She was beautiful.
Ever since I first met her, when I was little but a snotty boy on some random Christmas in church, I found her beautiful, but she has never been so lovely to me than when she is holding my son.
Luca is seven, he has platinum blond hair and sapphire blue eyes, like me. No one would ever be able to deny he is of my kin, as we seem to be made of the same mould, even if he is sweet, trusting and naïve like his mother.
I love my child, with every fibre of my being, but if I am not harsh, he will never be able to carry the heavy burden of our blood.
So, he hates me. More than I ever hated my own father. No matter, Luca will eventually understand why I do what I do, just like I understood my father.
I have been happily married for over ten years, now. Liliana, my wife, has golden hair and dull green eyes, soft traits and a whisper for a voice. She is admired throughout Apulia, and onwards in Italy, for her beauty, culture and manners. They say I am a man of good fortune, and I concur.
I love my wife to insanity. However, she does not love me.
The days go by slowly, one after another, with little variance between one another. I rule the city, quench rebellions, make deals, I save and I destroy the lives of my civilians and of my soldiers, as if they were ants and I was the bored giant with the looking glass. She cares for the manor in silence and resignation, she dotes on her son, she reads and she prays to a God who will not listen to her.
I am not a good man. She was in love with someone else, and I forced her to marry me, instead, under pain of death or worse. Over the years, her enormous and forgiving heart still could not find in itself to let me in, to give me what I craved the most, even after I give it whatever it may desire, within reason. She has any material good she could ever want, I provide for her with glee, but I do not allow her freedom. Peace. Security.
To be absolutely candid, I was less than "not good". I am cruel and sadistic. I beat her, I torture her, I rape her, over sins of my own making. I took away an angel of the Lord and destroyed it, over selfishness and pain.
Liliana reserves her love and care to our son. It was the only time I ever see her smile, her expression bright and her steps full of happiness and hope. She sings to him, she laughs at him, she showers him with kisses and offers him sweets of her own making.
I hate Luca. I wish I could send him away, and I wish Liliana would never see him again, that she hated and rejected him. Just like she did me.
So, I am cruel to my son, too, and so he hates me, too.
After my wife became pregnant, I have not bedded her, but I still have needs. I have lovers and kept women in town. One of them gave me another son, Daniele, whom I brought onto the manor.
I love Daniele, and I am kind to him. I allow him to do as he pleases, but he is not to speak to Liliana, he is not to see Liliana, and if this is not avoidable, he is to treat Liliana with the utmost respect and reverence.
He loves me, but I do not love him as much.
Over time, I came to realize I am just like my father. Like him before me, my mother was also a Key Maiden, and she also did not love him. They were married either way. She gave him a son, and a slut in town gave him another. He was cruel and demanding to one, kind and pliant to the other. One was a monster and the other died young.
He drove the love of his life to an early grave, and so will I.
Liliana is strewn across the floor, face bloodied and marked with my hand. Luca and Daniele can certainly hear me, they fear me, but they will do nothing, and I will do nothing to them. The man I keep alive in my dungeon to keep her pliant can hear me, he wants to kill me but his emaciated figure will never manage to.
She is silent. She does not cry any longer. I will never know when I will break her beyond repair, I only know I certainly will one day.
Rosberg was right. Mafia corrupted the Falzone line beyond any recognition, beyond any repentance. We are no longer worth the position of keepers of the grave, and what once was a symbol of enduring and all-consuming love, became just a mark of possession and destruction.
What can I do? It is all I ever known. Pain, hurt, obsession, violence, coercion and manipulation. I am a man, just a man, and I deserved love, too. I wanted love too, and so I took it. By force, when it made itself necessary.
Yet, I still want it, and I still do not have it. I will never have it. I will always want it, but I will always try to take it. No matter what I have to do, no matter what I have to shatter or the tools I must use.
It does not matter. Money, power, blood, politics, morality and God. Nothing matters. I love my wife to insanity, but my wife does not love me in return. So, I torture her.
If the world is fair and God exists, which I know for a fact that does, I am up for great suffering in the afterlife.
It is nothing more than I deserve.