The taxi ride was a false promise, a brief, silent interlude between one nightmare and the next. My father, Giovanni, sat tense in the passenger seat, his eyes fixed on the rearview mirror. My mother, Sofia, held me tightly, her body trembling with a fear that was contagious. We had left our home, but the silence between us was heavier than the suitcases we carried. The news of Vinnie's men and the roadblocks had turned the city into a cage. We were not fleeing; we were rats in a maze, and the maze was now locked.
The driver slammed on the brakes, and our car was instantly swallowed by a hail of bullets. Glass shattered into a million sparkling shards, the sound of the gunfire a horrifying, staccato rhythm. I screamed as a bullet tore through the passenger window, slamming into my father's head. I watched as his body fell lifelessly on the seat.My father's blood was a warm, sticky blanket. I lay beneath it, a corpse playing a part, my body frozen by a terror so profound I couldn't even breathe. My world had shrunk to the broken shards of glass around me and the sound of my mother's terrified sobs. The gunfire had stopped, replaced by a silence more terrifying than the noise.
Dante Corsi, Vinnie's right-hand man, was the conductor of this orchestra of horrors. He walked to our car, his footsteps deliberate, and his eyes, a cold, empty gray, found my mother. She was a beautiful woman, even then, with a dignity that a life of hardship couldn't steal. It was that dignity he now sought to shatter.
"Drag her out," Dante commanded, his voice a low, resonant rumble. They pulled her from the car, her delicate body a stark contrast to their brutality. She was dragged, screaming, to the front of a closed shop. "Undress her," Dante ordered. The men obeyed, tearing at her clothes with vicious hands. She stood there naked, her body trembling not just with cold, but with the shame and fear that radiated from her. The last remnants of her past—the small pearl earrings she had saved—fell to the ground.
Dante stepped closer, his face a mask of cold detachment. He looked at her not with lust or anger, but with the calculating indifference of a man settling an old debt.
"I remember the day you chose him, Sofia," he said, his voice flat, devoid of emotion. "I asked you to marry me. I had a good name, a future. But you chose the baker. You chose him for his gentle hands." He gestured to my father's body, his mouth twisting into a cruel smile. "And where did that get you, mia bella? What are those gentle hands doing for you now?"
Sofia's face, streaked with tears and dirt, was a portrait of raw, unbearable grief. Her eyes found mine for a fleeting second, a silent scream of love and agony. It was a look that would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life.
"Dance for us, Sofia," Dante commanded. "Dance for me."
Her body was a puppet on a string of pain. She moved not with grace, but with the broken, terrified rhythm of a woman whose dignity had been systematically stripped away. "You could have had a better life," Dante said, his voice a low, casual whisper, as if he were discussing the weather. He ran a hand through his hair, his indifference a blade sharper than any knife. "A life of ease. A life of power. But you chose him. A choice has consequences." He paused, a cruel glint in his eye. "I always get what I want."
The words were a final, chilling punctuation on his monologue. Her body finally gave out, her dance ending as she crumpled to the ground. That's when the men, "the boys," as Vinnie called them, fell on her. Their laughter was not one of joy, but of a vile, savage power. They were animals, a pack of hyenas tearing at a gazelle, their faces contorted with a vicious glee that was more horrifying than any act of physical violence.
I lay there, buried beneath my father's blood, listening to my mother's final, fading screams. The world was a blur of crimson and torment. A single tear escaped my eye, and a thug noticed, pointing with a laugh. "The little bastard's alive."
"He stays," Dante Corsi said, without a flicker of emotion. "He gets to remember."
And I did. I remember every second of it. He left me there, a boy buried beneath the bodies of his parents, surrounded by the shattered ruins of my past and the ashes of my innocence. It was all me now. The promise of a new life was gone, replaced by a singular, burning hatred. They took everything—my family, my home, my past. And in that moment, a CEO was not born; a monster was made.