Page 110 of Beauty and the Mafia Boss

“And, for the record, the first time you found me here, I came just for the show. Tizziano was proposing a jackpot that day, he tried to convince us to bet on who you would sacrifice, the girl or the horse.” I push the cheek with the tip of my tongue.

“I suppose everyone lost.”

“In a great twist of fate.” He shrugs in a mundane gesture that I would never make. “Walk with me, Vittorio.”

We cross the shed that houses the horses and walk towards the now empty vineyards. The first few minutes are spent in silence, but I wait. I never understood my father, but I always admired him, and lately I've found myself wondering more and more often how he did it.

He was a good husband, a good father, and a good Don. He was more than good enough. He was even memorable in some aspects of each of these positions and at no time did any of them represent a weakness for him.

“Your mother is not happy with you.”

“Is this a complaint?”

“No way. What I mean is, the next time you decide to teach her a lesson, I would appreciate it if you remembered that I am an old man, but unfortunately, I am not yet deaf.”

The good-natured comment is a typical personality trait that my father always demonstrated at home and only within it. No man who ever knew Don Francesco would imagine his ability to say something like that.

“How did you do it?” I voice my question.

“Faith, charity and violence.” He begins to answer my question without me having to explain. “Faith is obvious, our patron is La Santa, after all. Violence isn't difficult to understand either, most of us have too much of it inside us for there to be any doubt about it. But charity, Vittorio, has so many possible interpretations... Some grown men carry it burned in their chests and yet never truly understand it. Some choose a version that pleases them enough to profess, and others understand itand decide to simply deny it, labeling it a weakness. I thought you would be one of the latter.”

“You did?”

“You laughed,” he says simply, turning off the motor on his chair, and I stop my steps too. I lift an arm, pulling a leaf from the vine we're standing under.

“That doesn't mean much,” I reply, and a smile of someone who knows something I don't know appears on his face.

“Maybe not, but I'm a man of faith,figlio mio. Is it not the strongest of our pillars? Family is, in my opinion, a simple matter of faith.”

“Faith?”

“Believing that, for those people, you can be a better version of yourself. One that inspires them to also be the best version of themselves.”

“But what are these people to you? And what do they mean to the outside world when they look at you?”

“It's also a question of faith. People believe what they want, what they can or what they are led to believe, Vittorio.”

“Why are we here, father?”

“I came to give you some advice,” he says, and I wait. “It's more of a fact about people, really. They are capable of respecting temperamental leaders, Vittorio, but they rarely respect indecisive leaders.”

“Is this about Eritrea?”

“This could be about many things.”

“I hate your habit of speaking in riddles,” I complain, and my father laughs.

“I'm grateful for that. It means that despite appearances, my son still feels.” And with that last cryptic sentence, he maneuvers his chair and leaves me alone, or as alone as one can be after his riddles take root that refuse to dry up until his listeners fully understand them.

***

“What’s wrong?” I ask as Gabriella's body sinks into the pool for the fourth time in a row, demonstrating her complete inability to relax.

“My mind is just full,” she says, planting her feet at the bottom of the pool.

“Of what?”

“Memories.” I want to ask which ones, I want her to tell me, to describe each one of them to me, to feed my insatiable compulsion to devour everything about her, but instead I wait for her to talk for herself, and when she doesn't, I see myself asking something that has nothing to do with my own desire.

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