Page 109 of Beauty and the Mafia Boss

However, as soon as I open my mouth, ready to force Rafaella to speak, the cell phone alarm goes off and we both look down at the tests lined up, side by side, on the dark marble.

“I told you.” I boast smilingly when all the tests show negative marks for pregnancy.

“It could still be a false result.”

“Five false results, you mean?” Rafaella rolls her eyes.

“You're still going to pee on a stick at least once a week,” she warns, and I shrug.

“And you're still going to tell me what Tizziano did this time.”

***

I recently read in a magazine that the big problem with building barriers to contain a large volume is that although they are powerful and extremely effective, they are often destroyed by something simple, like a small impact on a key point that no one knows exactly where it is and which, even so, can eventually be found by chance.

I remember laughing, thinking that this was an absurd idea, because I simply couldn't imagine the containments of a hydroelectric plant, for example, coming down because of an unknown object hitting it, at random and with a precise and calculated force, in a specific point that would make the entire structure collapse without anyone having any control or intention to do so.

I couldn't imagine it until now.

The open book in my hands holds every movement of my limbs hostage to a single image, stamped into its core, the Pea Princess is lying on her pile of more than a dozen mattresses, while she has a grimace of discomfort on her face.

Raquel's image bypassed my defense mechanisms many times over the last few months, but, each time, I knew that I just needed to close my eyes, take a deep breath, and forget it, pretend it had never happened.

Today, however, I can't close my eyes, I can't breathe, I can't stop staring at the drawing of simple black and white lines stamped on a sheet of yellowed paper nor stop my mind from getting lost in all the memories that seeing it, on a random afternoon, were freed.

I don't know if the turmoil in my chest is, in fact, the result of a set of events defined by chance or if it is a consequence of all the times I allowed myself to peek at my black box through a small crack since the day, two weeks ago, when I took those five pregnancy tests.

I don't even know if the reason I did this makes any sense, to tell you the truth. Rafaella's words, stating that a son of mine and Vittorio would be a bastard, keep echoing in my head in an inconvenient loop that, when I least expect it, takes my mind by storm, even though at the time I originally heard them, I hadn't given them a lot of credit.

However, with each surprise visit from the subject, a new “what if” comes along. None of them, however, erase the truth that, no matter the circumstances, I could never do anything for a life that would be generated by me.

Anything.

No move I could make would change the destiny set for this imaginary child simply because she is the daughter of who she is. I could never do that, condemn her before she even had a chance.

And that thought, that word, was perhaps the chance event that triggered my particular little principle of chaos, tocondemn. Because it was impossible to think about her without the set of six letters echoing images of an abandoned Raquel in my mind, again and again, forcing me to revisit the moments when she was well, smiling and teasing.

So, I opened the black box, a small crack, a thin and irrelevant one, just enough for me to take a peek, but the pain spiraling in my chest doesn't seem small, doesn't seem irrelevant, doesn't seem even close to being just enough for anything other than destroying me, exactly as I knew it could do from the beginning.

The precise reason I thought building a barrier would be a good maneuver after all. It's the sight of the tear falling onto the paper before my eyes that disenchants my movements and I close the book so hard that the impact reverberates in my wrists, but it's too late.

In my gut, I know no matter what triggered the disaster, it's only a matter of time before the walls I've built around my memories, the good, the bad and the devastating, come crashing down.

CHAPTER 52

________

Vittorio Cataneo

“I never understood your fascination with these animals until very recently.” My father's voice makes me look over my shoulder, and I find him in his motorized wheelchair, approaching Galard's stall, where I'm hunched over, in the stables.

The oxygen cylinder attached to the back of the chair and the vehicle itself could be seen as a license for carelessness, however, the tieless gray suit draping the slender body, my father's entire figure actually looks as impeccable as ever.

“That probably explains why I've never seen you here in years and suddenly this is the second time in just over a month that I've met you at the stables.”

“Well, I guess I could say the same thing about seeing you smile, except the horses weren't responsible for it, were they?”

“Why are you here, father?”

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