Page 27 of Promised to the Don of Naples
I reached the last photo in the sequence. Summer of 2015.
Estate 2015, Capri — gli ultimi giorni.
The last photo.
Matteo was in the center, twenty-eight, with the same smile from the photo in my room, only more tired. Beside him, Luca—thirty-four, six years older—not smiling, looking straight at the camera. A hand on my brother's shoulder, like someone holding on to something.
Behind the two of them, standing, not smiling either, arms crossed—my father.
The handwritten caption below the photo, which the great-grandfather had written while he was still alive, said:
The last days before the break.
And below it, in smaller letters, in a different pen—a newer pen, written much later, by Luca; I recognized it at once because it was the handwriting from the margin of the envelope:
Salvatore took Matteo out of Capri by force on August 19, 2015. That was the last time I saw Matteo alive.
I closed the book.
I sat on the bed with the book in my hands for a length of time I can't measure.
My father didn't break with the Morettis in 2019—he broke with them in 2015. He took my brother out of Capri by force. And four years later, my brother was dead.
I went to the window and opened it.
The bay was purple with late afternoon, the boats coming back to the marina, Vesuvius going gold on the other side of the water. And somewhere in that city, Luca Moretti was sitting in some office, having known about that photo for years, having known about that date for years, and he'd waited for me to find it on my own—because he knew—he knew—that if he told me all at once, I wouldn't believe it.
He wasn't deceiving me. He was letting me find out.
And that was more violent than lying.
I sat back down on the bed.
I set the book on the nightstand and sat staring at the wall.
And then I heard the voices.
Distant—coming from the floor below, the opposite wing, through the plumbing or the old architecture of that house that carried sound through channels no one knew about. I got up and left the room, out into the corridor. The voices got louder near the service stairs. I went down two flights and pressed myself against the wall of the corridor that led to Luca's office.
A meeting.
Luca's voice I recognized first—low, without warmth. Then Raffaele's, lighter. Then an older voice, rough—Acquaviva, I guessed, the bald consigliere with the glasses who'd had dinner with us. And a fourth voice I didn't know. A Sicilian accent. A younger man, maybe forty.
They were talking fast. I only caught pieces of the conversation.
"...prima del matrimonio..." "...non possiamo aspettare..." "...lui sa che noi sappiamo..."
I pressed my ear harder to the wall.
And then Luca said, clearly, in a louder voice:
"Salvatore's coming back Friday."
"Still before the wedding?" asked the fourth voice, the Sicilian one.
"Four weeks before. He's coming to get Valentina for a family lunch in Palermo."
I felt my blood run cold.
