I hugged her. Before she could continue, I locked her in my thin arms and squeezed her with all my might, because, deep down, that was a reality that had always been in my gut. She had always been my mother figure. No one else.
“I didn’t have another mother, Aunt Lizzie. I only had you,” I revealed, hearing her immediate gasp of joy. “But now, you’re going to have your own family. And I… I want to have mine.”
“So, you’re going back in December.”
“Yes. In December, I’m going back to Italy.”
Chapter 58
Daisy Peonia Mary Parker
December, 2025
Silver River, South Mississippi, USA
The magnolia towered over us, a witness to our shared silence.
Sitting on the swing, Olivia kept the heels of her boots planted in the grass and her gaze fixed on a spot in the distance. I, for my part, let the tree trunk support my back, while I stored that image in my memory.
My months in Mississippi had come to an end. With them, I knew, I would leave Olivia. I had tried all that time to rekindle our friendship, to make things the way they used to be. Olivia was her usual self, oblivious to my secret. But I was someone she could never know.
“Paulie is such a cutie-patootie.” I sighed, trying to ignore the building tension between us. Aunt Lizzie had given birth tendays ago. It was a little boy and she gave him my Papa’s name. Now, Paul ‘Paulie’ Fitzgerald was the joy of the house. “I’m going to miss him.”
“I can’t understand how you can leave us. How you want to go back to a man like that, Daisy,” she whispered, and her dark eyes lifted to meet mine. There were traces of pain scattered across her complexion that others might not be able to recognize, but that I knew perfectly well. She wasn’t just a best friend. She was the sister life had given me, and whom I was now forced to let go. “He didn’t even reply to your messages.”
I took a deep breath and looked away at the wintry world around us. “He’s just trying to protect me,” I said, recalling Luca’s phone call from a few nights ago. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one wasting away from the distance. Camillo had spent the days since my departure locked up in the villa. According to Luca, he barely ate or slept, and every now and then they caught him watching old CCTV footage. Recordings of me.
“What if he’s already found someone else, Daisy?”
“He hasn’t,” I cut her off, meeting Liv’s gaze again. I took in everything about her—the way she dressed, spoke, even breathed—and my heart ached. I wished I could tell her the truth. All of it. I couldn’t. Never. “He and I… we’re more alike than you can imagine.”
She frowned. “I find it hard to believe you have anything in common with a mobster.”
Little did she know.
“We have similar pasts, Liv. I think my pain and his speak the same language.” I admitted, watching her throat move as she tried to swallow my words. I smiled tenderly. “Just as yours and mine did twelve years ago.”
Olivia smiled and stood up, standing right in front of me. “If you go back to Italy, I’m gonna be in so much trouble,” she said with a laugh that made me raise my eyebrows. “What? Did you really think I'd let anyone harm my friend's man?”
“What do you mean by—”
“Senator Jones left a flash drive with irrefutable evidence of Camillo Vicari’s involvement in criminal activities. Drug trafficking, murders… It was handed to me right after her death.” My legs went numb at the sound of those words, and I stepped away from the tree. Olivia surprised me again, throwing herself at me in a tight hug. “Something also tells me the senator didn’t kill herself, and you know that, don’t you, Ms. Daisy?”
I swallowed hard and clenched my fingers around the gray knit of her sweater. “She tried to kill me, Liv.” Her body stiffened. “The night I left your house, the senator gave me a ride and I accepted. I was stupid. She dragged me to the train tracks, where Lester died. She was going to kill me…”
Olivia stepped back very slowly, a morbid seriousness on her face. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
I shook my head and crossed my arms over my chest, swallowing hard. “Because Camillo was the one who saved me that night, Liv.”
“He killed the senator.”
“No,” I retorted immediately, my voice hardening. “The forensic report was clear. The senator killed herself.”
I expected some outrage, perhaps a rebuke from her, but instead, Olivia nodded and reached into her pocket. When she pulled out a small, rectangular, silver object and held it out to me, I blinked, unable to comprehend what was happening.
“The evidence against him is right there. When you hand it over to that fuckhead, tell him it’s my sincere thanks for saving my best friend.”
With trembling fingers, I picked up the flash drive, tears catching in my throat.
