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Inside the open drawer, a small thumb-sized USB drive caught his eye. A sticker wrapped around it read: Vitari. He picked it up and teased the drive between his fingers. Why would his father keep a flash drive with his name on it? Was it filled with more horrible pictures like the other drive he’d found?
It didn’t matter. Whatever was on it wouldn’t change what had to happen.
A car engine disturbed the crickets chirping outside.
He tossed the drive onto the desk, flicked the safety off the gun, and waited.
Car doors slammed, voices murmured. The housekeepers would tell his father he was home. But it didn’t matter how his son had come back from the dead—Giancarlo always visited his study first.
The voices faded. Shoes clipped the tiled floor, coming closer.
Vitari breathed in, lifted his chin, and in the gloom, watched the door.
The handle turned, the door swung open, and Giancarlo’s broad profile filled the doorway, lit from behind. He hesitated, and Vitari felt the weight of his judgmental gaze fall on him, as it always had. Always there, always watching, judging, even from afar.
“My boy.” He reached for the light switch.
“Leave it.”
That hesitation, that moment of knowing… Giancarlo lowered his hand, stepped inside, and closed the door behind him, sealing away the world outside the study. Now it was just them, father and son.
“I always knew it would come to this.”
Vitari huffed a sour laugh. “Is this the part where you claim you’ve only done what’s best for me? You had to be cruel to be kind?”
“My son.” He moved into the light cast from the window.
He looked older. More lines had gathered around his eyes and mouth, which was always fixed in a grimace. He wore a grey suit, similar to the black one Vitari wore.
“I’m only your son when it suits you.” Vitari heard him swallow. He was afraid. Good. He should be. “My whole life, you let me believe I was nothing, but it wasn’t about me, was it? It was about my mother and your cowardice? Sasha Zhokov murdered her and took me from you, from your own front yard, and you were too weak to stop him. You weren’t ashamed of me, you were ashamed of you, of your own weakness. Because you did nothing.” He tasted the rage again, like the whiskey burning inside. “Nothing!” Vitari swallowed the knot in his throat. “I rotted in Stanmore for years and you did nothing.”
“You have every right to be angry?—”
“Angry doesn’t touch the surface, Father.”
Giancarlo took another step, and Vitari raised the gun from under the desk. Giancarlo must have known it was there, but now he saw it—saw the exact gun it was. His eyes widened, but not in fear. He nodded and met Vitari’s gaze again.
“Was she a whore?”
Giancarlo spread his hands and breathed in, filling his lungs. “I loved your mother more than life.”
He hadn’t expected those words to mean anything. He couldn’t remember his mother, didn’t know her, but hearing the quiver in his father’s voice told him he would have loved her too. He’d been robbed of that. Giancarlo had taken the truth from him. Had he known he’d been the product of love, things might have turned out differently.
“Why did you hide it?” Vitari whispered. He’d have yelled, but his voice wouldn’t have held.
“I was ashamed, son. I couldn’t look at you without seeing her. I blamed you. I failed her, failed you in the worst ways.” His voice cracked. His hands trembled at his sides.
Vitari steeled himself, slamming down barriers. He wasn’t here for this. This wasn’t a cathedral in England, and he didn’t care for Giancarlo’s confession. He was here to save the love of his life, to do what Giancarlo couldn’t. He wouldn’t fail Francis like Giancarlo had failed Stefania.
All he had to do was pull the trigger.
“Do it,” Giancarlo said. “Do it, son.”
Vitari smiled. Even now, in his final moments, his father barked orders at him like a dog. He would kill him, but he wanted more, he wanted a fucking apology. Giancarlo still hadn’t given him one.
“Know this, I am proud of you, Vitari.”
His smile froze, pinned in place. Proud?
