Page 140 of Promised to the Don of Naples
"Mamma's. April 2012." I took a step forward, and Luca tried to hold me back, but I took the step anyway. "She warnedyou, Father. She wrote that if you didn't stop, you'd lose both your children. You kept the letter, but you didn't stop."
My father's face trembled.
"Lucia," he murmured.
"She was right. You lost us both. We're here, on the other side, on the side of the man you wanted to kill. You're the one who did this—Mamma warned you, and it was you."
For a second—just one second—I saw the old man inside the monster. I saw the man who'd kissed my forehead when I was a child. I saw the father Mamma had loved once, in 1986, on that first night in Mondello.
Then the second passed, and the monster came back.
Salvatore raised the gun, but he didn't aim it at Luca.
He aimed it at me.
"If I die," he said, his voice shaking, "you die with me, daughter. You chose the wrong side. You're not mine anymore."
Matteo threw himself in front of me.
The shot went off. My father's trembling hand missed—the bullet hit the wall behind us, tearing out a piece of the plaster. And before he could fire again, Raffaele appeared from the side of the staircase, went up three steps, and disarmed my father with a sharp blow to the wrist.
The pistol fell, rolling down the stairs.
And my father, disarmed, old, alone, was forced to his knees by two soldiers in the middle of the hall.
LUCA MORETTI
I pulled Valentina behind me.
I lowered my eyes to Salvatore.
On his knees in the middle of the hall. Two of my men holding his arms. The big suit, the white hair, the whites of his eyes gone yellow, the spotted hands.
This was the man who'd ordered Tonio killed. Who'd ordered Pasquale killed. Who'd wounded my nonna at the temple. Who'd locked up his own son for seven years. Who'd recruited Carlo seven years ago and left me blind inside my own house. Who'd sent three men to kill Valentina while she had coffee in the green room.
I took the dagger from my jacket.
Salvatore looked at the dagger and recognized it.
"That's Lucia's," he murmured.
"It was her great-grandmother's," I said. "Valentina gave it to me."
The old man laughed. A dry laugh, with no joy in it.
"You were my son's friend," he said. "You ate at my table in Capri when you were boys. I've known you since you were twelve, Moretti."
"And you killed your son," I said. "Faked his death, locked him up for seven years. Showed Valentina a closedcasket and let her mourn a brother who was alive. Seven years, Salvatore."
"I gave you my daughter, Moretti." His voice picked up speed. "I stopped the war. I made the deal. I handed you Valentina on a platter, I—"
"You gave me a bomb," I cut in. "You sent her to my house full of hate, wanting her to kill me in bed some night in November. That was your plan. Her hating me, killing me, and you keeping it all."
Salvatore didn't answer, because it was true.
"But she loved me," I went on, lower. "That was your one miscalculation, Salvatore. You sent her to hate me, and she loved me."
I looked back.
