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“You are not the man who made you.”

“I am just as guilty, cousin.”

“No. I see you come home after every job and wash your hands until the skin splits. I see you sitting alone in the chapel when you think no one knows where you are. I see you leave money in the kitchens for the widows of the men we killed.”

I looked at him then.

He had always been younger in ways that had nothing to do with age. He still believed a man’s actions could be placed on a scale and weighed. He believed that mercy might eventually balance brutality. I had long stopped believing in balance.

“The boy will remember my face for the rest of his life,” I faltered.

Alessio’s jaw tightened.

“He will wake at night and see me. He may even grow into the same thing we are.”

I handed the bottle back to him.

“You’re terrible at making a person feel better, Alessio. ”

The memory fractured. I stood in the present with my hand wrapped around the door handle to my room. I didn’t remember reaching for it. The metal was cold beneath my palm. My hand tightened around the handle.

The last message he ever left on my voicemail after I left the family was still carved into my memory.

Demi, I know you’re alive. And somehow, knowing you chose to live without us hurts more than hearing you took a bullet.

There had been no accusation in his voice. Only grief, a love stretched too thin.

I had deleted the message.

I opened the door. The room smelled of dust and memories. The bed had been stripped. The shelves were nearly empty, though a few books remained where I had left them. A jacket still hung from the back of the door. No one had touched the room.

I stepped inside and my chest tightened. On the desk sat a photograph in a plain black frame. I was nineteen. Alessio had one arm thrown around my shoulders, dragging me toward him while I glared at the camera. Gianni stood behind us, making horns with his fingers above my head. Alessio’s grin was wide and careless. He had looked certain we would all grow old together.

I picked up the frame. My thumb passed over his face.

“I became a priest,” I whispered.

The words sounded absurd in the empty room.

Alessio would have laughed. He would have stared at the collar, shaken his head, and asked whether God had run out of better men. Then he would have hugged me. That was the thought that broke something in me. The certainty that he would have forgiven me.

My knees struck the floor before I realized I was falling. The frame remained in my hands. I bowed over it, unable to breathe. I had buried strangers. I had stood beside grieving mothers and told them death was not the end. I had spoken of mercy, reunion, and eternal life with a steady voice. I had never believed those words less than I did in that room. Because Alessio wasn’t waiting for me. He was dead in the ground. He had died believing I had chosen a world without him.

A sound tore out of me. I pressed my fist against my mouth, but another followed. Harsh. Broken. Nothing like prayer.

“I’m sorry.”

The room greeted me with its morbid silence. I bent until my forehead touched the edge of the mattress.

“I’m sorry.”

I had said those words to God. To the dead. To men bleeding beneath my hands. I had never said them when they could still matter.

I stayed on the floor until the light shifted across the room.

When I finally stood, I returned the photograph to the desk. At the door, I looked back once.

“I came home,” I whispered.