Page 9 of The Diávolos: Part One
Antium City has been my home for the past four years.
Now, I’m going back to my own personal hell.
“A couple of times in your life, it happens like that. You meet a stranger, and all you know is that you need to know everything about him.” —Lisa Kleypas
Three weeks later
It’s Thursday, and I’m getting ready to go to the shooting range. It’s funny how this is the only consistent thing in my life since I moved back to Antium. I never used to train before; I didn’t need to.Or so I thought.
I moved out of my childhood home four years ago because I craved normality. Now, everything triggers memories of a time when I was always being watched. I couldn’t even be in my own home without the worry of getting involved in affairs I did not care to know or witness. I wished for a life where mybabaand his cronies didn’t surround me. I didn’t want the life of a mafia princess then, and I still don’t.
After losing my mother, I leaned on my father for love and support. When I was a young child, I thought he was loving. But that wasn’t reality. He was the furthest thing from what a loving man should be. I came to know who he really was through whispered conversations behind closed doors, with my ear pressed tightly at the crack. I became more aware of what he did and what kind of person he was—cold and calculated. I was privy to information that not many people knew, simply because I lived in his house. He conducted shady business, and he murdered people. He never came right out and told me, but between the eavesdropping and what Aria would tell me about her father, it was obvious. After going back and forth with information, we figured out that mybabawas a Godfather, and that hers was his second-in-command. We still didn’t understand what it meant to be in the mafia, but we knew they did unspeakable things.
This is when everything started to unravel. Once I pieced together who he really was, I couldn't help but wonder if he had ever really been honest with me. He lied and killed for a living. He clearly was capable of anything, with no regard to the consequences. Which led me to thoughts of my mother. He never told me the details of what had happened to her, so I started looking into her death. I would sneak into his office when he wasn’t around, looking for any information about her untimely demise. I searched every drawer, filing cabinet, and every book in his library, savagely tearing his office apart, only to put everything back the way it was so that no one would notice. I would get so angry when I couldn’t find anything, and it just fueled my rage. It made me want to dig deeper. I asked him questions that he didn’t want to answer, which made him treat me differently. He told me that if I was so interested in his affairs, he would make sure I was involved in them.
And that was a promise he kept.
From then on, he started punishing me for my curiosity. He made me sit in meetings where he would execute people for doing or saying anything against him. He brought me along when he conducted business and made me watch as he and his goons would tear fingernails off men one by one, take hammers to their knees, or cut off digits to extract information, prove a point, or heck, just for fun. I saw things no twelve-year-old girl ever should.
One dreadful night, I convinced him to let me stay in the car while he met with some of his partners. It was late, and we were in the parking lot of an abandoned property. I could barely see a thing through the darkness other than a yellow flickering light inside the building. I squinted and could see my father standing with three other men, engaged in conversation.
I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings when I heard the car door open on the driver’s side. A large man wearing a ski mask climbed into the car.
I panicked.
The keys were still in the ignition, so I threw myself over the middle console to remove them. He grabbed my hair and pulled. I started to scream, hoping my father would come running. He didn’t, and I was left to fend for myself.
In the midst of all the chaos, I remembered he always left a gun in the glove compartment, so I reached over with my free hand. The man was too preoccupied with trying to take the keys away from me to notice. I had never fired a weapon but had seen my father and his men do it many times before. I cocked the gun, praying that it was loaded, aimed it at my attacker’s head, and fired.
The sound was deafening in the small space, and my eardrums felt as if they were going to explode. The man’s grasp on my hair loosened as he went limp. I shot up from my seat and glued myself to the door. There was blood splattered everywhere, including on my face and clothes. Shivers racked my body as I waited for someone to come find me.
I hadkilledsomeone. I’d felt his soul exit his body as his head hung over the steering wheel. One moment I was fighting for my life, the next I had taken one. I couldn’t believe it. Even though it was in self-defense, I was disgusted with myself for being capable of such a horrific act.
Turns out, I was more like my father than I thought.
I lifted my bloodied hands to my face and sobbed, the adrenaline seeping out of me and its withdrawal making me disoriented. What had I done?
No one was coming to help me. I reached over to the door handle and let myself out of the car, walking unsteadily to where my father was so deep in conversation, he hadn’t even noticed his daughter had almost been abducted. Someone saw me, and said something, causing him to turn. His face showed no emotion, no worry, no concern, no fear. As I got closer, I recognized one of the men as my grandfather.
“What happened,engoní?” My grandfather asked, his tone flat.
“A man tried to drive away with me in the car,” I stuttered, my lips quivering. “I–I killed him,”I whispered. I had done something wrong, but I didn’t regret why I’d done it. The attacker was going to kidnap me, and God knows what else.
That incident confirmed my moral code. In the moment, I realized there was a difference between knowing what is right and doing what you have to do to survive.
My father simply smirked.Smirked.
“Kalí douliá, kóri mou,”he said. Good job, my daughter.
I stood there, helpless, in front of mypapoús,and two strange men, while soaked in another man's blood and brain matter. I didn’t know if I would ever be clean again, and he was…proud?
I had almost been snatched away. I could’vedied, and he hadn’t even flinched at the thought.
“As a Kouvalakis, you must learn to defend yourself,engoní. Your father won’t always be there to protect you,” my grandfather added.
Then, it clicked. It was all planned. A twisted initiation into the family.
From that day on, I began to carry a knife with me, knowing I was my sole protector.
