“If you stay here, you will die in this house, losing yourself in that false memory,” he whispered, his voice breaking. “I won’t watch it any longer. I won’t watch my son rot from the inside out.”
I chuckled, a hollow sound of disbelief.
“So what? You’re throwing me out?” I said.
“I am letting you go,” he said, and his eyes finally glazed over. “Go somewhere else. Find a life somewhere else. Because if you stay here, there will be nothing left of you to save.”
His words shattered something inside me. I felt my heart break in a way I hadn’t thought possible after losing Mamma, a new, deeper ache that weighs in my chest.
He had given up on me.
For a long moment, I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe; the pain was suffocating. But beneath the heartbreak, a cold, determined resolve crystallized. I realized there was nothing leftfor me in this house, nothing left in Sicily except for my mother’s grave.
I turned away from my father, the last remnants of hope falling away.
I left that night, knowing I would never return.
I didn’t pack a bag or say goodbye. All I had was the freezing rage that had turned into my only companion.
∞∞∞
Three months later, Buenos Aires
I stood by the VIP bar at Lux. For the first time in my life, I was a nobody—just a man with a heavy bank account and time he didn’t know how to spend.
Gio brought me a glass of whiskey, and we toasted to our new business.
Then, the strobe lights caught her on the dance floor.
She looked like a delusion.
She moved recklessly, like a beautiful firefly, oblivious of the man watching her.
When she stared back, she locked her eyes with mine and smirked like she was taunting me.
“Who is she?” I asked Gio.
“That?” Gio grinned. “Katarina Flores. Model, actress. Half of Buenos Aires is in love with her. She was in my favorite soap opera.”
“Sounds like trouble,” I said, the word tasting like a promise, as she challenged me in a staring contest.
For the first time in two years, the freezing rage in my chest felt a fraction warmer.
I didn’t know who she was.
I only knew she was the first thing I had seen in two years that looked more beautiful than revenge.
Chapter 32
Katarina
The dream is a loop.
We’re outside someone’s house, the lawn freshly mowed, the air buzzing as people walk around in hurried steps as if preparing for something grand. A party, perhaps.
I’m running after a boy who refuses to turn around. The weather is warm and safe, almostperfect. Then the sun glitches. The warmth itself hits a wall of ice, and suddenly I’m awake.
The room is dark, but my eyes catch a shadow figure of a man at the foot of the bed.
