Alessio

I came into Padre's office, no knock, no pleasantries. I threw the door open, it cracked off of the wall behind it and I slammed my palms down onto his desk. "What the fȕck was today?" I yelled.

He didn't so much as glance up from his work. "Temper. Temper." He said slowly in a neutral tone. I knew all of his tones, every single one of them was a threat. "Sergio, do shut the door behind you. You know how the hallway has ears."

My flattened hands clenched into a ball. "What. Was. That?" I repeated slowly and finally he placed his pen down. He motioned to the two seats before his desk. Obviously he was expecting us together, there was usually only one chair in the room. He'd had a second brought in for us.

"Sit."

With clenched teeth I sank into the chair. Sergio on the other hand leaned against the door. "No thanks, I'm good here."

Ugo's tone didn't changes, eyes didn't sharpen, hand didn't flex impatiently. Rather he repeated himself in the exact same robotic tone. "Sit."

"Look." Sergio said flatly. "It's been a long damn time since I've taken orders from anyone in this house. I'm not about to start now. I'm only here because your royal highness demanded my court and I would so hate to see his pretty little panties get all in a bunch again. I will stand."

I almost felt bad for Sergio. Not enough as I probably should have. He'd had everything coming to him for a long time now. Aria was likely the first friendly face he had seen here since he arrived, even Madre who babied all of the boys working under Padre looked the other way when he entered. But to talk out of term to Padre? I had come in hot headed but Sergio was downright disrespectful. I was almost worried for him.

Padre leaned forward and set his laced fingers on the table.

The thing with Padre was...he was a robot. While Pietro, Ari, and myself along with so many of our men had been taught to be the exact same thing we fell short. We were cyborgs, programmed to follow orders and complete our mission regardless of any outcome, but we had emotion. We could get angry, sad, fall in love, our emotions made us a liability. We yelled, and fought, and got down right angry. But Padre? He was a robot. He was all mechanical piecing. He was cut and built from scratch for this one simple job. He was cold, hard, emotionless, metal.

No matter what Padre was doing or saying his expression remained untouched, his tone unfazed. Whether he was complimenting your dress or describing to you in great detail where he was going to brand you before shooting you in the head his tone was exactly the same. When he watched someone do something great, he would sometimes nod, and when he was severely disappointed he would shake his head slowly before turning and walking away all together, but never did his expression change. He didn't yell at his men, he didn't lower or raise his voice, he was a robot.

He didn't used to be like that though, with us that is. He was violent and belligerent. Aria and I had once invented a drinking game based on his yelling and breaking things. We only played a few times before getting so drunk we were sick and decided the game was more trouble than it was worth. When we had aged and no longer needed to be "taught" and before everyone else he was picture perfect. I hadn't heard his voice change in a damn long time, not unless he was faking pleasantries of course. When it came to work, he was ice.

So when he leaned forward and his eyes narrowed and his tone came out low and threatening towards Sergio I was shocked. I hadn't heard a change of tone from Padre since I was a child. Surely, this was the end for Sergio. "Being here for this wedding is an honor and a privilege and you will do well to remember so, should I have to remind you of your betrayal to this family and how the consequences should have been certain death. Gia and I have kindly spared your life boy and it would be in your best interest to grow very grateful, very quickly, lest you wind up on the bottom of the ravine as your actions have surely warranted."

I didn't turn to face Sergio. Even my blood had run cold. Padre had beat obedience into our heads at a young age, literally. Having seen him mercilessly murder without a double blink, having seen him gather the men who had kidnapped Madre without a single shout or lash out at them, I knew when his tone had changed it was over.

I was waiting to hear an apology from Sergio, or at to see him seated in the chair next to me, but instead I heard only the door slam. He'd left.

I was stunned.

Padre leaned back in his chair again. "Now that that has been settled." He said his tone back to it's velvet form again, his eyes didn't quite match the tone.

Padre was unnerved. To be honest, I wasn't sure if he would kill Sergio or not. He should, if it was anyone else he wouldn't have made it to the door.

"Will you have him taken care of?" I asked Padre who waved his hand dismissively.

"You needn't worry about Sergio. We will have our sit down."

I wondered if this sit down would include old wires wrapping his wrists and ankles to the chair as Padre had his fingernails plucked off. Sergio was a bastard. He was dead to us, he had turned his back on the family long ago and he knew this was a crime punishable by death.

Even still, it was hard to get the mental image of him falling out of the tree when he was five and breaking his ankle and how Pietro and I had had to carry him back to the house ourselves, it was difficult to erase his first clean up from my mind, he'd handled it better than I had but his hands hadn't stop shaking the entire time, it was difficult to forget the time I tackled Padre to the ground when we were certain he was going to kill Sergio who was not even fourteen years old yet.

I'd written Sergio out of my life and my mind a long time ago, assuming he had died and not wanting to verify it for myself. It didn't bother me, assuming he was dead. But to sit across from Padre and expect that he was going to kill him sometime in the next twenty-four hours?

I frowned.

"You had something bothering you son?"

I pulled my mind away from Sergio and back to my father and the little trick he had pulled today. "Why did you do that?" I demanded.

"What precisely are you accusing me of doing?"

"You know what." I struggled to keep my tone calm. "Ambushing us with Ari like that?"

"Why, Alessio, I thought you would be thrilled to see her."

"Well, of course I wanted to see Ari. But with Katherine there? To drop something like that on her? You knew damn well what you were doing."

"I don't know what you are talking about. I asked you to lock up my study, I assumed your wife would retreat to your room to gather herself a pair of pants. How was I to know she would accompany you?"

"You should have told me, not thrown me in there totally clueless. You should have told me and Ari and I would have met at an appropriate time and place and I would have introduced Katherine to her when the time is right."

"Temper. Temper." He warned me as I was snapping at him again.

"You told Sergio to lock up the office as well."

"Did I?"

"Don't play coy Padre. You know you did. Why you would want us all in the same place, Sergio, Ari and myself...you know what she did when he betrayed the family. You think I wanted to see them together?"

His eyes narrowed. "Yes. I do know what she did and I also distinctly remember you failing to reprimand her."

"Reprimand?" I spit out. "What was I supposed to do? Smack her around?"

"Now Alessio, you know I would never advise that. I've never struck your mother. But there are of course matters I don't just bite my tongue to either. Commandare e' melio che fottere. You've grown soft my boy. With Ari, and with this Katherine. You showed such promise when you were a boy you know. Do you remember? When I would strike you? You never even whimpered. You showed such great promise, even more than your grandfather ever had. You were tough, you were strong. And then you met the girl."

(It is better to command than to fȕck)

I clenched my jaw and forced my silence.

"If you had an issue with your Aria and Sergio, it should have been handled at the time of her unfortunate decision, wouldn't you agree?" He watched me for a moment waiting on my answer, when I failed to give one he probed further. "Well?"

"Si Padre." I finally accepted my defeat and he nodded.

"Then being that you had let her action go for so long it would seem silly to let it come into play now, si?"

"Si Padre."

"Well there you go. Now there's no reason for you to be disgruntled about Aria's and Sergio's presence together. Si?"

"Si Padre."

His desk phone rang, he glanced to it and then answered it on intercom. We could hear obvious background noise, arguing. "I hope his is important I am trying to have a heart to heart conversation with my son here." He said to the phone.

"Sir, we have Sergio trying to leave the premises."

His eyes turned back to mine. "He is not to leave."

"Yes sir."

Padre smiled condescendingly to me as he spoke. "Do whatever you must. Sergio is not to leave until I've had a sit down with him as well."

"Yes sir."

The sound was unmistakable, I knew it well, I had done it enough times, experienced it enough, there is a certain crack sound a gun makes when it comes in contact with bone. Usually it's done to the jaw for effect or the head to knock the victim out. In any case, the sound is unmistakable.

"Sergio never was quiet like you when struck." Padre said lacing his fingers together and resting his hands on the desk. The commotion on the other line was only louder, he was fighting back obviously. There were two men on the inside of the door and two on the outside and another pair of two at the gate, meaning there was anywhere between two to eight men fighting against him now. "But the thing about Sergio, and I am sure you are well aware of this." He glanced to the phone when it grew abruptly quiet and then back to me. "He is foolish, but he has always been far more courageous."

Sergio had been known as a coward and a traitor since I was sixteen. To hear Padre call him courageous now, it was surprising. It was...alarming.

It was true.

Sergio had done what I had never had the courage to do.

"I think we are done here now, wouldn't you agree?"

"Padre. If you do anything to try to come between Katherine and myself-" I paused, because there was little I could really say to him. He was my father after all.

"Come now boy. I've taught you plenty about how to properly threaten someone. Don't pretend as though you can't finish your thought now just because I am your father. This weakness is not what I have taught you. Spare no mercy, ever."

I frowned. "If you try to separate us, I will take every single torture technique and crass display you have shown me and I will kill you with them."

He smiled. "There's the monster I raised."

---------------------------------------

Hey readers!

I've been on a bit of a writing kick, unfortunately it appears to be dwiddling down. Was going to hold off until Monday with this update but eh, I just plain didn't feel like it.

If you guys haven't remembered to submit questions for Character's magazine please do so! You can find the link on my profile, my facebook, twitter, etc.

Lots of votes and comments and perhaps I can bang out another chapter soon (; Spoiler alert, it'll be another chapter in Alessio's POV!

Where are all of my conspiracy theorists? What's your opinion on Sergio now?