courthouse steps a limousine stopped in front of me. A man in a suit jumped out of the front passenger seat, came around and held the back door closest to me open. I knew without being told who was in the car.
I stepped in and the door closed.
Chapter 14
Cole
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmY7kH-KB48&list=PLLhu_aWzuRciPpJIZLYZ7-UsUHojohW0H&index=7
The interior of the car was perfumed and O Fortuna from Carmina Burana was playing softly in the background. I turned my head and met the soulless, glassy, obsidian eyes of the Capo, the Don, the Godfather of Occhi Morti.
Tommaso Paganini was the perfect embodiment of evil incarnate. A demon. Evil poured out of him like oil when he spoke. His nickname was Nice Guy. He earned it a long time ago when he was still doing his own wet work. Always, before he cut his victim’s throats, he told them with believable sincerity not to fear or worry, he was not going to hurt them because he was a nice guy.
Even though he worked closely with my father, I consciously kept out of his way and had only met him on a handful of occasions. He made my skin crawl. I could still vividly remember that hot summer’s day by the pool. I was sixteen and lying on the grass with my eyes closed when I felt a shadow fall on me. I opened my eyes and he was standing over me with his hands in the pockets of his trousers. The sun was in my eyes and, at first, I couldn’t properly make out his expression, but when I shaded my eyes with my hands, I saw it. As clear as day …