????MAFIA POSSESSION ????????
( HIS ADDICTION ????)
BY, ROYAL DIADEM ❣️
CHAPTER 28
Copy and have your life shortened ????
LUCA HOPED that Caroline hadn’t done anything stupid or rash. His father’s
car was in the drive, so she might be dead by now. It was likely that she was
dead by now. But he couldn’t process that. He couldn’t consider what that
meant for him. It was his fault the woman he loved felt like she had to break
into the mansion of the most powerful Mafia Don in New York. And he
would have to accept whatever punishment his father saw fit to give him.
Disobedience wasn’t taken lightly. Not from the underlings,
from the
dealers, the suppliers, the guards, the waitstaff, and certainly not from his
own children.
Luca power-walked because running was unprofessional and suspicious.
Maybe she wasn’t dead. She could be hiding. It was possible no one knew
she was here, and he could find her and get her out before anyone was the
wiser. But he couldn’t indicate that anything was wrong. He never ran.
A gunshot from inside the house. Luca ran.
He reached his father’s office and heard Caroline’s voice, unwavering
but a little unhinged, ask, “What happened to my father.”
Luca stepped into the office to see Caroline behind his father’s desk
with a gun clenched in white-knuckled hands. Emotions played across her
face in a rapid collage. Anger, fear, loathing, panic, hatred,
hopelessness.
She didn’t even seem to see him.
On the floor at Luca’s feet, blood seeped between his father’s fingers,staining the carpet and his mother’s dress. The Don clutched his leg and his
wife fretted over him, not quite knowing what to do. There was a lot ofblood. She might have hit a major artery. He needed medical attention.Someone should call an ambulance.
Luca looked back up at Caroline and spoke gently. “Caroline.”
Caroline grimaced and adjusted her grip on the gun but ignored him. “I
want the truth.” Her voice didn’t waver, but Luca could tell she was barely
holding it together. “I want to hear you say it.”
Luca’s father growled. “Say what, bit-ch ?”
“Say you killed him.” She fidgeted with the gun. It looked so foreign in
her hands. Out of place. Like someone had done a poor job of
photoshopping it there.
“I didn’t kill him.” Bruno had the gall to laugh.
Luca took a step toward the desk. “Caroline, put the gun down.” He
spoke sweetly, hoping she would collapse in on herself. Because if she
didn’t, even he might not be safe. She liked him, maybe loved him, but if he
got in the way of her vendetta, he might just be collateral damage.
Instead of falling into his arms or shooting him, she ignored him and
spat, “Bullshit,” at his father.
Bruno sat up a little more and hissed at the pain throu-ghhis teeth, still
holding his leg. “I didn’t kill him.” He sounded triumphant. Luca knew he
was lying, and he hated the whole charade.
“Don’t lie to me!” It to-re throu-ghthe air with a raw pain and rage that
seemed more intense than Caroline’s little body should be capable of. Her
finger flexed on the trigger and it occurred to Luca that if she shot again, it
might hit him or his mother. He couldn’t risk that.
“Caroline,” He spoke with authority now. The kind of authority that
usually made her shiver and quietly obey. “Put the gun down.”
She acknowledged him for the first time with rage burning behind her
gla-ssy green eyes. It took his breath. “No. Not until I know the truth.”
Bruno laughed again. “Truth is just what you choose to believe.
I could
tell you all the truth in the world, but if you don’t believe it, that’s on you.”
Caroline stood up and shook the gun at him. “Say it. Say you killed my
father.”
Luca watched his father glance at his mother and smirk. “But I didn’t.”
“I’ll shoot you again,” Caroline leaned forward over the desk and Luca
wanted to go and restrain her and pry the gun from her hands, but she was
so unbalanced. It wouldn’t be safe. “I’ll shoot. I’m not afraid of you.”
And she would, he could tell.
It was Luca’s fault. He should have toldher as soon as he saw the reflections. But he wanted proof. He wantedevidence. He couldn’t present an observation without research and a works-
cited page. He should have trusted her, explained it in a way that would
keep her rational. He could have prevented this.
“You’ll shoot me?” Bruno challenged. “You’ll shoot my wife and my
son too? And you think you’re better
than me? I didn’t kill your father.”
Caroline aimed the gun and prepared to shoot. Luca stepped out of the
way on some self-preservation instinct. His mother waved her hands. “Wait!
No. He didn’t kill your father, I did.”
The rhythmic ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner of the office
echoed off the walls in the silence that followed. Luca couldn’t tell if his
mother was covering for his father to try to save his life, or if she genuinely
believed she was telling the truth. Either way, he was stunned.
So was Caroline,
suddenly unsure where to point the gun and gaping in
total shock. “What are you talking about?”
Luca’s mother had a broken quality to her posture that he’d never seen
before. Uncertainty. Shame. He’d never known his mother to feel shame.
She took a shaky breath and rubbed at the blood on her hands. “Your
father… I- we-” She struggled for the words. Luca’s chest tightened. He’d
also never seen his mother at a loss for words. Especially not when she was
lying. “We had an affair.”
She bit out like it was ripping off a band aid. She
glanced at her husband, who still looked triumphant, if in a considerable
amount of pain. “We had our differences though, and we got into an
argument.”
Caroline looked so on edge; Luca worried she might pull the trigger
accidentally. He took another step closer to the desk, and she didn’t even
seem to notice.
“He wanted me to run away with him. Told me how much I would love
you, how we could all be happy.
” She shook her head and looked up at
Caroline with pleading eyes. Luca didn’t like that. His mother never
begged. She got what she wanted. This was all so out of character for her
and it rubbed him the wrong way, made the hairs at the back of his neck
stand straight up. “I couldn’t do it,” she all but apologized. “I hadresponsibilities. Four kids, all mourning the loss of my fifth.” A briefmoment of silence.
Luca looked up at the family portrait behind the desk.
Tessa and her twin held hands. They looked whole that way. It had beenhard, like Tessa became half a person for a while. His mother choked on adry sob. “They needed me.” She glanced at Bruno again and added as anafterthought. “My husband needed me too.”
Luca took another step toward the desk and Caroline didn’t react. If he
could get close enough to take the gun, they could de-escalate the situation.
It was easier to think about ways to solve the immediate problem than to
process what his mother was saying.
“I tried to cut things off.
I knew it was wrong. I knew–” She covered
her mouth with a hand to regain her composure and it stung Luca to the
core to see her like that. His mother was the most composed person he
knew. He tried to emulate her constant poise and confidence. She dropped
her hand and blood st-riped her cheeks where she touched.
Too bright
against her soft olive skin. Too stark against her tasteful makeup. Too
morbid for the woman who had always been a pillar of support for her
children. “I tried to end it gently, but he thought it was personal. It wasn’t
personal, I just—it was wrong, and it never should have happened, and it
never should have reached the point…” she trailed off and blinked back
tears, shoulders shaking in a hiccupped sob.
“What happened?” Caroline demanded in a low voice as she sank back
into the chair. The gun kept switching between her and Bruno, but it was
obvious Caroline was losing some of her vengeful anger.
Luca watched his mother collect her thoughts as tears ran down her
cheeks. “The argument got physical.” She wrung her hands in her lap,
smearing more blood on her already ruined dress. “I pushed him, and he
fell. The fireplace-” she hid her face in her shoulder. “He hit his head on the
stone fireplace.”
Luca frowned at his father. He had connected all the dots in this story,
but here were some new dots on the outside that didn’t connect to any
others. His mother wasn’t lying. He was confident in that fact. He’d seen
her crocodile tears to get out of a speeding ticket or gain sympathy. She
managed to look pretty then. These were real tears. These were real sobswracking her shoulders and forcing her to curl in on herself. This brokeLuca’s heart.
His father looked a little out of it. He’d lost a lot of blood.
His face waspale, and his eyes were unfocused, but he still wore a look of triumph.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean-” she hiccupped. “I never meant to kill him.
I never wanted to kill him.”
The gun drooped in Caroline’s hands. She lost her conviction. She’dbeen ready to avenge her father against the man she considered the devilincarnate, but she hadn’t been prepared to face the intense regret of her father’s lover. And what sort of monster could shoot a woman pleading for
forgiveness covered in the blood of her husband? Not Caroline. Luca knew
Caroline was no monster.
“Bruno came home and found us, and I didn’t know what to do.”
Another hiccup. “He tried to get medical help, but brain damage-” She took
a de-ep breath. “They couldn’t- He died on the way to the hospital.”
Luca gave his father a ha-rd stare. His father returned it. They
understood each other. He knew Luca knew the truth and was daring him to
say something. He really
thought Luca wouldn’t call him on it. Luca took a
mental step back to look at his parent’s relationship objectively. Bruno let
her think, for all these years, that she killed a man. It added to her guilt,
indebted her to him in some way. Emotional manipulation if not abuse. She
was a pawn in his game as long as he could use her. The same for his
children. Manipulation, borderline abuse. Skewed priorities and dubious
morals. Negative reinforcement to exploit any talent they had, to mold them
and shape them in his likeness. Duty and loyalty to the family above all,
meaning ‘you’ll do whatever I tell you to.’ His father disgusted him. He
was a bully. He used people, stepped on them to climb up a social ladder
fueled by a sick hunger for complete control.
“See? I didn’t kill him.” His father lied throu-ghhis teeth with a painfilled smile.
Luca could see Caroline wavering. She was struggling with this, as shehad every right to. It wasn’t what she signed up for. What could she donow? He had to tell her. He had to tell her the truth, expose his father,explain what he knew. But wasn’t this a nicer story? A lover’s quarrel. Noone to blame, not really. Wouldn’t this soothe Caroline’s hurt?
He watched the gun tremble in her hands. No. The lie would burn himup. And keeping something from her was the reason his father was bleedingout on the floor and his mother was huddled in tears, begging forgiveness.
He had to tell Caroline the truth. “He’s lying.”
No sooner did Luca speak than Bruno’s arms gave out and he collapsedflat on the ground.
TBC