I did not forgive them. I would never forgive them. But I allowed them to stay and help, because their presence served a purpose. They owed me debts from a lifetime they could not remember, debts written in blood and silence and years of cruelty that no apology could erase. There was no settling those accounts. All I wanted from this life was to never owe them anything again.
Since my parents' assassination, the Genovese Family had withered. The old alliances dried up. The phone stopped ringing. No one visited, no one paid tribute, no one so much as sent a card at Christmas. We had become ghosts in our own territory, and ghosts were easy to ignore, easy to rob, easy to destroy.
But an invitation to La Rete changed the calculus entirely. It announced to every Family, every crew, every ambitious soldier in Riviera City that the Genovese bloodline had produced something rare. A mind sharp enough to attract the attention of the most powerful shadow syndicate in the country. It meant the Genovese had a successor. It meant we were no longer prey.