"Bella."
"Matteo."
We embraced. Short, this time, without crying. There are things you only cry over once—after that they become something normal.
He held me at arm's length, looking at me.
"You're different."
"You haven't seen me in seven years. Everything's different."
"No." He smiled. "You're different."
I sat down on the edge of the bed, and he went back to the armchair.
"What's it like being here?" I asked.
"Better than Capri. There I was a prisoner of papà, here I'm a prisoner of Luca. It's quite different."
"Different how?"
"In Capri I was property. Here I'm a problem." He smiled. "I'd rather be a problem, bella. A problem has a solution; property doesn't."
It was the first joke I'd heard from my brother in seven years.
"Matteo. I need to ask you something. In 2015, when you found out what papà did, why didn't you talk to Don Marco?"
"Because I loved papà, Valentina. I know it's the stupidest thing a man can say, but I loved him. I still love him. Cazzo, I still love him." He laughed, without joy. "And I thought: if I talk to Don Marco, Don Marco will kill papà. Then I'd have no father, and I'd have to take over the Rossi famiglia at twenty-eight. Then I'd have to lock Valentina in a convent forever." He looked at me. "I thought wrong. But I thought it."
"Matteo. I have another question."
"I'm listening."
"Our mother, in 2013... was it really cancer?"
"It was."
"Really?"
"Really, Valentina."
"Do you swear?"
"I swear on your life."
I nodded and took a deep breath.
"I believe you, brother."
"There's one more thing. Did Bianca tell you about the steel box?"
"She did."
"Bella," he said, lower. "There's a letter in the box from our mother to papà. From 2012."
"How do you know that?"
"Because I put it in the box myself, in 2015, before papà locked me up. It was the only thing of mine I had on hand when he found out. I put it there with the other documents so he wouldn't throw it out." He looked at me. "Mamma knew about the scheme, bella. Mamma wrote to papà asking him to stop. In 2012, a year before she died."
