Total pages in book: 197
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
His father was quiet for a long while before Antony finally reached over, and took the sunglasses off himself. Antony stared at Gio without saying anything, and then handed the sunglasses back.
“You don’t wear them in church regardless of what you look like—it’s disrespectful, Gio.”
Great.
A longer stretch of silence passed on between the father and son before Antony was the one to break it again. He usually was—Gio just tended to let his father speak until he didn’t have anything else to say.
It was easier.
“You’re scaring your mother,” Antony murmured.
Gio glanced down at his hands in his lap. “There’s nothing to be scared of.”
“I would think the constant belief that she’s going to wake up to a call some morning that they believe her son’s body is in a morgue is something to be scared of, Gio.”
“Low blow.”
“Tell me where I lied.”
Gio sighed. “I could die being a made man, too.”
“Is that what it is?”
“Hmm, what?” Gio glanced at his father. “You lost me.”
“You’re just restless and so reckless that it doesn’t matter to you either way—you’re going to die, and you know it—so why not speed the process along a bit?”
“I never said that.”
Antony frowned. “I wonder.”
“Don’t.”
“I also know when this all started for you—this partying and fast living and rebellious nonsense,” his father added quieter. “And I know you don’t want to talk about him—about how he died, and how you were there, Gio, but you know as well as I do that Giovanni worked damn hard to keep you away from this kind of thing. He didn’t want you getting messed up in drugs, or—”
“All right, that’s enough,” Gio said thickly.
He didn’t talk about his mentor, and the man who he’d been named after.
He didn’t want to.
He didn’t want to remember.
“You know,” his father murmured, “it’s okay to say that might have messed with you a bit, and that you need—”
“I need you to drop it,” Gio interjected firmly.
Antony did, thankfully.
“Fine; remember, I did try, Gio. Today, and before today. I will try tomorrow, too. I could have been outside greeting your brother as he made a choice that would change his life, and this family and his future—a choice I want to let him make—but instead, I am in here. Trying to help you.”
“Wrong choice, then, huh?” Gio asked. “We all screw up sometimes, Dad. We all make mistakes. Isn’t that what you keep telling me every single time I fuck up? Well, that and also that we can fix mistakes ... sometimes.”
Antony shook his head. “This wasn’t a mistake. It can’t be—you’re still my son, Gio.”
Sometimes, he wondered, though.
How much was it going to take?
How far was he going to have to push?
Would there come a time when his father finally said enough was enough, and washed his hands of Gio for good? Antony seemed to believe there was something in Gio that was good—something that could change.
He hadn’t found it yet.
And he had to live with himself twenty-four-fucking-seven.
Shame, that was.
King in Waiting
“Well?” Dante asked. “What do you have to say for yourself, then?”
Giovanni stayed quiet near the window of his brother’s office. His favorite place in any office or room, really. Unlike most men in his business who refused to put their back to a window or doorway, Giovanni was not quite the same. He figured he’d cheated death so many times in his life that it was not going to creep up on him from behind. Besides, like this, he could pretend to be distracted.
Even if he was anything but distracted.
“Andino!” Dante barked.
Gio finally let his attention drift away from the window. His sixteen year old son stood in the middle of the room with a blank expression on his face even as he faced the wrath of his uncle. He was quite a sight, this son of his.
Built like a brick shithouse, and fully capable of proving he was as tough as one, too ... Andino was something else.
Gio had seen bigger, older, and maybe even better men, cower at the sight of Dante’s rage when it turned on them. And yet, there Andino stood like he was facing a summer rain storm that was about to be a fucking nuisance to his evening and not his very pissed off uncle.
It amused Gio like nothing else. People kept saying this boy of his was more like his uncle than him, but Gio didn’t know if that was entirely true in all cases. Andino was just really good at being fucking sneaky.
God knew Gio and Kim tried as hard as they could to let this kid of theirs live his life how he wanted to, and without too much of their—or any outside—influence. Their lives had been so controlled, and strangled by rules. He didn’t want that for his son, too. How the hell was Andino supposed to learn who he was or who the fuck he wanted to be when too many other people were telling him who they wanted him to be?