“Your uncle is a murderer,” I continue. “Your grandfather on my side was a strategist who made one fatal miscalculation. Your mother is currently sitting on a wall in a mafia garden, talking to fetuses because all her other options are men.”
The rosemary moves in the wind. Possibly judging me.
“Don’t start,” I snap.
The absurdity of it almost steadies me. Almost.
I think of Alessandro’s face when he said yes. Not defensive. Not pleading. No apology. He wouldn’t give me the relief of hating him for a lie. He stood there and accepted every word I placed on him.
It should make him easier to hate. It doesn’t.
That’s infuriating. A man who lies gives you a clean target. A man who tells the truth too late leaves you swinging at air, because the truth itself has already done the damage.
After seeing Dante, I wanted him gone. Broken. Ended. I still do. But now the file sits beside me and the act of destroying Dante is no longer a fantasy.
It’s a sequence I can imagine so easily. Names to approach. Pressure to apply. Councilmen to fracture. Marco, perhaps. Salvatore, definitely. Giulio carefully, if at all. Dante’s schedule. Witness statement. Vehicle record. Confession. Alessandro’s signature.
The knife is also real.
So why am I sitting here instead of using it?
Because once I do, nothing remains abstract. Because Dante falling won’t lift the weight. Because Alessandro gave me the knife knowing it could cut him, too. Because I need to decide whether justice is the same as destruction. And because I need to decide whether staying makes me complicit or simply alive.
That’s the worst question. The one with no clean answer. If I stay, am I forgiving Alessandro?
No.
I seize that answer immediately.
No. Forgiveness isn’t a room assignment. It’s not shared children. It’s not choosing to survive in the place where betrayal occurred.
Forgiveness, if it ever comes, is a thing I’ll name myself. It’s not a conclusion men are allowed to infer because I remain visible in their house. I can stay and not forgive. I can build and not absolve. I can love…
No.
That thought strikes too close to the crack. I move away from it.
Not yet. Perhaps not ever.
I can choose and still remember. That’s enough.
The garden path crunches faintly behind me. I turn. Teresa stands near the kitchen passage with a shawl over one arm andthe expression of a woman who has decided I’m both an adult and an idiot, which is becoming her primary emotional range.
“I thought I said alone,” I call to her.
“You did.”
“And yet.”
“I’m far away.”
“You’re twelve feet away.”
“Farther than the soup tray.”
I almost smile.
She approaches only when I don’t tell her to stop. Progress, perhaps. Or exhaustion.
