Michael shook his head.
“I don’t care, Mom. I love you both.”
He looked at both of us, drying his tears with his shirt.
“I’m sad I don’t get to know my real father.”
Cole’s expression turned from rage to sadness on a dime after he heard those words. He was devastated; he looked defeated, but in my eyes, he was free; the truth had finally set both of us free.
The double doors opened. Vito walked through.
What now?
EPILOGUE
Outside the operating room, the doctor told Lucy the bad news about Mr. Moretti. The doctor looked somber, and Lucy looked very sad.
“Sorry, Lucy. We did all we could,” the doctor said.
Lucy gasped. She held back the tears.
She called her boyfriend Vito and told him the news.
“Hi, honey,” Lucy said sadly.
“Hi, baby,” Vito replied. “What’s going on? How is your dad doing?”
There was a long pause. Lucy teared up.
“I lost him, sugar. I lost him.”
Lucy was Moretti’s illegitimate daughter. He had paid for all her nursing classes and got her the job at the hospital with the doctor’s recommendation.
Moretti wanted his daughter to be near him, and he got his wish.
This was the price he paid for mixing business with pleasure. But he was very happy with his daughters, Lucia and Blondie, and his son, Rocco. Three different mothers, one fatherly heart.
“I’ll make him pay. I’ll take care of it,” Vito promised.
“Yes, sugar. You make him pay. He’s a bad man. He turned Clarissa into a bona fide whore. I heard her say it, and he didn’t deny it. That was the life my father never wanted for me or Blondie. And now he’s gone.”
Lucy started sobbing.
“Is he there now?” Vito asked.
“Yes, he is,” Lucy said with tears streaming down both cheeks. “Get over here quickly before he takes off or something.”
“I’ll be right over. I’ll turn him into hamburger meat.”
“That’s the Vito I know and love. Thank you, baby. Bye.”
Click.
How is Grandpa Moretti going to take the news?
Two weeks had passed after that whole ordeal. Cole was in the hospital bed recuperating from the beatdown Vito had given him.
He was connected to an IV. The clear liquid dripped into his left arm. The beeping of the heart monitor was steady.
