We watch the car pull through the gates and disappear down the street.
Sofia takes my hand and squeezes it and then runs back upstairs to play.
I stay in the doorway for a moment longer and look at the empty street beyond the gates.
The house doesn't feel like a prison anymore, partly because I’m free to do as I please, but mostly because I choose to stay here.
I've come to realize I can never take the beast out of a man like Dante, but I can hope that one day, he will walk away from the beast he's been imprisoned by.
I close the door and lock it.
Then I walk upstairs to check on Sofia.
She's in her room arranging her dolls in a circle, humming a Christmas carol and making up stories about what each doll is saying.
I lean against the doorframe and watch her.
She's happy here, thriving in ways she didn't in Naples.
She has a father who loves her and stability—a home that's bigger than two cramped rooms and a kitchen that doubles as a living space.
This is what I've been trying to give her since the day she was born, and now she has it even if it came in a way I never expected.
It's unconventional the way Dante and I met or the circumstances under which Sofia was conceived, but we're no less a family than anyone else.
Except my partner is a dangerous man who puts himself in dangerous positions and may not come home at any given moment.
It's something I can't quite wrap my mind around but regardless, it's something I have to learn to live with.
Dante and I won't ever have the same relationship as a normal couple, but as long as he comes home to me, that's all that matters.
It's what I have to focus on.
And now, I'll grab my rosary and pray.
Because if he doesn't survive this test for Kemal, I may not survive losing him.
26
DANTE
The body camera feed flickers on my phone screen.
Two couriers and a tech move through the tunnel system.
Their headlamps cut narrow beams through the darkness and I watch from the back of the surveillance van parked three blocks from the port decoy site.
My jaw is tight as they navigate the cramped passageway.
It should be me.
I should be the one down there and I'm not.
I'm up here sitting in a van like a child waiting on his parents to return from the store, feeling like a waste of space, but this is what I promised Angelica.
I am not going to put myself into unnecessary danger because I have a little girl to come home to now.
I won’t do to her what happened to me.
