Then a nasty voice intruded on my mind.
Your son is on his good behavior now.I could smell the whisky on his breath. See the nasty golden glint in his eyes.Boys are easy to handle at this age. Eager to please. But just waituntil he’s older and he disobeys you. Until he breaks your rules, the way boys do. You’ll know what to do.
I’d been smoothing the covers over Leon’s shoulders when the voice came, and my hands stilled. In the space between one breath and the next, an image flashed across my mind so vivid and wrong that the bottom dropped out of my stomach.
Me in a temper as ferocious as my father’s, striking my son across the face. Hearing his cry of pain. Seeing him stumble and fall to the floor. Then me, standing over him, breathing hard, and feelingvictorious.
A bitter taste spreads through my mouth, and my stomach clenches nauseatingly.
I’ve killed men with my bare hands and felt less than I felt in that single second, staring down at my sleeping son while my own mind showed me what I was capable of. What I was made for. What my father built so carefully, over so many years, with such methodical cruelty.
I stepped back from the bed so fast that I tripped over my own feet and had to catch myself on the chest of drawers.
I’ve been standing here ever since, watching Leon sleep, my body tight with agony in a way that has nothing to do with the surgery. My palms are damp. I am Don Cristiano Montoni, feared across this city, and I am terrified of a four-year-old boy sleeping peacefully in front of me because I don’t trust myself to be near him.
You’ll know what to do.
“Cristiano.”
Mina’s voice, soft from the doorway.
I don’t turn around. “Mina.”
A pause. Then her footsteps, quiet on the carpet, until she’s standing beside me. I feel her eyes move over my face in the dark, reading me the way she always does, finding the things I’ve learned to hide from everyone else.
“What happened?” Her voice is careful. Not alarmed yet.
“He saidgood night, Papa.” The words come out strange. “Not Cristiano. He hasn’t called me Cristiano in days.”
I hear her breath catch, the small involuntary sound of delight. Then silence as she registers that I am not delighted. That my shoulders are rigid, and my hands, pressed flat against my thighs, are still not entirely steady.
“Cristiano.” She steps in front of me, tilting her face up to mine. “Look at me.”
I look at her. Her eyes are dark and searching, and what she finds in mine makes her expression shift. “Tell me.”
I keep my voice low because Leon is just three feet away. “I was tucking Leon in, and I heard my father’s voice giving meadvice. About what to do when Leon misbehaves.” I stop. “And then I had a thought. An image. Something I would never do, but it was there. For a second it was there, and I couldn’t—”
Mina reaches up and takes my face in both her hands.
The touch makes me unclench. I exhale, a long unsteady breath, and her thumbs trace slow lines across my jaw.
“Look at Leon,” she says quietly.
I turn my head and look. His chest rises and falls. The T-rex is tucked against his ribs. After knowing him for such a short time, I already love him so much it frightens me.
“You stepped away from the bed.”
“Yes.”
“The moment the thought came, you stepped away.”
“Yes.” My voice is rough.
“Your father never stepped away from his impulses in his life.” Her hands are still cupping my face, warm and steady. “He never stood over you shaking because a terrible thought frightened him. He never felt horror at himself. He felt nothing, Cristiano. Not when he hit you. Not when he made you do terrible things.” Her voice is soft, but her eyes are fierce. “Thethought isn’t who you are. What you do with it is who you are. And you stepped away from your son.”
My throat is tight.
“Your father might always have a voice in your head,” she continues. “But you get to decide whether you listen to him.” She strokes her thumbs across my cheekbones. “And you’re not going to listen. Because you are working so hard, every single day, to be something different than what he made you.”
