This was the last fucking straw.
After an hour of driving the empty roads, he pulled into a bleak little car park over by the town’s government offices. Easing on the brake, Bruno rolled into the small, dingy car park out back. Killing the engine, he hopped out of the car.
Seagulls coursed the grey air overhead as he looked over to the sign for the Coronado Graveyard.
Marching up the foggy walkways of the graveyard, Bruno passed through the world of irregular rectangles, cemetery headstones that marked the graves here and there. His legs moved as though possessed, like the walking dead, numbly drifting through time. The silence in the graveyard was as grey as the air—as deadly as the man who roamed through it.
When he reached Antonio’s final place of rest…feeling slowly returned. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a cigar and noticed that his hands were shaking. Lighting up, Bruno took a hard suck off the stogie while his eyes locked on Antonio’s grave.
This amazing man was dead. Gone. Never coming back. This was all he was now, a dull grey stone.
A gull screamed in the air, and Bruno’s stomach turned to lead. His heart beat so hard it was as if he were having a heart attack. What he really felt was shame. Was this the price of success in this life? Those who achieved it were left wondering the world alone in self-disgust….and regret. In a world obsessed with vigilante justice and revenge, everything he loved and cared for was being ripped from his soul, and soon all that would be left of him was a shadow of the man he once was.
Running two calloused hands to his cheeks, he whispered aloud, “What have I done?” He could hardly hear his own voice, lost in the wind. A cutting stitch gutted him from the inside, feeling as if the wind had been punched out of him while chained to a treadmill.
“WHAT HAVE I DONE!” Bruno repeated, his voice raging like a wild animal. He looked up to the clouds but all he saw was darkness, black like his heart. The cloudy sky seemed to morph into an image of something...a shape? A figure? A face! Not Antonio…...but his father. As he stared at the image, creeping closer, looming overhead, something deep in his unconscious mind surfaced. His father’s words, words he’d been living by for so long:You can’t trust anybody in this world, Bruno.
A single tear free-fell down his face. The big man fell to his knees, shaking his head. “Why would you say that to me, dad. Why?”
But the clouds were as silent as the cemetery itself.
Tears began to flood down his cheeks and chin, and he cursed it. Swiping the tears with the back of his hand, he closed his eyes and relaxed his body, praying for this feeling, all feelings, to melt away as they always did. He had seen too much violence, too much tragedy to let this get to him. It was tragic but normal. It shouldn’t be affecting him like it was.
Get control of yourself. Get control of yourself. If you don’t, who’s gonna lead the crime family?
Slowly lowering his eyes to Antonio’s name engraved on the tombstone, he vowed, “Antonio, my brother. I swear, I’ll break the fucking man who did the crime you paid for. I’ll break the shit out of him. I’ll break him slow, so he feels the impact of what he’s done.”
Even still, disgust gripped his heart and lungs, squeezing hard.
Bruno huffed. He hated himself, but what happened had happened. There was no changing it. This man had been his only real friend outside of his blood family. Bruno hated to think this way, but he knew it was the mob that had led him to do this. He’d allowed himself to become so brainwashed by that life. And now, nothing could be done. Right and wrong, good and bad weren’t black and white anymore.
Suddenly, he finally understood that his brother was right to have taken the position he did. Charlie was smart, turning his back on the crime family before they could get him by the throat like they had Bruno. He was a man of that life now, a man of his word. Mob for life…. and you don’t walk away from the mob. They carry you out feet first if you know what that means.
Emotions bombarded his hardened heart. Hanging his head, he dug his nails into his palms, willing his heart not to go berserk. Was he crazy? Was he nuts? Killing people left and right. Committing murder with the nonchalance of somebody opening can of beer. He realized why his father had been so tough on him growing up….it had shaped him, molded him into the monster he was. A man who could kill… unafraid of anyone. Michael De Luca had built his definition of a man, not a pussy. And although he was doing him a favor. In the mob, it showed weakness to have a heart. You couldn’t have a heart in this business. Without this edge, he wouldn’t have survived.
Yes, he survived, he’d made it, but he still had to live with who he was.
“Goddamnit!” Bruno threw both hands over his face and yelled, hands trembling, tears free-falling down his face. A man pulled to the edge, hollow, stripped away. He asked himself, was this what he deserved? His fingers tucked into his coat and from within, he withdrew his .22 from under his jacket.
Holding it in both hands, he pointed the muzzle up at his tortured face and stared deep into the dark, hollow barrel.
Chapter Twenty-One
The end of the road?
A cork from a bottle of Dom Perignon exploded across the large office floor, decorated for Christmas. Up in the top office of the casino, Bruno stood alone. Turning on his heels to face the windowed wall that overlooked his Casino, he removed his blazer and kicked off his shoes. He drank the champagne right from the bottle and as the alcohol burned the back of his throat, he held up the bottle triumphantly to the empty Casino, imagining an adoring audience below.
It was Christmas day. The only day of the year the Casino wasn’t open.
As Bruno raised the bottle to throw another gulp down the hatch, the door sounded behind him. His face changed from joy to anger as he quickly drew his gun, cocked it, and spun around.
When he spotted Marco in the crosshairs, he narrowed his eyes then slowly lowered his weapon.
Marco sighed, pacing steadily into the center of the room. “What are you doing, Bruno?”
Bruno stared at his cousin for the longest time, then clicked the safety on and shoved his gun back into his belt. Turning on his heels, he gazed out of the window again.
Marco was saying something behind him, but Bruno didn’t want to listen.
