Page 19 of Cara

He deflates into a chair, letting me know those words were a burden he’s been struggling to hold. “She chose Madrid. She begged me to tell you. She wants you to follow her.”

Silence consumes the air between us. His words make me want to sprint for the door, board the first plane out. They also make me want to destroy everything in sight.

“Sophie is gone. I sent her away for a reason.” I step to the window, gazing out at the soldiers guarding the gate despite the rain. “Tonight, I became everything she hated.”

“She’d understand.”

No onecould understand this. “I thought I had a chance. I ran with her because I tricked myself into thinking I deserved it. The life I imagined? It’s never gonna happen. She would always be tied to what happened to her, to the family if she were with me.”

“That’s not true?—”

“Bo, I have a child.”

He’s right off that chair in a rush. “What?”

“Isabella.” Even uttering the girl’s name unsettles my stomach. “My father knew. She’s Rosie’s kid. Sophie would…”

I don’t even know what Sophie would do, how she’d react. I never imagined children with anyone else.

“Jesus,” Bo says.

I remember a time when my eyes were painfully dry, when tears wouldn’t reproduce. Now, I feel I’ll never stop.

“Everything has changed. She is better off without me, Bo, and you cannot argue that. I know you can’t… not after everything you just saw.”

The door attendant stands to attention when he sees me.

My father owned this building. By now, word has spread that I am the sole heir of his fortune. That this building is now mine and all of his possessions. He bows his head, adjusting his posture, addressing me with the respect that is due to a man who just won an impossible war.

Don Marcello.

I’m bone weary, but I nod to him, knowing more than ever that I have to make these men trust me. Admire me. Fear me. They cannot see weakness. I wait until the elevator doors close before I lean against the railing, just trying to make it.

The wide hallway leading to Arturo Marcello’s Manhattan apartment hasn’t changed, a stretch of red carpet that never seems to end. Tucking my wife’s wedding ring under my shirt, hanging by a chain on my neck, I acknowledge the soldiers at the doorway as I enter. My feet pause at the entrance, seeing my past in gleaming technicolor.

The coatroom I confessed my love to Sophie in.

The back rooms I watched my father interrogate men in.

The chair by the windows where my mother would knitmittens for the newborns of the family. Walking to that chair, I see a pair in the basket. Lifting it, I take a strike to the chest, reading the embroidered signature at the bottom.

For when you become a father.

Con tutto il mio cuore,

Mamma

Unable to stand any longer, I drop into the chair, setting down the handmade mittens. I know the exact moment I'm not alone. My eyes lift to the bedroom, finding my mother still wearing her beige minx coat. Her eyes are swollen from crying, but they expand at the sight of me, even in the dark.

She doesn’t say anything right away. Braving a few steps, one foot after the other, she doesn’t come to a complete stop until she enters the living room, observing me closely. Taking in the destruction, sobs begin to roll out of her. She falls to her knees, seizing my shoulders.

“Myson!” Her arms aren’t long enough to surround me completely, but she tries. She grasps at my sweater, pausing only when she senses me tense in pain and resorts to cradling my face, just like she would have done twenty years ago. Her eyes trace my wounds, her mouth falling open in despair. “Mio figilo!”

I’m bone-weary, but I needed to see her. I needed this. To face someone who doesn’t know what I’m capable of. “I’m okay, Ma. I'm fine.”

“I thought you were never coming back. Your father?—”

“Is dead.”