The boat ride to Italy had always been absolute hell for me.

The universe gifted me with a soul-devouring case of motion-sickness, which meant that I was forced to lie down horizontally for the entirety of the 10 day journey, and I could hardly eat anything during that time.

I truly was not made to cross oceans.

I usually arrived in Italy feeling malnourished, dehydrated and sickly, but the sunny weather and the relaxed atmosphere of the country made up for the discomfort in some ways.

"Capo!" My companion Anthony yelled upon my arrival at the docks, already waving at me from half a mile away.

The sun was high up in the sky, and the sight of the olive trees and maritime pines warmed my heart even further.

Anthony was Alcalmo's son, and one of the most hyper people I'd ever met. He wasn't a friend of mine, because father told me never to fully trust Alcalmo, but he was the one member of the family I was closest to. At fourteen years old, he was also the youngest member in training, right after me.

"Anthony, it's good to see you," I said once I finally made it off the boat, greeting the younger boy with a tight hug.

"I'm so happy you came earlier! You can't leave me alone with those Italian pure-bloods!" Anthony cried dramatically, throwing his arm over my shoulder as we made for our limousine.

Anthony wasn't fully Italian either, just like me. His mother was American, but because no one could really tell if they didn't check his DNA, it never became a problem for him with the other mafia kids.

"Hey, I've been hearing the craziest rumors about you! I even saw you in the papers once! Your father got you a mansion!? Tell me how, I want one too! Tell me, tell me!"

"Ah, Anthony," I sighed, grabbing to my head as I was still a bit dizzy. "It's none of your concern, okay? Your father is the second richest man in America, I'm pretty sure he would give you one if you weren't still a baby."

"Fourteen is not a baby!" Anthony yelled. "I'm growing a moustache, but it doesn't show because I'm a redhead."

"Hm, right," I said, diving into our limousine after handing my suitcases to the driver. "I'm sure that's it."

_____________

"They're having a meeting," Anthony said after the both of us entered my father's extravagant, pure-white villa. It looked like something straight out of a magazine, and it didn't have a shred of personality to it. My father wasn't one to pay much mind to interior architecture. The only thing he cared about was wether the place looked expensive, and expensive it did look.

"Pretty soon you'll be having those meetings... isn't that exciting!?" Anthony asked, zooming into the livingroom like a bumblebee.

I sighed and threw my suitcase on the couch, loosening my tie as the heat was already getting to me. "Very."

Anthony skipped through the room and touched anything that caught his attention. He still saw the world he was about to enter as something fun and exciting, which often pained me to see. He hadn't witnessed a single murder yet, but I knew it wouldn't be long before his first one.

"Father won't let me learn the piano, even though I begged," Anthony sulked, messing around with the white grand piano in the corner of the room.

I knew asking the boy to sit down and be quiet wouldn't work, but at least the he did well at distracting me from my self-pity. If I kept myself alone with my thoughts, I would only be thinking of one person until school started. "The uniforms..." I began, squinting my eyes. "Don't tell me they are still yellow."

"Oh, yeah," Anthony giggled, doing some kind of half-assed cartwheel. "Bright as canaries."

I groaned and tipped my head back. "You'd think they would give us something intimidating to wear. Like black, or grey. But oh no, we have to look like fucking piñatas."

Anthony laughed at my misery and ran up to me with eyes full of mischief. "Let's go swimming capo!" He said, latching on to my arm. "I've been bored out of my mind out here. Let's play pirate!"

"Okay, okay, fine," I said, allowing myself to be dragged off the couch and pulled toward the infinity swimming pool. "But if you drown, tell your father it wasn't my fault."

____________

Training facility Camp Corleone wasn't like a school in most ways, even though my father always referred to it as one.

If one looked at it from afar, it resembled more of a prison, or a reformation camp for troubled kids, because that's kind of what it was.

Most recruits at Camp Corleone had parents who were already involved with the family, but there were also newbies. Italian kids who wanted to make a name for themselves by climbing up the ladder one step at a time.

I dug my foot into the gravel, distracting myself as instructor Marco counted heads.

It was 6 am, and all fifty-four of us were standing in a long line on the training grounds.

Today we had a knife-fighting class, but before that was an hour-long jog session through the mountains.

I didn't have great stamina, and I didn't have much physical strength, so I wasn't looking forward to today at all. The one thing I could rely on was being quick and flexible, but that hardly ever mattered much in a fight with someone three times your size.

"Park?"

"Present," I said, making all fifty-four heads turn to me at once like I was some grotesque circus-freak.

"You've missed some classes," trainer Marco said, rhythmically tapping his pen against the list of names in his hand. Marco was a pure-blood Italian, and became a made-man at the age of twenty-five with no previous ties to the mafia. He was also extremely, extremely dreamy, and I used to have a bit of a crush on him when I was younger. That was, however, until I heard about how the man had a thing for drugging and raping young women.
My interest disappeared quite quickly after that.

"I will keep up, sir," I said, straightening by back.

"Speriamo," the man said, clicking his toungue against his teeth. "You have big shoes to fill."

______________

I was absolutely beat after our morning jog through the mountains, which Marco suddenly decided to turn into a race at the halfway point.

I came in second to last, as one overweight kid called Gabriel nearly passed out before he reached the finish-line and tripped right as he was about to cross it.

He was a newbie.

"It's okay," Anthony said, patting me on the back as I fought to catch my breath. The boy wasn't even sweating, and managed to come in first place. "You just haven't gotten used to the sun yet."

"Knife-fighting will be done one against one!" Marco yelled, clapping to grab everyone's attention. "Find someone of your size to begin with. After that we will switch. The knives are made of plastic for now, but they won't be soon. Go practice."

Anthony sped off to find an opponent, and I rubbed my chest as my lungs still burned like they'd been set on fire. I really needed to start doing cardio or something...

"Ragazzino Cinese," I heard someone say, before I was violently shoved backwards by none other than Carlos Capello.

Carlos was built like a toothpick, had a face covered in acne, and wore thick reading-glasses that made him look like a complete nerd. He was extremely socially challenged, and if this were an American high-school, he would've been absolutely done for.

But sadly for me, this was not America.

This was training Camp Corleone, and Carlos was qn absolute psychopath.

He'd already been punished for trying to murder a classmate on three different occasions, and that classmate had been me twice of those times.

"I'm not Chinese, Carlos," I grumbled with a sigh, picking myself up and reluctantly going into a fighting position. "I'm fucking Korean."

I'm not sure if this surprised anyone, but I did not win my fight against Carlos.

The kid ran straight into me the second we started, and knocked me right off my feet only to start jabbing his plastic knife into my chest like he was actually trying to pierce it.

Marco and a few other students had to intervene by pulling the boy off of me, and I managed to get away with nothing but a nosebleed and about fifty bruises across my torso.

I didn't know why Carlos hated me so much, but I supposed psychopaths didn't really need a why when they were being violent.

At times I wondered if my father would've liked me to be a psychopath, or a sociopath, or just plain insane. Because I definetly would have excelled at school if I were any of those things...

__________

"Think your dad's gonna be mad?" Anthony asked as the two of us drove home together.

I pushed my piece of toiletpaper further up my nose as it simply wouldn't stop bleeding. "Of course not," I said, every inch of my body throbbing with pain. "He has a weak, talentless son who can't even run a mile without nearly blacking out. What's there to be mad about?"

Anthony pouted his lips and stared at me with pity in his eyes. "That kinda sounds like something your dad could be mad about..."

"Master Anthony, we are at your home," the driver said, looking at us through the rear-view mirror.

Anthony gave me a sympathetic smile and grabbed his backpack. "Don't worry too much, Capo. It's not like you're disabled. After some extra training, you'll be top of the class in no time."

I waved at Anthony as the car drove off again, the boy's unwavering faith in me charming my heart and making it hurt a little less. I knew I wasn't allowed to trust him, but his cuteness was making it difficult not to.

I sighed as another drop of blood dripped from my nose, and I wiped it away with my yellow sleeve. "Guess I can't even do that, huh?"

_____________

"Gonzales, where is my father?"

Gonzales, my father's most trusted guard, only shrugged as he made himself a Pornstar Martini at the pool-side bar. "He is in America, attending business. I don't know what business."

My lips broke apart in disbelief. "Father went back to America without telling me? I haven't seen him once since I arrived in Calabria!"

"He is a busy man, master Park," Gonzales said, pouring alcohol like he'd chosen the wrong profession.

"I know that," I mumbled, touching my chest and stroking my bruised skin. "It's just that... school hasn't been going too well, and I wanted to talk to him about it."

"What were you going to say?" Gonzales asked, throwing a paper umbrella into his drink before stepping away from the bar.

I followed after the man as he descended into the jacuzzi and watched him enjoy himself to the fullest. Gonzales was a very carefree man, even though his job seemed extremely stressful to me at times. I'd never seen him angry, or scared, or frustrated. He faced every situation with a clear mind and a positive attitude, which I did often admire about him.

"I wanted to tell him that I am sorry, and that I am going to work hard on fixing my short-comings."

Gonzales hummed and took a sip of his Martini. "Then why don't you just show him those things instead, young master?"

I swallowed thickly and lowered my head, hugging myself as the loneliness I used to feel when I lived with my father made a slow return. "Because-- because I don't know if I can..."