29
Mia
“Papa!” I run over to my father. Antonio has brought me to a secluded motel out of the city, and he decided to wait outside. It’s already late in the night, but the events of this bloody day still prevent my body from giving in to the exhaustion it’s owed. At the Moretti house, men are busy getting rid of all the bodies, which for the most part belonged to the attackers. I’m not entirely sure what their methods are for making things, people, disappear, nor did I ask. All I know is that there won’t be any more funerals, not for them. Before I came here, I had to wash the blood from my body, hoping that the death didn’t stain my skin. Yeah, it must have been the first time in my life that I was incapable of getting warm, no matter how hot the water was, the coagulated blood sending shivers down my spine. And apart from that chill, the rest of the world seems to be hiding behind a cloud of fog, surreal in many ways. The one thing I do recognize, however, is the way my body warms as I let my father embrace me in his arms.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him, “for everything.”
He pushes back, holding me at arm’s length, looking directly into my eyes, parts of his face still bruised.
“Mia, you have nothing to apologize for.” He walks over to the bed of the motel room, sits on its edge. “I’m the one who’s sorry, truly.”
“Papa, why didn’t you say anything before?” I take the chair next to the small table with the kettle, tea, and coffee sachets, and sit down in front of him.
“How could I? How could I have possibly explained such a thing?” He shakes his head.
I want to tell him that I would have understood, but that would be a lie. Even I know that. “You can tell me now. The real story.”
He looks to the window where Antonio’s silhouette stands, a look of sorrow on his face as he nods to my request. A deep breath.
“After your mother died, it was increasingly hard to find any motivation to carry on with the sham that was my work. It got to the point where too often I had to turn down good, honest people who needed my help. My whole life had changed to where I was nothing but a lapdog to those men. The Moretti family started demanding more and more from me. It was too much Mia. I was getting burnt out, and that’s dangerous for men in the family’s pocket. As soon as you start to slow down, they push you harder and harder, until they have no use for you anymore. So I had to get us out of there.” He shakes his head, looking full of regret and sorrow. I take his hand and squeeze it, letting him know I’m not angry. “I had to do it, Mia, not for myself but for you. My little girl. Your mother would have risen from the dead to kill me if anything had happened to you. I knew that if you were ever going to have a better life, a safe one with a normal upbringing, I had to take you away from the Moretti’s. I had to give you a life untainted by gangs and death because…” He closes his eyes. “Surely, I would have been taken out at some point, for the knowledge I have. And what would have happened to you? Alone without even a father to love you? No. I had no choice. If I’d told you, you would have been curious, you would have had questions that I wouldn’t have answered because, Mia, I didn’t want you associated with these men in any way!”
I sighed, rubbing my thumb over my father’s hand. “You know, until a few hours ago, I thought you were dead.”
He looks to the ground. “You shouldn’t have gone through that. It’s not fair.”
“No,” I agree, and by the way this conversation is going, I’m doubting he knows anything about today’s events, not entirely. A car pulls into the motel parking lot, shining its headlights through the window. I try to look out for Antonio and see his figure still there, guarding our room. “But we have to move on. You have to tell me what arrangement you made with Antonio. When I asked, he said I should hear it from you.”
He tilts his head at me and starts to whisper. “Mia, my girl. What is this thing you have with this boy?”
What exactly am I supposed to say here? It’s not like my thing with Antonio is something that’s easy to describe—far from it. To explain that, what started out as a sexual fantasy, unleashed a part of me that had probably been lying dormant for most of my life, and just when we were starting to find new depths to each other’s personalities, he locked me in a room again, making me think that he killed my father. How can I tell my father that in equal measures I despise and yearn for that man.
“It’s complicated,” I answer.
My father shakes his head. “Mia, it’s not too late. You don’t have to go along with this any longer. I’m sorry for whatever they’ve put you through—the things I’ve put you through—but you still have a chance at living your own life.”
There’s almost pity in my eyes. He really doesn’t get it, does he? What life did I have before this? Nothing that was made from my own choices, that’s for sure. I can’t let other people’s opinions dictate what I will or will not do with my life. “Papa, please, just tell me what happened.”
He gets up, surprising me, and starts to pace the room.
“Okay, so I’ll tell you what happened between us, what Antonio offered to me.” He fills his lungs with air through his nose. “In exchange for a clean slate, for my crime against the Moretti family to be dropped, I should give my permission for him to take your hand in marriage.”
“Marriage?” I ask, my voice rising in pitch and volume. What? I look toward the silhouette Antonio casts against the window. “Are you kidding me?
The whole notion that these two men should discuss whether I should marry someone takes me by surprise. In fact, it outright annoys me. Now I start pacing back and forth. I guess the one thing I’ve realized from all this is that I have to be in control. If I’m ever going to be happy, I have to start making the choices that dictate my life, not letting the men around me do that.
My father looks disgraced, leaning against the wall and looking down. I realize that he loathes this position he’s been put in. He sees that he’s writing off his debt with his own daughter’s life. And I see that it was his daughter’s life that caused him to make that debt in the first place.
“Papa,” I stand in front of him and take his hands into mine. “I understand why you did what you did. I can’t say it was right, none of this is right.” I shake my head with a sigh and look out at Antonio’s silhouette again. “But I’ve never doubted your love for me, and I won’t start now. And Papa?” He lifts his eyes to mine. “I don’t want you to doubt my love for you when I say yes to Antonio.”
“But Mia, you can’t—”
“No.” I stop him with a finger to his mouth. “Stop. I love you with all my heart.” Finally, tears sprout from my eyes. “But you need to stop making decisions for me. You and him.” I tilt my head to the door.
The truth, scattered across the last few days in tidbits of emotions, realizations, and actions, has started to come together now. Now that I know my father is safe, and now that I know Antonio didn’t kill him, didn’t betray me, and didn’t want to leave me behind or let me go. I still don’t know if he loves me, or if this was just his way of taking pity on me, but I know what I feel now. It’s become clear. The first time I felt alive like my life was worth something, was when it was in danger.
The last few days at the Moretti mansion were the most turbulent, exciting, and terrifying days of my life. But I survived, didn’t I? There’s a power in that feeling. The same kind that I felt when I took my own pleasure from Antonio’s body. The same kind of power I felt when I discharged the gun, taking a life to save another. The same power I felt when I held that very gun to the man I’d just saved. In my actions of the past days, there was a power I didn’t know was there before.
I finally know who I really am, and what I want to spend the rest of my life doing.