Chapter fourteen
314 Words
He tried to reach out to Sofia. Letters, returned unopined. Phone calls, unanswered. He had Bruno drive him past her apartment once. He saw her through the window, talking with a friend. She was alive. She was living. She was free of him. It was the only victory that mattered.
On a quiet Sunday morning, with the sun streaming into his study, Vittorio Conti knew it was time. He was in his chair. He wore a simple linen suit. The medical folder was open on the desk, but he wasn’t looking at it.
Gennaro was there, and Bruno, his arm in a sling. And Marco, standing by the window, looking out at the city he would now rule.
Vittorio’s breathing was shallow. The pain was a distant tide.
“Gennaro,” he whispered.
“Don Vittorio.”
“The foundation… the paperwork?”
“It is done. Signed, sealed. She will never know it comes from you.”
A faint nod. “Good.”
He looked at Marco. “Remember the pause.”
Marco turned, his eyes glistening. “I will, Father.”
Vittorio’s gaze drifted past him, to the photograph of Chiara. His Chiara. He had failed her in so many ways. But he had, in the end, protected her granddaughter. Perhaps that was a form of atonement.
He thought of Sofia’s words. The cracks where the light gets in. He had lived his life in darkness, sealing every crack, fearing the light. But it had found its way in anyway, in the form of a girl with a bright scarf and a brighter mind. And in its searing, painful beam, he had seen the monstrous shape of his life for what it was. And in that final, desperate moment on the dock, he had used the tools of the monster not to spread more darkness, but to defend that sliver of light.
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