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“Fuck that,” I say at once. A knee-jerk reaction. “I can do it myself.”
Mario sighs. His hand hasn’t left my shoulder. He squeezes once reassuringly. “It’s not a sign of weakness to go to any lengths to protect the ones you care about, Marcello. The only true weakness is pride.”
I start to retort, but I end up swallowing it back. “You’re right,” I say instead. “Fuck, you’re right.”
“Pride hurts the very same ones you want to protect.” His eyes slide over to the woman on the bed with all the tubes running into her. Doing her breathing and eating and heart-pumping for her. “It hurt her.”
I know he’s remembering the night it all happened.
I am, too.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I say fiercely.
He just shakes his head sadly. “Pride cost me my wife,” he whispers. He looks up at me. “It cost you your mother.”
“She’s not dead,” I fire back. “She’s right there.”
Mario shakes his head again. “You’re my son, Marcello. I was supposed to protect you. And I was supposed to protect her. I failed you both. Look at her. She’s not alive. Not in the ways that matter.”
The walls we’ve kept up for so long between us feel like they’re in danger of crumbling.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I say again. My voice is failing.
Since the night of the attack, my father and I have kept up this charade. I am the don. He is an advisor.
But that’s basically just a bandage on a bullet wound. The easiest way of ignoring all the pain in our past.
The truth is that he is my father and that Mamma was his wife. That the things the Irish and the Russians did hurt us both far more than we have ever been able to admit.
“We can’t keep holding on to this,” Mario says. “You can’t go into the future if you’re clinging to the past. You can’t protect everything at once. We failed her, son. Perhaps it’s time to let that failure go.”
Tears prick at my eyes. Tears glisten in his, too.
His hand holds my shoulder. I put my hand on his shoulder.
Beep. Beep. The machines keep humming.
We both turn and rest our free hand on my mother’s bed. “Goodbye, Mamma,” I whisper.
I stand. Mario stays seated, whispering softly in Italian.
I leave him to say everything that’s left to be said.
Harper
In shock, I clutch the door, completely flabbergasted by what I just heard.
Mario is Marcello’s … father?
All this time, I thought Mario was just a butler or an advisor to Marcello, doing precisely as he was asked. But they always did have a very close relationship, now that I think about it.
How did I not notice before?
I swallow and stare at the two as they converse with each other about Marcello’s mom, who still lies in that frigid bed looking like a living corpse. And I can’t help but be moved by Mario’s words as they both clutch to each other and the bed.
I don’t mean to spy on them, but when I saw them both in this room talking, I needed to make sure it wasn’t about me. But what I’m witnessing now takes my breath away.
“Ci mancherai, Tesoro,” Mario says softly, his voice strained with emotions. I don’t even need to see his face to know the tears are rolling down his cheeks.
I lean against the door as Mario gets up and tears each wire from the machine, one by one. Marcello bursts out into tears, covering his face with his hand to hide them. And I can’t help the tears that spring into my eyes watching the two of them suffer.
Right now, I wish I could hold him and tell him it’ll be all right.
But I know it won’t be. I can’t do anything to fix this, and I can’t stop this from happening.
Within seconds, the beeps on the machines turn to full elongated screeches and then nothing as Mario turns off the switches. The silence that follows is deafening.
I’ve witnessed plenty of deaths before, but none has made me feel as weak as this one.
Especially when Mario walks back to Marcello and they get up to hug each other so tightly that it makes me cry with them.
I want nothing more than to go in there and hug them too.
But to do so would be to infringe on their privacy, and it feels wrong.
Besides, what can I do?
I can’t change what just happened.
I can’t take their pain away.
All I can do is watch in awe at how much emotional power it took to do that. To give up the one person you love the most.
“Mamma …” Marcello whispers.
“It’s okay,” Mario whispers back. “We’ll see her again. Someday.”
But then he looks up straight at the door … right at me.
My eyes widen as my breath falters, and I instantly hide behind the pillar, clasping my hand in front of my mouth to stop the sound from coming out.
