Disclaimer: I do not own these characters.
Tuesday, June 8, 1999
My heart is filled with dread and fear. I cannot shake the feeling that having the entire Santos family in one place � my first mass � will be a horrific mistake. Yet, how can I put these fears into words when Danny and Pilar are so sure of their mother�s good intentions?
Also, this is the final step I will take to free myself of the Santos life. I have long wondered if they will allow me to take this step, or if I will be forced back into a life I hate.
For these reasons, I will write a letter to Danny and explain everything. The letter will remain among your pages, and only if something bad happens to me, will he read it. I will place the letter and the journal in the safe keeping of a neutral party, someone who will not be present at my first mass.
The letter to Danny:
Danny,
If you are reading these words instead of hearing me speak them myself, it is because I am not able to. Please forgive me for keeping this truth from you for so long, but I did not want to put you through unnecessary pain, if I could keep from it.
Your father and my father were once the closest of brothers. They grew up together, just like you and Mick, and like you and Mick, one brother was good and genuine, and the other was ruthless. Your father was a good man, Danny. He had such good intentions where the family business was concerned, and he, being the oldest, had the power to legitimize everything. My father was jealous of his power, and did not want to give up the power and money that the illegal activities afforded the Santos family. But, the final decision was your father�s, and he was determined to legitimize everything.
Carmen agreed with my father. Her greed blinded her to the detriment that the business was doing to her family. Mick�s birth had not softened her heart at all. She was determined to keep the business as it was.
My mother had no idea what she was marrying into when she married my father. She could not handle being married to the mafia. She wanted out, and she found comfort in the arms of another man.
The other man was your father. They had identical visions for the Santos family. She wanted to raise me without the constant threats, and your father wanted Mick to have the childhood that he never had. They fell in love, and had an affair.
When my father and Carmen discovered the affair, they also discovered that the affair had produced a pregnancy. Your father was unaware of this, so my mother was held captive at the vacation house in San Cristobel. Meanwhile, Carmen faked her own pregnancy, and your father was none the wiser. He was completely distraught, thinking that my mother had left him. Carmen and my father manipulated him back into the old business, and he was never truly happy again.
You were the product of that affair, Danny. My mother, our mother, gave birth to you in San Cristobel. Carmen had arranged, conveniently, to be on the island, and told your father that you were born while she was there. She came back to Springfield, showed you off as the new Santos baby, and your father did his best to make the family a happy one. Thus, Pilar was born, several years later.
Our mother died, two years after your birth. No one seems to know why, but I believe it was a broken heart. She was separated forever from her two sons. Years later, when your father discovered the truth, he was killed. Dietz arranged the hit for Carmen and my father, and made it appear as if a rival family did the deed.
Your grandmother confessed everything to me, after I entered the Priesthood. She�d kept the secret for so long, out of fear of Carmen, but she had held her tongue as long as she could.
My father and Carmen robbed me of a relationship with you, my half brother, and took our mother from us, Danny. And then they took your father from you. My father has been gone for years as well, and I mourned those years for a father I believed in, whole heartedly. I know I should forgive, but something in me will not allow it.
I only ask you not to respond with violence, for it was violence that separated us in the first place. Take this information, and free yourself of the burden Carmen has placed on you. She has no claim or control over you. She is evil, and even if she had carried you and given birth to you, she would be no more your mother than she is now, because what is in her is not in you.
I love you, Danny. You are my blood, more so than you ever realized.
Ray