FLASHBACK TO FEW YEARS AGO
LEONARDO
"Dad!" My voice cracked under the weight of years I never spoke out. "I won't keep living in Lorenzo's shadow! I want a life of my own. You gave him everything about him, the name, the power, the legacy. Everyone out there knows him as the mafia heir, the golden son, the face of our empire. No one even knows I exist. Why?! Why did I have to be buried alive while he lived like a king?"
My father didn't even look my way. He just lowered his whiskey glass and pointed at me with his eyes sharp and cold. "Will you shut your mouth and sit your heart down there."
The words hit me harder than a slap. I blinked, trying to understand if I had misheard him. But not that tone of that ice of that rejection was the same I had felt since I was a child.
Why did he always hate me?
Why, from the moment we were born, had Lorenzo been the son of pride and I the son of silence?
