“I’m sorry,” I murmur into my newly-charged phone.
It had taken a while to convince Donatella to bring me the power cord, and even longer to scroll through the hundreds of messages Mia had left me. But finally, curled up in the safety of my bed, I’d hit the call button to talk to my mom.
“Mia said you just disappeared, and Claudio won’t pick up the phone!”
I cringe a little at the sound of his name. “It’s…we broke up, Mom. I’m staying with a friend for a bit.”
The lie isn’t an easy one, but there is no other logical way to explain myself. I suppose we had broken up; it wasn’t as if ourrelationship could ever recover from him selling me to the mafia and me calling him out for being a coward.
Even if the words hadn’t technically been said out loud.
“Which friend?”
Describing Rocco Moretti as a “friend” felt completely ridiculous. “Captor” might have been better, but I suppose after what I agreed to at dinner, “colleague” might be more appropriate.
Although aligning myself with the Italian Mafia was a surefire way to get my mother on the next plane to Brooklyn.
“I don’t think you know them,” I scramble for a name. “Donatella?”
“Is she looking after you?”
My mind flashes back to the near-screaming match we had over the dress I’d had to wear for dinner. “In her own way.”
“I never liked that man. I told you that from the very start.” Mom sighs. “You should come home. I can send you the money for the flight.”
How different my life might have been if I’d only listened to her advice back then, instead of acting like a lovesick fool. “It’s okay, honestly. Work is going well. I’m finally starting to get noticed.”
By the Italian don wanting revenge on my boyfriend. I don’t add that part.
“Cassy…”
It’s the pitying note to her voice that gets to me. My eyes prickle with tears. I know what she’s going to say next, even if I don’t want to hear it.
“I know how much you wanted to meet your father.”
I blink hard. “He doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Cas.”
It had been the world’s cruelest prank. I’d boarded that plane to Brooklyn after seventeen years of wondering if I would ever know my father, only to arrive in his city, days away from meeting him again, and then to receive the news.
Carmine Bellini, died by suicide.
I couldn’t mourn a man I didn’t know. And yet, the news had been heavier than I had expected it to be. Perhaps that was because I’d been so close to finding out everything I had ever wondered.
Why had he let my mother go? Why had he never tried to contact me? Did he care about us? Did he think about us at all?
Was it his guilt that had killed him?
Was it somehow my fault?
It was part of why I’d been so quick to agree to Claudio’s offer to come out here. But even that had backfired in my face.
“It sucked,” I admit quietly to the only woman who could possibly understand the kind of grief I’m dealing with, “but he’s just the man who gave me a bit of genetic material. You’re my mom. That’s all I need.”
My memories of Carmine are spliced with photos my mom kept lying around. There’s nothing solid or concrete to them at all. It’s all just a haze of ideas and projections that I can barely grasp onto.
“I know, baby.” My mother sighs again. “I’m just sorry that nothing is how you expected it to be.”
