Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 89232 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89232 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Chapter
Twenty
Angelo
* * *
Sitting behind the desk in the chair that belonged to my father, I stare at the dark screen of the phone in my hand. The house is never empty. There’s always Heidi and the rest of the staff. Double the number of guards patrol the perimeter of the property. Yet the silence creeps up on me at times like this, mocking me with the voices that nowadays only sound in my head. Adeline’s laughter. The rattle of my father’s cough. My mother humming to the radio in the kitchen.
My uncles and cousins are often here, a lot more than before. They probably think it’s wiser to check in on me. I haven’t been myself in a long time. I’ve never been drunk as often as I am of late.
I turn the phone over. I was drunk when I sent that message to Sabella seven months ago. I came home from a house I’d built to honor my mother’s family, polished half a bottle of Scotch, and typed the inappropriate text. I still don’t know why. I only know I was raging. Angry. Blaming myself for everything. Blaming Sabella. Blaming her for not being well enough or strong enough to be here with me.
In two weeks, she’ll turn nineteen. I’ve been patient. More than patient. I want what’s mine. I want what I paid for, and I paid dearly. We both have. It’s time to turn the page and start a new chapter. It’s time to lay down the ghosts and fill this house with voices again. Real voices.
The ringtone of the phone pulls me from my dark thoughts. I check the screen. It’s Toma. Uncle Nico must’ve put him on babysitting duty again. I consider ignoring my cousin, but I’m not focusing on the investment analysis on the laptop screen in front of me. Even as I take the call, I pour four fingers of Scotch.
“Toma.”
“Angelo, you need to come over to the house.”
I swallow a mouthful of alcohol. “I am in the house.”
“The new house.”
I clench my fingers around the glass. Since I moved the old man and his family into that house, he’s given me nothing but trouble. I haven’t set foot in it in a month. Work kept me busy. It takes time to run a multibillion-euro business, and it takes more time turning that business into a global empire.
“What’s wrong?” I ask with a grunt, setting the glass aside. I don’t need these complications.
“You’ve got to come and see this.”
I want to tell him to deal with whatever it is, but I created this problem. My father warned me, and I didn’t listen. Solving yet another tricky situation is fair punishment.
“I’ll be there in thirty,” I say.
On my way out, I tell Heidi I’ll be late for lunch. In the car, I can think. I always reflect better when I’m driving. My senses are alert despite the fact that I just downed a drink. I shouldn’t be driving, but there are a lot of things I shouldn’t do.
The old man and the kids didn’t want to move here. You’d think I offered them a pigsty instead of a house with every possible luxury and comfort. I organized a cook and a cleaner, but the women resigned after a few weeks. They couldn’t put up with my grandfather’s verbal and physical abuse. The cook said he threw a pot of boiling water at her. She said if she hadn’t been so fast, her face would’ve needed skin grafts.
I punished him by withholding his allowance. Food and commodities are always delivered to the house. He doesn’t need the money, but that’s what he cares about most. Nothing hits him harder than losing the cash.
Things went better after that. Until he started again. It’s always the same. He causes trouble and promises to be good when I don’t pay the euros into his account. As soon as he gets the next installment, he acts out again.
Those devious kids don’t help. They stole the cleaning lady’s phone and bank cards from her purse. They emptied a bucket of piss over her head while laughing their asses off. I thought sending them to school in Bastia would help, but they created so many problems that I ended up hiring a tutor to do home schooling. That lasted for little more than a week before the woman stormed through my door and demanded her money before getting off my property as fast as she could.
What’s it going to take? Sending them to a military boarding school? I was no model child, but I knew how to behave civilized when necessary. If I’m being honest with myself, moving them into the house had less to do with feeling charitable and more with wanting to wipe away the stigma that clings to my family name. I wanted my mother to walk down the street in the village and be met with respect instead of scorn. Sure, after I made an example of the grocery store owner, people served her when she went into a shop, but they still despised her. They just hid it better.