Chapter 2
II. LIAR
A year earlier, Rome
A glass of whiskey in my hand. Garden below, full of strangers clinking glasses and pretending they know what victory feels like. My father won the campaign today. Officially, the Mayor of Rome.
And me? His perfect son. The one with a split brow and two stitches because he hit me so hard I saw black.
A knock, gentle, barely there, before the door creaked open. Maria stepped in, quiet as ever.
“Sir, there’s a letter for you,” she said softly.
I took it from her fingers. No name. No return address.
“Grazie, vecchia cara,“ I said, and her face lit up with the tiniest smile.
I was a bastard to most, but never to her. She’d done more raising than either of my parents combined. The second the door closed, I tore the envelope open.
Inside, there was an invitation to the House of Clowns, La Maddalena. And on the back: “If you’re looking for truth, meet me at midnight at Piazza Navona. Wonder how I look? We have the same face, different suit.”
I laughed, one of those sharp, bitter ones that scraped your throat on the way out, and tossed back the last of my drink.
“Yeah, right.”
I crumpled the invitation in my hand, tossed it in the bin by the table, and dropped onto the bed.
Truth?
What was truth worth when lies let you breathe?
I’d built myself a home out of them. A fortress. Every lie stacked like a brick between me and the world. Because even men, oh, especially men, get broken. And if I let anyone see the cracks, they’d pour in like smoke. Better to be untouchable. Cold. Alone.
I stared at the ceiling, that one little dot next to the light. It looked like it moved when I blinked, but maybe that was just the whiskey again.
Then the door slammed open.
This time it was my mother.
“Oscar, baby, what are you doing lying down?” Her heels clicked across the floor as she flung the curtains open. Sunlight exploded into the room. “Get up, we should be with your father.”
“He doesn’t want us there,” I said, closing my eyes.
The pillow vanished from under my head and smacked against my face.
“But he needs us.”
“No,” I said, clutching the pillow to my chest. “He doesn’t need us either.”
She hesitated. Her eyes darted to the floor. Same move every time the truth got too heavy for her to carry. I saw it. The bruise she tried to paint over. Faded purple under layers of concealer. She didn’t even bother hiding it this time.
“Yeah,” I said, laughing under my breath. “I’m the liar.”
“Just get dressed,” she said, turning her back to me. “Come downstairs.”
I used to think she was weak. For staying. For letting him wreck her over and over.
But maybe strength doesn’t always scream. Maybe it just stays. Holds the house up with shaky hands and smeared lipstick.
We were never a real family. But she was still the only mother I had.
My father kept my adoption secret. Except when he wanted to spit it in my face.
And the worst part? He chose me.
He chose me, and still broke me.
He hit me like I was something he scraped off the street, a forgotten piece of trash.
And I let him. Back then, I thought I deserved it.
I thought punishment was a form of love.
Somewhere between teenage years and the day they locked the door on me, I started searching for something, anything that could help me.
I rifled through cabinets like a scavenger until I found his prized whiskey.
My first sip was fire and velvet. I dropped to my knees like it was holy. After that, there was no turning back. I told myself I’d never become him, but the truth is, I already had.
I stood up, the room tilting sideways, but I didn’t bother fixing myself. Not for him. Not tonight. I poured another glass, let the whiskey carve its way down my throat, and welcomed the burn.
When the weight in your chest grows too heavy, escape doesn’t need permission, it just needs an opening.
I wasn’t drinking to forget. I was drinking to feel less.
Less of the buzzing voices, the pressure, the shame.
The whiskey made it all go quiet. For a moment, it made me feel like someone else.
Someone better. Even if everyone else saw a wreck, I felt free.
I stepped outside. My shirt hung loose, half-untucked. The glass dangled from my fingers, empty, just like me. My breath reeked of liquor. I barely reached the garden before he saw me.
Dante Ricci. Mayor of Rome. My father.
His eyes flashed with anger. He stormed toward me, seized my arm like a child misbehaving in church, and dragged me back inside before the public got a glimpse. I laughed in his face. Part drunk, part from spite.
“Behave yourself,” he hissed through clenched teeth, then shoved me against the wall with the grace of a man who liked pretending he was still in control.
“What’s the matter?” I sneered. “Afraid they’ll see the cracks in your perfect little portrait?”
His jaw twitched. “No. I don’t want them to see a freak like you.”
Then he pressed my face to the wall. I didn’t care.
“Now grab your bottle,” he spat, “and finish it somewhere else.”
I turned my head, looked him dead in the eyes, and grinned. “Whatever, Father.”
He turned his back.
Mistake.
Without thinking, I brought the glass down on his skull. It shattered on impact with a sharp crack. “Taste that, you pathetic asshole.”
He crumpled to the floor, one hand clutching the back of his head. He was silent. Still.
I didn’t wait. I didn’t care. I walked away, glassless, mind empty, heart raw. I stepped onto the front porch, his cabriolet glinting in the sun. All I wanted was to leave. The keys were in the ignition. And as soon as I moved toward the car, a pebble hit my side.
I flinched, spun around, but there was no one.
“What the hell?” I barked into the silence.
Then—tap. A second stone struck the back of my head.
I turned.
There, half-shadowed beside the hedges, stood a man. My own reflection.
Same build. Same posture. Same eyes. Except he wore a clown mask and clutched a red balloon like it meant something.
He raised one hand, crooked two fingers, and called me towards him.
And I followed. Not out of curiosity. Not out of fear. It was like stepping into a memory, or a dream I couldn’t wake from.
I passed the hedges, slipped past the old oak. The clown in a red suit moved like he knew the way, like he knew me. By the time we reached the woods, he stopped.
He turned.
The paint on his mask had cracked. His eyes, icy blue, met mine like glass to glass, and for a second, I wasn’t sure which of us was real.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked, stepping toward him, trying to peel back the mask with just my eyes.
He tilted his head, amused. “They call me many things,” he said with a grin.
“Clown.” He gave an exaggerated bow, fingers hooking into the corners of his mouth to stretch it wider.
“Joker,” he cackled, the sound sharp and cracked.
“Rio.” A chuckle, almost childlike. “But to you?” He took a step closer. “I’m your first brother.”
I scoffed, spun around like I could laugh it all away. “I don’t have brothers.”
“Believe whatever makes you sleep at night.” His voice dropped low. “But soon you’ll learn I’m the only one you’ve got.”
He leaned in, close enough that I could feel the heat off his breath. He inhaled deeply, nose grazing the air near my neck. “You stink of old money,” he said. “I smell like cotton candy. But soon…” His grin widened. “The only thing we’ll both reek of… is blood. Starting with dear old Dante Ricci.”
A sharp crack of branches behind us.
I froze.
Something moved softly, slowly. I didn’t know if it was real or some illusion stitched together by whatever madness I’d stepped into, but I waited. Still as the grave. Then, she came into view.
A woman.
She wore an old white, stained dress. Her skin looked pale white, her face gaunt and lined with scars that told stories no one had ever listened to.
Her crooked and yellowed teeth jutted out like broken fence posts.
In her hand, she held an incense burner, swinging gently, thin trails of white smoke curling into the air like fingers.
The smell hit me fast. Sweet. Familiar.
Oleander flower.
The moment it reached my lungs, the world turned liquid. Shapes blurred. Colors bled into one another. My legs buckled slightly, and my vision warped like heat rising off asphalt. My throat burned.
Oleander is poison, my mother used to say. But in the right hands, it can steal the mind without ever killing the body.
They must’ve thought they were clever, using it on me. But I was already crazy. Already lost. They couldn’t take what was already broken.
They may have been my blood, but they were nothing to me.
Still… I wondered. Were they the ones waiting for me at Piazza Navona? Was this the truth I came looking for? Or just another carefully painted lie?
A woman’s voice sliced through the fog in my mind, soft, raspy, like it had clawed its way out of the earth.
“Get up,” she whispered. “Follow the white rabbit. At the end of the road lies your Wonderland… and inside, the House of Clowns.”