Deviant Prince [Romano Brotherhood, #2]

17 | Massimo

20 years ago
Devil's Dice; downtown Chicago.

I meet the devil on my eighth birthday.

It's a blank, starless night. One of those nights where my head feels heavy and Papa has to remind me where I am every once in a while. I recently started having what he calls seizures. The feeling afterwards is like I'm floating above everyone's heads. They can't see me, or everything I'm seeing. The world doesn't make sense up here, and eventually I'll float out of existence, become lost forever.

Papa says he used to have these seizures too, that people like us do. He understands this feeling and is showing me how to deal with it.

He treats me differently now, in a way that shows me everything before this was pretending. He doesn't shield me from things, including himself.

It's better this way. If I am to take over his business one day, that makes us business partners. And business partners don't pretend to care about each other the way Papa was pretending to care about me.  

But I still like going to therapy. Even though Papa doesn't care what I do anymore, I think I got addicted to having someone there to listen. 

The smell of sweat and alcohol stinks up the street outside Devil's Dice. It's an important night, one where Papa and I will finally see everything we've been working for the last several months. This casino will allow him to expand even further into a new market—that's what he tells me. But most importantly, it will be mine after he is gone. And even though Papa says that won't be anytime soon, I've been feeling like something is coming.

Papa has been unusually happy to involve me in everything leading up to this night. Opening night. Strategically set to overlap with my birthday, because, he says, "this is all for you, Massimo. It's a gift."

He let me sit in on important meetings, meet all his contacts, even help make major decisions. It meant I was away more, that I couldn't be there all the time for my brothers. But I feel proud tonight, too. What we're doing here matters.

Although it matters to me for a different reason than it matters to Papa. 

At one of the first business meetings I attended, Papa found out one of his men had been stealing from him. He had grabbed the offender by the collar and dragged him to me, declaring with dark glee that it would be up to me what happened to him.

Knowing that Papa wanted me to order his death, I had instead chosen that the man be stripped of his title and sent to scrub plates in the kitchen. Working for the very man he'd tried to steal from seemed a better punishment than being flayed alive.

But Papa hadn't thought so. He'd been angry that night. I'd failed the test.

"I need to know I'll be able to rely on you," he'd snarled in my face, shoving me against one of the bookshelves in his office. The rough spines dug painfully into my back. "When the time comes, you need to make the right decisions. The ones that challenge your weaknesses."

I had only stared at his face, confused as it darkened into a shade of purple. Papa could be violent, yes, but not excessively. This wasn't about the money.

"I thought it w—"

My words ended on a startled choke, jumbled into dust by Papa's fist bruising my jaw. I'd blinked at him, surprised. He never really hit me, only Mamma.

"You can't let this weakness rule over you any longer," he said. "Let go of this part of you that refuses to spill blood. Men like us, men in this business? We have to make decisions like that every day. You've done far worse, anyway..."