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“If you stay here, you will die in this house, losing yourself in that false memory,” he whispered, his voice breaking. “I won’t watch it any longer. I won’t watch my son rot from the inside out.”

I chuckled, a hollow sound of disbelief.

“So what? You’re throwing me out?” I said.

“I am letting you go,” he said, and his eyes finally glazed over. “Go somewhere else. Find a life somewhere else. Because if you stay here, there will be nothing left of you to save.”

His words shattered something inside me. I felt my heart break in a way I hadn’t thought possible after losing Mamma, a new, deeper ache that weighs in my chest.

He had given up on me.

For a long moment, I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe; the pain was suffocating. But beneath the heartbreak, a cold, determined resolve crystallized. I realized there was nothing leftfor me in this house, nothing left in Sicily except for my mother’s grave.

I turned away from my father, the last remnants of hope falling away.

I left that night, knowing I would never return.

I didn’t pack a bag or say goodbye. All I had was the freezing rage that had turned into my only companion.

∞∞∞

Three months later, Buenos Aires

I stood by the VIP bar at Lux. For the first time in my life, I was a nobody—just a man with a heavy bank account and time he didn’t know how to spend.

Gio brought me a glass of whiskey, and we toasted to our new business.

Then, the strobe lights caught her on the dance floor.

She looked like a delusion.

She moved recklessly, like a beautiful firefly, oblivious of the man watching her.

When she stared back, she locked her eyes with mine and smirked like she was taunting me.

“Who is she?” I asked Gio.

“That?” Gio grinned. “Katarina Flores. Model, actress. Half of Buenos Aires is in love with her. She was in my favorite soap opera.”

“Sounds like trouble,” I said, the word tasting like a promise, as she challenged me in a staring contest.

For the first time in two years, the freezing rage in my chest felt a fraction warmer.

I didn’t know who she was.

I only knew she was the first thing I had seen in two years that looked more beautiful than revenge.

Chapter 32

Katarina

The dream is a loop.

We’re outside someone’s house, the lawn freshly mowed, the air buzzing as people walk around in hurried steps as if preparing for something grand. A party, perhaps.

I’m running after a boy who refuses to turn around. The weather is warm and safe, almostperfect. Then the sun glitches. The warmth itself hits a wall of ice, and suddenly I’m awake.

The room is dark, but my eyes catch a shadow figure of a man at the foot of the bed.