"To her, I was just her son. She didn't understand why a ten-year-old needed to know how to take a beating properly. Why pain was treated like a lesson instead of something you protected your child from." His eyes dropped. "I watched it kill her every day. She couldn't take it anymore." Luca drew in a slow breath.
"So during a famiglia meeting, she begged publicly to leave with me. She wanted to take me and Marco away from all of it." He leaned back slightly against the sofa. "I was Don's son, but that didn't automatically mean I had any future leading the famiglia. Not yet. But Don was always impressed with me. Even then."
His mouth twisted. "So Mum saw it coming. She saw exactly what was going to happen if she stayed. Eventually I would grow into someone capable of taking over. And she wanted me out before that happened. She thought she could leave."
There was bleakness in the way Luca said it.
