Giuseppe had called me into his office. Told me he had a gift for me. Told me he'd spent two years tracking down the men who destroyed my life.
We drove to a warehouse on the south side of Chicago.
There was a man tied to a chair.
Giuseppe handed me a gun.
"This is the man who gave the order," he said. "This is the man who took everything from you."
I shot him.
I shot him six times.
Once for my father.
Once for my mother.
Once for Lucio.
Three more because I couldn't stop pulling the trigger.
Lorenzo was there.
He stood in the corner of that warehouse and watched me empty the clip into a stranger's chest.
He never said a word.
"You were there," I say now. "You saw me kill him. You saw?—"
"I know."
Lorenzo's voice is heavy.
"I know what you did. I know what Giuseppe told you."
He pauses.
"Giuseppe lied."
The words don't register.
They bounce off something inside me. Some wall I didn't know existed.
"What?"
"The man in that warehouse wasn't the one who killed your family." Lorenzo leans forward. "He was a rival. Someone Giuseppe wanted eliminated. He used your pain to do it. He gave you a target and called it justice."
I can't move.
I can't think.
Twenty years.
Eighteen years I believed I had avenged my family.
Eighteen years I carried the weight of that killing like a badge. Like proof that I had done something. That their deaths meant something. That the monster who took them had paid.
And it was a lie.
