For the first time in eleven years, I wake up in my own room.
I lie there and let that fact settle into me. The celebration was big last night, even bigger than I expected. There were voices and clatter and the clink of glasses, and every surface covered with a dish or a serving plate.
All my brothers showed up. Giovanni, who stepped in and took my place all those years ago. Antonio, with a laugh that could fill any space, no matter how big or small. Roberto, loosening his tie before dinner, as if the fight were over.
My children dropped their stiff shoulders and relaxed.
Vito, a lot more like Antonio than me, smiled brightly and laughed loudly.
Nico, the reserved one, didn’t let that stop him from having a second glass of wine. And Caterina, my princess, telling a story that drew everyone in. Like a queen commanding her court.
Wine flowed. Others stopped by to see me, see if it was real, congratulate me. People hugged me as if they had been holding their breath for eleven years and finally believed air was real. There were toasts I only half heard because the sound of my front door opening and closing kept ringing in my head.
Life moved around me, not past me.
I drank enough to be social with everyone, but not enough to waste my morning on regret.
Being out and free doesn’t mean I lose my discipline. If anything, I have to be more disciplined than ever.
Now, the house is quiet. I can hear the soft sounds of the world waking up around me. A bird singing its morning song, running water somewhere in the house.
Not much else can be heard beyond the high walls of my estate.
Security was its purpose when I bought it. And it’s something you can feel. This estate is alive with it. Cameras set into eaves like careful eyes, alarms ready to wail, walls that keep everyone out. And some in.
I bought this place when Lucia was born—brick and stone and land enough to hold a life. I told Carlotta it was for her, for the children, for the mornings and the summers and the laughter that eats up afternoons. It was true. It is still true. The house is a body built to protect a heart.
The empty space where my wife Carlotta should be sits next to me in bed like a shadow.
Grief is an old thing with me now. Not sharp, but so very heavy. It does not stab; it presses. It is patient and never-ending.
Two years after they closed a door on me, the cancer she had in childhood came back to her with its hands out, asking for more.
She stayed positive for my sake. But I could see it eating away at her through the glass that separated us. Then one day, she stopped coming. One day, she went to the hospital and never left.
I did not get to tuck the blankets around her. I did not get to drive her to treatments or pretend, for her, that I believed everything would be fine.
It wasn’t.
They buried her without me standing there to see her off like a queen.
People like to imagine I cannot love because it’s easier to believe that a man like me can’t love.
They are wrong.
I loved Carlotta in every way imaginable. Completely, utterly, without condition.
High school sweetheart is technically the right term. It’s not enough. She was more than my sweetheart.
She was my breath, my language, my life. She reminded me of who I was when the world beat me down. She made a home out of nothing, so I could give her a home and prove I’m worth something.
In the last months, when she needed me most, I was staring at gray walls and counting down each hour until I could be with her again. I blame Dixon for a lot of things, and I will even the score in time.
But the part of me that is a father and a husband reserves a different feeling for the daughter who chose state over blood and made sure I wasn’t there when her mother needed my hand. There are sins the world calls justice. I know better. I will not forgive Lucia for that. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
It’s not anger I feel. It’s betrayal.
And it burns hotter than my anger ever could.
