Total pages in book: 197
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
His family name.
His legacy.
All of it.
John, the one that had come after the one murdered long before his time, had taken it back for them. With the help of the son of Antony’s son. Because sometimes, if one was lucky enough to live as long as Antony did, then they were also lucky enough to see life come full circle.
What went around, came back around.
“They did it, John. They did it for us.”
The Legacy
Antony didn’t know if he was unique in the way that after his eightieth birthday, he stopped counting the years. At first, he thought it was because he knew he was closer to his death than he was his better years. Now, he didn’t know if that was entirely true.
Sure, when he was younger, he had the glory of watching his wife bloom into a mother. The world had been at his fingertips. Power was his drug of choice, and he indulged just enough to make an empire. Loyalty had always been at the forefront, his honor always intact, and never challenged. He’d had the benefit of watching his sons grow from babies, to men, to husbands, and fathers ... grandfathers.
And yet, as he sat in the large leather chair, the backdrop of their photo shoot the family mantle covered with gold, and the crown molding intricate over a portrait of their family seal ... Antony thought perhaps these years were his best.
Yes, he needed help.
Yes, his body was tired.
And sore.
And old.
Yes, his mind was not as quick, even if it was still just as sharp. And yes, he had more family and friends buried than he did alive now ... but look at what he had. Look at all that he had done.
It was never more on display than in that moment. His wife smiling across the room from her chair. She didn’t like to stand as much as she used to, and she didn’t even wear her kitten heels anymore. That hair of hers had long turned white, and the years wrote lines on her face that matched his own in many ways. Hell, they’d spent their whole lives looking at each other, after all ... things were going to begin to match.
Surrounding her, however, were his sons’ wives. Each balancing a different child on their hip, grandchildren of varying ages for them—great-grandchildren for him. The children’s mothers, his grandchildren, did their best to wrangle the older ones into a group to keep them all out of the shot.
“Almost ready?” the tattooed blonde said. Haven—who surely would have made his father faint at how different she was from what had always been accepted as a wife for a made man. And yet, all these years and all these stories that carried through his family’s lineage made Antony think ... no, it was the changes in his family, the bending of the rules ... the rulebreakers of his blood, who made this family stronger.
If they didn’t change, they would stay the same.
Things that stayed the same were doomed to repeat the past. Somethings needed to just stay in the past, because the present and the future would always be better.
He could have died young.
Time and time again.
He felt death.
Saw it.
Heard it.
Touched it more than he should have.
Antony Marcello could have died so young. And he would have missed this. He might have never made this.
So yes, these were most definitely his best years. Even if his body had felt like giving up eons ago. He still had to be here.
At least, for this.
“Yeah, almost ready,” the photog shouted.
Antony didn’t miss the way Andino, his second eldest grandson, gave his wife a lopsided smile. Haven, to her benefit, was doing the best she could just out of range of the shot to hold their walking nine-month-old. Never had Antony had the pleasure of seeing a baby walk so early on in life. Until his great-grandson.
“Ok, let him go to his daddy,” the photog said, standing up to his tripod while waiting for Haven to let her son down to the ground.
Laughter lit up the room, because as soon as she put the boy down, he darted, chubby hands out and reaching, for his father who stood next to where Antony sat on his large, ornate chair. Andino bent down, hands out to catch the oncoming boy—who hadn’t quite learned to stop yet, but always wanted to run as fast as his fat little legs would take him to his father—while the photog did his thing.
Behind Antony, Giovanni stood with his hands resting on his father’s shoulders. Gio squeezed, and Antony reached his own, weathered hand up to pat over his son’s. His silent acknowledgment back.
“And look at me,” the photog said.
All eyes went to him.
The man took the shot.
Four generations.
Four generations of Marcello blood.
Of Marcello men.
Of the best things Antony ever made—his most important accomplishment, he said, when a recent reporter somehow managed to get his home phone number, and called for a statement about book deal an unauthorized biographer had just received after pitching the life and legacy of Antony Marcello.