Page 105 of Revenge on the Mafia

When I was done wrenching out the hollowness of my empty life, I flushed the toilet with a shaky hand and staggered to the sink. It took me two tries to squeeze the toothpaste out. He watched me from the doorframe. I set my focus directly in front of me because I couldn’t look at him. Not for the reason he thought. But because I only saw the suffering I’d inflicted on him. By stabbing him, by coming for my stupid revenge plan, by making him relive everything by telling me. Suddenly, I knew Papá would have been disappointed in me.

I took the longest time brushing my teeth. When I couldn’t avoid him any longer, I turned to face him. We stared at each other. My lips wobbled with emotion. A muscle flexed in his jaw. This was it. We’d already broken whatever it was. We could walk away or try to fix it. He was tapping his fingers so fast that it was an audible rhythm in the silence. But he hardly noticed it. For the first time, I understood his stance. Niccolò Martello was helpless. Life had thrown him all kinds of fucked up shit, and right at that moment, he no longer knew how to handle it. I’d brought him to this point.

“You’re counting.”

He stopped instantly. He let out a frustrated hiss before he hid his hands in his pockets. The words I’d spoken lingered like an accusation.

An odd silence took over. It hurt to even breathe in it. I took a step toward him. He backed away. Rejection settled in my stomach like a sour taste. Then he spoke, and his words hit me like a kick to my stomach. “I’d like some paella.”

My insides twisted. For a second, I thought I might have thrown up again. I knew what he wanted. What he was telling me to do.

Taking a deep breath, I headed toward the door. He shifted away from me. Like I’d not want to touch him. Or he didn’t want to touch me. I didn’t know which hurt the most. Without a word to him, I went into the kitchen. He didn’t follow me, and that alone made me want to sink deeper into the pit of gloom I’d found myself in. He’d been around me all the time. Slipping food under my nose, a glass of water in my hand, or giving his shoulder for me to cry on. The absence of his presence weighed me down like a brick in my chest.

I couldn’t stand the sound of music but before, I couldn’t survive the silence anymore. Crossing over, I switched on the record player. The Symphony of Asturias filled every corner of the room. To the rhythm of the rapid, driving beat of the opening scene, I chopped the ingredients while muttering every Spanish curse I’d learned in my life. It did nothing to calm me. I couldn’t control the rage barreling inside me. I was so angry hot, ugly tears streamed down my face.

How dare he put himself at risk? What made him think his life was worth so little? To him, to his brothers, to me… how dare he not tell me… he could have confessed earlier and spared us both the agony. I quelled the thought that maybe I wouldn’t have been ready to hear it. That was a different matter entirely. We could have skipped that hideous, repulsive event the day before where he’d taken my hand and just… taking the knife in my hand, I plunged it onto the worktop. It vibrated on the wood before coming to a stop. I stared at it. I stabbed him. Tears blurred my eyes. More than once. When he’d… I couldn’t do it anymore.

Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath. All the memories crashed into each other, and somehow I forgot to breathe. The rage inside me seethed. Cooking a damn paella wasn’t going to help me with anything. The man was loco.

Abandoning everything, I marched into the room. He was waiting for his undue destiny, seated on the bed, head bent down, elbows resting on his knees.

“I’m not poisoning anything,” I snapped.

“Then you’re being a coward,” he told me calmly.

“Dios mío, basta ya.” I threw up my hands. “I’m not a fucking coward. I’m being strong. I’m moving on.” I strode toward him. He tensed. Ignoring him, I pushed myself between his thighs. Reluctantly, he looked up at me. His gaze filled with a mixture of hope and defeat.

“You need your revenge.”

“I don’t need revenge.” If I have you. But I couldn’t get myself to let those words slip. Instead, I cupped his face and said, “I know you knew Papá well. Maybe better than me or Mara. Can’t you see then that he wouldn’t have wanted this for you?”

His jaw flexed. “It’s not about what he wanted.”

“What is it about if not that?”

He swallowed thickly. “He didn’t see it coming, Anna. He trusted me.”

“I know. But you didn’t see it either. If you had, wouldn’t you have warned him?”

“Of course,” he bit out.

“What would you have done?”

He laughed. “I’d thought about it too many times. I would have warned him. Arranged for a different identity and moved all of you out.” He dropped his gaze to the floor. “Then I would have informed Enzo and then…” he looked up at me, his expression dead serious. “I would have killed my father.”

His confession was a fact. There was no hesitation in it. “Don’t you see it then, Nico?” I said softly, imploring him with my eyes. “You’re not to blame because if you had known, everything would have been different.”

He let out a deep sigh. I looked into his eyes. “There’s nothing to forgive, but if there is, I forgive you.”

His nostrils flared. “It’s not your place to forgive,” he snapped.

“Why not? As his daughter, it is. As the one person who saw him die in front of her eyes, it’s my damn right. No one else knows what it was like to watch him bleed out. See his body twitch, see the light leave his eyes.” A sob escaped me. He gripped my thigh. “I saw him change from my papá to a dead body, Nico. It’s my damn right.” I wiped blindly away at the tears. “Papá loved you. Just as much as he loved me and Mara. The things you know about him, the things that he taught you, that’s what keeps him alive in our hearts. I forgive you. In fact, I’m grateful because now I can move on.”

My shoulders sagged. The fist around my chest eased after eleven years. Without a doubt that Papá had admired this man. Loved him even. The star on his chest. The words around it: Si no puedes encontrar una estrella, busca lo suficientemente lejos hasta que la encuentres… Papá hadn’t preached it to the world. Again and again, he’d told us, no somos cobardes. We are not cowards. He’d meant it as a mantra for how we faced our lives. It was time both Nico and I walked that path.

“Move on, huh?” his tone was bitter.

I stepped away from him. “I release you from everything.”