Reverence - Book 2

- 39 -

"Tell me when it began, when you considered me an imbecile and when you lost control." 

The fire warmed my back, my legs crossed tightly. I fanned my face with the fluttering face of the file folder. Luca sat across from me, his shirt abandoned and a bandage wrapped around his seeping wound. Imelda was silent, staring out at the roiling waves, moonlight fractured across it's surface. Domingo's hands were clasped, almost in silent prayer.

Asa's body lay to the side, drug off the rug and into the cold hands of the shadows. 

I let my finger slide down the file, opening the pages like a great wave. 

"Who are you really?" 

I asked, my eyes settling on Luca. His strong face was drawn, cheeks gnawed on nervous teeth. 

"You know who I am." 

I let out a cut chuckle. 

"Do I? For it seems I know only what you've fed me. I know who you are, in flesh. But what has made you?" 

He cleared his throat. 

"If I tell you, things will be different." 

A sneer grabbed my mouth. 

"There can be no difference when it is the basis of lies." 

Luca came to his feet, a sigh escaping his chest. Imelda's worried glance followed him, a tremor settling in her hands. 

"I am no man that you have perceived me to be." 

He began to pace, dizzyingly slow, my eyes aching to follow him. 

"What I know to be true is that I am Luca Portillegaro. Born of wealth and notoriety, but also of plague and deceit.  My father built this compound from that of a single brick, and many have fallen on the sword of denial within it's walls. At one time I was an honest man, but greed has it's ways of defiling even the most pure. But my intentions for you. They have never been corruptible. Yelena you must believe in me and the words I speak." 

I laughed, my fingers clenching around the file. 

"You've all lied to me, kept the water above my head. How dare you ask for my trust in this hour."

A flash of lightning split the sky, the ocean and the clouds reoiling in horror. 

"What evil have you conceived to become the man that you so claim to be?" 

My voice was low, splintering the space between us. 

"I suppose it was an unwarranted inheritance. My family, we were once at peace. My father started humbly, managing stocks and day trading but quickly became consumed by the tender underbelly of corruption. He began pocketing back trades and quickly became embroiled in fraud and embezzlement. That was the first time he hurried us from the life we had known by the light of the moon. we left our home in Sicily to the safety of the coast. He would soon meet more than one demise here, as he turned so dutifully back into his old habits. But it seemed to worsen, the long nights. The drugs. The women. His anger was a swell, always rolling in and out uncanny to us. That was when it happened, the shift. Suddenly there were black cars and lucrative holidays. We were never left to want. I tried desperately to protect him, us. But he got into his bed with the politics of money. It came from everywhere, congressmen. Senators. Ambassadors. No money became foreign to him. But as sure as stars ignite, they begin to die. His greed spread like wildfire, his loans impossibly interested and his thirst for repayment insatiable. He was the shark in dark waters and everyone knew that his power came at an incorrigible price. A price that my own mother was made to pay. She had tired of his ways. the lying, the abuse. The infidelity. So to love us, she stole from that shark and he drug her under the waters. I found her the next morning, the blood had congealed around her face and she was stone cold, a stranger to me. He thought of no hesitation when he put that gun to her head."