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Stefan
“So you’re hell bent on seeing this thing through; on wrestling control of the company from Dante and doing things your way?” Smithy asked.
“I am,” I declared.
“Then God have mercy on your soul,” the old man said.
“Your God has already proven that he has no interest in me or my soul, or he would have intervened a long time ago,” I spat.
Smithy put his hands on my shoulder, forcing me to look in his eyes. “One day Stefan, you’re going to have to come to terms with what happened to you. Taking your anger out on the world is no answer. You may think this is about business; a difference of opinion with your brother. But it’s not. The demon you’re fighting is within. And all the money and power in the world won’t help you win that war.”
“I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. For now, I’ll take the money and the power. I’ve seen first-hand what they can do.”
Smithy’s milky-blue eyes got foggier. He squeezed me on the shoulder, turned around, picked up his packet of tobacco and left.
Pain entered through the door he exited.
***
“WHILE YOU WERE OFF building your little empire, I was suffering. You did nothing to protect me! Nothing!”
“I didn’t know Stefan. I swear. I didn’t know,” Dante said, his body as rigid as a block of ice. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“So when you came back to our room every night, you didn’t notice anything different about me?”
“Like what? Most of the time you were asleep.”
“I was pretending to be asleep. I heard you come in every night. Didn’t anything stick out to you? How quiet I was all of a sudden? How mad I was all of a sudden? How I never wanted to be left alone in that room by myself all of a sudden? Didn’t any of that register?”
“I th ... I thought,” Dante said. His face showed the signs of realization dawning, “I thought it was just regular teen-aged angst, and losing mother. I never thought someone was touching you; abusing you like that.”
“He wasn’t abusing me ‘like that!’,” I said, spit flying in my rage. That bastard was selling me to those twisted motherfuckers who came in his club looking for little boys instead of grown-ass whores! You knew everything about that club Dante. Everything. The wanna-be ballers who liked to beat on the girls. The cheap fucks who tried to sneak out without paying. And the perverts. How could you not know that twisted bastard was selling kids – kids like me? How could you not know your little brother was being sold ... night after night after night? You had to know! And you did nothing. Nothing!”
“I didn’t Stefan. I swear to God I didn’t. You have to believe me,” he begged. “You have to believe me. You have to.”
***
I HAD IMAGINED MY CONFRONTATION with my brother a million times in my head.
I had tried to make myself believe that he didn’t know. I had tried and tried and tried. But one thing I knew about my big brother is that he knew everything about an outfit he worked for. To not know could spell danger. That was his mantra.
And in this time, I’d learned a valuable lesson or two of my own. I’d learned to take what I wanted from this world because there was no right or wrong. There was only weak and strong. The advantaged, and those who were taken advantage of.
The men who’d bought me as a young boy; they were the ones with all the advantage. And it was their faces in the business pages, the society registers, the political offices. And I had dirt on enough of them to run any kind of enterprise I wanted.
Hookers. I could run an international ring.
Drugs. I could get’em through any port.
Gambling. I could start my own damn casino.
Powerful men will pay to keep their dirty little secrets a secret, especially the kind of secrets I knew. When you control the powerful, you become powerful. That lesson I’d learned well.
My brother was wasting time; playing in the pee wee leagues. Grimaldi Tech belonged in the big leagues. I could take it to heights Dante never even dreamed of, in a tenth of the time. So no, I had no desire to ‘go clean,’ as my brother so desperately wanted. Why should I, when the game was rigged anyway? The rich and powerful played by different rules; rules they made. And that was the only kind of game I was interested in – one where I got to make the rules.
Dante could spend a few more years cleaning Grimaldi money; making it legit, and it could still come crashing down around him. All it took is one powerful bastard with an itch in his nuts, and what he’d built – what we’d built – could be taken away from us in the blink of an eye. Because that’s how those bastards worked. They thrived on taking down those who they didn’t think belonged. And we – the Grimaldi brothers – definitely didn’t belong. Not in their country clubs. Not with their daughters. Not in their high society.
Money could buy you entree. But it could never buy you respect. As far as I was concerned, they could keep their fucking respect! All I wanted was to run my business; to build my empire – our empire – the way I saw fit.
I’d build something they could never take away. And we had a free pass to do it. I’d paid for that right, literally with my own blood. My innocence. And almost, my life.
I would never be at the mercy of anyone or anything ever again.
Ever.
Not even my brother.