“I have lived everything life has to offer. What I need is to know that my life’s work will be continued.
“And you think I will?”
“You will,” he says.
“What makes you believe that I am carved out to do so?” I ask. At this point, I just try to gain as much knowledge as possible.
“Because you will be the one who kills my sister,” he says, plain as that.
I scoff and shake my head slowly in disbelief.
“I am no killer,” I say.
“And that is where you are wrong, mia bella, Antonella.”
I don’t know if I am more irritated by the fact that he calls me ‘my beautiful’ than the fact that he believes I am a killer.
“What makes you think that?”
“Because you already killed,” he says. His words reach my ears, but I don’t process them.
No words come over my lips.
I take a step back.
This is not true.
I did not?—
“You may not remember, because you were only eleven,” he says.
Eleven-This can’t be.
Rosalia was right.
“I didn’t?—“
“You did,” he says, and you meant to. “Because you would do everything to please your father. And you will do the very same for me.”
“I—what? I didn’t?—”
I am Sophie Brooks. I am people’s sun and moon, I laugh, I am happy, and I make the best out of everything. I encourage people and help them believe in themselves. I laugh and joke. I am warm. Kind. Caring. I am no killer.
“You heard me,” he says. “Let me show you something. Sometimes the eyes must see.”
He walks me through the estate, two of his men following us everywhere. Endless corridors and rooms, stairs leading up and down.
We stop in a room in the basement that would be best described as a study. A scent of cold smoke and male perfume trails up my nose. There are maps with routes, probably shipping routes on the wall, and photos of people connected with red strings.
A shelf filled with leather ledgers on the opposite side, where a stack of alcohol bottles resides behind crystal glass, and three leather armchairs in front of it. A dark wooden table in the middle, on it an ashtray with a half-smoked cigar on it.
“This here was your father’s,” he says. “You spent many hours down here with him.”
I can’t remember it.
I shake my head.
“Nothing?” he asks, as if he knew. He opens a drawer, pulls out an envelope, throws it onto the desk and nods for me to take it.
