Anna’s sobs were offensive. Who was she crying for? The father who never loved her or the sister-in-law she’d always been envious of? Large black umbrellas, held above us, protected us from the rain. I could barely hear the words of the priest, which were filtering in and out, like being underwater and trying to listen to someone shouting at you from above the surface.
I shed no tears. Why should we shed tears for the dead? They were the ones who were lucky, they did not have to deal with reality.
On the opposite end of the cemetery, Stephen Castello was likely standing beside his son’s casket, vowing revenge on me. I knew he’d killed my father, and he knew I’d killed his son.
Daniel Castello had been bagged and dropped outside his father's front door about the same time I’d kneeled beside Luther’s body. The scenes were cleared, and no authorities were involved. That was the way we did things.
The caskets were wheeled into the mausoleum, and I was asked if I would like to come in and pay my final respects to the dead. I walked away, a young Lance Knight, one of my Cavalieri, stood beside me, holding the umbrella above us.
We came to a stop at a clearing, stone tombstones surrounding us. Castello did the same. He said nothing, just stared at me. I wondered what ran through his mind at that moment. I knew he’d killed my father, call it a hunch, and he knew I’d killed his son.
I felt a smile tugging at my lips at the thought of what I’d done to Daniel. The pleasure I felt doing it. I would do it again and again. The battle lines were drawn, and it was a just matter of time now before one or the other made a move. But today, on this day of mourning, we’d called an unspoken truce. We would go our separate ways, hold wakes, and do whatever the fuck we were supposed to do after the dead were disposed of. I jumped into a limousine and was driven home.
A day, a week, a month later, the man still hadn’t made his move. He’d used the time to disappear, to slip under my radar. But I knew it was not over, there was no end to a war like the one we were in.
And then there was the baby, Giuliana, my daughter. I kept away from her. I ached to look at her golden hair and bright blue eyes that reminded me of another. It hurt to see the love in her eyes that I’d searched for in her mother’s. And so, I shut her out; sent her off to live at a nunnery, because my father was right. Love was that dirty little lie you told yourself in an attempt to deny the darkness. Love was for the weak, and I was not weak. I would rip that part of my heart out with my own fucking hands.
