Chapter 1
UNKNOWN
Lorenzo; Nine Years Old.
“Per favor, Marco, let the boy grieve he'd just lost his father. You can always teach him tomorrow,” Maria begged, hoping for once in his life her husband would stop and listen to her.
“Se Alessandro poteva farlo, poteva farlo anche lui.(If Alessandro could do it, he also could), he said, his eyes warning her from saying more.
“Marco…” she continues.
“Take a look at him, Maria! He's so weak and soft,” he sneered “And with the hair, if I hadn't fucking had him circumsized, I'd think he was a little frail girl. Just look at what your daughter turned him into; he's now a Marchetti and no blood of mine would be seen as weak,” Don Marco added angrily, glaring at his youngest grandson.
Maria bites her lips and glances at her grandson. Standing in the foyer of the majestic Villa Marchetti, the little boy glanced at her, he had the face of his mother, eyes a beautiful shade of honey brown, a few shades lighter than his hair.
His nose, sharp and stubborn; he was so beautiful, so sad it tugged at the protectiveness inside her.
He'd been quiet after Celia’s death, and living with Marco’s strictness has made him even more so.
He rarely talks to anyone except her and Alessandro. Her heart literally ached with the sadness in the boy’s eyes.
Maria was sickly and didn't want to die without doing everything she could for these boys she loved with her life.
She'd lost her daughter at a young age, barely thirty, same as her son; she'd failed to protect her oldest grandson years ago when Marco had decided to initiate him earlier on.
Alessandro was already a made man; that poor child had become someone unrecognizable to the world.
She'd watched helplessly as it happened gradually, and now he was so burdened by this wretched life at such a young age that his eyes were constantly hooded with that darkness.
Though she'd refuse to believe Marco had changed him for the worse, the biggest part of her knew the damage was done.
Maria refused to not at least try for Enzo, even if deep down she knew it was a losing battle.
It hurts so much that she wasn't strong enough to stop her husband not just for what he did to Alessandro and what he was about to do to Lorenzo, but also for not being able to protect her children from him.
For not being strong enough for her children, it's her greatest regret in life.
But her children were already gone, far away from Marco and his cruel and controlling ways.
Lorenzo wasn't; he was a child who'd lost his mother a year ago and his father recently; he needed her.
They both do.
“Marco, you and I know he's not going anywhere. Please give him a few months to recuperate; he's lost Celia and his father; he's traumatized by their loss. You know…He'd seen her in…in that state, and now his father is gone. It's too much grief for any child to bear alone,” She'd forced the words through trembling lips.
Clutching at her neck, her rosary that was wound around her fingers moved like pendulums with her shaking hands, her mind flashing back to the image of her daughter's dead body.
Don Marco's face hardened, eyes dark as he stalked closer, his height and build dwarfing that of his frail, small-stature wife.
“And that's why he needs to be stronger; I know what's best for our grandchildren, Maria. I'm not going to listen to you and allow either Alessandro or Lorenzo to become like Franco. I'm going to whip them into shape the way I should have been with Franco instead of allowing you to coddle him.”
Maria flinched, his words were so venomous it felt like a physical blow.
“They are going to be the strongest made men the Marchetti Famiglia had ever seen, I'll make damn sure of that or I'll die trying. There's no in-between. No weakness,” he spat, eyes glinting with cruelty.
“Please, I'm begging you, Marco,” she cried, chasing after him as he stormed over to the boy, who had been watching with narrowed eyes at both of them.
He grabbed Lorenzo by the scuff of his shirt roughly and started dragging him along towards the huge crowd of made-men and boys.
“Get back!” Don Marco thunder glaring at her. She'd ignored him and went to follow, but her trusted maid had instantly clutched her hands, leading her back to the house.
“Why do you do this to yourself, Signora? The Don never listens to you anyway,” the younger woman asked, worriedly.
“I know Zetta, but what am I to do? These boys are all I have left. Just look at Enzo, he's so young and already an orphan. It breaks my heart whenever I look at him; he's a good boy, Zetta. They both are,” she cried, tears welling in her eyes.
“I know Signora, I know and they know it too. You're their strength, you know; they love you and would hate to lose you,” Zetta replied assuringly.
Maria smiled at her sadly. “What good am I to them, Marco would never rest until he strips every bit of good out of them.”
“Don't say that, Signora, you don't see what I see, but with you here, things are much better. If something were to happen to you, that's when they'll truly be orphans.”
Those words and the sudden sound of gunshots seemed to spur her, because instead of going back into the house the way her trusted housemaid expected of her.
Maria storms after her husband, with Zetta right on her heels, trying to dissuade her from whatever she intends to do. The middle-aged woman's steps falter as she takes notice of what's going on.
Half of the men in the family were right outside, right in the middle was the large cage Marco had erected.
It was twice the size of a boxing ring and made of logs and hardwood, it's where he pitted the poor boys against each other.
They all range between the age of seven and fifteen, too young for his cruelty. But Marco never sees what he does as wrong.
Making them wrestle and fight each other daily, in his words it's a way to harden and mold them into strong war hardened men. And it's exactly what he intended for poor Enzo.
In front of the line of made men, lay the body of a man, he was dead she knew that as much as she knew who took his life.
The man had been bound, he was helpless against the little boy forced to take his life. Enzo held a gun in his trembling hands, looking pale as a ghost.
Anguish tore at her heart at the thought she couldn't delay his initiation. He was still shaking in fright from the gun pointed at him by another soldier.
Marco took the gun from the boy's hand, before guiding him to a chair. He stood over Enzo, who was now seated on the chair; his long hair, which he'd put in a ponytail, was now loose.
A sob slipped past her lips as Marco raised a sharp blade in his hand; she was moving before she even knew it, hands grabbed at her from behind as sobs and coughs wracked her.
“Go back inside the house Maria, before you anger the Don more than you already have,” Benedetto, Marco’s consigliere who had sneaked up on them warned.
She ignored the man, in her eyes he and Marco were birds of the same feather. Heart in her throat Maria stared at Marco as she wheezed and coughed.
Her behemoth of a husband barely spared her a glance as he hacked at the silky long hair of his youngest grandson with the blade none too gently, almost as though he was daring her to try and stop him.
Though he didn't say anything to her. The look on his face and the rigid set of his shoulders told her everything she needed to know.
He would never stop; her opinion doesn't matter to him as always. Marco does what Marco decides: it's the rules of his world.
Here he is king.
She knows he's angry that she'd dare to try and stop him that, too, in front of his men and she knew they'll be consequences for her actions.
Knowing him, he's going to hit her where it hurts most. He's going to vent his anger by punishing the two boys she loves more than life itself.
A small part of her regretted it. She wished she'd just kept quiet. But Maria had been silent for far too long that she loathed that part of her.
The part that feared this man and couldn't stand up to him. It's why she never truly blames her son Franco and admires her daughter-in-law Sofia for doing what she never could.
Even if it ended badly for her, better to live on your own terms than on Marco's mercy which to be honest was nonexistent.
It saddened her that Celia had taken after her, too gentle, too soft for this world and she'd died painfully because of it.
She glanced down at Enzo, the poor boy's face was pale, his lips trembling but there was no sign of tears anywhere on his face as clumps of his hair fell all around him, some on his shoulders and his body.
A thin line of blood trails down the side of his face and she knew Marco had cut him. He'd nicked him and he didn't care. Her tears fell fast and hard, blurring his face.
“Come Signora, you need to take your medicine,” Zetta whispered, sniffling as she helped her mistress back into the house.
