This life is merciless. It doesn’t negotiate. It doesn’t forgive.
It takes.And takes. And then takes again.
For the first time in years, I wonder whether Marcello is right. Whether I should walk away from the empire I built with blood and bone. Whether I should choose my wife and my son over the throne I have spent a lifetime carving.
Because if I don’t leave this world soon…
It will take everything good I have ever built. Everything I love.
Everything that still makes me human.
24
BEATRICE
The air smells like grass, warm pavement, and cherry popsicles.
Daniele is laughing—real, unrestrained, belly-deep laughter—as he sprints toward the swings. The kind of sound that melts something inside my chest. His curls bounce with every step, one shoelace untied, his whole little body buzzing with eight-year-old joy.
This is the childhood I always wanted for him.
I sit on a park bench, hands folded over my stomach, just… watching. Letting myself breathe. The past few weeks have been good for me. Healing, even. Talking to Marta helped more than I expected. She grounded me in ways I didn’t realize I needed.
I want another child. I want Daniele to have a sibling.
I wantMatteo to have another baby—maybe a daughter this time.
A little girl would ruin him in the best way.
But my body… has other plans. Miscarriage after miscarriage has hollowed me out. Some days, it feels like I’m made of hope and bruises.
My phone buzzes.
Valerio:On my way to pick you up, principessa.
I roll my eyes and text back.
Beatrice:Surely eight years later we can retire that nickname. I’m by the swings with Danny.
Phone away. Eyes back on my boy.
Daniele is by the sandpit now, laughing with a couple of kids from school. He’s smiling wide, dimples deep. You’d never guess the child with the bright grin and dirt on his knees is heir to the largest mafia syndicate in the state, if not the country.
Matteo has worked hard to keep those worlds separate.
Sometimes, I almost forget how heavy it all really is.
Here, under shifting branches, with sunlight spilling over the grass and a dog barking at a squirrel, the weight loosens. I can breathe. I can pretend, just for a moment, that this is all we’ve ever known.
I soak it in. This little slice of ordinary. This peace I don’t take for granted.
This is what life is supposed to be.
And for a moment… just a moment… I think about forgiving myself. For the pressure I’ve put on my body. For the grief I’ve carried. For letting the desire for another child eclipse everything else.
Here, watching my son laugh in the sunlight, I remember what matters.
But maybe now it’s time to think who I was before I became a mother, a wife, a woman trying to outrun her past.
