Page 8 of Wild Heart
My eyes take a moment to adjust before I make out my father.
He’s slumped in the armchair by the empty grate of the fireplace. An empty bottle of red wine is upturned on the coffee table with a stained wine glass beside it.
I slip into the room and close the door behind me. Papa doesn’t even look up, which frightens me. He’s usually vigilant, on guard at all times, but not today.
There’s a photo album spread out on the coffee table. It’s open to the page of my christening. My mother holds me up to the camera while the priest sprinkles holy water on my head. My chubby baby face is contorted into an intense frown, and my father always brings this moment up, saying that even as a baby I had a mistrust of authority.
The other photos are of my parents, much younger and happier. My father’s face is unlined and wearing a smile that I seldom see these days.
I close the photo album and crouch next to my father. He has his head in his hands, his fingers splayed as he weeps into them.
“Papa?”
I put my hand gently on his shoulder, but he doesn’t stir.
It’s alarming seeing the mighty Carlo Berone like this, and if any of his enemies saw him, they’d know his weakness. But it’s only one day of the year. One day that he allows himself to grieve.
“Papa,” I say again, gently prying his hands from his face. My hair falls onto his arm, and it finally alerts him to my presence.
He lifts his red eyes to mine, and the tear-stained face is so out of character for the father I know that I almost recoil. But I’ve seen him like this before.
Once every year on the anniversary of my mother’s death. It’s an indulgence he allows himself. Because every other time he has to bury his grief, hide it deep inside himself to protect his reputation.
“Piccina.” He calls me by my childhood nickname even though I’m a woman of twenty. I let him have that indulgence once a year too.
His hand lands on my head and a watery smile appears on his features as he strokes my hair.
“You look so much like her, Piccina. So beautiful.”
I’ve heard this before. Apparently I inherited my mother’s beauty and my father’s temper. A lethal combination.
I have none of my mother’s good grace that makes the anniversary of her death into a day of grieving for the entire estate. Many of the men and women working here still remember my mother. Some of my father’s younger foot soldiers remember her from their childhoods. She loved children and had an open door policy. Any kid on the estate could come into her home and she’d feed them, play with them, laugh with them.
When she took me to the lake to swim or the park to play, she’d gather up whichever children were around and we’d all go.
Everyone loved my mother, but no one more so than my father.
“Have you had anything to eat?”
It’s late afternoon, but if Papa’s been drinking since breakfast, he’ll need a good meal and time to sleep it off.
“So beautiful…” He shakes his head sadly, completely ignoring my question. “That’s why I have to do what I’m doing, Isabella. It’s for your own good.”
I resist the urge to pull away. Today is hard enough on my father. I wanted to get through it without an argument.
“How can it be for my own good when it’s not what I want?”
He shakes his head sadly. “You don’t understand, Piccina. It is the old ways; you are too American.”
I snort, because our family have lived in this country for at least three generations. We’re all American, it’s just my father who clings onto some out of date Italian ideal. But I bite mytongue. Not today. I won’t argue with him today. In a few hours, if all goes according to plan, it will all work out anyway.
“I’ll get you something to eat and ask someone to make the bed up in here.”
I go to stand up, and he clutches my wrist. “Send Niccolo. Only Niccolo.”
I nod in understanding. My father doesn’t want his men seeing him like this. Niccolo is his most trusted lieutenant.
I set the empty wine bottle upright as I stand up.
