Page 15 of Niccolo (Mafia Kings #7)

U nfortunately, he was right.

She didn’t react at all like I thought she would.

I rode home on the bus alone and went up to our apartment. I found my mother working on her computer, a full glass and an empty bottle of white wine sitting on the desk beside her.

“Mama, we need to talk,” I said breathlessly.

“Go ahead,” she said as she clicked her mouse, changing the color of some text in Photoshop.

“I need you to look at me.”

“I can hear you just fine,” she said in a bored voice as she continued to work.

I gritted my teeth, then spat out, “Papa’s having an affair with a girl at the university. Maybe one of his students. I saw them kissing.”

My mother froze.

There was a long silence…

And then she swiveled around in her office chair to look at me.

“You think I don’t know?” she asked bitterly.

I stared at her in shock.

She chuckled – a dark, angry sneer. “Look at your face. I’ve known for years, Sofia.”

My mind reeled. I wasn’t exactly thinking straight when I asked, horrified, “He’s been seeing her… for years?!”

“NO,” my mother said contemptuously. “It’s a new girl every single year. How do you think we met? In fact, how do you think we had you?”

I wanted to vomit.

I did not want to hear anymore –

But my mother threw it in my face.

“I got pregnant with you while I was taking his class. He tried to get me to have an abortion, but I wouldn’t.”

When she said that, it felt like someone had sliced my heart with a knife.

But my mother kept going.

“I dropped out of school, but the university found out by then. They were going to fire him, but he told them we were in love and were going to get married, so they let it slide… if we got married. He wooed me and won me back… we got married at the courthouse… and then I had you two months later. And… here we are,” she said, waving her hand at the apartment around us.

“He was faithful for a couple years while you were a baby… but then he started up again. By that point, I didn’t care anymore. My only condition was that he never bring any women here, ever.”

So that was why all the graduate students Papa had played chess with had been men…

“I gave up everything – my entire life – to have you, and to stay with that cheating bastard,” she hissed, “and look where it got me. So you come in and tell me about all this now, and expect me to give a shit?”

She gave one last, dark laugh – then turned back to her computer screen and slugged down half of her glass of wine.

I stood there in utter shock for a long moment…

Then went back to my room…

Closed the door…

And cried bitterly with my face buried in my pillow.

My father came home late that night. He seemed wary at first… but when my mother didn’t say anything to him, he got me by myself and whispered, “You told her?”

“…yes,” I said in a numb voice.

He smirked. “She didn’t care, did she.”

I glared at him. “I think she cares. She just drowns it all in cheap wine.”

He snorted. “What did you think was going to happen? She was going to rise up in righteous indignation and throw me out?”

When I didn’t answer, he said coldly, “I’ve been thinking. I think it’s time you moved out.”

I stared at him in shock. “…what?”

“I know you’ve saved all your winnings from your tournaments. It’s not much, but it’ll be enough to get a room somewhere with other students.”

I just blinked in horror.

I’d never lived apart from my parents before.

“Oh, you thought you could do this to me and there wouldn’t be any consequences?” he hissed. Then he smirked. “It’s just like when you play chess… you never did know when you were at a strategic disadvantage until it was too late.”

“Mama won’t – ”

“Mama won’t give a shit,” he said coldly. “In fact, she’ll agree with me. Be out by this time next week.”

Then he turned and walked away.

My father was right. I’d won a little tournament money over the years – a hundred euros here, a couple hundred there – and I’d saved almost everything I won.

I had a total of 2537 euros, which was enough to rent a room in a student apartment in Turin for at least half a year.

Except I had no intention of staying in Turin.

I skipped class the next day, packed my laptop, and took all the clothes I could carry in a single suitcase.

Before I left, I left a note on my bed for my parents saying I was going ‘no contact’ with them and not to bother trying.

Then I blocked them on my phone and created a filter in my email to make sure I didn’t see their messages.

I also wrote two more emails:

One to the registrar’s office formally withdrawing from the university…

And another to the university letting them know that my father was having an affair with a student, that he’d had many such affairs over the last 18 years, and that they might want to look into it.

I sent the first email straightaway.

I hesitated on the second one.

I wanted to send it… I really did.

But I wondered if it would make me an awful person to do that to my own father.

I could have rationalized it by saying, My father’s a predator. I’m just saving a bunch of poor girls in the future.

And while that was true…

That wouldn’t be the real reason I sent the email.

I had to be honest with myself.

The fact was, I wanted to get even with my father.

I wanted revenge.

For all the years of belittling me and cutting me down, which only now did I see clearly as emotional abuse…

And for throwing me out because I tried to tell my mother she was married to a piece of shit.

But if I sent the email, he’d probably get fired…

Lose the vast majority of his income…

And maybe have to move out of the apartment we’d lived in for my entire life.

If it was just Papa who suffered, I could probably deal with that.

But it wouldn’t just screw him over, would it?

Mama would suffer, too.

Even though she hadn’t been much of a mother, I couldn’t see myself destroying her life because of one conversation where she’d been nasty to me.

Her life was punishment enough – living in an alcoholic haze and married to a cheater, unable or unwilling to set herself free. I didn’t see any reason to make things worse.

So, in the end, I clicked ‘Delete’ rather than ‘Send.’

I wondered for a few minutes if I’d made the right decision…

But once I walked out of the apartment building, I felt something I hadn’t ever felt before in my life:

Free.

And that was enough to make me forget about revenge.