Page 66 of Waiting Game

“Things are not always as simple as they seem, Miss Santino. Yes, there is a lot of bad in the world, and yes, The Family is entangled in it deeply. But without their leaders, like your father and now your brother, there would be much more chaos. The Family police a lot of the criminals in Melbourne, who otherwise would have no one to answer to.”

“I just don’t understand it. Why can’t he leave it behind - for me?” I asked desperately. I was no longer talking about my brother, and Andreas caught on quickly.

“I can’t answer that, Miss Santino. For some of us, it’s in our blood. For some, it’s the lives we’ve lived that drive us to this side of society. I’m sure you can understand that, being raised how you were? I imagine that your brother had been brought up, training to eventually take over. So what do you think that he thinks his purpose is? After everything he had endured, everything he had seen - how could he go to anything else? Surely you’ve felt as if you don’t belong amongst this normalcy? Surely you’ve felt out of place?”

I nodded again slowly.

He was only repeating what Rome had told me, but I understood what he was saying.

For Antoni and Ren, it was both in their blood and what they had been raised for. In school, we were shunned by the other kids, and encouraged by our parents to only hang out with the children of mobsters. I didn’t have a single friend who wasn’t involved with The Family until I left, until university. So I guess that I understood how being so surrounded, so immersed in the culture and tradition of crime would be hard to escape for some.

So what made me so different?

Was I really as defective as my parents thought?

Did I simply not have it in me like my siblings did?

“Doing bad things for the sake of good does not make a bad person,” he said, giving my hand a comforting squeeze before dropping it.

I frowned as I considered his words.

“Thank you Andreas,” I said, standing, “I’ll let you rest now.”

“Visit me again, Miss Santino,” he said as I left, and I nodded.

“Of course I will,” I smiled, and shut the door behind me.

I leant against it and took in a shaky breath.

Every belief that I had held was being questioned, being challenged. I didn’t like it.

I had to admit, that even after everything that I had witnessed - I couldn’t believe that Ren, or Antoni, or Rome, were objectively bad people.

Each of them were kind, caring, selfless. All the things a good person should be.

Yet I had villianised them so much in my head - and for what?

20

Chapter 20

Ren

Larissa dropped me back at Antoni’s house after our visit to the prison. I wanted nothing more than to go home, but I knew it would still be hard for me to function properly on my own, and Antoni insisted that I stayed while I recovered.

I walked into the house which appeared empty, and I frowned, looking around.

“Hello?” I called out, but no answer.

I heard clanging coming from below me, and I followed the sound, down to the safe. Everyone was gathered there, and I heard Dimitri’s humming before I saw the rest of them. Antoni held open a duffle bag as Rome stuffed it full of ammunition, and Angel was pulling guns down off the rack and handing them to Dimitri and Robert.

Without any of them saying a word, I knew now that my father was right.

The war was only starting.

“What’s going on?” I asked, looking around the room.

“Vivielli has heard some chatter, and clued us in when we dropped,” Antoni started, “The guy you killed was-”

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