Blood on My Hands

I felt her blood on my face, and saw the hole neatly drilled in the very centre of her forehead, a minute fraction of a second before I heard the sound of the suppressed gunshot. She crumpled into my arms and I knew that I was going to be unable to do anything about it, again.

I knew who was doing this to me and why, but it didn't make it any easier for me. You see, a long time ago, in a moment of madness, I incurred the wrath of a very bad and powerful man. He let me know that my death would be slow and painful. My death would not be of the physical kind, it would be my mind that would die. A slow death as a result of watching those nearest and dearest to me die of un-natural causes.

The tally so far is; parents 2, sisters 2, wife 1, girlfriends, as of now 3.

I have gone to the police several times, and each time I have come away with the conclusion that not only they couldn't, but wouldn't, pursue any action against him, and that I would be condemned by public opinion as a murdering bastard.

My moment of madness was to fall in love with a very beautiful girl, who just happened to fall in love with me. That part at first was great, we lived in a world of our own, and nothing existed except us. The madness began when I approached her father with the very reasonable request to be allowed to marry Lucianna, his only daughter.

"I forbid this." Giorgio Bocelli was angry.

"But. . . "

"I will not change my mind on this, ever. I forbid you to speak with her ever again."

"Papa, I love him." Lucianna told him in a pleading voice that had been successful in the past, in forcing him to change his mind. Her plea fell on deaf ears.

"You must never speak with this man, or be alone with him again, ever." He struggled against acceding to his only daughter's every wish, and honouring the promise made many years ago when she was an infant, that Lucianna was to marry his friend Luigi Fontonoroso's son Mario. To not honour this would cause him to lose face, and this was an unforgivable sin in his eyes. After forcing her to leave the room he dismissed himself from my presence, and in doing so, he left the room to me and her mother.

"You must obey him, to go against his wishes will cause him to lose face, (stating the obvious) and that is not permitted." Her mother Maria told me.

What was our sin? One that is as old as time; I was born into the wrong family. My family were bitter enemies of her's. I may have been a Montague to his Capulet for all he cared, but this was not the case, I was a Minervini to his Bocelli. William Shakespeare started a trend by writing about those two families, and the same message has been written about by many subsequent writers and made into many films, but, unreasonable as his stance was, it is still happening and will probably continue long into the future.

It is now ten years since I was forced to give up my love for Lucianna. That we did not do so immediately is the reason that I am still being hurt. He made sure of that, as a result I had witnessed any person that I had unfortunately loved, or even befriended, killed before my very eyes.

To him it was my fault entirely. In his eyes it was me that had seduced his daughter. It was me that had taken her virginity, her virginity that had been promised to the son of his friend, something that could never be taken back. That it was she that had thrown herself at me didn't enter into his thinking at all. She was pure and innocent until I just happened along, and I had ruined her for life, or so he thought.

She was not a virgin when I met her, and she gave herself to me willingly, and with great enthusiasm, and skill I might add. But I was her first love. Those before me were just sex, a rebellion on her part, something that she had managed to keep a secret from him.

She had been driving, with more enthusiasm than skill, when she lost control of her eighteenth birthday present, an Alfa Romeo Guiletta Spyder, and managed to wrap it around a light pole. I was the first person on the scene and had dragged her from the wreck. Her breath smelled of alcohol, so without thinking of any adverse consequences, I drove her home before calling the cops.

I was questioned by the police as to why I had removed her from the scene instead of waiting for the paramedics and the police. "She had suffered no physical injury, but had become quite hysterical, so I thought it best to take her home where she could be cared for by her family."

"Do you know her?"

"No, I've never seen her before in my life." Not entirely true, but we had never actually been formally introduced, that would have been impossible.

"Then how did you know where to take her, did she tell you?"

What a stupid question. "I looked at her driver's licence."

"And where does she live?"

"As if you haven't already found that out." When I had returned to the scene after I had reported it, I had seen him on the radio reading out her plate number, so assumed that he had found her address.

"Don't get smart with me." He told me, so I told him what he already knew.

Having found out who her father was, he forgot all about giving her a blood alcohol test, and his incident report gave her a zero reading.

A couple of days later I received an invitation to her house so that her father could personally thank me for my quick thinking, and actions that had avoided any complications with the police. It was all very formal, but I got the distinct impression that this would be the first and only time that I would be invited to his house. This was confirmed a week later after we, Lucianna and I had spent the afternoon together in my student apartment.

"My father has forbidden me to see you." She told me after she had stopped kissing me, which was shortly after she arrived at my apartment.

"Why?" A reasonable enough question I would have thought. I already knew the answer, but was prepared to overlook it.

"Because, my love, I am promised to another. I had to give my minders the slip just to see you. I'll probably get into trouble for this, but I just had to see you." 'My love', did she actually call me that?

"I'm glad you did, but not happy that you might get into trouble over it." I should mention here, that by now we were both naked, and in my bed, and I was paying considerable attention to her very delectable left breast. That's not to say that the right breast was any less delectable, in fact it was the equal of the left in every way.

"Don't worry. I'll just profess my innocence to the fact that he is having me followed. I'll tell him that the fact that I managed to give my minders the slip wasn't deliberate, because I didn't know that they were there, and then I'll get angry that he is having me followed.

She became so good at giving them the slip that he gave up on having her followed, on her undertaking that she was doing nothing wrong. If only he knew.

We were soon very much in love, and it was this that brought us undone. We had been working on the assumption that, by presenting him with our love for each other as a fait accompli, he would have to allow us to marry. A very bad move as we were soon to discover. I have never seen anyone so angry in my entire life, and I was blamed for the whole mess. "I did not give you permission to see my daughter."

"We didn't think it necessary to get it." I said. In hindsight that was possibly the stupidest thing that I could have said. It was like a red rag to a bull, and he really blew his top. He turned on Lucianna. "Go to your room immediately!"

"But Papa . . . ." He turned her around and pushed her through the doorway.

"You are to stay in your room until I tell you that you can come out." He shouted after her, and then he turned on me. "As for you . . ." he signalled to a couple of men who had slipped into the room at the first sign of a disturbance. "See this man leaves my house, and while you're at it, persuade him never to return, or to have any contact with my daughter ever again." He said it in such a polite and quiet voice that I was expecting that they would talk reasonably to me. They said not one word.

I very quickly found out what a punching bag feels like, in particular my kidneys found out what a punching bag feels like. When they had finished their soft shoe shuffle on my now prostrate body, I was dragged to my car and one of them drove me several kilometres down this lonely road and parked. His mate, who had followed him, helped him drag me around and push me behind the wheel of my car, before putting it into gear and releasing the handbrake.

I was fortunate that the car camber steered its way off the road and through a fence into a paddock, instead of heading towards a very large and probably immovable tree at the bottom of the hill. They obviously hoped that when the irresistible force of my car met with the immovable object of the tree, it would be assumed by the police that I had lost control of my car all on my own.

The police did not believe the farmer, on whose land I had intruded, when they were told that he had seen two men 'stage' my accident. He had provided them with the licence plate of the other vehicle. It was at that time that the police interest in the matter, and investigations ceased. The farmer had a visit from two very persuasive men, and decided, shortly after he was taken to hospital following a 'tractor accident', that he was no longer interested in my welfare.

A short time after I had stopped pissing blood, I decided, reluctantly, to get on with my life without Lucianna. Unfortunately for me and those around me, my life was not allowed any peace. My slow death had begun.

My father, who was a man that I had never before seen angry, called me into his study one evening. I was having dinner with my parents. "Peter, tell me, why are you so sad these past months?"

"I was in love with a girl, and she in love with me, but it is not to be."

"Did she fall out of love with you?"

"No, it is nothing like that. It is her father, he has forbidden her to speak with me ever again."

"Have you tried reasoning with him?"

"Yes, for all the good that it has done us. Do you remember a couple of months ago when I was taken to hospital after that car accident?"

"Yes."

"It wasn't an accident. I was beaten by two of his thugs, just to reinforce his decision to forbid me seeing Lucianna again."

"We'll see about that. What is his name?" I told him. "He is not a nice man to cross. I have business associates who have, and they are no longer in business through no other reason than they had taken him on. He does not like to lose, in anything. But leave it with me, I will see what I can do for you."

"No Dad, leave it alone, I don't want to see you, or Mum, hurt in any way."

This, as it happened, was good advice, but my father chose to ignore it.

My father was an Engineer, and fastidious about everything mechanical. He had his own workshop where he serviced the family cars, so when I was told that it was a mechanical failure that caused his car to crash, killing both my parents, I began my own investigation. The mechanic at the police garage told me that a retaining pin had somehow dropped out causing his disc pads to dislodge under hard braking. I knew that this could not have been the case. Because he never allowed anyone else to work on his vehicles, and I had seen him working on the front disc brakes. The pin in question was a cotter or split pin, and one side was bent outwards so that there was no possible way that it could dislodge. I had to find out if there was ever an opportunity for someone to tamper with his brakes. I soon found it.

My parents had attended one of those large community gatherings of Italian migrant families on that fatal Sunday. There was lots of food, and wine, not that my father drank if he was driving, and reminiscing about the old country. You know the sort of things that go on in these gatherings. These were all first generation Australians of Italian migrant families who arrived in this country after World War II as part of a resettlement scheme. My grandfather had bought a Fruit & Veg shop with a residence above. He and his wife and young family, along with his brother and his family, lived over the shop and worked it for several years until they had enough money for Uncle Joe (Giovanni) to buy some land and establish a market garden. This provided Grandad's shop with fresh fruit and Veg that they could sell cheaper than if they had to buy it through the wholesale market.

Family members were brought over from Italy and they soon established a chain of Fruit & Veg stores. As the money rolled in, houses were bought. At first there was little furniture, just the essentials, until they could afford more. The next move was to a bigger house and the old house was sold to another new family as soon as they could afford it. Mum and Dad lived in the last house that Grandad had bought.

Years later, when the suburban sprawl began to intrude into the area surrounding his market garden, he was offered an obscene amount of money for his land. He sold on the condition that he retained enough land to build a supermarket with an attached bottle shop. He reasoned that if several hundred houses were to be built on his land, the new residents would need somewhere to shop. It turned out to be a wise move, and the Minervini family became even wealthier. My father's university career was payed for, and his engineering business established from this wealth.

This fateful Sunday the cars were parked in the surrounding streets, a perfect opportunity for someone to get to them.

My parents crashed into another vehicle when Dad failed to stop on a red light. The driver of the other vehicle also died.

I took my theory that Dad's car had been tampered with to the police. It was dismissed without investigation. It seems that they were told by a certain well known businessman that this could not have happened.

My world came to a halt when, a mere week after my parents' death, salt was rubbed into my wounds. Lucianna walked down the aisle of St Marys Cathedral on the arm of her father, in what was the biggest and most costly wedding of the year. I was not invited. To her proud father she looked radiant, but photographs that appeared in the Sunday tabloids showed an unhappiness about her forced smile, it was as if she resented having to marry this son of a friend, who she had barely spoken to prior to the wedding. In his speech at the reception, her father insisted that this was a marriage made in heaven, and that the young couple were very much in love.

Following their European honeymoon, the happy couple moved into their new palatial wedding gift.

I wished them well from afar, and got on with my life. I found myself a woman who I thought that I could love. We married and were happy, briefly, a matter of months only, until she was taken from me in a bizarre set of circumstances. She had gone riding on her parents' property and her horse came back alone. A search was instigated and she was found, face down in a dam. The official verdict was death by misadventure. It could not have been an accidental death because of the blunt force trauma injury that, due to the absence of a cause, could not eliminate human intervention. The Coroner noted in his verdict that she had been an experienced rider and unlikely to have fallen from her horse.

Her family was devastated and I felt a sense of loss, but there was something about my sense of loss that I couldn't put my finger on. I had expected to feel much more deeply about her death until I realised that, while I had feelings for her, they were not the feelings of the deep love. I realised that I was still in love with Lucianna. I read somewhere that she now had a daughter. I remember doing the math and realising that she and her husband must have began having sex immediately after our having broken up. I was saddened by this news, for I had hoped that it would have been me there with her and her daughter.

Not long after I had moved back into the family home to be with my sisters, there was another accident that this time claimed both of their lives. They were crossing a street and had been struck down by a high powered car that had failed to stop. It was found later by police, abandoned and burnt out in an industrial estate. No evidence remained in the burnt out car. I noted that the industrial estate was owned by Lucianna's father. I decided that I would be wasting my time bringing this to the attention of the police.

Me, being a reasonable man, thought that, having done away with my immediate family, he would call a halt to festivities. No such luck. I had inherited my father's civil engineering business following his murder, for I considered it to be such. This business was built on getting work from the Italian community. What had been a steady stream of work became nothing more than a trickle, not enough to keep our workforce. I sought contracts outside the community, but despite bringing projects in on time and under budget, this source of work soon dried up also. I had no alternative but to close the business and lay off all the workers. What made this decision even harder was that the workers got together and offered to take a wage cut to help me through the tough times.

I retained the family house. I had wanted to sell it but could not. I had tried sell to it by auction, but that had to be abandoned because of the disruption, caused by my almost father-in-law and his cronies intimidating prospective buyers. The Auctioneer called the police but no action was forthcoming, so, on my instructions, he abandoned proceedings.

I decided to become an amateur detective, and carry out my own investigation into this whole sordid affair. What I found out surprised even me. It had all begun back in Calabria between my grandfather and Lucianna's. It was a bitter feud and much blood was spilled in the process, mostly my family's. My grandfather was the mayor of the small town where both families lived, and Lucianna's grandfather was the local Mafia boss. It was he who ran the prostitution, the drug dealing and any illicit trade between Calabria and the rest of Europe.

Giovanni Bocelli was rich and powerful, and used to getting his own way in all things. My grandfather on the other hand, was an honest, hardworking man, who ran a couple of small wholesale food businesses, which gave to the poor more than he sold to the wealthy. He made little money from his position as mayor, because the finances of the town could not afford to pay him what he should have received.

The dispute escalated with the outbreak of the Second World War. Lucianna's grandfather was a strong supporter of Mussolini and the Fascists. My grandfather supported the other side, the allies. When Calabria was occupied by the Germans he had established an underground network to help those families that opposed the Fascists to escape and to provide the allied forces with information.

When the Germans left Calabria, Lucianna's family fled to Malta where, posing as allied sympathisers fleeing from the Germans, they jumped to the head of the queue of refugees seeking resettlement in Australia.

They were well established in Sydney when my grandparents arrived in 1949. Bocelli had carried on his prostitution and drug businesses, as well as a business that charged the new migrants for assisting them to become established in their new country.

My grandfather did not need his assistance, nor did he ask for it, but he got it just the same, and had to pay for something that he could have got for nothing. The feud was continuing, but not openly, it was all bubbling away under the surface. To all intents and purposes, both families got on fine. That was until I had become involved. I learned quickly that mediation was impossible, and that the honest members of the Italian community were shit scared to stand up to him.