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“Good morning,” I reply, standing on my toes to kiss him.
“You look beautiful,” he says, his gaze lingering on mine.
“Thank you,” I blush and take my seat at the table.
He lays out breakfast in front of me, and I gasp.
“Wow, this looks amazing!” I say, taking a bite of the omelet and hash browns.
Felix laughs. “You’re welcome,” he says, leaning in and giving me a quick kiss.
“You know,” I say, through mouthfuls of delicious food, “living here isn’t that bad.”
“And you,piccola tigre, are a little mooch,” he teases me.
“Hey, don’t you knowlittle tigressesbite?” I retort back.
“Ooh... I’m scared,” he says, pretending to raise his hands in fear.
“So, where did you learn to cook like this? I mean, I’m so spoilt for choice in your kitchen.”
He looks away with a distant gaze in his eyes. “It was an escape when I was a child.”
I say nothing, for in moments like these, sometimes, all one needs is silence to collect their thoughts.
“Growing up was hard, Tesoro. My father, Dominic Carlisi, was a man of few sentiments.
He and his first wife had multiple children, all girls. When after seven years of trying, no son was born, he divorced her and married my mother. It was a loveless marriage, for he still loved his first wife, and my mother was
nothing but a vessel to give him the next don in line to his empire - the future Carlisi Don. When I was born, he bought my mother the largest diamonds he could find - huge, ostentatious things. And that was the end of their
affair. She continued living in the same house, for my father then resorted to women of the night and had no need for a wife. He needed her to be my mother. From morning to night, she would run a strict schedule. And then,
there were the hours carved out with him...”
He pauses, with memories too painful to utter out loud.
I take his hands in mine and squeeze them tight.
I don’t know what else to do, and I don’t know what is going through his mind, but I know that he needs this.
A shoulder to lean on and a heart to hold on to.
We sit in that silence for a few more minutes until Felix finally speaks.
“Every day, I attended to my father’s business with him for two hours. These hours were grueling; I was just a child when I started. Six years old. I feel he purposely put the most gruesome vengeance in these hours.”
He pauses while reminiscing. Then he clears his throat before continuing.
“I witnessed my father’s men crushing hands, cutting fingers, and threatening people with death. Once, when I was thirteen, he put a gun in my hand and told me to shoot a man in the leg. I couldn’t bring myself to, and he
told me I would amount to nothing. But you see, my father had no choice. Weak or not, I was his only son.”
“Oh, Felix,” I said, sighing.
“But I had my mother, see. She cooked the best food in town, and I would spend hours in the kitchen, watching, learning, and helping her. Cooking was my escape from the pressures of being a Carlisi and my father’s demands.
I’ve been in the kitchen ever since.”
