Snapping Point||Book 1

49.

Romano De Rossi

It was as if my brush with death went unheard within the Family. Sure, word got around eventually about me getting shot and barely making it out alive, but the reception? Colder than a corpse in the morgue. Nearly three weeks had passed, and it felt like whatever damage that had been done amongst them was irreversible. It had left them on tenterhooks, and me uninterested in delving into it.

Frankly, I wasn't looking for a celebration or any revere, nor did I want to plunge straight into the chaos of my duties. That's why I had been holed up in my quarters since I got back yesterday morning. Transitioning from whiskey to tobacco to barely-there foods and back. Nothing could cure the monotony of my current lifestyle. Least likely to achieve that were the texts I'd been sending out since morning.

My phone left me feeling surprised and uneducated. Wasn't I supposed to see the online status of a person's contact? Shouldn't my messages switch to "read" instead of remaining stuck on "delivered"? And why were calls going straight to voicemail without ringing first?

Until yesterday, I had never encountered any issues when trying to reach Xenia—whether it was sending messages, making calls, or hearing back from her. Even after she had left, I texted to check in on her and at least receive some sort of question. None. But then I could tell she saw all my messages. They had been simply ignored.

Right now, though, I was refusing to believe she had done it. With all the undelivered messages and disconnecting calls, my head couldn't wrap around the thought that she had blocked my fucking number.

My hanging messages were staring back at me. The many times I had said hello and asked why she left the cabin before Ottavio and I were done, even though they were all stupid and pretentious questions, or the times I was asking why her line wasn't connecting and why she had refused to text me back.

I understood my actions and the motivations behind them. But I hadn't thought that three days of silence from her would throw me into a frenzy. Perhaps I had held onto two possibilities. One, that upon hearing my confession, she would return home and at least entertain my calls. Two, that she would extend an offer to discuss it, forcing me to reconsider and giving me a reason to justify why it wasn't easy to extricate myself from the situation—oh, I just can't, because Xenia doesn't want me to. Simple. Deplorable, but simple at least.

Unfortunately, I now faced possibility number three, which was unexpected, not up for grabs, and downright unsettling. This alone should've been ample reason to regain my self-control and reclaim my once uneventful life. Instead, it felt like a gut punch and a headache from hell. Got me reconsidering something I thought I was done with—explaining why I had uttered those uncharacteristic words to Ottavio.

God, Xenia was giving me the cold shoulder, hoping to scrub me from her memory, but I prayed that wasn't the case. Amidst all the madness happening right now, being back to my former uninspiring life, I realized I'd been a complete idiot to toss aside something so beautiful and real. Life felt dull, days dragged on, urges boiled over, and my fury blazed anew.

Two months in as Capo, and I'd seen enough to make me think about throwing in the towel. To hell with the disappointment from Rossi and Morelli, to hell with my own damn ambitions. I was at my limit, and all that was left was to just... snap. This post came with its own set of problems that just wouldn't quit. The burdens wouldn't bulge. I saw and heard things I wouldn't have if I weren't Capo. Case in point: my wife fooling around with someone in the family, and I still hadn't sussed out who.

Talking about Luciana, before yesterday, we hadn't seen each other for a week, since she showed up uninvited to check on me again at the cabin. To entertain the thought that she was cheating meant believing that while I was away, another man had been playing the role of husband, and playing it convincingly. Part of why I had been watching her perch around with utter disgust was because she had the nerve to call me out on my bullshit while she played just as dirty, only with a masterful skill for pretending.