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“Mike, I raised you up when you had nothing, and no one. I saw your skills, and I gave you a home here. I trained you from the gutter!”
“And now you are letting everyone who is a part of that familyfuckingdie! You are letting everyone down!” Mike yelled.
“Shut the hell up!” I replied.
“Deep down, you know it's true. What are you scared of? Vasquez? Why won’t you kill him? Why won't you send us to do the job? We could have had this over with months ago! Ever since he showed his true colors after your father died… we could have ended this!”
“Don’t you dare bring my father into this!” I got closer to him, fuming. I felt my blood boil under my skin. “Watch your mouth, kid!”
“Vasquez killed your father, and you are too much of a pussy to even avenge his death.”
I punched him across the face, knocking him to the ground and felt arms on me from behind. I turned to see that it was the other members of the family holding me back. With a stare, they let go and backed off. Mike looked back at me and wiped off the blood from his mouth, and then he got back to his feet.
“Look, Boss, you might not see it now, but what we do. We need to act for the good of this family.”
Fisher got behind him, “He’s right. We want to protect this family and sometimes the path that must be taken is the one that changes who we are. We can go back after this, we can change again, but for now, this is what we need.”
I looked away from Fisher; the only thing stopping me from hitting him too was the respect I had for him. He was just as old as my father, and I had grown up looking up to him as a father figure. I looked at the rest of the men in the back, they were all standing in their bloodied suits, looking right at me.
“Go home, all of you. Change your clothes and get comfortable. I don’t want to hear of a stint like this ever again, do you understand me?”
I watched in shock as none of the men moved. They stood their ground, staying firmly behind Fisher. Mike walked behind Fisher and grabbed his computer from the car, “We are behind the person who makes the most logical decisions for the family, and right now, that’s Fisher. When we have dealt with this, then we will come back to you.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO
Angelo
I had felt misery before, but there was something about that moment that made me feel like I had seen it all, and I had nothing left.
They were right, I was just too weak to do what needed to be done. I had always known that my father was ailing and could not finish the job against his enemies, but I refused to listen to my gut and tell him what I thought. I allowed him to fill my head with thoughts of peace, of a world where everything was perfect and where we had no enemies. The irony was, my father was very violent when it came down to it, giving twice as much trouble as he ever got. But he had fed me with some utopian nonsense about growing up and becoming kinder. Maybe it was his dreams for our family in the future, or maybe he didn’t want me to back down from becoming the Don when needed. Either way, it was starting to destroy our family.
I really wanted to believe that we could find peace if we looked for it hard enough. If we put in our best and just worked every day, we would find it like all the good things in life, and it would eventually come. But not this time, no. I had lost everything and there was no peace just death and hatred all over.
The second bottle of whiskey was placed on the table, and I pulled it towards me, filling up my tumbler and downing the contents at once. I knew that the doctor would probably kill me for having alcohol while I was doped up on drugs, but that was not what I was thinking about or even caring about. My own family had turned their backs on me. They had gone against everything I stood for, and they had left me alone.
They felt safer with Fisher leading them. The man had more experience, was a lot older, and looked like a trueborn leader. He made the difficult choices and followed through with them. He gave the people what they wanted, and they ate it up. Fisher had taken control and started on that very day, praying I would not die, but looking for vengeance as well.
They crossed the bridge and burned down a burger place, which apparently belonged to a member of Vasquez’s family. They had killed three people that night, and they wanted more. Fisher and many of the people who were members of my family were incredibly bloodthirsty, and I could not bring myself to believe that they would be so merciless. But even as I thought about it, it made sense. What they had said made sense. I had not done anything until they had killed a few of us, and even then, I refused to end the problem. I only defended against it but did nothing to take care of it once and for all.
I wanted vengeance for my father. I wanted Vasquez to pay. But deep down, I knew that my father would not want me to be the one to pull the trigger. He would want justice, but not this way. If only he knew how much blood was already on his hands, how much satisfaction Vasquez’s pain would bring. For what it was worth, he tried to uphold the family’s legacy, too.
Now it had all been thrown to the gutters and the Preston family was now a group of murderous thugs who went on hits. The fact that I could empathize with them hurt me most. I saw their rage, and I wanted to take care of Vasquez. I wanted to shoot him in the head and have his body fed on by a pack of stray dogs. But in the back of my mind, my father's words kept ringing, and I wanted to honor them. I wanted to run the family the way I knew he would have.
But the family did not want to be run like that. They had other ideas on how they wanted to behave, and now they were running around with Fisher. If I let them, they would ruin everything we had worked for, everything we had built. The police would get involved, everything would spiral out of control, and it would all end in deaths and arrests. But I was one man, and I could not force them to do anything they did not want to, especially not now, with me being shot and the family on the brink of war.
Fuck no… I could not just wait and see. It was my responsibility to do something. I took a swig of the whiskey straight from the bottle, and the bartender looked at me, remembered who I was, and instantly looked away, opening another bottle for the others in the bar. The others there had no idea who I was or that I controlled so much of their everyday lives. Or at least I used to, and now I had lost all that power, and the people who had given it to me had decided to go off on their own.
“Fuck me,” I said out loud.
I knew I wasn’t going to be able to drive myself home, and I really wanted to go back. But the idea of crashing the car or being pulled over by the police for drunk driving was not something I was very interested in. So, I pulled out the phone and began scrolling to the one Uber driver I trusted and had saved his number on the phone. Even if he could not come pick me up, he would send someone who I was sure would not have any connections to my enemies.
As I scrolled through the phone, I saw the name I had used to save my father’s number. I had not deleted it after he had died, and there it was, looking back at me. I laughed, knowing that I had failed. That was it. I hadfailed, and I was unable to run the family as he had groomed me to try to do. Now everything had fallen out of my hands, and I was going to head back home like a failure, and I would fall asleep with everything I had worked for in the hands of another man.
Who cared if Vasquez won? What did he win anyway? I wanted nothing to do with it anymore. I had lost Benny, Leonardo, my father, Antonio, and so much more. I had lost so much fighting this useless war, this power struggle, and now I could not just help but wonder what the point of it all was. I could have gotten peace anytime, left the family, and started a life of my own, and right now, I had someone at home who I could start that with. I could leave it all behind and become who I wanted to be, with my lioness at my side.
The car came and I paid the bill, and then I headed out into the car. I managed to keep myself upright and got into the car, and the driver headed off, taking me home. By the time we arrived, I had fallen asleep, and he had to wake me up. After paying the charge, I got out of the vehicle and went into the building. I spotted Dorothy at the front desk, looking at me with fear and confusion in her eyes. She walked up to me, the beginnings of a question on her lips. But I did not want to hear it. I did not give a shit about that. I just wanted to get to bed.
I hit the elevators and started the slow ascent to my floor. As the doors parted, I saw Maria standing by it, a look of concern on her face. She walked up to me and then recoiled at the smell of the alcohol on my body. I shook my head and began taking off my clothes, but Maria would not let me off easily.
