Capo Dei Capi (Secrets of the Famiglia Part 1) novel Chapter 47

I was raised to like what I do. To be proud of who I am, A Catelli.

The day I killed my first man, I wasn't even 9. A burglar got into our house and held a gun against Deno's head. My mother tried to get the burglar to take her. The asshole shot her. My mother was brave and managed to get him on the leg. Deno ran away from the intruder, but I was so filled with anger that I took my mother's Glock and clipped him 5 times.

Only to get outside and find the soldiers who were protecting our home, sleeping. My father killed them once he got home. I stood there and watched. My mother survived only to die 3 years later by a bullet to her head.

My brother was barely 8 at the time, and Anya was just a baby. Deno remembers it in his dreams. I have lived that fucked up day for years.

My father told me one saying that helped him along the years to deal with the nightmare, 'it is what it is.'

Today those same words came back to me; only I wasn't burying my mother.

There is no excuse for what happened to my youngest brother, Lorenzo. He was the untainted one from all of us. His future was supposed to be bright. He was going to be the normal one, well as normal as he could be in this dark, twisted world, we were cursed into.

Deno and I knew he was different from the rest of us. Lorenzo wasn't perfect. His hands were tainted with death at a young age. A young Prince protecting his friends in another King's territory didn't come without a bloody price.

Deno kept tabs on the 5 sacrificial lambs who were sent to Chicago to prevent a war my father started. My brother survived that fuck fest only to die in the place he was supposed to be safe.

Deno and I would find the ones responsible and make them pay. Even knowing the blood we'll spill in his name is something he would detest to, won't bring him back, we will get our revenge.