Doomed to Love the Mafia Boss.

Chapter 3

“This is your fault. If you don’t want a beating too, lock yourself in your room and do not come out until I call you.”

His voice is rough, and it hurts to hear it. I press my hands against the wall and my nails scrape its surface, causing enough pain to make me react.

I catch details I want to forget before he goes back and locks himself in, leaving me there, paralyzed.

His hand is covered in blood, and crimson stains his shirt and his lips.

He looks like a beast.

He is not a man, he is something degrading.

I make no sound. The same instinct that led me into the hallway now forces me into silence. I would rather feel a thousand times the fear I felt when the Underboss touched me than face the monster growing before me.

In a rush of survival, I run to my room, slam the door shut, and lock myself in the bathroom.

The screams begin again.

Intense, continuous, and, to me, eternal.

I stare at the clock on the shelf.

Two forty in the morning.

Tick-tock.

The screams last an eternity.

Tick-tock.

The clock drives me mad more than her screams. Time moves forward, but it also seems suspended.

It does not stop.

Tick-tock.

Neither does she.

Tick-tock.

I think I am suffocating. I cannot breathe.

Tick-tock.

The same minute that sometimes is worth nothing, at another moment is all you have.

Tick-tock.

Three in the morning.

I can hear from the bathroom that for her it is eternal too.

Now I can count every second without error. Time becomes slow… and at three-oh-five in the morning, I hear silence.

The emptiness invades the house… until I hear the only coherent thing come from my mother’s lips since I woke up.

“Please, no…”

She repeats it.

It is her last plea.

I feel it.

I know it.

Her last words… and she wastes them begging.

Three ten in the morning.

Tick-tock.

Time begins to move again. The hands keep advancing without stopping, tearing through everything, while the house sinks into a dark and oppressive void. I am afraid even of my own breathing.

Then a dry sound—like something falling to the floor—echoes… and my father laughs.

I think I have never heard him so happy.

Meanwhile, I remain motionless, watching as the sun slowly begins to rise.

For a moment, I convince myself it was all a nightmare. I want to believe it with all my strength.

But she never came.

It is tragically ironic that no one prepares us for grief. For years I went to catechism and learned about life after death… but no one talks about those who stay behind.

How do you survive it?

I look at my father’s face, searching for a single sign of regret after murdering my mother… and I find nothing.

I am in a state of numbness. As if I were in a deep, frozen ocean, where the body stops feeling before it dies.

That is how I am. Cold. Distant. Asleep inside.

It is strange to sit at the table with him… but I feel nothing.

Feeling nothing… is good, I think.

That is what I keep telling myself so I can endure living with that monster.

The days pass. Life goes on. Business too.

And I… no longer care about anything that happens in this house.

I only exist.

And my father… seems satisfied with that.

14 years old

One year later

They say mourning should last a certain amount of time, but I feel as though I have been submerged in it for a year, and today I think it has become part of me. That legend that every person has a purpose in life, a function in existence… nothing but cheap self-help nonsense.

I remember the morning after the worst night of my life, and that memory haunts me every day. When the door finally opened after that dawn of horror, my sleepless eyes saw some random maid come into my room instead of Mom, to take out a black dress.

I put it on like an automaton and went downstairs, answering the call of Dante De Luca, my monstrous father, who only called Paolo, Raoul, and me to breakfast. He was already sitting at the head of the table, with red eyes and an anguished expression. He made sure that no one else had contact with us, except for the staff, before informing us of the obvious: Gianna, my mother, was dead.

But we needed to know how it had happened. We needed to know what to tell others when they came to offer condolences. He delivered it brilliantly, in a way that surprised me.

God, he was so good at that!

“My dear children, sadly I must inform you that your mother is gone.” He looked directly into my eyes, making sure I was paying attention. A knot formed in my throat and my eyes burned with tears I did not shed. I looked at my brothers and could see some pain in Raoul, but for Paolo it seemed as though Father were talking about the weather.

My middle brother was clenching his hand so tightly that his knuckles changed color, turning slightly white.

He was punishing himself so he would not show that the news had hit him as hard as it had hit me. Father had always considered him weak, and all his pride rested on Paolo, my older brother, even though both had already been initiated into the Cosa Nostra.

Raoul, despite having sworn in blood, burned his saint, and taken lives, was considered weak, and I do not really know why. He had to prove his coldness at that moment, even while knowing what had truly happened.

Then, absurdly, my father added:

“Last night, our house was invaded and she was taken from us. Our enemies are not playing games, and they always detect the weak people among us, looking for ways to hurt us.”

Again, his eyes shifted toward me, waiting for confirmation that I understood the version I was supposed to repeat.

“It is time to mourn, but know that it will be brief. Without her here, we will establish new directives in this family. It is time to shape your character, so that you understand your role in the world. Now eat. We will bury her early tomorrow.”

Suddenly, the expression of pain disappeared. He had already shown us how we were expected to behave, so he ended that unnecessary performance.

Father had plans, I knew it. I did not know what kind of plan required Mother’s death, nor what he gained from it. Until last year, actually, I knew nothing. I more or less suspected that business involved crimes. But that lives were at risk and would be sacrificed like pawns on a chessboard? I discovered that while I was becoming one of his pieces, and I remembered bitterly how Mom used to say I was intelligent and that, on that board, I would be the Queen.

I could only feel the rage growing inside me. At Raoul’s inertia, at Paolo’s satisfaction, at Father’s joy and, worse still, at my own ignorance about everything happening around me.

Mom protected me so much that everything had become one huge secret.