Mafia Legacy

Chapter Thirty Six-Luca

"How did you get involved with Whitaker?" I asked, kneeling in front of Carlo. He was weak, and barely able to hold his own head up. I had sent Marco and Charlotte to get him some food and water a little bit ago, but he wasn't interested. He was content to just sit here and waste away. It was like he had lost all of his dignity and self respect over the years, and he saw death as an easy way out. At this point, he wanted me to kill him, and that was fucking irritating me. He had put me in an impossible situation.

Carlo shrugged. "He found my DNA somewhere. Matched it back to the body and brought me in for questioning. From the very beginning, he was out for you. Typical really. Everyone around just wants to use me to get to you."

"What did he say, exactly?" I asked, trying to keep him on track. He'd made is clear that somewhere over the last several years, our friendship had evaporated and he had grown such resentment for me that he couldn't see anything else. It was heartbreaking, really, but it was even worse to see him like this and know he had no intention or desire to fix things. Both for himself and between us.

"That he knew I worked for you. That he was in a position to make certain shit go away if I agreed to help him. It's been a while in the making. When I came to visit a year ago, I planted the gun in your office. He's been watching you. All of you."

I had pretty much expected that. Whitaker was vying for a run at governor and big arrest like me could have solidified a win. Carlo was a pawn, and that was it.

"Can we stop this bullshit, Luca?" Carlo groaned, rubbing his forehead. "Nothing is going to change what happened. I know what you have to do. Just do it and get it over with. I've known this was coming for a long time."

I glanced back at the Angelo, Marco and Char before standing up. Char had tears in her eyes, and honestly, Marco and Angelo were close themselves. This was a terrible situation and the longer it went on, it just got worse. Shaking my head, I stood up and walked out of the cell. I needed a break myself.

"So?" Marco asked. "What's the plan?"

"What do you want to do? You're the one with a bullet in your leg." I ran my fingers through my hair in frustration. I really was at a loss here. Carlo was right. What I should do is kill him. We should all take a turn on him and then, when we finally got bored with seeing him suffer, we should kill him. And at any other point in my life, that was probably what we would have done. But so much had changed over the last 20 years. This wasn't black and white, and putting someone I once cared about through that kind of turmoil was heavy. Especially considering the headspace Carlo was in.

What he did was terrible. It was the deepest and most personal of betrayals. But he was suffering and as pissed off as I was at him, I couldn't bring myself to kill him with a clean conscious. Until I knew he was absolutely, one-hundred percent beyond help.

Marco let out a heavy sigh. "I don't know. This is one time I'm glad you're the boss and not me." A smile tugged at his lips, lightening the mood a little bit.

"Char?" I turned to her. Charlotte had become somewhat of a moral compass for me over the years. She understood the intricacies of the mafia, but she had such a beautiful and pure soul that the right thing usually fell on some sort of continuum with her.

She bit her lip, looking back and forth between all three of us, and finally, letting her gaze fall on Carlo.

"You want to know the truth?"

I nodded. Of course I did.

"I want you to kill him." Her response caught all of us off guard. "I want you to make him feel the same agony he has put all of us through the last few months. All of our families have suffered because of him. He almost killed Marco. He broke into my home. He let the two of you rot in prison for weeks, all because he is afraid to take responsibility. He's using you as a copout. I want him to feel as scared and hopeless as I have. I want him to be sorry and to beg for forgiveness."

I stared at her completely wide eyed. This was the very last thing I had expected from her.

"But most of all, I want the old Carlo back." She sighed. "And I don't think that any of us can walk away from here feeling right if we don't do everything we can to try to help him, and then deal with his betrayal after that."

There was my girl. She was worrying me for a second there, but now I knew exactly what she had been doing.

"I think we should send him to rehab. A long and intense program where he has to work through his demons and get himself better. Because you know, the worst pain Carlo will ever feel is when he is in his right mind again and he realizes what he's done to us. The old Carlo wouldn't have done that for all the money or notoriety in the world, and when he finds that person again, he's going to go through his own personal hell without any help from the four of us."

Everything she said made sense. I couldn't imagine when he got clean and realized the ramifications of what he'd done. By the looks of him, I was willing to bet he hadn't gone a single day without using in several years. We should have seen it sooner, but he had always been the partier. Now I realized that was his way of hiding his real problem.

"I think she's right." Angelo said. "I know I won't be able to look at myself in the mirror if I let him die this way. Not after all the shit he's bailed me out of over the years."

"Okay. I'll send him to rehab. But when he gets out, even if he's his old self and back to normal..."

"Even then, we can't fully trust him." Marco agreed. "So at that point, we figure out the best thing to do."

I nodded. Out of all the possibilities, this felt like the best option. We weren't deserting him; we weren't hanging him out to dry. We were rising above the bullshit, like he should have done. Carlo could go to rehab and get the help he needed, and when he returned, we would figure out what to do. There was no chance I'd ever be able to trust him in my ranks again, or even as a close friend, and that reality stung a bit. Charlotte was right. I knew working through the issues he was battling would be an uphill battle for him, and it would be worse than any pain I could inflict on him.

He'd being going through his own personal hell while working to get himself back, and that would be sufficient punishment.

For now.