“Uccideteli,” he whispered to his head guard. “Kill every soul that had anything to do with this,” my father continued, his voice gaining a terrifying, hollow strength. “Bring my wife home!”
Lorenzo and Gio dragged me toward the house, my boots dragging behind me. Lorenzo’s voice was shaking as he called for the medics, his hands trembling as he tried to staunch the flow of my blood.
“I’m here,” Lorenzo kept muttering, more to himself than to me. “I got you. Just hold on. You’re okay.”
But I wasn’t okay.
As they carried me through the doors of the villa, I looked back at the driveway.
My father stood there, staring at the horizon, the silence of his rage more deafening than the gunfire had been.
That was the day the light went out.
The man I was supposed to be died on that sidewalk with her, face down in the dust.
∞∞∞
Two years later
The blood on that sidewalk dried into a dark, ugly stain, yet the memory of it remained a fresh wound in my mind.
For two years, I was stuck in my own home. I spent every waking hour obsessing over grainy CCTV footage, ballistic reports, and whispers in the streets. I knew what I saw. Amid the smoke and the screaming, I recognized a man as a member of the Castiglione clan.
But no one saw him. To everyone, I was just a grieving son losing his grip on reality.
I stopped eating. I stopped sleeping. The gym in the basement became my only sanctuary, where I broke my knuckles against heavy bags until the physical pain drowned out the screaming in my head. I was dissolving into a shell of a man fueled only by rage and resentment.
Lorenzo stood in the doorway of my mother’s darkened room one night, the smell of Mamma’s perfume still clinging to the curtains I refused to let them wash.
“Damiano. You’re wasting away. Come down. Have a meal. Show respect to the Dons.” He said, sounding exhausted.
“I’m not sitting at a table with my mother’s murderer and his friends,” I said, not even bothering to look his way.
“You have no proof!” Lorenzo’s frustration ultimately cracked, his voice bellowing in the room. “We’ve looked everywhere. You are mistaken, Damiano. It’s time to admit that before this kills you.”
I didn’t go to dinner.
I waited until the house became silent, until the clinking of silverware and the fake laughter of our “allies” had ebbed into the night.
I walked into my father’s study, clutching a folder of evidence that was nothing more than circles drawn around blurred faces and dates that only made sense in my own head.
I dropped the folder onto the center of his desk, his brows furrowing at me. I was shaking, my eyes bloodshot with months and months of little sleep.
“It was them,” I said, my voice shaking. “Why won’t you believe me? Why are you protecting them over your own blood?”
He didn’t even glance at the papers. He looked at me, his eyes devoid of anger. Instead, there was a terrifying defeat that I had never seen in them.
He looked at me like I was a broken thing he didn’t know how to fix.
“Damiano,” he uttered, and the gentleness was worse than a scream. “I have lost my wife. I cannot lose my son to this insanity, too. You are seeing things that aren’t there. You are becoming someone we don’t recognize.”
“Because I’m the only one who hasn’t forgotten!” I screamed, sweeping the items off his desk in a violent motion. Books, pens, and crystal glass flew to the floor. “You’re all moving on! You’re laughing with them! It’s like she never existed!”
“Enough!” My father stood, his voice taking on a terrifying scream.
“I have tried everything to understand you. The Castigliones will never do that to our family. You have to believe that.”
He walked around the desk, stopping inches from my face. He smelled like the expensive cigars Mamma used to hate.
