Born a Santonio

Greed can make anyone numb to their actions. If Cass could go back in time, she wouldn’t hesitate. Anything would beat the feeling of remorse she felt every time she looked at her reflection for too long. Her family’s signature vibrant brown eyes would haunt her for the rest of her life. It would be a reminder that she was the last member of the Santonio family alive. Her deep breath’s echo welcomed her room. Mornings seemed to be the hardest for her these days, as she found herself being plagued with endless ‘what ifs’. Walking through the empty estate, her stomach continued to drop. It was a constant battle between Cass and reality. Maybe her mother would call for her, scolding her for her lack of appetite, or uninterest in the latest fashion trends. It could be that she was looking for her younger sister Veronica’s fierceness and the loud laughter that would eventually lead her to laugh as well. She was looking for her little brother’s obnoxious playing in the room next to hers when she would stay with them in the estate in the countryside. Reaching the kitchen, Cass was hoping to find the normalcy of six months ago. A time where she could be her own person and enjoy her small family. It is the little things that you miss the most Cass thought to herself. Her family had been slaughtered. They were gone, leaving her to carry on the family name and business. If she had known the consequences of losing the thick stack of documents her father had given her for safekeeping, she would have burned them herself. Those documents contained Italy’s five wealthiest families and their illegal activities. “Look where it left us Papá,” she said out loud into the now emptiness of what was her childhood home. If anything Cass’s true flaw had been in not paying attention to who she could trust. She never even paid attention to her father's involvement with the other Italian Families in Florence. She had only known the life of luxury and the benefits that it had provided. Alejandro Santonio had been many things but innocent had not been one of them. Cass had been twenty-four at the time, working as one of her father's personal attorney's when she fell upon crooked documentation. Alejandro had silenced her with a heavy look when she had gone into his office personally to discuss the matter. She held his gaze disobediently, questioning her father's involvement with one of the other Italian families. “You are bold to mention the Costa name in my presence girl,” he had said with disdain. “ We hold no ties to them and will never as long as I breathe, you know better,” Alejandro commanded into the air. It had been true, Cass had known better than to disrespect her father by mentioning the Costa name regarding his business. The two families had always hated each other for as long as she could remember. There had always been violence but as the eldest daughter, she had always turned the blind eye. That had been the first time she had addressed her father of the Costa family. The second time had been when he had given her the documents containing dirt on the other families of Italy. At the time only two other people had known of the whereabouts of those documents other than herself. Her father who had been the one to give them to her, and her best friend Gabriel Romano, a member of one of the families listed. They had gone missing when they both had flown to Greece for a Wedding. Shortly after that, her family had too. In a panicked state, she had told Gabriel why her missing bag had been important. Cass had been reassured by Gabriel that they would find her missing bag. Not knowing that exactly one week from that trip her family estate in the countryside would be raided, killing almost all five members of the Santonio name. Sitting down at the empty table Cass looked around. She might have had cooks, drivers, bodyguards, and other employees at her beck and call but they could never give her the company that she yearned for from her family. Cass sat in silence thinking of the course of action she had been pushed to take. Gabriel had broken more than her trust. She had suspected that he had gone to his family when she had informed him of the documents incriminating his family. What Cass failed to realize was that he would break their bond and have her family killed. Yesterday her father's men had discovered that Gabriel had willingly gone to the Costa family. Both traitorous names left a bitter taste in your mouth. It had taken five months to put most of the pieces together, six months of recovery. The remorse she felt was too intense to ignore. It was an intense rage that you feel every time you breathe. Cass's heart had been ripped out the way the bullet on her left shoulder had. Picking up her shoulder slowly she could feel where the bullet had penetrated. She had almost died the night of the attack. She had been out in the garden on her computer, finding details on one of her father's investments in Rome when she heard her little sister's shriek, followed by her mother's wails. Cass had gotten up from the garden’s table looking at the direction of her lit up home. Her mother had been screaming in Italian for someone to let her sister go. It hadn’t been until a prominent gunshot had echoed through the vast countryside that her mother began to scream in a manic state, crying for her dead daughter. With wide eyes and a shaky hand, Cass covered her mouth to muffle her sobs. Multiple gunshots had gone off shortly after. Cass couldn’t move. She could only hear them looking for someone else, looking for her. For the first time in her life, Cass had been paralyzed. She thought of her little sister and brother, how they would never get to go to school and graduate, have kids, or simply have a future. Hugging herself Cass feared for her life. With the little strength left she sent a text through her computer to one of her neighbors for medical assistance, Cass understood she had little time before she would be found. Her neighbor was 7 miles away. Footsteps startled Cass as she shut her computer. Maybe she would make a run for it and live as she hoped. Hope had been the only thing she had left. Cass began to make a run for it, sneaking into a hidden path. If she made it to the road she had a chance to survive. It wasn’t until Cass reached the gate that she realized that all of the estate’s security had also been slaughtered. In her moment of hesitation, another gunshot rang through the night. Cass fell immediately from the impact of the gun wound. All that she could focus on was the intense hot pain that she felt in her shoulder. With squinted eyes, she could see the face of the youngest Costa son, Javier speaking into a phone stating that all targets had been neutralized. Cass looked at the night sky to seek comfort. She was not ready to die, she chanted in her head. Her world began to get hazy, her world getting dark. ‘Loss of blood,’ she thought. Before succumbing to the darkness Cass wondered if her family had felt the same if her mamá had feared death. The next time that Cass would wake up would be in an empty hospital room. She remembers waking up because it had been the first time she had been truly alone in the world. When she asked the nurse for the television to be turned on, her family had been on the news. “Santonio family of five dead,” she heard, seeing all five pictures of her family on the monitor. Cass slowly started to cry. She had been the only member to survive. Wiping away a tear Cass sits back on her chair. Six months is a long time to think. A long time for someone who is thought to be dead to take revenge. The Costa family may have taken action, but it had only been a response to Gabriel’s information. Cass wanted blood, an eye for an eye and she was going to avenge her family.