Don't Shoot the Messenger

6 - to meet again

A/N:     2825 words

Long chapter ahead - enjoy!

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Mr. Macello's POV 

 The war is over. His children are dead, all but a couple who already married into other families. I affirmed my relationships with those families and promised them that the grandchildren would be spared... and their own wives as well, as long as they stayed out of it.

Don Baradili assumed that the marriages bought a closer alliance than they did. The others agreed to maintaining peace with him and to help if he was attacked. They never agreed to support him if he got into trouble that he started himself. His grandsons are in my custody. The wife of one of his sons is dead, and the other a widow returned to her parents. His unmarried daughters are dead also; they took up arms instead of taking cover and my people shot back. 

I will raise the children to despise their Grandfather. They are already angry (at me). As they grow older they will understand that he brought this on his Famillia. He did not respect the rules that govern the Peace.

I had promised my enemy that his grandsons would inherit, that I would not kill them. His holdings would go back into their hands when they are old enough. Even the funds from their businesses and investments will be held in trust. True, much will be spent in blood and treasure to sort out the aftermath. The legal assaults I launched on them will have to be settled or dropped as many of the guilty are now dead. I have lawyers and other people for that and the Baradili family does as well; they will be working together.

Their Grandfather signed the papers in front of witnesses. I am now the children's legal guardian. I will train them and turn over the reins to the boys when they are ready. I gave him my word that I intended nothing else, and will do my best to see that word fulfilled.  If anything happens to the boys, I still would not keep his holdings but would pass them on to a son of his eldest daughter.... a younger son who was not already set to inherit from her husband. All that is theirs I hold in trust and their people now answer to me.  Oaths have been accepted from the defeated family's loyalists. It is done.

 I poured the old Don wine at the settlement, and offered a toast - to his death. Baradili thought it was poison and hesitated before drinking it, but he was a broken man. It was a tranquilizer instead. He will spend the next years in a mental institution.

 Most now believe Don Baradili is dead, but I plan for his grandchildren to kill him when the time is right. They will want justice for the deaths of their parents, and I will direct their rage on him. The oldest boy is 4 years old going on 5. In a few years he will hardly remember his birth family. It will be years before I allow the boys to have contact with any of those people.

Now that enemies have been laid to eternal rest or been broken before my will... now is the time to see her at last. It has been two months and 6 days since that fateful night. She is in Barcelona, Spain. I know her every move, and I can guess even which direction she will take when she leaves the hotel in the morning... She will turn in a direction she did not explore the day before, uphill instead of down. In this case North and East instead of South and West. She has couch surfed with college students before and there is a university not too far. Today she may look to make friends and get cheaper accommodations.