Page 49 of A Touch of Fate

I wasn’t sure if maybe I was crossing a line I shouldn’t, but I needed to give it a try.

Domenico’s family lived in a small house in the suburbs.

I didn’t know much about them and had only met Domenico’s mother and brother when she raged in the restaurant.

I was a tiny bit anxious about how she’d react, but I was willing to risk her wrath if it meant I could put in a good word for Samuel.

Leo didn’t leave my side as we made our way to the front door and he rang the bell. “I’ll have to interfere if she loses it again. Grief isn’t an apology. It’s been years.”

“Don’t tell her that,” I whispered.

The door opened, and Domenico’s mother stood in front of me. Her eyes widened when she spotted me. She was in a bathrobe and looked slightly disheveled.

“I hope we didn’t wake you,” I said.

She scowled. “Of course not. I prepared my husband and son breakfast before they left to do their duty for the Outfit.”

I could hear that she didn’t think they should still be part of the Outfit.

“I’d like to talk to you if that’s okay.”

She looked at Leo, who regarded her like a ticking time bomb. Then she stepped back and nodded. She left the door open and moved inside. We followed her into a living room. The TV was playing. She sank down in front of it. An ironing board and a heap of crumpled clothes stood off to the side.

I moved closer to her. Leo stopped right behind us. His hovering was unnerving. She looked like someone who struggled with grief and perhaps even depression but not like she would attack me, at least not physically. She met my gaze eventually.

“Samuel misses Domenico too, and I know he’s very sorry.

” Leo made a sound that suggested it wasn’t something I should say.

Was it really so bad if a man, even one with power, admitted that he was sorry for something like this?

“I just thought you should know. I know that doesn’t bring your son back, but Samuel never meant for any of this to happen. ”

“Everyone moves on with their lives, even my husband and son. Everyone can except for Domenico and me.”

I nodded. For a mother to lose her child in this way must have been horrible. It was probably impossible to move on from that. “I don’t know if it would help you, but maybe forgiveness would make some things easier.”

She let out a hollow laugh. “Forgiveness? Did you forgive the man who cost you your legs?” She motioned at my wheelchair.

I didn’t correct her that I still had my legs. I smiled. “I did, eventually.”

“He paid with his life for what he did. Forgiving a dead man is easy because he can’t flaunt his happiness in front of you anymore.”

“I would have forgiven him even if he were alive. His death didn’t change my situation.

” I never asked Danilo or Dad to kill him, and I wouldn’t have.

His death didn’t change anything for me, except for knowing that in addition to my suffering, his family now grieved too.

“Is that what you desire? Samuel’s death? ”

My voice broke slightly. I was falling for Samuel a little more every day. Maybe I even loved him, and I wanted to see him fully happy. Thinking that someone other than our enemies wanted him dead hurt my heart.

Her eyes glazed over in thought. “Sometimes,” she admitted. “I wish he had died and not my boy.”

I nodded. I understood that too.

She looked up at Leo, who was typing on his phone. “Is that betrayal? You can tell him exactly what I said. I would tell him and his father to their faces. They can kill me if they want, then I’d finally be united with my boy again!”

Leo frowned at her as he lowered his phone, but he didn’t say anything.

I realized she would never give Samuel her forgiveness. That would require her to move on, and she would never allow herself to do so. For her, it would feel like betraying the child she’d lost.

I squeezed her hand. “I don’t understand your pain. Nobody who hasn’t experienced it can, but I am sorry for your loss. I know the things we lose always echo the loudest.”

She swallowed hard and nodded.

Samuel came home early that day, and one look at his tense face as he stepped outside on the porch where I was doing origami told me that Leo had told him everything.

Not that I had expected anything less. Samuel probably always got a detailed rundown of my day.

I wasn’t sure if it was concern or his need to control everything.

“That was very foolish,” he said quietly.

His quiet rage was always the most potent. I sat up straighter and put the origami flower down. Giorgia had asked me to do them for her wedding as table decorations for their wedding gift. “If wanting to help my husband makes me a fool, then I don’t mind being one.”

Samuel shook his head and squatted before me with a look of intense frustration. “Do you realize how much danger you were in?”

“I visited a mother who’s caught up in grief and depression, not the enemy.”

“Grief can turn men into monsters.”

“Men, certainly. She’s a woman.”

Samuel glared. “This isn’t the time to be witty. What if she’d decided to pay me back and hurt me by hurting or killing you, Emma? Did you consider that?”

“Leo was with me. And killing me wouldn’t have hurt you in a way she might desire.

For her to have any chance of getting even, she would have to kill someone you love, like your mother or Sofia.

Not me, because you don’t love me.” The words ached, but I didn’t shy back from a hurtful truth. I never had.

Samuel regarded me without saying anything.

“Right?” I whispered, and I wasn’t sure why I did it.

Samuel straightened and looked out over the lake. “I told you she won’t forgive me.”

“She can’t because she would feel guilty. It isn’t even about you anymore. It’s about her feeling obligated to stay in the past and not move on like everyone else.”

“I want to move on, now more than ever, because of you.” He looked me in the eyes, and the look in his made my heart speed up. Samuel wasn’t a man for emotional declarations, but this felt like one.