How Far One Will Go for Revenge?

I envy kids whose parents are still alive.

My mama and my papa, Clarabella Di Angelini and Valentino Franceschini, were murdered in front of me when I was 10 years old, by Ricardo Campogalliani, the heir of the opposing family to papa's, whose been rivals with him ever since they were born. He attacked our vacation home in Florence, with a group of ten, and shot both in the head before stabbing their hearts and slicing their throat open.

Overcome by adrenaline, horror, anger, and fear, I grabbed the two guns papa kept in the left drawer of his desk in his office, since I was hiding behind the desk, and the murder happened in that room, and putting the shooting lessons papa had forced on me since I was old enough to walk, I took advantage of how they hadn't spotted me and shot all ten in the chest and neck. Though I only managed to kill all ten, except Ricardo.

Running fast, I grabbed one of the butcher knives Ricardo used on my parents from the ground, hopped over his chest, and began to stab his chest non-stop. In the beginning he fought and desperately screamed at me, grabbing another knife from the ground and try to kill me, making a cut on my right biceps, another that crossed over my left eye from my forehead to my cheekbone, another on the left side of my collarbones, and one more, a deeper one, that went vertically from the middle of my chest to the right side of my ribs until the right corner of my waist. But I didn't feel anything in that moment, nothing but the volcano of emotions consuming me.

He stopped moving when I began to shred his throat and his skull with the butcher's knife, after leaving his chest open, his blood washing over me, covering me, blinding me.

The last thing I remember from that day my nonno's scream when he got to us, and people trying to take me off of Ricardo, trying to make me stop destroying what was left of his upper body. That is, a pudding of thrashed human meat, blood, bones, and organs.

I stayed catatonic for eight months after that. I didn't speak, I didn't react, I didn't smile, I didn't frown, I didn't cry, I didn't get up from my bed. Nonno, Mauro Franceschini, who became my and my younger brother's guardian, Giorgio Tristano who was 9 then, got all kinds of doctors to examine me, and I was diagnosed with severe PTSD. Which made me officially normal between all the heirs of Mafia families in Italy, I had been successfully traumatized for life.

My little brother was asleep when it all happened, he didn't even see the scene, he only heard what happened and saw me broken in more ways than another, and I remember hearing him crying none-stop around me, though it felt like a background sound for my numb state. I had been trained to do that, to kill, but no one expected I would have been obligated to do that so young, at the tender age of 10, and all after seeing my parents being brutally murdered in front of me.

That broke my soul forever, I was never the same after that, though I did speak after eight months. "I'm sorry," I cried, still with my eyes closed, knowing nonno and Gio were in the room with me by their scent. "I'm sorry," my entire body shook with the tears bottle up for eight months, "I couldn't protect them, I'm sorry," I begged for forgiveness, hopelessly.

That went on for three months, until all of my tears dried up, then I came the worse part. I turned cold, frost cold, indifferent aside from nonno and Gio, and even with them, I felt unable to even smile, I was just straight up broken, dry of tears, of life, and happiness. Dry of love, suddenly build to repel it.

By then I was already 11, a year had passed. When the first anniversary of their death came, I promised to get revenge and to whip out the entire Campogalliani clan with my own hands. So, I began to train harder. I trained until my hands bled from holding knives and guns, until my legs couldn't hold me up anymore, and I would only sleep by fainting from exhaustion, everyday. I began to take care of my body, to make it stronger, taking vitamins, eating, training all that and my martial arts.

But nonno didn't want me to do that on my own, he didn't think I would do it and stay alive.

So, in my 13th birthday, when I had already began forming a juvenile body after having my period at 12, I grabbed a backpack and filled with guns and bullets, put on a bulletproof vest, packed myself with knives, gas grenades, a special mask, all with my dad's gold crucifix necklace, which he had on when he died, hanging around my neck, because we may be mafia but we have faith in Dio.

Then I ran from my home, in Palermo, and went to Rome. It took me a day to get there as I was, and it was nighttime when I arrived. Taking advantage of my size, I infiltrated myself in the villa of the Campogalliani right where Aurelia Rocca-Campogalliani and Salomone Campogalliani, Ricardo's parents, Alessandra Camerini-Campogalliani his widow, Piera and Letizia his 15-year-old daughters, Terenzio and Osvaldo and Adelberto his 14-year-old triplet sons, Daniela Campogalliani his single twin younger sister, Graziella Campogalliani his younger sister, as well as Alahis Gentili her husband, with Venera and Carmela their twin daughters, and Fiorella Campogalliani, his nonna, were at. His two best friends Samuel Conterno and Dario Passarelli too.

Everyone who could possibly want revenge for what I did on him, or on what I was about to do.

Sabotaging their electricity and leaving them in total dark, I used the grenades to put them down, then I killed all their guards, underlings, and staff, in case they were loyal enough to want revenge, and then I killed every single one of them, even the kids my age, especially his children. I destroyed his parents with even more bloodlust as I attacked them.

Yes, I made them unconscious to kill them, because I knew my limitations and as a child myself, I was not gonna be able to deal with all of them awake. Well, his wife, which I left at last, did wake up and tried to attack me, but I jumped on her and broke her neck before she could harm me.

Then, I stole a car, already knowing how to drive, since I had bribed my guards to teach me in secret, even though nonno probably knew, and still drenched in their blood, exhausted, I went back to Palermo, to home. It was chaotic, everyone was after me, nonno and Gio were going insane, and as soon as got there, I felt to my knees, convulsing with exhaustion, my consciousness only lasting enough for me to say, "They are all dead, it's over," to nonno, before blacking out at his feet.

Well, he didn't take it well.

I disobeyed him, and so, he decided to throw me in the worse place possible: Scarlatti Catholic Boarding Prep Academy.

A gothic catholic barbaric academy, extremely severe and ruled by ruthless priests, where everything is prohibited and you're free will is stolen from you under the name of Jesus. I had only heard stories about the ancient academy that was founded back in 1485, in a Mediterranean Italian private island owned under the name of a Old Money priest, in the middle of a fucking forest, with no internet, no signal, nothing. And also famous for disciplining students as if they were in the fucking military.

A Catholic anarchist-style 15th century military.