Ennio lets go of my gown and straightens, then walks to the window and closes it, firmly turning the handle.
"I’ve been in the same place you are many times, but I always pushed through."
"Spare me this ‘there’s another, better day’ spiel. You had revenge to look forward to, but me?"
He slowly turns back to me and fixes me with his gaze.
"I know your only mafia single-player mode is ‘kill them all’, but that won’t work here, Ennio. Sorry! I’m not going to kill Fate. I don’t have anyone left to take revenge on, nowhere to aim my energy, nothing that keeps me alive!"
Ennio presses his lips into a thin line.
"I can give you that easily."
"What the hell are you talking about?!"
Ennio pulls a gun from his pocket.
I curl my lip with contempt.
"Really? Sure. Go ahead, shoot me, if you think that’s going to scare me—" I stop because he turns and heads down the hall toward the room I was in.
"Hey wait," I get up even though the dizziness makes it hard, but I catch up to him, grab his arm and force him to face me.
"What are you doing? Why are you going there?"
"I’m about to give it to you. That reason."
"I don’t understand."
"If you don’t get yourself together," Ennio lifts the gun and shakes it slightly, "there are people you still care about, people who still matter to you, and you know I’m not the kind of person who hesitates to pull the trigger."
"My parents? You’d kill them?"
"The question is whether YOU would kill them, that’s the correct way to put it, do you really think you won’t kill them by committing suicide, a hundred times over? Do you think you won’t shatter their hearts and condemn them to die every singleday when they remember your face crushed on the hospital parking lot?"
Silence falls, I tremble, pull my hand back, and sway on my feet. I have to lean on the wall just to stay upright, feeling tears sliding down my face.
"Let me die, Ennio, don’t keep me alive on a premise like that, let me die, please, I’m begging you."
Ennio frowns.
"I won’t. You’re going to keep living, you’re going to fight for me, and then you’re going to go on with your singer life, and your parents will be safe and healthy, happy to have their son. Ok?"
"A son who will be a wreck? You’re sentencing me to a life of torment, sentencing me to a life in hell!"
Ennio turns, walks past me and goes back to the visitors’ area, takes a small silver case from his pocket and after a moment lights his ever-present vape.
"You’ll push through this, Bay, I promise you, a person can push through anything, survive hell."
I growl in frustration.
"The problem is I don’t want to suffer, I lost him, do you understand? I don’t want to wake up every day in a pit of despair and not see even a flicker of light in front of me."
He turns toward me, his black eyes drilling into mine.
"I live like that," he says, blowing a thin stream of vapor toward me.
A scent reaches me, my head spins a little, but there’s something extra in it, a faint dizzying calm.
