Page 3 of My Dark Ever After
Even though he was an important man with a booming financial firm, he never missed a doctor’s appointment. Every time I woke up from surgery, he was there beside my bed, smiling at me. Every time I was sick and aching, he was there to hold me, to distract me. My human embodiment of hope.
I knew how lucky I was to have a father like him, and until recently I’d never thought to take it for granted. If he’d asked me to crawl over glass, I might have. That was how much I trusted him. That was how infrequently he’d let me down.
The only thing we had ever disagreed on was Italy.
His homeland and the seat of his hatred.
My ancestral country and the setting of my lifelong dreams.
Gemma had always encouraged me to visit.
Fuck him,she’d say in that flippant, slightly cruel way she had of putting down any and all authority figures.If he loves you, he won’t stop you from doing what you’ve always dreamed of doing.
But it was easy for her to say.
As the sick sister, I’d been given more attention through necessity, but they made it up to Gemma by giving her whatever she asked for. Trips around the world, designer bags, a Porsche when she turned sixteen.
We could have been raised by different parents, that was how disparate our upbringings had been.
Her words lingered, though.
Long after she moved to Albania for her year abroad.
And then she sent me that last email before she died.
Listen to me, Jinx, I know what I’m talking about. You don’t owe Dad and Mom anything. It’s your life, and you’ve fought to stay on this earth to live it. You owe it to yourself to go to Italy. I hope you find answers there like I have here. I never could have known what I would find when I started looking into who I truly am. Don’t let Dad’s lies keep you from your truth. I won’t let him keep me from mine anymore. Be brave and bold, little sister. I hope when we see each other again, we are both very different people.
It seemed too much like the hand of fate to receive a message like that from Gemma just a handful of days before she died of a heart attack.
So I’d taken it to heart despite the god-awful feeling of lying to my parents and disobeying the strictest order they’d ever set for me.
Do not set foot in Italy.
Even now, after everything that had happened, the lies and heartbreak, I couldn’t say I regretted it. My summer in Tuscany had changed me for the better.
Raffa had called me his fawn, hiscerbiatta, but I felt like a stag now. Something with wariness and horns, something that wasn’t afraid to gouge if threatened.
I knew now what I hadn’t before.
There were real monsters in the world, and the most dangerous of them all had a face like an angel’s.
“No rest for the weary,” I responded finally, with a little shrug as I reached into the open bag on the seat beside me for another pencil.
He studied me for a moment, something like fond amusement warring with frustration in those brown eyes that were so similar to my own. “You always preferred to do things longhand. Unusual for kids today.”
“I wouldn’t say I’m a kid anymore,” I said mildly, my attention on the numbers set out before me instead of on my father.
The sight of him hurt me. Knowing he wastherebut nothere, not present for me the way he always had been before.
It might have hurt less if I’d still had Raffa, but losing the only two men I’d ever loved in one fell swoop had carved me up from the inside out and left me hollow.
“No,” he mused with a weary sigh, moving into the conference room to brace his hands on the back of one of the empty seats. The light hit his face full on, highlighting the tired brackets beside his eyes and mouth. He’d always been a handsome man, but right then, he seemed like a faded photograph of someone from a long time ago. “But you won’t tell me what happened this summer to take the bloom off the rose.”
I snorted softly, dropping the pretense of work to level him with an assessing look. “I’ve told you. When you are ready to tell me about why you left Italy, I’ll tell you what happened in Firenze.”
He flinched slightly at the name of the city, a tic he couldn’t curb. Curiosity burned in me so brightly I couldn’t believe I’d ever been able to contain it. I’d always wondered about what bridges he must have burned in leaving his family and nation behind and moving to America, but I’d respected him too much to press.
No, maybe that wasn’t quite it.
