Gabriel fixed her with a look.
Bruno growled grudgingly at his uncle. His chair screeched as he pushed back from the table and left out of the room.
Charlie followed.
From the other room, they could hear Gabriel’s voice through the air vent above their heads.
“Your sons are utter lunatics,” Gabriel said. “Now your son, Charlie, he’s real special. He’s college material.”
Bruno rolled his eyes. Scholastically, Charlie always performed much better than he did, but Bruno knew he had no fewer brains. He knew he wasn’t stupid.
“I can’t see whatcollegehas to do with getting anywhere in life,” Bruno muttered. “I make more money in one day than most do in three months. How about that for something special,” he sneered.
Gabriel’s voice sounded again. “I’ve got a friend of a friend in the admissions office at the college. I’ll get him in. Studying will keep him occupied and off the streets. I want your Charlie to make the most of his considerable assets.”
Martina sighed in defeat. It was no secret she’d always thought her eldest had a calling to be a doctor or a lawyer. “And what about my Bruno? What will he do?” She pleaded.
“I need to do what is right,” Gabriel replied.
But I can’t perform miracles, Martina. Do you understand? Your Bruno, he’s a brawn guy. It’ll be worse if I try and get him in. They’d laugh him out of the interview room. Charlie has the brains, not Bruno. It ain’t fair but life rarely is.”
“Alright,” Martina said finally, “I’ll take the money but I can’t promise he’ll attend. And say nothing to Bruno. It’ll hurt him too badly.”
Bruno bit down hard on his bottom lip. The woman often lied out of love for Bruno. He didn’t blame her for that. Terms like dyslexia weren’t recognized back then. Not that it would have made any difference. His father would have done anything but admit that the great Michael De Luca’s son had a learning difficulty. As a young kid, Bruno had endured some merciless bullying from other boys. Too proud to ask for help, Bruno told nobody. He didn’t know he was dyslexic at the time, it didn’t have a name back then. The only thing teachers cared about was if you were very bright or very stupid.
Bruno turned to his brother. “Do you hear this man?”
“Maybe he’s right, Bruno. I’d be a fool to make the same fatal errors as our father. We haven’t been accepted into his life yet, it’s not too late to get out.” Logically, statistically, the chance that Charlie could avoid meeting the same ugly fate as his father was almost too obscure to contemplate. It was impossible to know who or where or when it would happen again, but one thing was certain: the odds of survival were almost impossible.
“Tell me you don’t mean what you say, brother?”
Charlie shrugged. “Gabriel’s right, Bruno.”
“You don’t mean that. Take it back, Charlie! Accountancy? Life in an office? That’s not who you are.”
Charlie swore. His anger giving an indication of his fears. “I want nothing to do with the mob. I’ve seen enough and made my decision to get out of it before they got their hands around my jugular as they had around our father. If that life could turn a man against his best friend then what do we really have here? There’s no honor, no respect, no loyalty in that. There’s so much betrayal, so much treachery with everybody. That isn’t a brotherhood, it’s nothing.” He sighed. “This is how it’s gonna be, Bruno.”
Shaking his head, Bruno left the room. He’d heard enough.
Enraged, he went into the garage and sat down on a spare tire then sank his head in his hands. When his father passed, a man he’d loved and admired, Bruno had waited for tears to fall, they didn’t. He’d waited for his heart to ache, it didn’t. He only felt anger. It also proved true something his father had always told him.
The most fatal mistake?
Trust.
There are some people you trust, people who you go so far back with.“I don’t care who you think you know, who you think likes you, loves you, cares about you, you can’t trust any of them. Not unless they’re your own flesh and blood. Even then, you can’t trust anybody in this life, only yourself,”he always told his boys.
Growling, he looked up and the lights flickered in his eyes. He took his pistol and shot out the lights. Spotting a can of gasoline, he grabbed it then poured the liquid all over the floor then threw a lit match and watched until the car exploded into flames. Ash and heat hit his face, but it was annoying more than painful for Bruno. The real pain was in his heart, he knew inside… he would never again work with his brother.
Just like that, everything changed.
The fire burned hot and the fire trucks showed up ten minutes later. They contained the fire to the grange that sat at the back of the property.
Bruno found he couldn’t care about any of it, he had lost his partner, for good. From there on out, Gunz was dead to the mob world.
Known only as Charlie De Luca….the man who walked away.
Chapter Three
