I scuffled forward to keep pace with Kris, only just barely managing to catch my dad’s eyes as we continued past the living room. He threw me a smile, but it wasn’t warm or loving, it was cold and malicious. It didn’t matter how much I wondered for the rest of my life, I’d never know what I did wrong to be cast out from his eye of favor.
Or why the same thing didn’t happen when my brother Marcello was born.
“Do you see, Romeo?” my mother said in a sweet tone as we looked over her bed. “You’re a big brother now. You have to look out for Marcello always.”
She didn’t even look in my direction. I was standing near the back, like I was just another one of the Cavetti’s goons, while my parents and my brothers had a heartwarming family moment.
What had I done wrong? Why was I not good enough?
“Dad,” I said to my father one day. “I’ll always look out for Romeo and Marcello. They’re my brothers. They’re family.”
My father turned his nose up at me. “They won’t need your protection. They’ll be strong enough on their own.”
“I’m stronger than them because I’m older,” I explained. “I’m the one who is supposed to protect them.”
“You’re not strong,” my father said. “I don’t see it in you.”
I stomped my foot. “I’m strong! I’ll prove it!”
And for the first time, my father looked at me. “Oh, you will? How will you do that?”
“I’ll do anything,” I whined. I just wanted my father to love me the same way he loved my brothers. I wanted him to know that I was strong too. “Any test to prove that I’m strong.”
The loud screech my father’s chair made as he slid it back from the dining room table still haunted my waking nightmares. It was the noise that made all the difference. The one that signified the change of my life from simply sad to downright torturous.
Because Angelo Cavetti was a sadistic, evil man, and his seven-year-old reject had just given him a free outlet for all of his twisted desires.
“Come with me,” he said, and I was innocent and all too eager to follow him.
He led me out of the dining room, through the living room, down the long hallway that led to the back doors of our estate, and straight through them into the back yard. A few of our family’s thugs were out there smoking, and he flagged them down and brought us all to the very back of the estate. He pointed at one man, at least seven feet tall, with thick, wide arms and broad shoulders, and ordered him over. He stepped out from the group of guys, and then my father clenched onto the back of my shirt and dragged me over until I was facing him.
“Fight him,” he hissed.
The grunt looked up at my father with wide eyes. “Boss, I can’t fight him. He’s a… ”
No other words escaped his mouth before my father had his pistol out and had emptied two slugs into his chest. I jumped sky high and tears filled my eyes as I watched his suddenly lifeless body fall to a heap on the ground.
“Move him,” my father told one of the remaining goons, while another large man was ushered forward. “You. Fight this boy. Don’t hold back. He said he wants his strength to be tested, well it will be.”
That was how my torture began.
Every single day was filled with a new form of punishment. Sometimes, I’d wake up and find that all my windows had been locked and boarded, and my door was bolted shut. I couldn’t get out and no one else could get in. Only when I was ‘strong enough’ to figure my way out, was I allowed to leave. No food would be brought to me. No water. I was so young, but I’d be locked in my room for days on end, convinced I was going to die.
Some days, my father would stand me in front of a brick wall in our alleyway and whip my back, claiming that only a weak person would bellow or cry. It hurt so much I bit a hole in my lip to keep from screaming, and when my father noticed the blood, he made me drink lemon juice straight from the bottle, searing the fresh cut.
Unlike the delicious foods that my brothers would be given to eat for meals, I would be forced to eat steamed vegetables, or any foreign ‘delicacy’ my father could think up, like bugs, dirt, and other disgusting dishes. I’d be forced to sit at the table and watch as my brothers ate food I only dreamed of, while I suffered through a lack of nutrition. Romeo was playing big brother to Marcello exactly as he’d been taught to, and though he didn’t once have to go through the torture and punishment that I did, he was praised for being strong and capable.
And I started to loathe him even more than I loathed my father.
My feelings towards my own brother were cemented when a vision of beauty came to visit our estate. She was beautiful, with long, flowing black hair and shimmering blue eyes, and unlike anyone in my home, when she saw me, she smiled at me. Lucia Bonifacio became my reason for living.
My face stung as my father slapped me across it. “Where do you think you’re looking?” he sneered. “Lucia is Romeo’s. You’d do well to know your place.”
Rage simmered in my body and grew exponentially as the days carried on. Why did Romeo get so much when I got so little? What did he have that I didn’t have?
Then the fateful day came.
I’d been tortured, bloodied, and bruised for close to three years. Now nine, I was emotionless and hated anything and everyone. My mother was pregnant once again, another boy was on the way, and I didn’t think I could survive more Cavetti children who meant more to my parents than me. I hated Romeo, and my father knew it, and one day he gave me the chance. I believed he’d done it on purpose. He made direct eye contact with me and left a crowbar sitting on an end table near where Romeo and Marcello were playing.
