Page 142 of Promised to the Don of Naples
"Sì."
"The documents."
I looked at the cloth bag in my lap. Operazione Levante. Conti Esteri Zurigo. Trasferimenti Cayman. Everything that could destroy the Rossi name, in my hand.
"I'm going to turn them in," I said. "To the prosecutor's office in Palermo."
"You could use that. Blackmail. Power. What's left of his empire…"
"I don't want his empire, Luca." I gripped the bag. "I want him erased from the papers. I want the state shutting down what's left. I want the name Salvatore Rossi turned into a case file, not a legend."
He nodded slowly.
"Brava."
"And the doctor. Tito Fasano." I looked at him. "Bianca said he'll testify if we offer protection."
"Raffaele's already handling it." He took my hand. "Witness protection. He tells everything he saw over the seven years, closes your father's coffin with letterhead."
We passed my mother's house before leaving Mondello.
The real house.
The one on the beach, white, with the window of the room where I was born in the August heat. Where Mamma played Chopin on Sundays, where the vanity with the secret drawer was, and the painting of Saint Sebastian on the wall.
I didn't go in. I just asked the driver to slow down in front of the house.
I looked at the front of it for ten seconds.
Goodbye, Mamma, I thought. It's over. He's gone. You were right about everything.
The car drove on.
We got to Posillipo at night.
The house was silent, but alive—different from the war silence of the weeks before. Donna Beatrice was waiting for us at the door. She squeezed my hand without saying anything, in her way.
The nonna would come back from Capri the next day.
In the room, after the bath, I decided to tell him.
"Luca. I need to tell you something."
He was sitting on the edge of the bed, no shirt, drying his hair with the towel.
"I know," he said.
"You know what?"
"Since Capri, bella mia." He set the towel down. "You're different. You eat little, you're queasy in the mornings, you don't drink the espresso anymore. Your hand goes to your belly when you think no one's looking." He almost smiled. "I saw my mother like that once. I was eleven; seven months later, Raffaele was born."
My eyes welled up.
"You knew. And you didn't say anything."
"Neither did you." He held out his hand. "You didn't tell me so I'd let you into Villa Salina. I didn't tell you I knew so you wouldn't know I was going to get you out of there before the end."
I laughed with my eyes full of water.
