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Tears are falling from my eyes, flooding over my cheeks. I don’t even move to wipe them away. I can’t. I can’t move at all. All I can do is breathe and wait.
“I should never have brought her to New York. That is where I made my first mistake.” He talks without looking at me, his gaze locked on the floor at my feet.
“We should have stayed with her family, but I wanted her to know me, to see my world. And she loved it here. She was so excited. You were born here, and we had a family. We were so happy. So happy.” He swallows hard. I wait.
“My family, the mafia, they were angry. I was accused of marrying a spy. They hated her. They never accepted her. I tried so hard to get them to understand. Then I tried to make plans to leave, to take her back home, but I was too late. I realized how serious they were - too late.”
“So you killed her,” I say, with pain in my voice.
“They gave me a choice, Seraphina. And they meant it. I had seen them doing it to other people before. I just thought, seeing as I was in the organization, that it would not happen to me or to myfamily. They gave me a choice. Either - I had to kill my wife - or they would kill my wifeand my child.” He is sobbing again.
“Seraphina, I did it because it was the only way to get you out of New York. They would have killed you both. How could I be so weak to watch them kill my child? I made the hardest choice I have and ever will have to make in my life. I took the life of my wife, the person who was my entire world, in order to save our child. And I know, believe me, I know - that if I had asked her, if I had had that chance to ask her - she would have told me to kill her.”
I walk over to the container wall, where the chair is lying on its side. I pick it up and slump down onto it. My legs are shaking. I can no longer hold myself up.
“Seraphina, please, my daughter, please believe me.”
I stare at him, silenced, shocked, processing, but unable to think.
“Say something, Seraphina. Tell me I'm a monster. I know I'm. I deserve it. But even now, I would make the same choice again. I would make that choice, and I would force myself to live in pain every day. Do you know why I have not killed myself?”
“Why?” I ask, my voice a mere whisper.
“Because I don’t deserve that kind of relief. I deserve to feel this agonizing guilt.”
I stare at his pain, the years of anguish that he has experienced etched in every wrinkle on his face.
“Why didn’t you try to reach out to me?”
“I didn’t deserve to.”
A simple answer that tells me so much.
My father is dead inside. He hates himself more than I could ever hate him for what he did. And, honestly, I can’t even hate him anymore. Did he even have a choice?
I sit for ages, staring at the wall opposite me, unable to look at him, my thoughts getting more and more distant.
After an unknown amount of time has passed, I stand up, picking up the knife from the table nearby, I walk over to him.
He lifts his head, revealing his neck as though asking me to kill him.
I step behind him and slice the ropes off his wrists.
I hand him the knife, and he stares at me in shock.
“Cut your feet free,” I say, without emotion.
He does and then tosses the knife to the floor. He takes his time standing, his legs unsteady and shaking.
“Seraphina,” he says, but I'm already walking away. I need to get out of here.
I turn back, glancing over my shoulder at him. “You are free to go.”
“Seraphina.” He calls my name again, but I walk out of the container.
Outside, there is a man watching me. He stares at me with dark eyes, his arms folded across his chest, a look of hate across his face. I glare at him. I do not know who he is.
My father steps out of the container and stands next to me.
