Ricardo #2
Because that, unfortunately, isn’t entirely wrong.
Mario lets the silence sit for another moment, then pushes the file toward me.
“Valecourt,” he says, returning to business as if he has not just sliced open my chest with a knife and sifted through the contents of my heart. “I'm sick of dealing with their office. Call and smooth things over, then take care of this paperwork.”
I take the file.
“Fine.”
“And Ricardo?”
I look up to see him standing at the door.
“What happened before, with Dante’s mother, it wasn’t your one and only chance. I wish you would see that.”
He leaves, closing the door behind him.
I sit there for a long moment with the file in my hand and my brother’s words echoing in my head.
Beyond it, somewhere down the hall, Julia is working outside Mario’s office. Professional and focused. Likely with that small line between her brows when she is reading something closely.
Nothing like Liliana Castelli. The girl I fell madly in love with at twenty-one years old.
Liliana was sunlight in human form. Laughing, reckless, beautiful in a way that made men stupid and women envious. She loved loud music, fast cars, expensive wine, late nights, and dancing on marble floors in bare feet.
At twenty-one, I thought that was life.
I thought that was freedom.
I thought I had found a woman who knew how to enjoy the world without fearing it.
By the time I understood she loved the white powder as much as she loved the rest of it, I was already gone for her.
I can still remember the first real fight we had. Her pupils too wide. Her smile loose. My hands on her arms while I tried to make her look at me, really look at me, and hear what I was saying.
You need help, Lili.
She laughed.
She always laughed.
She kissed my jaw, told me I worried too much, told me she was in control. She said it as if control were like a pretty dress she could put on when necessary, as if addiction were something that happened to weaker people, not her.
I pleaded.
I threatened.
I tried to buy doctors, clinics, privacy, time.
She slipped through all of it with that smile on her face and powder in her nose, until eventually, I had to let her go.
I thought I had.
Weeks later, she came to me and told me she was pregnant.
I remember how everything changed with that one word.
Pregnant.
My child.
Our child.
And suddenly, leaving the choice to Liliana was no longer love. It was cowardice. There was a life inside her that had no voice, no defense, no chance unless someone made a decision she was too sick to make for herself.
So I went to my father.
That is when it got ugly.
Money opened doors and closed them behind her. Doctors signed what they needed to sign. Men who owed Francis Conti favors made certain there were no leaks, no questions, no interference.
Liliana was put in a private rehab center outside Naples.
For nine months, she hated me.
I visited anyway. I brought flowers she threw at the wall. Books she refused to read. Clothes she would not wear.
I sat through her sobbing, her rage, her pleading, her promises, her accusations. Monster. Thief. Conti bastard. She called me worse than that, and I took every word because Dante’s heartbeat was steady and strong and his little body was growing safely inside her.
That was enough.
When he was born, my father used every connection he had to make sure full custody was mine.
No delays. No questions. No chance for Liliana’s family to interfere.
Dante came home with me.
He was so small.
Angry, too. Red-faced and furious, as if he already understood far too much about the world. I remember holding him in the middle of the night while he screamed hard enough to turn purple, and thinking that I had never loved anything more in my life.
I tried to give Liliana a chance.
She was sober then. Furious still, but clear-headed.
The first time she held him, it was at my father’s house with my people standing close enough to intervene if necessary.
She cried tears of joy when he wrapped his tiny fist around her finger.
She told me she wanted to be better. She told me she would do it for him.
For Dante.
For us.
I wanted to believe her so badly that I didn’t let my doubts interfere.
Then I found her high with our newborn son asleep in the next room.
That was the end.
There are moments in a man’s life when a decision becomes so clear it leaves no room for grief until later. I looked at her, at the powder on the table, at the empty look in her eyes, and whatever remained of the boy who had loved Liliana Castelli died there.
Ricardo Conti, the man, was born.
I took my son home.
I never let her see him again.
As far as I was concerned, Dante was mine.
Mine to raise. Mine to protect. Mine to love enough for both of us.
Dante does not know all of that.
How could I tell him?
How does a father look at his son and say, ‘your mother chose drugs over you over and over again’?
I could not do it.
So I let him believe a different version of the tale. That I was young. That I got a girl pregnant in college. That she was not suited to this life, and I decided my son belonged with me, with the family, with the Contis.
It is not the whole truth.
It is kinder than the truth.
At least, I have always told myself that.
My gaze drifts toward the closed office door.
Down the hall, Julia is working, unaware that my brother has dragged ghosts into my office and left me alone with them.
Julia, with her careful heart.
Julia, who worries about Dante before she worries about herself.
Julia, who has already had too many people make decisions around her and call it care.
My hand tightens around the arm of my chair.
Mario is right about one thing.
If I am not careful, protection can become its own kind of damage.
And I refuse to make Julia pay for what Liliana broke all those years ago.