Page 5 of Blood & Heartache

…most of the time.

The soup was delicious, and I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until it hit my stomach. The grumble it let out rejoicing at being fed made me smile. Even now, Glenda knew me better than I knew myself some days. Once I finished my food, I noticed she’d set the lockbox and the items that were inside it on the table.

Seeing I was done, she took the tray and nodded with her chin over to the bar. “I brought you a pot of coffee since I wasn’t sure how long you would stay in here. If it’s too long, I’ll be back here to force you to go to bed.”

“Understood,” I answered, reaching out to grab the note I’d been unable to read before. Pausing, I looked up to meet her gaze. “Thank you, Glenda, for always looking after me. You’ve always been by my side even when I didn’t make it easy for you to be there.”

“My sweet girl, you’re like my own child, and it’s been a privilege to watch you grow into the woman you are today. These days are going to be hard, but I’m right here if you need me,” she reminded before turning to leave through a hidden entrance behind the bar.

Putting off reading the letter for a bit longer, I got up and poured myself a cup of coffee. I indulged in adding cream and sugar, feeling that I earned the treat. While I wasn’t obsessive about my weight, I was aware of my intake-to-energy-expelled ratio. Most of the time, with all the workouts I did along with the running, I didn’t have much to worry about, but Daddy warned me that heart issues were a problem in our family. It seems he’d been more aware of that than I realized. Yet he continued to live life as he saw fit which landed him in a situation that got him killed.

Shaking my head out of that dark tangent of thought, I returned to the table and took my place at the head of it. Atticus couldn’t scold me for sitting here anymore since I was now the boss of the Caprioni Family. That reality burned in the pit of my stomach like I’d swallowed an ember. I had yet to make the calls back to the motherland our family left and share what had happened with the crime leaders there. As my father said when he told them about my coming into power, we don’t owe them anything but our respect for the work they’ve done. My respect would probably turn up in a few days, then I’ll make the call.

Reaching out, I grasped the letter and once more flipped it open to reveal the handwriting. No point in waiting. I’d need to read it eventually. Maybe already having bawled my eyes out will help in keeping my composure.

My beloved daughter,

If you’re reading this letter, it means I wasn’t alive to share the information on the memory stick in person. There is so much that I still need to teach you about this world we live in, but I also know the reality is I might not get the chance. Losing your mother taught me never to assume you’ll have time later. As I write this letter on your birthday, knowing I’ll finally get to see you again, I know the upheaval this will cause. So within this case is everything I’ve ever wanted to tell you. Some things you might already know, depending on how long we have together, but I won’t risk leaving anything to chance.

Astin, I need you to understand one thing. No matter what you learn in these documents, I loved you with all my heart. Everything I did after your mother’s passing was to give you the best life I could while keeping you safe. I’m sure I’ve made mistakes along the way, and you might be hurt by them, but much of it was for a reason. You’ll always be my firstborn, the heir to everything I have to give. I trust you to make the right call when it comes to Casimira, Jamison, and Liu. My hope is you’ll be able to find a way to love them as I have. You deserved a family, the one I built in that picture, but the evils of this world stripped that from us both.

Once you learn how this all came to be and the struggles we faced for the three of us to have the fraction of time together we did, it will hopefully clear up many questions.

Don’t be afraid to love with all your heart, Astin. I did with your mother and Casimira. Those were the happiest moments of my life, and I’ll gladly bear the pain of Natalina’s loss to have experienced it. You have so much of your mother’s caring spirit in you, I hope all I did to protect you hasn’t made you lose that.

I’ll end this by saying I love you, my dearest daughter, and I’m sorry. So incredibly sorry for what you had to endure and what you lost due to my choices. Everything was done with the best intentions but also out of fear, and I accept any anger or resentment you might carry because of it. Be strong, be wise, love with all your heart, and keep a sharp blade with you always.

~ Daddy

Chapter 3

Pacing the hall outside the conference room, I waited for Glenda to return. I don’t know how the old bat could get in when the room had been set in lockdown mode, but she just winked at me when I asked.

“Some secrets need to be kept just that, a secret,” she mentioned as she left the kitchen with a tray of food.

The past four days had been hell, absolute hell, and there was nothing I could do about it. Astin lost her father, got shot, and became the boss of the Caprioni Family in one instant. It was a good thing Raymond and Harrison were dead already, or I’d have them strung up in the basement carving small pieces of their skin off. Those bastards who claimed to be friends of the late Boss traded their lives for power and money. In the end, the devil came for their wretched souls in the form of the woman I loved.

Watching the lethal beauty of her collecting souls of those who’d wronged us shouldn’t have been as captivating to watch as it was. Astin had transformed into someone I didn’t know, void of all humanity and thriving on a single goal—destroy those who killed her father. The practiced way she dealt with Harrison at the end told me that Astin had been right when she said maybe I didn’t know her anymore. Whoever that version was, it wasn’t my Tin-Tin, the woman I’d pined after for years. No, that woman was the queen of the Caprioni Family who should be feared and respected.

My mind returned to that moment with the muzzle of her gun pressed to my temple and her icy gaze locked on mine. There is no doubt that if Luca hadn’t swooped in at that moment, I wouldn’t be alive right now. That icy goddess of death didn’t see me, she saw a person who was standing in her way who needed to be removed. When I questioned Luca later about how he knew what to say to bring her back, he just shook his head.

“Sorry, man, the boss’s last order for me was to keep that information to myself. I plan to do that unless I feel it’s in her best interest for you all to know,” Luca informed me. “I’m just fucking glad he told any of us. Who knows what could have happened if she couldn’t snap out of it.”

That thought made us both shiver with dread. No one would have been safe, and everyone would have been a target. The perfect killing machine with an unknown off switch was now added to the list of things I never wanted to run into in a dark alley.

“Ryker, have you been pacing out here this whole time?” Glenda asked, snapping me back to the present.

The tray she held showed an empty soup bowl and a pile of tissues. My heart squeezed at the thought of her locked away, lost to her grief. “How bad is it?”

The older woman sighed and shook her head before heading toward the kitchen. “That poor girl believes it’s her fault her father died. How she can sit there and blame herself when she told him not to go is beyond me. You and I both know that if Master Colmazio chose to do something, we could not change his mind. The only thing that would have happened is another fight, and he’d still have gone anyway.”

It didn’t surprise me one bit that she felt this way. The damn woman still believed she was the cause of her mother’s death too. If she hadn’t been born, then her mother wouldn’t have been killed protecting her. Guilt is a wild animal that eats away at you slowly until you don’t even see what it’s doing to you anymore.

“We just need to give her a different target to go after, one that her alter didn’t deal with so she can remember it,” I suggested.

Glenda slammed the tray down on the kitchen counter near the sink. “I won’t speak ill of the dead, but that man nearly ruined her trying to keep her safe.”

“How did it even happen? What makes a person become that?” I pressed a pleading tone in my words.