“Antonio Moretti! Watch your blasphemy, young man.” My aunt puts her palm to the air in a threat to bring it smashing against my head. “As for your friend? I wouldn’t blame her if she’s long gone by now.”
The funny thing is, my auntie thinks she’s doing Mia a favor, but all she’s done is added to my anger. “Blasphemy or not, Zia, if this broad is still in the house and I find her, then my swearing to the heavens will be the least of her worries, trust me.”
“No respect,” Auntie Maria shouts to me as I storm out of the kitchen. “Even gangsters should show respect, Antonio. Remember that and get yourself dried up. If you catch a cold, don’t expect me to be playing nurse for you. You hear me?”
Yeah, thanks for nothing. I storm off without replying, heading back to the front door, my fear that she managed to escape growing. It’s more so because I know what it will force me to do, just out of honor alone. Without Mia, her father’s future isn’t looking very bright. Then I remembered something—my father was talking to someone up in his room, yet, his nurse was standing in the kitchen, right next to Sophia.
* * *
Nearing his room,I can still hear my father talking to someone, his voice rising and lowering like it used to when he would tell us stories as kids. At the door, I knock then enter without waiting for an answer.
“Ah, my son returns. And he’s forgotten how to use an umbrella.” My father gestures his arms apart.
I walk toward my father, who’s sitting up in his bed, his back against a pillow. And there with him, in a chair by his side, who else but—
“Mia. Who gave you permission to leave the room?”
“Permission?” She answers back, tilting her head in confusion. The beauty in her face is somehow elevated by her sudden confidence. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes challenging, again. It’s a stark contrast to the last time I saw her, nearing tears on her back.
“I was telling young Mia here, how beautiful she is,” my father says.
My reaction is to show disapproval with an audible release of air from my mouth. I can see that my father’s charm has amused Mia, however, if she knew the things my father has done in his life, she would have thought twice about sitting next to him.
“Come on,” I say, “you shouldn’t be in here.”
“There’s no rush, Antonio. In fact, I was just about to tell Mia about the old neighborhood.” I have no choice but to let the old man have his fun. “You see, there was a time when the blocks of a neighborhood acted like walls around a village. We all had our own communities where everybody got to know each other pretty well. When I look at you, I remember your mother.”
Mia straightens her back. “You knew my mother?”
“Of course.” My father releases a deep sigh into the room, “It was terrible, the way she went. Sickness is the worst way to die, trust me.” He taps his chest, and starts to cough as if feeling the need to make the cancer in his lungs as obvious as possible. I move toward to give him a few pats on the back to help clear his throat, but he waves me away.
“I’m fine. I’m just fine. You know, Mia, you and Antonio used to play outside your father’s office when we would discuss business.”
“No, I didn’t know that,” she answers. At the mention of her father, she leans back in her chair as if to distance herself. Maybe in realization of the fact that my father, no matter how deceiving his appearance may be, is not a sweet old man, not at all. She would do well to remember that my father ordered her father’s inevitable death. It was because of her naked body in the shower that her father wasn’t dead already. If I hadn’t felt my resolve fall away, replaced by an unquenchable thirst for her body, and changed my tactic. All in the name of pussy, Antonio. It has never before been a problem for me, to separate business and women. But, today especially, I question if Mia has changed that.
“Mr. Moretti, please.” Mia’s expression changes into one of despair. “What do you plan to do to my father?”
“Sweetheart,” my father answers, then drops his tone. “We all make mistakes in this world. And it’s the way we choose to deal with them that differentiates one person from the next, because trust me, darling, a mistake against the Moretti family always catches up with you.”
He turns to me, his voice growling as he says his next words, “I just hope my son hasn’t forgotten that.”
“That’s enough!” I blurt out. Mia’s mouth is gaping in shock with the way my father’s temperament changed, and I don’t like where this is going. I pick her up with the weight of my father’s judgment on my back and march her out into the hallway as if I’m dragging a naughty child out of class.
“Let go of me!”
I don’t say anything else to her. I can feel the anger rumbling from inside her. She fights me, but there’s no chance in hell that she’s going to get away. Guess there’s no escaping the fact—I am my father’s son.