Unwanted Inheritance Read online

  UNWANTED INHERITANCE

  Santos “Sonny” Ferrari Story Book One

  By K. Forest

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  UNWANTED INHERITANCE

  First edition. March 11, 2021.

  Copyright © 2021 K. Forest.

  Written by K. Forest.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Prelude

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

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  About the Author

  To my mother who knew I could

  Prelude

  Awareness is slow in coming. My head feels like it is in a vice, and my eyes, like heavy sandbags. Not to mention my throat feels like the Sahara Desert. Sunbeams try to penetrate the slits of my eyes, completely blurring any vision. Where the hell could I be? Laying on my back, I slowly turn my head to the left, immediately suffocating in long, dark, smoky hair. Blowing it away from my face, my stomach rebels against the gesture. I try to focus my eyes on the mystery girl laying on her stomach. My arm and hand are buried under her body and tingling from the lack of blood flow. Trying to get it back to life, I start squeezing my hand, which was conveniently placed around a fake C cup. She starts to moan and then immediately snores lightly. How she can breathe under the amount of smoked-up hair is mystifying. Events are slowly penetrating my memory, and now I’m wondering if Mateo is close by. I turn my head to the right, and there he is, laying with a blonde sprawled across his chest.

  I begin to feel the rocking movement. We must still be on Axel’s yacht. However, the decor in the room looks entirely different from what I remember. I hear a door creep open and someone whispering our names. “Pssst, Sonny, Mateo, you guys in there?”

  Reluctantly, I lift my head only to confirm it is my twin brother Angelo and our friend Sam. “Sonny, thank god!” Angelo sighs. “We’ve got to go, so hurry up. Where’s Mateo?”

  I gesture next to me. Is there any part of my body that does not feel as though it was assaulted by a sledgehammer?

  “Sam, wake him up. We gotta get off now!” says Angelo, still whispering.

  I try nudging Mateo and dryly mutter to him to wake up as the kids are here.

  “It’s not funny, Sonny. This is serious, get your ass moving. Now! Do you have any idea whose yacht you are on?”

  “Stop the moving. I’m feeling nauseous.” I hear Mateo mumbling. From my peripheral view, I see Sam scurrying around the room gathering our belongings. I still can’t move, and I really don’t want to. As Angelo peels the dead weight, naked blonde off Mateo, he whispers to her. “It’s okay, darling, go back to sleep.” He gently lays her back down and briskly walks to the other side of the bed. Pointing to me, he states in a more forceful whisper, “Now, move it Sonny.”

  While Sam helps dress a very groggy Mateo, Angelo barks whispered commands like a drill sergeant. Ignoring the vice gripping my head, I shimmy to the end of the bed. Rubbing my face, my stomach still churning, I just try to absorb what the hell was going on. Boxers are thrown at my lap, and I remember we had been celebrating.

  “Epic time we had. I wish I remembered all the details! The best celebration we ever had.” I exclaim.

  Angelo starts to say something, then instead, with disgust, shakes his head and continues dressing me. Finishing hurriedly, he grabs me under one arm and drags me out of the room continually shushing me.

  While attempting to get my balance on the dock after we made it off the boat, I happen to glance at the yacht’s name, Hidden Agenda. “Guys, I thought Axel’s boat was called Knot Working?” I ask Angelo.

  “Geez, Sonny!” he exclaims in a still hushed, exasperated tone. “We’ve been looking for you for almost two fucking days. If this lead didn’t add up, I would’ve had to make the worst call of my life. We really thought you guys were kidnapped or worse.”

  He’s flaring his arms in exaggerated movements and about as upset as I have ever seen my brother. Still puzzled by his behavior, I whisper, “Ah, get off it, Angie. It’s not like you guys never take it up a notch.” In the past, he had always ragged on me telling me to let go and have some fun. Finally, I do, and now he’s reprimanding for doing what he told me to.

  I lunge for his arm, trying to stop his erratic movements which are making me even more dizzy. At the same time, I signal my desperate need for his sunglasses. Handing them over, he remains agitated.

  Mateo is having his own struggles with the last step of the yacht. He’s leaning heavily on Sam for much needed stabilization, and I hear him begging to take a wiz and have a smoke. We are at a standstill, while Mateo with an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips, pees off the dock. Sam looks like an owl surveilling his surroundings, while shadowing Mateo who is still unstable.

  Angelo, still agitated, glares at Mateo, shaking his finger violently. “Hurry and finish, Mateo. I know Sonny probably won’t fully comprehend what I’m going to say, but you should know better. The boat that we found you on is called Hidden Agenda, and we are not in Monaco, we are in Barcelona. You owe me some Ben Franklins since I had to bribe the crew to allow us aboard, asshole. So, sober up fast as we need to get the hell off this dock now.” Angelo spits out with a sting in his voice.

  Mateo’s cigarette falls out of his mouth, his expression registering shock as he quickly finishes up what he’s doing. They quickly move us from the dock to a nondescript black van. As I get thrown into the back seat with Mateo, all I can smell is old food and dirty car odors. Never having let loose to the extent I had last night, the hangover is a completely foreign feeling and not one I ever want to experience again. I am still trying to figure out what the hell is going on as nothing is making much sense.

  As the van starts to roll, I hear Angelo say there is a store at the next corner. “Pull up,” he tells Sam, “I need to get some food for us and some coffee to sober up these two clowns.”

  “I’m already sober.” Mateo mutters with his head leaned back and eyes scrunched closed.

  I nudge him wanting an explanation. As he turns his head, he lets out a deep sigh. “Rodrigo Casas. Does that name register anything, Sonny?” He asks, whispering to me. “That was his yacht we were on. I guess those were his women we ended up with.” Then, he nods to the front of the van, “They are just making sure that our tracks are covered and the incident doesn’t get back to Casas or to your father. Your father and Rodrigo Casas have bad blood between them. From the little I know, it started years ago. They can’t even be on the same continent without igniting bloodshed. No one knows why they have this feud, but if he caught Antonio Ferrari’s golden son on board his yacht, all hell would have broken loose. Casas would definitely have had the upper hand over your father, or, worse, we’d both be dead. I totally fucked up.” He turns and looks out the window of the van.

  Starting to get a glimmer of understanding into the whole situation with the information he just gave freely to me, I vaguely remember hearing m
y father had a beef with a guy named Casas, which left bad blood between them.

  Closing my eyes, I allow my mind to wander to my family. Aw yes, my family, the Ferrari family. A family business many would argue as having less than legitimate tendencies. During our formative years, my father often took all of his sons to work with him when he chose fit. I believe it was his attempt to groom my brothers and me for a place within the family organization. The Ferrari business was started in Italy years ago by my grandfather and now stretches to New York City and Las Vegas. It is now run by my father and his brother Carmine, our godfather. My father would take my brothers and me to the various hotels, casinos, restaurants we owned. He proudly introduced us to everyone, then he would disappear into one of his meetings, leaving us to make whichever location we were at our personal playground.

  As time went on, he stopped taking me as often. I think due to my lack of interest, but he continued taking my brothers. I was left free to pursue my studies and artistic interests. I firmly believe that Mother had something to do with the change of course in my life. Deep down, my mother knew I was the only one who truly enjoyed more scholarly pursuits. I was more than willing to consent and excelled in academia.

  My brothers, though, let’s say they enjoyed the other unsophisticated activities. Both are notorious womanizers. Tony has a similar temperament to my father. While cool and collected when dealing in business, they both can be both bullheaded and arrogant at times. Angelo and I, the twins, are three years younger than Tony. Besides our personalities, the thing that differentiates us is the color of our eyes. Angelo’s eyes are hazel, like a jungle cat. I inherited my mother’s brilliant glacier blue eyes. To complete our family is our sister Bianca, the baby of the family who attends boarding school in Switzerland. She takes after my mother with a slender, graceful stature. She has a vivacious personality that draws people to her. Although spoiled by the family, she has the most generous heart of all of us.

  Tony is the heir apparent in our family dynasty, groomed to take Father’s place in the future. Angelo seems headed in a similar direction as second in command, but sometimes I wonder is that what he really wants. While he is gregarious, he can tend to be sensitive at times. I have always been the overachieving, quieter brother. While he surrounds himself with friends, I tend to be a bit of a lone wolf. My quick decisions typically come with obvious outcomes. So far, my outcomes have fared well for me. Early on, like a never-ending chess game, I learned ways to out-maneuver or persuade my father and others around me. At times, it would get me into vehement arguments with my father, while my brothers united calmly and quietly, never challenging him. Mostly I would do what I wanted first, then reason with him after the fact. It drove my siblings nuts, especially Angelo. Also, at times, manipulating my mother helped persuade my father to see my point of view. Which is probably what earned me the nickname Golden Boy.

  Minutes later, Angelo abruptly takes me away from my meandering thoughts as he returns to the van. He has gathered as many hangover remedies as he could find and now throws them at us in the back seat. He hands us each a coffee. Just the smell makes my queasy stomach lurch. “It’s going to be a long mother of a ride boys, buckle up,” states Angelo as he starts blaring music on the radio.

  Agonizing hours later, with many stops for puking and peeing, we are finally back at the hotel. Crawling out of the van, I can only thank the powers that be that it’s over. We wearily say our goodbyes, promising to meet up when we were all recharged.

  I lazily trail behind Angelo to the family boathouse that sits on the Ferrari Hotel property, smiling to myself about how the tables have turned with me following him like a puppy.

  While he seems to still be a little agitated and distant, I figure the least I could do is thank him for rescuing me. Although I’m still not quite sure of how we had gotten on the wrong yacht, and I still feel too miserable to bother analyzing for more details. But Angelo seems down, and maybe a little positive reassurance would peak his mood back to normal. “Hey, thanks for the rescue, Angie. I really do appreciate it.”

  Shaking his head, Angelo stops abruptly, causing me to nearly trip into him. “God damn it, you scared the crap out of me! Not so much about the repercussions from dear old Father, which I’m used to, but the reality that I might have lost you Sonny. I kept thinking this could be the last birthday we would celebrate!” His finger keeps jabbing me in the chest. “Shit, just give me some space to absorb it all. See you in the morning,” he says as he turns, whips open the door, and slams it behind him. Unbelievable—he just left me standing dumbfounded and alone.

  Seconds later the door reopens, and Germano, our family steward in Italy, steps out. “Sir Santos, I’m glad to see you are back safe.” Giving me a matter of fact nod as though it was just another ordinary day, he says, “I left you your favorite pasta dish on the counter with some flatbread. Let me know if you should need anything else. I’m assured that you and Sir Angelo will be staying on location for the near future.” He doesn’t give me time to respond, just nods his head again and walks away.

  My stomach starts to rumble, and I can’t believe I am actually famished for Germano’s pasta dish. Amazingly, the aroma doesn’t repulse my stomach. Inhaling everything he had laid out for me, I notice I still haven’t heard a peep out of Angelo. Guess he showered and went to bed.

  As I slowly take the steps up to my room, I debate whether I should try to discuss the issue again with Angelo. Deciding it could wait until morning, I continue to my room. The door is ajar, and I notice my keys, wallet, and phone are on my bed. Shit, it didn’t even occur to me; I just assumed that I had the items. The phone battery is dead. It leaves me wondering how many messages I really did miss. Plugging it in, I rub my face in defeat.

  Being so out of my element just feels strange. Never before have I lost whole chunks of memory, drank so much alcohol, or mimicked my brother’s behavior so graphically. To think it all happened in twenty-four hours is a lot to absorb. I reluctantly walk into the bathroom. An animalistic terrorist is looking back at me in the mirror. In total disgust, I reach for the razor and start the process of becoming human again. After a long hot shower, I’m eager to slip into bed. On the nightstand, I see a glass of water and a pill with a note that says, “Drink and swallow. See you in the morning.” For once, I do as the note states without questioning anything. Effortlessly, I close my eyes and drift off into a deep dreamless sleep.

  When I wake up the next day, I feel much better. Glancing at my phone, I realize I slept over twelve hours. I scroll and see over twenty missed calls from Angelo, Sam, and my brother Tony, along with worried text messages. My mind and body have done a full reboot, and the seriousness of my actions finally register. I definitely need a good, old fashion sweat workout to feel completely like my old self.

  Carrying my sneakers down the stairs, I get to the bottom level and halt abruptly. Angelo is sitting on the middle couch with his hands in a prayer position leaning against his face. No TV, none of the usual music he loves blaring at a high decibel, just Angelo and complete silence. Very weird, and it’s only noon.

  “Hey Angie, I thought you would still be sleeping.” I continue walking to the kitchen on the hunt for something to drink. He gives no response. “Want to join me at the gym? I’m heading there now to sweat what’s left of this mess out of me.” Still no response. He is usually more upbeat.

  I’m starting to get concerned, but I should have been prepared as I have never seen him as angry as he was last night. Mind you, I never plan on letting loose like that again; I like remembering my nights and ladies. Mostly I crave order and self-control, leaving the amped up party life up to my brothers and their friends. Mateo and I tend to gingerly sip a good-quality whiskey never getting completely lit. Just a nice buzz to relax and put up with obnoxious surroundings.

  As a matter of fact, the only time I saw Mateo completely blitzed was during my freshman year at boarding school. I flew to Italy to spend it with my uncle for a lo
ng weekend break since Vegas was so far away. While there, we stole some liquor and expensive cigars from my uncle’s stash.

  Both of us not only got drunk but also horribly sick to our stomachs. That was the one and only time my uncle ever lost it on me. When he found out, we were in the doghouse. Instead of ripping us up and down, he made us clean the stove in the hotel kitchen to his liking. I never felt the urge to do it again, and, as far as I know, Mateo never seemed to either.

  “Hey, you okay, Angie? Need me to get you Advil or something?”

  “I’m fine,” Angelo answers.

  Silence creeps between our conversation. I walk over and sit on the other couch, gingerly sipping my orange juice. Angelo and I don’t deep talk stuff much. He yips and yaps about something all day long, while I grunt in agreement to whatever he is saying or ignore him completely. Often, we just know what the other is thinking.

  Since I am still not fully recovered from being so hungover, I’m having trouble locking in on him. “What’s up, Angie?”

  A long, awkward silence follows. I guess he’ll talk when he’s ready. After all, this is Angelo, the grand mouthpiece of the family. I start to push up from the couch.

  “You were MIA, then Mateo wasn’t answering his phone. It just, really messed me up.” He thumps his chest a couple times for emphasis. His face is scrunched up in misery.

  “Angelo—” I begin to say, but he interrupts.

  “No, let me finish, Sonny. What if I hadn’t found you, or worse yet, you were lying dead somewhere with your throat slit?” He stops, taking a deep breath. “You’ve never seen the dark side of Father’s life like Tony and me. It’s some scary shit. But even scarier is the thought of losing you. I warned Father that you shouldn’t be so sheltered from his world. You just don’t comprehend how close to danger you got.” Running his fingers through his hair, he continues. “Sonny, just promise me you won’t let loose again like that.” He asks me wearily.