Chapter 37
I stared at him, and he stared back, and for a long moment neither of us spoke. The room was different now, softer at the edges, the shadows longer, the air thicker. I could feel myself drifting, floating, like I was underwater and breathing anyway.
"Dad..." I said again, and this time the word came out steadier. "You're dead."
He tilted his head, and something flickered across his face—amusement, maybe, or sadness, or both. "Am I?" he asked, and his voice was exactly how I remembered it, low and calm and certain. "Then why are you talking to me?"
I didn't have an answer for that.
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and looked at me with those steady eyes that had always seen through every wall I tried to build. "You look tired, son."
"I am tired."
"More than tired. You look empty." He studied my face, and I felt like a child again, caught sneaking out of the estate, caught hiding something I didn't want to share. "What have you done to yourself?"
I wanted to look away. I couldn't. "I made a mistake."
"One mistake?"
"Many." I swallowed. "But one in particular. There was a woman."
My father's expression didn't change, but something in his posture shifted, softened, maybe. "A woman...." he repeated.
"I met her by accident. She thought I was someone I wasn't. I let her keep believing it." The words came out rougher than I intended. "I stayed with her. I let myself... feel things. And then I left. I took what I came for and I left, and I told myself it was to protect her."
My father was quiet for a moment. Then he asked, "Protect her from what?"
"From me. From this life. From the danger that comes with being close to someone like me." I gestured at the room, at the estate, at everything I had inherited and couldn't escape. "You know what happened to you. To Mom. I couldn't let that happen to her."
He looked at me for a long time, and I could see him turning my words over in his mind, examining them from every angle the way he used to do with business decisions.
"Do you remember the shoes you had when you were young?"
I blinked. "What?"
"The shoes. The ones you had when you were a child. Brown leather, with the little buckles. You loved those shoes."
I stared at him. "How do you know about those shoes?"
"I was there. Just because I was busy doesn't mean I didn't notice."
He sat back again, his arms crossing over his chest.
"You wouldn't let anyone touch them. You kept them under your bed, wrapped in a cloth, and you would take them out sometimes just to look at them. You said you were saving them for later. For something special."
I remembered. I had forgotten, but I remembered now. The shoes had been a gift from my grandfather, the only thing he had ever given me that wasn't a lecture or a lesson. I had treasured them. I had kept them safe, hidden away where no one could ruin them.
"And what happened?" my father asked. "When later came?"
I swallowed. "I had outgrown them. They didn't fit anymore."
"Exactly." He said the word like it was a verdict. "You kept them so safe that you never got to enjoy them. You were so afraid of losing them that you lost them anyway."
I opened my mouth to argue, but he cut me off.
"This woman. The one you're hiding from. You think you're protecting her by pushing her away. But you're not protecting her. You're hiding. You're keeping her in a box under your bed, waiting for a later that will never come, and by the time you decide you're ready, she'll be gone.
She'll have outgrown you."
"She's not a pair of shoes," I said, and my voice came out harder than I intended.
"No. She's not." He didn't flinch. "She's a person. A person who deserves to make her own choices. You don't get to decide what's safe for her. You don't get to decide what's best. You can only decide what you're willing to fight for."
I swallowed. The words came out before I could stop them, rough and raw, the kind of question I had been asking myself for days without ever saying out loud.
"Why did you marry her? Mom. Even after you knew she would be in danger."
"Why do you think I did that?"
I shook my head. "I don't know."
"Because I wanted to live."
The words hung in the air between us, simple and devastating.
"I had spent years being careful," he continued.
"Years keeping everyone at arm's length, years telling myself that I didn't need anyone, that love was a weakness I couldn't afford. And then I met your mother, and she looked at me like I was something good, and I realized that I had been surviving, not living.
I had been so focused on not dying that I had forgotten what it felt like to actually be alive."
I shook my head. "That's selfish."
"Yes." he said. "Love is selfish, Caspian. It's not noble or selfless or any of the things poets write about. It's wanting. It's needing. It's looking at someone and realizing that you would rather have them and lose them than never have them at all."
He uncrossed his arms and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.
"I knew your mother was in danger the moment I put that ring on her finger. I knew that every day she spent with me was a day she could be taken from me. But I married her anyway. Because I wanted to live. Because she made me feel alive in a way that nothing else ever did."
"And all of it, every moment, every fight, every morning I woke up next to her and none of it was in vain. Not a single second. Even the end." His voice dropped. "Even the end was worth it."
I opened my mouth to respond, but he held up a hand.
"I didn't have the right to decide what was safe for your mother. She was a headstrong woman, stubborn and fierce and absolutely impossible to reason with. She wouldn't have listened to me if I had tried to send her away.
She would have told me to stop being an idiot and then she would have made me breakfast like nothing had happened."
A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"All I could do was protect her. That was my job. Not to decide for her, not to make choices on her behalf, but to stand beside her and fight for her with everything I had."
I felt something crack inside my chest. "But she died anyway."
"Yes." he said, and his voice didn't waver.
"She died. And I would have died a hundred times over if it meant I got to spend those years with her. Because those years, Caspian, they were worth everything. Every moment with her was worth the risk. Every fight, every close call,
every sleepless night wondering if today would be the day it was all worth it. Because I got to love her. And she got to love me."
I looked down at my hands. They were clenched into fists on the desk.
"The only thing mafia men are good at is protecting and fighting for what belongs to them. That's what we do. That's who we are. If you think that loving someone puts them in too much danger, then why do you have men working for you?
Why do you let them stand beside you in meetings where bullets could fly through the window at any moment?"
I looked up. "That's different."
"Is it? You're putting their lives at risk every day. By your logic, you should let them all go. You should stop going out in public altogether—who knows when an enemy might attack and innocent people might get hurt?"
He raised an eyebrow. "But you don't do that, do you? Because you've accepted that risk is part of this life. You've accepted that people will die, and you've made your peace with it. But when it comes to your own heart, you run."
I couldn't argue. He was right.
I pressed my hands against the arms of the chair and tried to steady my breathing. "She could get hurt. If enemies find out about her, if they use her against me—"
"Then you protect her." He said it like it was simple, like I was the one being difficult.
"You couldn't protect Mom."
The words came out before I could stop them, sharp and accusatory, and I regretted them immediately. But my father didn't blink. He didn't look away. He just nodded slowly, his jaw tightening.
"No," he said. "I couldn't. And I have lived with that every single day since. But I didn't regret marrying her. I didn't regret loving her. I would have done it all again, even knowing how it ended. Because she was worth it. Every moment, every risk, every sleepless night—she was worth all of it."
I looked down at my hands again. They were shaking. I didn't know when that had started.
"You think you're being noble," he said. "You think you're protecting her. But you're not. You're being a coward. You're so afraid of losing her that you won't even try to keep her."
I looked up at him. "What if I'm not strong enough?"
"Then you get stronger." His voice was hard now, unyielding. "That's what we do. We fight. We protect. We don't hide in the shadows and pretend we're doing anyone a favor by being alone."
He leaned forward again, and his eyes locked onto mine with an intensity that made my chest tighten.
I thought about the shoes. I thought about how I had kept them safe, hidden under my bed, waiting for the perfect moment. And then I thought about how I had outgrown them without ever wearing them, how I had cried when I finally opened the box and realized they would never fit.
"Go to her," my father said. "Let her decide. And if she tells you to leave, then you leave. But at least you'll know. At least you won't spend the rest of your life wondering what could have been."
I didn't want to do that again. I didn't want to wake up one day and realize I had let her go without ever really trying to keep her.
"Don't let her outgrow you, son."
His voice was the last thing I heard before the darkness swallowed everything.
I woke up with my cheek pressed against the cold surface of my desk and a crick in my neck that told me I had been there for hours.
The clock said three in the morning. The papers were still scattered across the floor where they had fallen.
The room was dark and quiet, and the only sound was my own breathing, slow and uneven.
I sat up slowly, wincing at the stiffness in my shoulders, and looked around the room. The chair across from me was empty. There was no one there. There had never been anyone there.
It was a dream. Just a dream.
But I could still hear his voice, clear as anything, echoing in my head. Don't let her outgrow you, son.
I pressed my hands against my face and took a deep breath.
My father had been dead for twenty years.
He had been shot in the street alongside my mother, and I had watched them both bleed out while I sat trapped in the back of a car.
He wasn't here. He hadn't been here. Whatever I had seen, whatever I had heard, it was just my own mind, my own guilt, my own desperate need for permission.
But that didn't make it wrong.
I thought about what he had said. Love is selfish. You don't get to decide for her. You protect what's yours.
I thought about the shoes. About how I had kept them safe and lost them anyway.
I thought about Elera. About her voice on the phone, hollow and broken, telling me she regretted ever meeting me. About her smile, bright and warm, the way she had looked at me when she thought I wasn't watching.
I had been so afraid of losing her that I had pushed her away. I had been so certain that I was protecting her that I hadn't stopped to ask what she wanted.
But my father was right. I didn't get to decide for her. I could only decide what I was willing to fight for.
And I was willing to fight for her.
I stood up from the desk and walked to the window.
The city was dark below me, the streets empty, the buildings lit with scattered lights that looked like stars fallen to earth.
Somewhere out there, she was sleeping in a bed that wasn't mine.
Somewhere out there, she was waking up and walking to work and living a life that didn't include me.
But that could change. It wasn't too late. It couldn't be too late.
I wanted to live. I wanted to love her. I wanted to fight for her, even if it meant risking everything.
She was worth every fight. Every risk. Every sleepless night and every hard conversation and every moment of fear.
I wasn't going to let her outgrow me. I wasn't going to keep her in a box under my bed, waiting for a later that might never come.
I was going to find her. I was going to tell her the truth. And then I was going to let her decide.
Whatever happened next, at least I would know. At least I wouldn't spend the rest of my life wondering what could have been.
I put my phone in my pocket and walked toward the door.
There was no time to waste. I had already wasted too much.