Page 32 of One Filthy Kiss

I smile. I forget how clean the air is here until I return.

“As are you, Don Emiliano.”

His hair is white but still thick. There are more lines at the corners of his eyes and creasing his forehead than there were when we last met, but his eyes are still bright, and he is still the smart man I knew before.

“Retirement suits me well.”

His wife Caterina appears then with a pitcher of homemade lemonade and two tall glasses. She sets the tray down on the table between us and kisses my cheeks. Her palms, when she folds my hands into hers, are warm and scratchy.

Caterina pinches my cheeks. “Still so handsome, Giovanni. You will make a wonderful groom someday. And what beautiful children you and your future wife will have.”

I smile. It is their way to be vocal and exuberant with their affections.

“Have you met someone? Is that what you’ve come to tell us?” She takes the seat beside her husband and reaches for his hand.

“No, that isn’t why I’m here.”

It is good to know that they always have my best interests at heart. I don’t know if I would be quite so generous if our situations were reversed.

“We don’t see enough of you these days. You know that our door will always be open for you,” she continues.

“He knows this, cara.” Emiliano raises his wife’s hand to his lips.

I imagine this is me and Megan in forty years’ time, sitting in the shade of a lemon tree, peaceful and contented and happy, and am instantly flooded with guilt at the images in my head.

This is one of the reasons why I avoid coming back to Sicily. When I am in New York, I learn to compartmentalize my two homes, it is the only way to stay focused. But when I am here, the feeling of homesickness swells inside my gut and tarnishes the life I have built for myself in the city, painting it dull-gray, and turning it cold.

“Will you visit their graves while you are here, Giovanni?” Her eyes fill with tears. Fifteen years, and still the pain is as raw as it ever was.

“I will try to make time.”

How can I tell them that I haven’t factored time for visiting graves into my busy schedule? That there is someone special in New York whom I want to hurry back to. That I can’t even remember the last time I visited the graveyard.

“I still talk to Elisabetta.” Caterina blinks, and a tear trickles slowly down her cheek. “She is still watching over you.”

Elisabetta was their daughter.

She was killed in the same car crash that killed my parents.

We’d known each other since we were babies. We grew up together, played on the beach together, learned to swim and climb and ride bikes together. Elisabetta was my best friend. She was beautiful and as dark and tanned and sultry as Megan is light and fair and bubbly.

We always knew that our families would want us to marry when we grew up, and we accepted this with gratitude. Not all mafia offspring got so lucky when it came to choosing their future spouse. We were so close that we could finish each other’s sentences and choose each other’s meals in a restaurant. We each knew when the other was feeling down or happy or worried. We were a great match.

Elisabetta had been finalizing wedding arrangements with my parents. I should’ve flown to Sicily the day before. But I canceled my flight because of a business transaction that I was waiting to close on, a deal that would eventually result in the purchase of the hotel and casino resort in Manhattan.

That was the day they were killed.

I’ve never forgiven myself. I should’ve been here. If I’d traveled here as planned, they wouldn’t have been in the car on their way back from Syracuse. The accident would never have happened, and they would have all lived.

“Caterina, let the man be.” Emiliano holds his wife’s gaze, his voice dragging me back to their homely veranda surrounded by the scent of lemons and jacaranda. “It is still as difficult for him as it is for us.”

His wife studies my face, and her expression crumples. “Oh no. You still haven’t let it go, Giovanni, have you.”

She is right.

I haven’t let it go.

I will never stop trying to prove that their deaths were not accidental.