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The man looked bowed, gray. A shadow of the boisterous, vital man he remembered. Had time done this? he wondered. Or had it been his betrayal?
Seeing him, Luigi’s dark eyes widened. Suddenly life and color came back into the old man’s pale cheeks. “Cristiano?”
“I’m giving you back your villa,” he said tersely. “It’s yours. Keep it. Just never contact me or my family again.”
Hands clenching at his sides, he turned away.
“No,” the old man said.
Cristiano stopped, turning around in shock. “What?”
The gray-haired man looked at him. “I don’t need a villa. What I need,” he whispered, “is a son.”
“You should have thought of that before you tried to force my mother to get rid of me when she was pregnant,” he said, “then tossed her out on the street.”
“All I did was keep her from drinking while she was pregnant. And she hated me for it.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because from the moment Violetta told me she was pregnant, I loved you.”
The wind blew softly against Cristiano’s face. From a distance, he could hear traffic on the road, the cry of seagulls.
“That’s a lie,” he said in a low voice.
“You know how she was. You know better than anyone,” he said sadly. “Violetta was beautiful. Charming. But so broken. She accused me of keeping her prisoner. A few months before you were born, she disappeared without a trace.”
Cristiano thought of his mother’s fury if anyone tried to take her alcohol away. Once, when he was nine, he’d dared to pour out her bottles of whiskey while she was passed out. She’d slapped him so hard his ears rang for weeks.
“You made her a drunk.”
“I did?” Luigi slowly shook his head. “We met in a bar, when she offered to buy me a drink. I’d never seen any woman hold her liquor so well. Stupidly, I was impressed.”
That made sense to Cristiano, too. Agata had told him that when she worked for Bennato, the man had rarely touched alcohol. He took a deep breath.
“If you knew I existed, and you claim to care,” he said slowly, “why didn’t you keep trying to find me?”
“I did. For years,” the old man choked out. He blinked fast, shaking his head. Tears streamed down his wrinkled cheeks. “But you’re right,” he whispered. “I should have looked harder. It wasn’t until I saw her picture in the paper, a few days after she died, that I knew where you were. But before I could leave for Naples, you showed up at my hotel in Capri, asking for a job. I thought it was a miracle. I thought it was my chance.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I told myself I needed proof first. But the truth was... I was afraid.” He swallowed. “After the way Violetta raised you, why would you ever forgive me? I was a coward. And I waited too long. By the time I had proof you were my son, you’d already left. And I didn’t want to cause you more pain.”
“I betrayed you.”
“I didn’t see it as a betrayal.”
“How did you see it?”
The elderly man whispered, “Justice.”
A tear slid down his wrinkled cheek.
Cristiano stared down at him in shock. Everything was different than he’d imagined. Everything.
“Can you ever forgive me?” Luigi choked out. He reached his shaking hand to Cristiano’s shoulder. “I loved you so much. But I could not protect you. I failed.”
Cristiano stood frozen in front of the old wooden shack. The sun felt too bright on his face. Clenching his jaw, he looked out at the sea.
