Page 4 of Alessia
1 - Alessia
Iwalk through the ever-rotating door of this godforsaken hospital I call home for about forty hours a week. It’s scent is familiar and I greet Greta who sits at the reception with a smile that doesn’t reach my eyes. Today I’m not here to work, I came to visit my father.
Elio walks a few steps behind me, always watching and assessing the space around me. That’s the burden of being a Mafia Princess, you never have a moment alone.
To feel.
To cry.
To just be.
I walk to the elevators and the doors slide open. A bed is rushed past me, probably to the OR by the looks of the heart monitor that’s hanging of the bed. I step into the elevator and push the button for the third floor where my father is lying in a bed. Hooked to one of those heart monitors.
It’s kind of symbolic, one of the great mafia leaders is dying because the cancer that infected his lungs has reachedhis rotten heart. At least his sick body now matches his wicked personality. My father was one of the most feared men in the mafia world, and even from his deathbed he still is. The body count of that man is endless. He says he stopped counting when he reached three hundred and fifty bodies. That was forty years ago. Now at the age of sixty-five, his own body is going to be added to that list in a matter of weeks or maybe even days. Killed by something he can’t stop, alter or fix.
I walk through the hall to the last door on the right. Of course the bastard had to pull some strings to get a corner room. I stop and inhale a deep breath.
“You good Ma’am?” Elio asks behind me.
I turn around. “Yeah, never better.” I say with the sarcasm dripping off my tone.
“I know you don’t want to be here, but it will be over soon.” He says.
“I know, but then I need to step up and take his place. Even though he thinks I’m ready, I don’t know if I can do it. I workhere, in this place, to help people and when I leave this building, I need to do the things that put people in the basement of this same building.”
Elio looks at me, his dark-brown eyes look at me with so much care and worry.
“Stop looking at me like that!”
“Like what? Like I care? Like I want to protect you? It’s my job Alessia, of course I care.”
I let out a deep breath.
“Never mind, let’s get this over with.”
I push open the grey door and walk into my father’s room. The scent of my father’s cologne fills my nose. Even though I hate the man with every fiber of my being that scent reminds me of home. The time when my mother was still alive, and we were happy. Happy and on top of the world. Just the three of us.
“Ah Alessia there you are.” My father’s voice sounds weak, nothing left of that powerful man people fear. Outside this room the mafia world still thinks he’s on top of his game, only the people closest to me and my father know the real story.
“Hi Leo, how are you today?” I walk over to his bed and put a soft kiss on his head.
“As well as I can be hooked to all these machines and dying.” He says with irritation.
“How’s it at work?”
