The Heir's Retribution

EPILOGUE

Note: This part will be written in Dominic/Darius' point of view. I know this story took so long. Thank you for holding on and being here till the end.💙

EPILOGUE

I was born wrong.

Not broken. Not misunderstood.

Just wrong.

Even as a child, I knew it. I didn't cry when I fell. I didn't flinch at pain. I didn't feel guilt the first time I hurt something just to see if I could.

Even then, I could feel it, that hunger. The urge to end things... to watch them struggle until they stop moving.

My father called me special. But not in the way children are told they're special by their parents. He saw potential in me and trained me not to be a son, the next ruthless hand of the Vitalis Organosi.

Since I turned five, he forced me to start learning other languages-- English, Mandarin, Russian, Tagalog, Spanish and so on. One after another. He said that language was power. That if I could speak to people in their tongue, I could lead them. Manipulate them. Control them.

"A leader who doesn't know how to listen does not know how to lead," he told me once.

He'd starve me for forgetting a word or mispronouncing a phrase. But if I impressed him, he'd let me skip a training session. Just one.

While other kids were being taught how to ride a bike, my father brought me to an underground training facility where future soldiers of our Familia were forged. Instead of learning how to play, I was taught how to disarm a man twice my size.

Doon ko nakilala si Emerson. Ilang taon lang ang tanda niya sa akin. Tahimik siya at palaging nakatutok sa training, kaya hindi ko na ininda ang presensya niya.

Before I even learned how to write my own name, I was already standing at a shooting range with a gun in my hands.

My father also made me spar with his strongest men. I came home with bruises, cracked ribs, and blood in my mouth more often than not. And when I cried once, instead of consoling me like a normal parent, he just stared at me as if I'm wasting his time.

That was the day I understood my pain meant nothing to him.

Simula noon, hindi na ako umiyak.

And my mother...

My mother never said anything, but I know she believed it was a curse. I remember the way her face paled and the way her hands trembled when she caught me aiming a gun at the family dog.

After that, she started looking at me like I was a stranger wearing her son's face. I think she loved me once, before the fear swallowed her whole. Before she realized she learned that it was a monter instead of a boy she had carried in her womb.

But she tried. God, she tried.

She read me bedtime stories about kindness. Taught me how to say sorry, even when I didn't mean it. Hugged me like maybe, just maybe, she could hug the monster out of me. And still... I never stopped being who I was.

Then the screaming started.

My parents would fight behind closed doors. My mother would cry, clutching my little sister to her chest, calming her because the shouting always made her cry too.

She was furious that my father was preparing me to become the next capo at such a young age. That he was bringing me to the place where they brought hostages to kill and torture, and made me watch. She said I was just a boy.