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I sat up and took his free hand, tracing the lines of ink over the back of it. “You’re not a monster, Gio.” Far from it.
“And you?” That endless gaze met mine as though he could suck me in, pry out all my secrets and spit me back out. “Do you ever wonder what it would be like to be ‘normal?’”
I smiled. “All the time.”
“And what do you think normal looks like, Emilia?” He leaned in, his lips brushing my shoulder.
It took me a moment to think past the tingling he ignited on my skin. My fingers raked into his hair, holding him to me as I tilted my head for him. “Like this. Safe and warm and easy. I imagine it’s morning coffee at a local café, lazy Sundays. Friends, college, a job—”
“And what job would you want?” he hummed against my neck.
“I…” I didn’t know. “It’s silly to even think about it.”
He cupped the back of my head, forcing me to look at him. “But you did think about it. So, tell me.”
“I guess I pictured myself studying art history. Maybe opening a gallery somewhere.” Somewhere far from Chicago. My lips curled as the fantasy life I’d once dreamed of unfurled in front of me. “I would travel the world, looking for pieces, meeting new people, experiencing new cultures...” I let out a long breath and my whimsical dreams right along with it. I dropped my gaze to his chest. “As it turns out, I was never even allowed to learn to drive a car, let alone travel anywhere.” I laughed humorlessly. “Too much of a flight risk, according to my father.” If I could have driven, I’d have run as far and fast as I could, stolen a car. Something. Anything.
“I’m sorry, piccola.”
I felt that sentence burrow into me, going far deeper than simply words. I wasn’t sure if he was apologizing for himself for keeping me caged or my father. Or maybe just my life.
“It wasn’t all bad,” I said, suddenly feeling the need to defend the very man I’d killed.
He’d said those same words on a dying breath. I’m sorry. I love you.
“Every time I think of my father now, I never remember the bad. It’s like death has blocked it from my mind.” I closed my eyes, fighting the familiar sting of tears, but feeling the need to purge my soul to Gio in a way I never would to anyone else. I only had Renzo, and I couldn’t tell him this. “Now I just see the bedtime stories, him teaching me to swim in the lake, taking us to Navy Pier and riding the Ferris wheel even though he was terrified of heights.” I couldn’t help the small smile that touched my lips. “He caged Chiara and me, sold us, deprived us of a life, yet I still see him through the rose-tinted glasses of a child. And knowing I killed that man—”
“You know that isn’t the version of him you killed, Emilia.”
“I know. It’s so fucked up to mourn him.” I had no right to that grief when I had pulled the trigger, and yet… I squeezed my eyes shut, and Gio’s lips pressed to my forehead.
“Do you want to bury him?” he breathed against my skin.
Did I want that? Maybe I needed closure, to lay him to rest. That version of him. That version of me. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll arrange it.”
“It’s fine. You’re busy—”
He silenced me with a kiss, slow and drugging and all-consuming. By the time he was done, I could barely breathe right, and I definitely couldn’t remember what I had been protesting.
“It will be done.”
6
EMILIA
Renzo clutched my fingers as we stared into the gaping hole Gio’s men had dug. It was a lonely spot for a grave, near the boundary wall of Gio’s backyard, beneath an oak tree.
The wind whispered through the branches that stretched overhead. A few golden leaves floated down onto the shiny lid of the coffin as though Mother Nature were making an offering, giving my father her blessing.
The silence stretched between Renzo and me, thick and cloying, and I wanted to fill it, to say something, but I couldn’t. As I stared at Roberto Donato’s final resting place, I realized I had nothing to say. No kind words, no prayers.
“Do you want to say anything?” I whispered.
“No. He’s dead. And the world is a better place for it.”
I glanced at my brother, his lips pressed into a tight line, jaw clenched. “It’s okay that you loved him, Ren. He loved you.”
He’d been good to Renzo and Luca. He’d been good to Chiara and me at one point.
“I loved him once. But what he did...” He shook his head. “I’ll never forgive him, not even in death.”
I hated this for him. I didn’t want him not to grieve for my sake.
