The Mafia Hit Man's Daughter by Linda Scarpa Read Free Book Online Page A

caught the beating of his life. He was only sixteen.
    I didn’t even have a chance to warn him, because I didn’t know what was going to happen. He was walking in the neighborhood and my father and his crew picked him up and put him in the car. They beat the living daylights out of him and then literally dropped him on the side of the road.
    I didn’t want to hear anything about it, so I ran upstairs to my room. A little while later the doorbell rang. After a while my father yelled for me to come downstairs. When I did, I saw Greg and his father sitting in the living room.
    When I saw Greg, I almost died. My heart was broken. He just glared at me. He gave me such a nasty look. He thought I told on him, but I didn’t. I didn’t tell my parents anything about what had happened that night.
    Greg was just sitting there. I couldn’t bear to look at him. His head was misshapen. There were bumps the size of grapefruits. His eyes were completely shut except for these little slits. His lips . . . I didn’t even know how they stayed formed. I don’t know how he survived that beating.
    Greg’s father knew my father, and he knew what my father did, but he didn’t care. His son had been beaten up so badly that he wanted to kill my father. Greg’s father wanted to know how my father could beat up a sixteen-year-old boy.
    â€œListen, I don’t give a fuck what you say, this is what he did.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, this is what he did? Your daughter was smoking, too.”
    â€œI don’t care. He should know better. He’s older than her. He knows who I am. He knows what’s going to happen to him if they get caught. So, why would he go and smoke pot with her?”
    I knew that my father wasn’t a regular guy. He was a street guy, but I didn’t know he was a full-fledged gangster. I didn’t yet understand the concept of “gangster.” What he meant was that people in the neighborhood knew who he was. Greg knew my father was a scary guy, but did he know my father was in the Colombo crime family? No, probably not.
    My father and Greg’s father kept going at it. Greg’s dad didn’t hold back what he had to say. I gave him credit for that—he was pissed off and held his ground. But he knew there was nothing he could do. What was he going to do? Call the cops? And then what?
    Finally Greg and his father left. It was just my father and me. I was traumatized. I couldn’t stop crying.
    â€œI hate you. How could you hurt Greg like that? Of all the people. Of all my friends. How could you do that to him?”
    He just looked at me.
    â€œThat’s what happens when you do stupid things. Maybe next time, you won’t do stupid things.”
    I felt terrible. My father made me think it was my fault. I was miserable and depressed over that for a very long time. I cried for Greg. For him and for me. I really didn’t have a lot of friends, and I lost my best friend. He hated me after that—hated me. We didn’t talk for years. I lost all the other friends I hung out with, too. They knew somebody got beat up because of me.
    I sat on my stoop—it seemed like forever—waiting for him to come by so I could talk to him. I wasn’t walking the streets anymore.
    One day I saw him and I tried to talk to him.
    He looked at me with such hate.
    â€œDon’t ever come near me again.”
    â€œBut I didn’t tell him.”
    â€œThen how did he know?”
    â€œHe just knew. If he didn’t know, he was going to beat you up, anyway, and try to find out. I had no say in it.”
    My father knew Greg was my closest friend, so Greg was the one who was going to get it. That’s just the way it was.
    The whole neighborhood where I hung out hated me after that—the whole neighborhood. I couldn’t hang there ever again. All I could do was stay in my house. The girls in that neighborhood all wanted to beat me up.