A/N: Don't own NCIS, don't earn any money writing about the characters either.
Beta: Mike91848 Thanks Mike you have made this a much better read. Any mistakes are mine alone.
CINDERELLA Revisited
Chapter 9
Antoney Steven DiNozzo
Steve DiNozzo sat in the leather recliner with his feet resting on the footrest, his barely touched drink in a Baccarat crystal glass in hand; a scotch and soda concoction Janes had handed him. His briefcase was placed neatly on the floor by his shoes. One of the signs of his obsessive compulsive disorder that always returned full force when he entered this cursed house.
Steve leaned back and closed his eyes wearily. He just couldn't settle down. He got some relief from the choking sensation when he loosened his tie but the feeling of having a noose around his neck being inexorably tightened did not go away.
His monthly meeting with his father had brought him to the mansion tonight to go over the company business. As CEO, Steve ran the company brilliantly, not only because of his own skills, but because the company's board of supervisors consisted of very smart, astute people that he had no problem listening to and taking their advice if warranted. Even so, his dad, though retired, still liked to be kept abreast of business related things with his son.
Steve took a sip of his drink, thinking about things other than the clear and sparkling mini icebergs he was staring at floating in his glass when Janes slipped in noiselessly and interrupted his disquieting thoughts.
"Your father just called, Master Steve. He says he's still in the air circling New York and probably won't be home for another three hours. He would like you to stay the night and discuss the new project with him in the morning over breakfast. Your room is ready if you would like to retire, sir."
Sighing, Steve drank the last of his cocktail and handed the glass to Janes. He stood up and put his jacket back on and reached for his shoes.
"Tell father I'll see him next week, this can wait until then. And Janes?"
"Yes, Master Steve?"
"Janes, it's been thirty years."
"Sir?"
"Don't you think you could leave off the masters and sirs and just call me Steve?"
"Nothing has changed, sir."
"Nothing has changed. Right." Steve studied the straight backed, grey-headed octogenarian with gentle lines and valleys in his face and his dark eyes still clear. Although officially retired, Janes would occupy his two room suite in this house until his death, as a provision made by Anthony, Sr. But he still liked to keep himself busy about the house giving personal attention to Anthony DiNozzo when needed and doing a bit of gardening, producing the excellent pesticide free vegetables he grew.
The thing is, Janes had never had any affection for him or Anton, as had none of the staff, really, until his mother had slowly been able to force the old school of servants away to seek better pastures, except for Janes.
Sighing again, Steve reached for his briefcase and walked briskly to the door.
"Goodnight, Janes."
"Goodnight, sir."
Steve walked the hallways quietly. If his mother was home, he had no intention of notifying her of his presence. It was too late and he was too tired to play her games. He had made it to the foyer when he heard his mother's voice coming from the atrium across the hall. He didn't want to listen as he preferred to remain blissfully ignorant of anything to do regarding his mother.
He quickened his step and had made it to the front door when he heard something that made him pause and his nerves tingle with that same nervy feeling he had had all day. He heard his mother talking on the phone through the partially open door, and listened to the one-sided conversation.
"That is not my fault. You should not have made promises until you had those papers in your hand.
"But, Ralph, I'm not dealing with any of them! This is you're mess, through no fault of my own. I paid you quite a bit of money to procure a kidney for Gregor, a lot of good that did. What you did with that money, or how you lost it, I should say, is not my concern!
"Ralph, please, in spite of your failure, I was able to get Gregor's name put at the top of the list for a kidney when the time arrives by begging and bribing people who aren't good enough to lick my boots. But it's done.
"If you're so anxious to get that property, go get it from the scum yourself. You have his address. Yes, that's it, Tony DiNozzo. I'm sure you don't need my permission, do whatever you want. I just don't want to hear about it. Now there's no reason for us to have to talk to each other again! Our business is over."
His mother hung up the phone and her high heels clicked on the stone tile as she made her way out of the atrium. He braced himself for the confrontation.
"Antoney? When did you arrive? Don't tell me you're leaving already?" She swarmed at him with such kinetic energy it was like the queen bee and all her drones together to overpower him as she reached up to kiss his cheek and run her hand through his hair.
He stepped back to avoid the gesture and she frowned at his obvious rejection, but made no comment about it.
"Who is Ralph and why have you given him Tony's address?"
Angela looked coyly through her lashes at him and slipped her arm through his as she began to lead him to her tea room.
"I'm hungry, Antoney. I missed dinner waiting on your father and now he's not coming. He'll probably eat at the club. Come, have a snack with me, we haven't had a chat in ages. Tell me all about what you have..."
"Mother?! What have you done? Who is going after Tony, and why?"
His mother screwed up her beautiful face in annoyance and pouted at him for yelling as she looked around the room.
"Is Anton here with you, Antoney?" She was stalling as she calculated what to tell him that would cause her the least amount of blame.
Yeah, where was Anton when you needed him? He seemed to be the only male still affected by her displays of distemper.
"No, mother. Anton is not here. Now what…?
"Antoney, I dislike being yelled at especially by my own son, but I realize you are still under so much stress being so recently divorced and finding out in such a bitter way that Ann was cheating on you.
"So, I will forgive you this one time. Now, I wanted to bring some things to your attention, and I would prefer that we talk quietly over a light meal rather than stand here in the foyer airing our business in front of the servants.
"But you are being stubborn, as usual, so I have no choice, really. My issue is with Ann. I have invited Ann and the children over for lunch several times and she has had flimsy excuses for not attending, but if she does not want to come, there is no reason why she cannot have the children dropped off and..."
"Mother, are you nuts? Ann hates your guts and you know that after what you did! And a condition of my getting the kids on the weekends is that they never set foot in this house or within fifty feet of you!
"Antoney!" Steve watched Angela forcefully get her usually volatile temper under control by an act of sheer will.
"Antoney, I wasn't going to bring this up right now, but since you are being so demanding and hurtful, I think it only proper. Son, don't you think the children would be better off living here with your father and me? They would have a much more stable..."
The horror of the thought of his precious children being raised in the same house with this monster...
"Mother! Let me try and get this through your head one more time!" Steve answered more quietly, patiently. This was important that she understand.
"You will be rotting in your grave in hell before my children step foot in this house again. And remember this, neither Ann nor I are a fifteen year old teenage girl who you can manipulate and terrorize into giving up her baby and then guilt her into committing suicide, as you did with Gregor's mother! I'll see you dead first, Mother. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!"
If looks were a gun, bang, he'd be dead. His mother stared at him with cold, calculating, revenge filled eyes, acknowledging the threat as real as their beating hearts. His children were nonnegotiable.
To Steve, this woman, his mother, was the ultimate destroyer of children's souls. She would contaminate and ruin any child she touched.
His mother saw him as a man she could not control. And to a man she could not control, she became a formidable enemy. Her obsession with Tony over the years proved that point beyond a doubt. She could never bend him to her will, even as a small child, he was his own person. Tony's inner strength and goodness drew people to him, made people want to help him until he could become strong and stand on his own.
Her unholy obsession had continued with her son, Anton, his poor little misguided, genius brother...and Anton's son, Gregor, the entitled. Shaking these thoughts out of his head, he tuned back in to his mother's voice.
"Tony has the right of possession from your grandmother to some land I negotiated with to bargain for a kidney for Gregor. The deal fell through but the man still wants the land."
"His name?"
"Ralph, Ralph Kohls. Now, you have what you want, please leave, Antoney. You have given me a headache."
"Gladly, mother."
He went around the carport driveway to the back of the estate where he had parked his car. As CEO of a multibillion dollar company, he had the limousine, the personal driver and the bodyguards, but sometimes, he just wanted to shift gears and accelerate a big powerful car himself. His bodyguards could follow discretely behind.
Steve drove to the private airstrip and boarded his Learjet and filed a flight plan with air traffic control. When given the okay to take off, the unsettling feeling he had had all day finely took tangible root in his gut. Once and for all, he was going to get some answers and he knew time was of the essence.
Steve decided to take a cab to the address he had looked up on his computer. He had had Tony's address ever since Tony had bought the place in a suburb of DC. It was easy finding him because he hadn't been hiding and Steve had been very thorough in his search right down to the minutest detail.
Million dollar homes on half an acre of land with several natural ponds and bird sanctuaries. Fifteen minutes away was the small but trendy downtown area with the usual coffee, gourmet and specialty shops that suited the upscale clientele. The drive to work was twenty minutes on the freeway, fifteen depending on traffic.
The land had formerly belonged to a millionaire who had stipulated in his will that the remaining family members could not sell the estate and the land for 100 years after his death. The estate had fallen into disrepair and the land overgrown with vegetation.
One hundred years later, the only living descendants, two elderly spinster sisters, gave up keeping the land in the family and sold it to a land developer who tore down the mansion and parceled the land into a half to three acres per plot. Tony had bought the six thousand square foot, one story home from a retired couple moving west to be with their daughter. He had divided it into a duplex with him occupying one and renting out the other. Very good investment he had made, too, the property probably had doubled in value since then.
Steve had thought it incongruous at the time but totally fitting that the mad man who had owned the estate had built secret passages and underground tunnels from the mansion that went for miles and that had never been closed off, and that Tony, who had grown up escaping in them more often than not, had stumbled on the place and bought it.
Steve continued to think along these lines as the cab driver dropped him off in front of the house. He was annoyed with himself for avoiding the obvious anxiety he was feeling over confronting his older brother whom he had not seen in over sixteen years and hadn't spoken to since he was ten. So he focused on the intimate knowledge, the mundane, the humdrum subject of...his brother's real estate.
Steve dismissed the cab and walked to the front door of the dimly lit duplex. He rang the doorbell several times and waited. The hall light came on and the peephole door opened and what looked like the barrel of a gun was pressed against the opening, plainly visible and a man's voice yelled out, "Who is it, dammit?"
"It's me Tony, Steve."
"Steve? Steve who? I don't know any Steve who would be fool enough to be knocking on my door at mid..."
"It's Antoney DiNozzo."
Steve said and waited for some reaction. There was no response for several minutes and then the door was flung open and Steve was confronted with the brother he hadn't seen for years. The brother who was eyeing him with hostile, suspicious and unwelcoming eyes, and who was checking the area behind him, looking for - who knew what.
Steve noted absently that they were about the same height but Tony was heavier, more muscular, and that Tony's weapon was still in hand but thankfully pointed at the ground. Tony spoke first.
"What do you want and more importantly, are you alone? Usually when Anton pays me a visit, he brings his own company, and it's not for a cup of coffee and a Danish!"
"I'm not Anton, Tony. May I come in?" Steve wasn't keen on standing out in the open doorway with the light pouring out, exposing them for all the world to see with his spidey senses on alert.
"Look, for the last time, my kidneys are not up for sale, so if that's why you're here you can turn around and go back wherever the hell you came from."
Tony stood blocking the door and Steve knew the door was that close to being slammed shut in his face. He couldn't allow that to happen. He came here for some answers and he was going to get them! As Tony shrugged his shoulders in a 'fine, if that's the way you want it' gesture when he got no further response from Steve, he stepped back and started to close the door.
"I didn't ruin those clothes! Dammit, Tony, it wasn't me!
"...Wha, what did you say...?" Tony stammered. His face blanched and he looked appalled that Steve would even mention that taboo subject.
"You heard what I said! If that's what you've been blaming me for all of these damn years, you've been wasting your hate on the wrong person. I didn't have anything to do with those clothes being ruined, okay! It was mother, all mother!"
Steve was sick of the ridiculousness of thirty years of silence and avoidance. If nothing else, he had done his part and the ball was in Tony's court now. Janes could stop looking at him like he was the condemned bound for hell.
Tony licked his lips as though suddenly dry and stared at Steve. He answered him hesitantly, now unsure...
"It was you! You were laughing when I came down those stairs, I saw you laughing!"
Tony leveled suddenly vulnerable eyes on Steve and a cloud passed over his face as though he was uncertain. He looked lost in thought, as though trying to remember something...
Steve remembered in concise detail every last second, every word yelled, every scream echoed, every snap of a bone, his father's sweaty brow, his mother's ever gleeful, hateful smile in a roomful of quiet frowns, the bluish sparkling glow of the chandelier, as though it had just happened this morning.
"Mother wouldn't let me wear my glasses. She said I had to look perfect and I hated wearing those contact lenses she made me wear so I didn't put them in.
"At first, all I could see was you coming down the stairs and I was finally going to get to show you off to my friends because you could kick all their asses playing basketball. So I laughed until I saw the shocked faces, and father went after you and was choking you and beating you but I still didn't know why. You were invited to attend, that's what you said!" Steve felt himself getting more angry, hurt and frustrated. Everyone knew the answers but him.
"That is the clearest memory of my childhood, Tony. But I'm still confused. I don't get it! What was wrong in that cursed house? Why was he beating you? Why, Tony? I want answers dammit. Me, Antoney Steven DiNozzo, I want to know. It's been thirty fucking years of my life on standstill and I want to know why!"
Tony shook his head as though coming out of a fog and took a step back at Steve's yell. Steve's sudden appearance, his impassioned, angry plea for answers had Tony start to speak about something that he just remembered.
Flashback
Antoney Steven DiNozzo spelled out his name in perfect childish print.
"Mother says my name should be spelle Y, Tony, not yours." said six year old Antoney. "She said that your mother stole the name before I was born and now father won't make you give it back."
"That's stupid," said Tony with pencil in mouth as he was busily trying to finish his math questions before the tutor said time was up.
"I'm telling mother you said she was stupid and you won't give Antoney back his H!"
Five year old Anton sat on the floor with his bubble maker, a reward for finishing his assignment before either of the other boys were halfway through theirs. The teacher said all of the boys were smart but Anton was well above average in intelligence, possibly genius level, and all his classes were accelerated. But he was still the bratty little brother to Antoney and Tony.
"Shut up, Anton, before I pour bubbles all over your big fat head." Said Tony, just as the timer rang and Tony had finished all but one question. Now school was over and the boys were waiting for their nanny, well except for Tony, who still had chores to do before dinner.
"Mother's not..." started a pouting Anton, before Antoney bowled him over and got up screaming at the top of his lungs.
"Let's play pintos and palominos, yeah, I'm the palomino this time," and he starting horsing around on his hands and knees whinnying and throwing his front hoofs in the air. He and Tony pranced around the floor on all fours doing mock battles to see who was the strongest steed.
"I wanna play, I wanna play!" whined a left out Anton.
"Okay, okay, shut up, will ya. You can be the jockey. Come on, Antoney, help him on my back and you could use your bubble wand like the whip but don't hit me for real, okay, Anton? Gee, Anton, you need to lose some weight, little bro, ughrrr.
"On your mark, get set, go, the race is on."
And they were having so much fun racing around and tumbling into each other and yelling and Anton valiantly clung to Tony around the neck and stayed on his horse declaring him the winner in all things and they laughed and screamed and laughed.
"What is going on here?" And that quick and it was over. The stepmother had come. And that was the last time Tony could remember having any moments with his little brother's, moments of childish happiness and joy and peace.
End of flashback
"Do you remember that day, Antoney?"
Steve had listened, awed by the beauty of the memory he had not retained, as Tony related it to him out loud while they stood in the moonlit, cool night with the artificial light glimmering from the open door revealing the only two people under the stars at that moment along with the hiding eavesdropping crickets and the snoopy fireflies.
"That's what I remember most clearly. After that day I was sent away, things became vague, unclear. The memories were still there in my nightmares but my waking moments were like a void happening in my mind."
Tony stood back from the door and reached to rub his forehead then remembered the gun in his hand. He let out a loud frustrated curse and stepped back into the house and beckoned with his gun hand which, Steve took as invitation to step over the threshold into Tony's house.
Steve DiNozza was still in shock that he had gotten this far into his brother's awareness after having been the neglected middle child all his life. His father was sternly silent when it came to his first born son. He had relinquished his parental responsibility on paper and obviously in his mind as well because as far as outward appearances were concerned, he had no son named Anthony.
In the earlier years that may have been the truth, but since the revolving door debacle, things had changed. His father had shocked everyone especially his mentally deranged mother who was fiercely jealous over what she considered hers. Anthony, Sr's invitation to have a conversation with Tony in his suite had fallen on dumbfounded ears. And even though his father had seen the expression of repulsion at that thought on Tony's face, his father had still waited up to the crack of dawn for him to show up, but he never had.
Now, there was no overt, I must reunite, make things better scenarios. Instead, there were subtle, discrete inquiries, an occasional question, a small show of interest, but, yet, his father held back, and that was another question he was going to have answered. Why?
As Tony directed him to the living room, Steve took note of the beautiful throw rugs and a hand woven throw made into a wall mural over the fireplace. The wall mirror in the dining room had elegant silver filigree worked into the wooden frame and the chandelier had the same silver filigree and crystals.
Steve recognized these items and others; the Steinway in front of the bay window, the elegant Tiffany lamps, all of it, because they were prominently displayed in a book his mother kept in her office. A book that listed, with pictures, every item that she claimed had been stolen from her mother-in-law while she was still alive. His mother had attempted to bring charges against one Anthony DiNozzo, Jr, and have him arrested and thrown in jail for theft. The items and many others worth millions combined were never located.
Steve laughed bitterly at the irony. His mother's tales of thievery, drugging and debauchery against his older brother, and what could happen to them if they didn't listen and obey her, had he and Anton shivering in their beds at night even when Tony had been a child and had still been living in the house.
The irony was she didn't need any of that stuff. She coveting everything Tony had. She would stoop to beg, borrow, steal and lie just to take it away from him or to have him locked up somewhere where he couldn't have them either.
"Something funny?" Steve watched as his brother walked into the room from the kitchen with his cell phone at his ear and two beers in hand. He handed one to Steve hung up his phone and tossed it on the end of the sofa, before sitting down next to it.
"No, just thinking about bogeymen." Tony looked at Steve oddly before taking a sip of his beer and raising his eyebrows in curiosity.
"Okay, if it's not for my kidneys, then why are you here?"
For answers? Steve thought, but said instead,
"I may have overreacted, but Mother..."
Tony leaned forward and interrupted, "What's the bitch up to now?" And Tony braced himself as though readying for an attack.
But Steve just leaned back and closed his eyes before straightening up and plowing ahead determined to lay it all out.
"That she is, Tony..." and he was interrupted again when Tony stared at him in amazement.
"Wow! You aren't Anton, are you? The last time I called your mother a bitch, your single-minded brother and two of his friends put me in the hospital with a broken jaw and some cracked ribs for two weeks." Steve stared at his brother for a moment, then furrowed his brow and got a weird, melancholy look on his face.
"Never mind. Just suffice it to say that I'm happy I won't have to use my gun on you in retaliation because The Bitch is the only name I have known your mother by for years, just as you have been Antoney, the traitor, for years."
"Am I still Antoney the traitor, then?" Steve queried, hoping for an answer he could live with after all of this.
"No...you've explained some things and I...started to remember a little bit. I remember you jumped on his back, had him around the neck trying to get him off me. God, you were just ten years old...he flung you away like you were a sack of potatoes and I remember there was blood on your face. How could I have forgotten that?" Tony sat morosely for a moment lost in thought. Steve contemplated the finickiness of the stored things remembered. You take your chances, like throwing a pair of dice, with what comes back to mind, sometimes to haunt you or make you regret years of wasted years. He knew the feeling well.
"No one would tell me where you were." Steve said, interrupting his own thoughts of regret.
"What?"
"Everything that happened that night was my fault so no one would tell me where you were."
"Wait a minute now, that's not true..." Tony attempted to reassure Steve.
"Oh, don't worry, I finally figured it out." Said Steve bitterly, as he got up from the sofa and walked to stand with his back to the cold stone fireplace.
"None of the crap that went on in that chamber of horrors was my fault but tell that to your ten year old self. God, I hated it. I changed my name, I distanced myself from mother. Did you know that father apologized to me for what he did to me that night? But I hated him for a long time after that for what he did to you.
"When I turned twelve, mother couldn't stand it anymore. She said she was tired of me moping around and playing the martyr and I told her to send me where you were but she just laughed and sent me to a boarding school in England. It was the best thing in the world she could have ever done for me. I was glad to get the hell out of there."
Spent, Steve reached for his beer and swallowed it down quickly, then grabbed Tony's mostly full bottle off the coffee table and slugged that one down too.
"Hey, Gulpy, hold on now, take it easy." His humor getting the best of him, Tony laughed as his brother downed his beer noisily. He leaned back on the sofa, finally relaxing for the first time that evening.
"Well, now that I got that out, I guess I'm less than a monster than I thought I was for despising my mother and hating my father. I wonder what Freudian reveal my psychiatrist would make out of that. He's been trying to get me to admit my ambivalent feelings about my parents for years."
Steve rambled on nervously, hoping he hadn't blabbed too much and thus appeared weak in his brother's eyes. He was the CEO of a vast company, damn it! He wasn't weak, he just had some issues that...argh...who was he kidding?
Steve saw Tony's knowing look. He seemed to recognize how ill at ease he was over his unresolved emotional feelings and disenchanted mommy and daddy issues.
"Look, I'll be honest with you Ant...uh, Steve. I've hated your mother and father for years, and we might as well add my mother into the hate fest also. For years, I couldn't see anything but the hate, for all of you. And believe me when I tell you that Anton has made it pretty easy to keep the hate hot. So, relax, you're no sicker in the head than I am."
"Yeah? That's kinda what's freaking me out." Tony mustered a smile at Steve's attempt at humor.
"Look, getting back to Mother. I'm assuming you're aware of what's going on with Gregor, Anton's kid?" At an affirmative nod from Tony, Steve went on to tell him about the mysterious phone call his mother had with someone named Ralph Kohls over her promise to turn over some property of their grandmother's in exchange for a kidney.
"I don't know who this person is but I don't think he's working alone. I didn't have time to research this guy because I felt I should warn you first but I have vast resources I can use to find out more..."
"Yeah, don't worry about that. I have vast resources too, his name is McGee. You say the bitc...your mother gave this guy my name and address? What's he gonna do? You guys have had grandmother's estate tied up in court for years. I can't sign anything over to them that I don't have!"
"My name hasn't been on that petition since I was twenty three, since...well since the revolving door thing. I had it removed by court order. I want no part of it. If grandmother had wanted you to share her things, she would have stipulated that in her will."
Tony scrutinized Steve closely as Steve tried to hide the hurt his grandmother's lack of affection for him had caused. But Tony seemed to know.
"Don't take it personal, Steve. She just clumped you all together in her hatred of your mother, and towards the end, her dislike of your father for being a useless drunk living in a bottle."
"Yeah, he's cut back quite a..."
"Steve? Let's agree to do one thing in all this talking crap, okay? I do not want to hear anything or talk anything about your father. Can we agree on that?"
"What father?"
"Right answer man."
"Just…what happened to you after Philadelphia? I umm…came back three weeks later when I could get away looking for you. I wanted to have it out with you then, clear some things up. But you were gone so I quit looking, figured you didn't want to be bothered…"
Tony got up from the sofa to pace. He struck his knee on the coffee table as he passed by Steve. When Tony bent over to rub it, Steve heard a familiar noise he could never forget. A swarm of bees whizzed over Tony's head, and the tinkle of breaking glass.
A/N Oh, oh!
Thank you so much for reading one and all. Please excuse that I cannot answer each and every one of your messages but I do appreciate them.
