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He wasn’t a moron. That was what they all didn’t get – like he was a dumb schmuck who liked fucking with people for the sake of it. When he was a kid his dad used to beat the shit out of him occasionally for misbehaving, causing “scenes,” messing with other people. This business wasn’t about making enemies, wasn’t about doing whatever you wanted, and if he was gonna take over some day that was what he needed to understand one way or another.
It wasn’t often. A last resort lesson.
Can’t get a monkey to learn otherwise.
Jesus, it was cold in here. "Hey, someone turn up the heat!"
Nobody seemed to hear.
After those kinds of lessons, he’d go take it out on someone else. Cause and effect. Kick it down the ladder. Short temper, impulse control issues, sadist, yaddayaddayadda, he’d heard it all before and it would slide off of him like so much shitty water. But call him stupid. Call him worse than his dad. In his shadow…
Vecchio hadn’t gotten on with his two-bit hustling alcoholic dad either. That wasn’t the first thing that drew them together, but it helped. No, Vecchio had – and Frankie hated to admit it – some kinda magnetism to him, back then, before he became a cop and turned his life to shit. It wasn’t that he wanted to impress him (Frank didn’t want to impress anybody he always told himself), it was just good to have someone in your corner that had something. There was a promise to him, like he'd grow up to do something great, and maybe they'd be able to do it together.
Then Vecchio went and messed it up by being nice to… whatever that kid’d been called. Some weak little faggot, the exact opposite sorta person you’d expect someone like Ray Vecchio – someone with a loser father who wanted better for himself, who had what it took to make it out if he just played his cards right, someone with promise – to stick up for. It was really that, more than anything, that made Frankie rearrange his face with a basketball. The way he'd ruined Ray for him. Frank didn’t start it. He never started it, not really.
Fuckin’ Ray.
You could take that kinda shit from your dad, your dad was meant to be disappointed in you -- it gave you backbone -- but not your friends. Especially not your friends sleeping with your sister. He should’ve killed Ray long ago, shoulda killed him when he beat on him for trying to get that fucking Mountie outta the way, but you couldn’t do that when you’d been seen to take a beating. There were rules, and he knew them, even though most of the time they didn’t apply to him.
You didn’t take that kinda shit from your sister either. Not from a woman, not for anything. Not when they were kids and he pulled her hair and broke her toys or later when he called her a slut and pointed out what kind of an image was expected of her, took over from their dad, like he was supposed to do. But then she went off and got married and had kids and then she was someone else’s problem, those were the rules, unless she came back because her deadbeat husband was a deadbeat. He could’ve told her that. He did, if he remembered correctly.
Nobody knew the pressures he was under.
Why was it so cold?
You run a business your dad was renowned for, you rake in more cash, you’re more feared, you’d think that’d come with respect. Irene could just up and go, her eyes spitting out her goodbye and good riddance, Ray could come for him and his bodyguard wouldn’t lift a finger, everyone could blame him for everything that went wrong and rejoice, and all the while muttering about how Frankie Sr. would’ve done things differently, like any of this was his fault, like his old man knew anything about the way the world was now.
But he wasn’t a fucking moron. And he wasn’t – despite what it looked like... he wasn’t evil. He was just doing what the role required, playing the part he’d been told to play, businessman, husband, father.
He’d let Irene go and let her come back. His father would’ve said it wasn’t their business anymore; you didn’t get in the way of what happened to a married couple, not even if your daughter was painted black and blue more days a year than not. Frankie Jr. was benevolent, that was what he was. Could’ve killed that kid all those years ago on the basket court, but he’d reined himself in, could’ve gone after Ray or Fraser after they messed in his business, could’ve fucking left Irene out in the cold.
She was cold now. She was so very cold. He’d felt bodies as they cooled after getting shot before. Handled his first one when he was still a kid. It wasn’t his fault, any of this. It wasn’t his fault.
“Don’t do this,” he remembered saying to her all those years ago.
It wasn’t even about his future spousal-abuser-in-law, although he’d hated him from the moment he laid eyes on him. It was just that she was the only one who really got it. Not even Ray could've... the pressures of living in this place, of being twisted into shape, of doing as you were told because you had a role to play. Them against the world, that was the deal you got with a sibling.
You couldn’t just abandon that, no matter what.
“Don’t do this,” he said, but nobody was there to hear him.