Capitolo XXI

I stared at Lucas, my breath shaky and deep. I stared at him like he just slapped me across the face with his strong, calloused palm as my skin crawled and the world around me suddenly froze. Why would Lucas tell me this? Of all the things he could have said, why did he tell me that he was half Russian? Like me. But even worse, Aurelia’s bastard son. The enemies' blood runs in us. He's one of the most respected men in the Mafia; young men looked up to him and the old ones pat him on the back wishing they were as righteous and notorious as he was. But he had been faking it. Gerlando, the father he grew up knowing, hid it. So did his mother. Did Harriet know, too? 

And in that moment, hatred rose in me from the surface like a boiling kettle. I hated it that he was just like me, yet he and his family were spared from humiliation and did not become outcasts. Lucas De Marchi should have had the same