Antonio
I pause outside the gates of the cemetery, staring up at the black wrought iron against the gray sky above. I could still turn around, leave, make like I never came down here in the first place.
But I came here for a reason. And I know I need to put this to rest, once and for all, if I’m going to be able to move forward.
I push open the gates, and they creak loudly as I step inside. Before me are rows of granite and marble, gravestones of all the people who have been laid to rest here. Among them, somewhere, is my son.
I know it’s strange to some of my men that I chose to lay my boy to rest somewhere I could visit him.
After how he betrayed me—and the fact that I was the one to pull the trigger on him—most of them likely thought I wanted to be done with this whole thing, to forget he even existed, condemn him to cremation and to sit on the shelf of some funeral home until it changed hands or burned down or something.
But I didn’t. Once the apartment was cleared, I made sure his body was interred up here. Even when my anger at him was so overwhelming I could barely make sense of it, there was still a part of me, deep down, that knew I should make sure I didn’t make any choices I wasn’t sure I could stand behind.
I didn’t attend the burial, didn’t bother with holding any kind of funeral.
Of the friends that he had, none of them seemed to have noticed that he was gone—no doubt they had only been hanging around him in the first place because they wanted his money or power, not because they actually cared about him.
From everything Julia has told me about the way Andreo was, it doesn’t come as a surprise.
I make my way between the gravestones, a heavy, damp scent hanging in the air, as though the rain is just waiting to break.
Julia offered to come with me today, but I insisted I wanted to go alone.
There’s a lot I have to say, and I’m not sure I want her to hear any of it.
This is between Andreo and me, and I want to get it off my chest before I embrace the new child who’s about to come into my life.
His gravestone is at the far end of a long row, simple, no sweet words added, just his name and the dates of his birth and death. I stoop down in front of it, placing my hand on the cool stone, and stare at it for a long moment.
A father should never have to bury his son.
No matter what happened between us, I believe that, from the bottom of my heart.
I can still remember holding him in my arms for the first time when he was born, that distinct feeling that I would do anything if it meant giving him the life he deserved.
All the promises I whispered to him, before he could even understand what I was saying, that I would provide him, guide him, turn him into the kind of man anyone would be proud of…
And now? Now, I know I failed.
It’s painful to admit it, even to myself, but it’s true.
I failed him. After everything Julia has told me about the kind of man he was, I can see now that I never provided him with the guidance he needed, never showed him the path that he should take.
Maybe it was being born into this that made him that way, with so much to his name that he never had to struggle or second-guess it, or maybe there was just something buried deep down inside of him that was always going to turn out like this.
I reached out to his mother, intending to let her know what had happened to him, but she made it clear that she didn’t want to hear from me, and I can’t say I blame her.
That part of her life is well and truly behind her, as far as she’s concerned, and I don’t want to inflict any more than I already have.
She hardly knew him, anyway, beyond handing him over to me when he was born.
She has no part in this, unless there was something buried deep down in her DNA that she kept from me, that activated him into the person he became.
But I’ll never know, so I have to take that responsibility on for myself. My hand falls to the name on the grave, and I trace it out with my fingertips.
Andreo Gattuso.
My son. My betrayer. My victim.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter, as if he’s right there, able to hear me, as ridiculous as I know that is.
But it feels good to get it off my chest, tell him directly, or at least as directly as I can, given the circumstances.
I wish I could have said it to him when he was alive, but this is the closest I can come now, so I will take it.
“I’m sorry that I wasn’t a better father to you,” I continue, my voice heavy, even to my own ears.
“I’m sorry I didn’t do more to guide you.
I’m sorry that I let you down, and that I let you turn into the kind of man you did.
If I had been less focused on the business, maybe I would have seen what kind of person you had become before it was too late, and I could have put you back on the right track, but… ”
I shake my head. “I didn’t. And now you’re gone, and I know that’s partly my fault,” I confess. Above me, the first few drops of rain begin to fall from the sky, splattering large droplets across the grave.
“But I promise that I’ll do better,” I go on, and I know I’m talking to myself as much as him now, convincing myself more than anything.
“I won’t let this happen again. I won’t let your brother or sister go through the same thing.
I won’t give them any reason to turn against me, not like you did. And I won’t…”
I take a deep breath, surprised by the swell of emotion in my chest. “And I won’t lose them. Not like you. Not again.”
I pause for a moment, letting those words percolate inside my head, and close my eyes, bowing my head.
Even though I know he hasn’t heard me, it still feels like a weight has lifted from my shoulders.
Maybe I needed to hear that as much as anyone else, the promise that everything was going to be okay, as hard as it was to believe that it could be.
I rest my hand on the stone for one more moment and then straighten up, casting my gaze around the graveyard. In this place, there are so many lives represented—so many of them long and happy, but so many others cut short for one reason or another.
There’s only so much I can do to ensure the safety and happiness of my next child, but I know I will do everything in my power to make it happen.
Whatever it takes. I will learn from my mistakes.
I will never let them turn into the kind of person that Andreo was.
Never let them hurt people the way he hurt Julia.
And I will never, as long as I live, let them slip through my fingers and feel like they had a need to turn against me.
I make my way out of the graveyard, and the rain pummels me, but I can barely feel it. I climb into the car and sit there for a moment, holding the wheel, while the rain hits the window, sliding down the windscreen like teardrops out of the corner of my eye.
But I can’t sit here in the past forever. I have to go be with Julia. Who is, no doubt, worrying herself stupid about me, wondering if she should have come with me.
I’ll tell her all about it when I get back, just like she asked me to—one of the demands she made after I closed off from her was that we keep the lines of communication open at all times, and I intend to do just that.
The drive home goes quickly, so fast that I find myself outside the doors to our new house before I even realize.
Our new home is a place that she picked for us, at my instruction.
She insisted she would have been okay living in the apartment, but the mention she made of it reminding her of the one she had shared with Andreo had played on my mind far too much for me to let something like that happen.
I had looked at the same enormous, sprawling places that I’d lived in before, something like the mansion that had been all but destroyed in the attack a few months ago. And I could have afforded it, easily, could have rebuilt the home I’d lived in before, if I wanted to.
But it didn’t sit right with me. The thought of all that space, all that possible distance between me and my family. Perhaps that had been the problem with Andreo. He had been free to do anything he wanted, and I had allowed him the space to become someone I hardly recognized by the end.
So, Julia had chosen a home just on the outskirts of New York, a simple little family place in a gated community where I could keep my guards on patrol without it drawing too much attention.
She told me, when she first laid eyes on it, that it was exactly the kind of place she had pictured for herself when she was a kid living with her parents, imagining a perfect life where she wouldn’t be treated so cruelly by them.
She has made no noise about potentially reaching out to them now she has fallen pregnant, and I’m grateful for that, because I’m not sure I would be able to handle having them around knowing what they’ve done to her.
Besides, this new place is alcohol-free, so I doubt they’d have much reason to visit anyway.
I step out of the car, and before I can even reach the front door of the house, I realize she’s standing there waiting for me. She has a concerned look on her face, but it brightens into a smile when she locks eyes with me.
“Hey, Antonio,” she greets me, making her way down the steps with her arms outstretched. “How are you…how are you doing?”
“I’m okay,” I reply, and I slip my arm around her waist, pulling her in close.
She’s starting to show now, a good-sized bump under her shirt, and I rest my hand on it for a moment, reminding myself of the future that’s waiting for me.
As hard as it is to believe, the past is behind me now, and I need to accept that if I’m going to be there for the child that’s about to come into this world.
“I ordered some takeout,” she says as she leads me inside. “I tried cooking something, but, uh…it didn’t come out so well.”
I chuckle. “That bad, huh?”
“Worse,” she replies, smiling up at me. “I think I charred the bottom of one of the pans. I’m going to figure this out before the baby comes along, I promise.”
“Hmm, right.” I drop a kiss on top of her head. I’m not sure I believe her. But then, right now, I’m not sure it really matters. As long as she’s here, at my side, where she belongs—everything will fall into place.
And I believe that from the bottom of my heart.