“My parents died when I was young,” he said. “Really young, like before I was old enough to even know them. I was in and out of the system after that, you know, no other family, nobody gave a shit about me. I went from foster family to foster family, and never got adopted, never had an adult look at me with anything more than annoyance and disdain.”
I narrowed my eyes and shifted in my seat. “That must’ve been hard.”
“It was, but it was also all I ever knew,” he said. “You gotta understand, I never had an adult give a shit about me. Not a single adult in my life cared about my existence, not even a little bit. I was always a nuisance, and so I acted out, got into trouble, fucked around. I met some rough guys and hung around them for a while, did some petty crime, ended up in juvie for a while.”
“How did you end up in the Leone family?” I asked.
“I met Steven after my second stint in juvie, when I was sixteen. I knew that if I kept getting caught, eventually I’d go to prison for real. So one day, I was out trying to make a buck, and I met some guys in the Leone family, just some low-level soldiers. They gave me a job, just a courier job, you know, carry some shit from here to here. But the guy I dropped off to was Steven.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “From then on, you felt like you had a family, right?”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
I shook my head. “Come on,” I said. “It’s such a cliché. I mean, you didn’t have to act out, commit crimes, you didn’t have to do any of this. These guys, these mafia assholes, they only care about themselves. They never cared about you.”
He watched me carefully and I shifted in my chair again. I knew I crossed a line and was being a jerk, but my anger flared up. I was this guy’s prisoner more or less and he was trying to tell me some sad story about his hard childhood.
Meanwhile, he was my warden, and I was the one in shackles.
“You’re probably right,” he said after a while. “They didn’t care about me, not at first. But after a while, you form bonds with these guys, even if you don’t want to. You start to care about them, start to care about their people. Steven gave me a home in his crew, taught me the value of fighting for a cause, kept me out of jail. I owe him a lot for that.”
“He turned you into a killer,” I said.
“Who says I wasn’t a killer already?” he asked, smirking at me.
I felt a chill run down my spine. “I’m not ready to write all your sins away just because you had it hard when you were younger.”
He made a dismissive gesture. “That’s not what I want.”
“What do you want, then?”
“You sit around here, acting like you have it so hard, like your whole life is over because some mobster uncle left you a few million dollars. Meanwhile, you had a mother who loved you, hell, you had a father who loved you, he just died young. You know how many kids lose a parent when they’re young?”
“I’m not acting like I have it hard,” I said, leaning forward and gripping the table.
“Sure you are,” he said. “Look at you, staring at me like I kicked your puppy.” He shook his head. “Come on, Clair. Your dad died, but that doesn’t mean the whole mafia is fucked up because of it.”
“You should hear the stories my mom tells,” I said. “Stories about you assholes hitting your wives, your girlfriends. About you assholes killing each other in the street. About you assholes getting people hooked on drugs, or stealing from small business owners, or fucking things up for everyone else then taking credit when you come in to fix your own mistakes. Don’t act like you all have it so hard when you’re going around breaking things.”
He crossed his arms and stared at me. I was breathing hard and I could barely control my temper. He was such a bastard, such a selfish asshole. He couldn’t see how his actions affected everyone around him, he could only see that he had a difficult life, like that was all that mattered.
But you don’t get a free pass. Doesn’t matter how hard things are. You turn into a killer, then you’re a killer, full stop. And killers don’t get forgiven.
“You have no idea what we do,” he said, his voice soft.
“You sell drugs, don’t you?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“You ruin lives that way.”
“I don’t make anyone take them,” he said. “That’s a choice. You want to talk about choices, but you’re going to blame me for other people’s mistakes?”