Page 53 of The Hitman

He blinks and then finally looks me in the eye. When he does, I can see just how angry he is, but I can also see the moment when he sees me — really sees me — for the first time since the grocer started yelling at us.

He takes a deep breath and pushes it out through his nose. “Mi dispiace,” he whispers. “I’m sorry.”

I have to take a deep breath too. “Thank you. Now please tell me what that was all about. Why was that man yelling at us?”

“Not us,” he corrects. “Me.”

“What’s the difference?”

“He didn’t have a problem with you. It was me.”

“Why? What did you do?”

“Nothing.”

I squint in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

He takes another deep breath. “The man wasn’t yelling at me because I did something. He was yelling at me because of who I am.”

“And…” I swallow the lump in my throat, “who are you?”

He huffs out a harsh, bitter breath. “I’m my father’s son. Neither of us were good men, and he thought I needed to be reminded of that. As if I’ve ever been able to forget.”

* * *

Giulio

The drive back to the farmhouse feels longer than this morning. Maybe it’s the silence.

For a brief moment today, I stopped second-guessing my decision to bring Zahra here. I let myself enjoy her presence, her hand in mine, her teasing grin, and the soft way she looked at me as if she truly saw me, maybe better than I saw myself.

That man took that all away in just a few minutes.

I haven’t been to the farmhouse in a few years, but I haven’t visited San Gimignano in over a decade, and I’d assumed no one would recognize me. Why would they? I’d been just a boy when my mother packed what little we could carry and ran away with me in the middle of the night. Technically, we probably could have waited to clear out the house since my father sometimes left for days at a time, but she hadn’t wanted to risk it, and knowing what I know now about monsters like him, I understand why.

For months, we lived looking over our shoulders, barely sleeping at night, thinking he would come find us, but he never did. I was a man when I went looking for him. I didn’t know what I expected to find, or what I thought I would feel when I came face-to-face with the man who made my childhood a living hell. The angry man who cursed me as soon as he saw my face didn’t shock me but feeling as if I was looking in a mirror did. I’d never realized just how much I looked like my father. I’ve wondered since what it did to my mother to see me turn into him more and more each day.

Seeing my father again changed my life for the better. Some people believe that you can’t right the wrongs of the past with vengeance. My mother was one of those people. She left my father and practically became a nun, devoting herself to the church and me until the day she died. As much as I wanted to be like her, I’ve always known that I’m most like my father, and I made sure that he knew that too. The last time I came to San Gimignano, I found my father, and I put a bullet right between his eyes, which just happened to be the same shade of brown as mine. My mother had been dead for six months by then. This was my final present to her, even though I wonder sometimes if it was a gift she would have wanted.

I hadn’t expected to inherit anything from the man who hadn’t wanted to raise me, but this house, my face, and apparently, my temperament are a trifecta of confusing endowments.

I’m not caught in some psychic turmoil over what I did. In fact, killing my father was the first decision I ever made fully on my own without worrying about how it would affect my mother. If she’d been alive, I might have been eaten away by the guilt, and she would have spent every waking hour in church praying for my soul. But if there is a heaven, I hope she knows that I did the right thing for me. I met Salvo a year later. It was easy to attach myself to him and set my own path, with my father as a distant memory.

I don’t know exactly why I’ve kept the house, but getting rid of it never felt right, even though I hate coming here. I have an apartment in Naples that’s just big enough for me and the occasional guest, and I have my work. Strolling through my traumatic past has never interested me. Were it not for Zahra, I might never have come back, and that grocer is why.

I don’t know how to live in a world where people will see me and think of my father. And as I park the car in front of my family home, I don’t want to live in a world where Zahra might look at me and see him either, but it’s only a matter of time before that happens.

I’m not a good man, but I am my father’s son, and I’ve somehow never regretted that fact more than right now. I shut off the car, and we sit in silence for a few minutes. I can’t speak. I’m terrified that I’ll say the wrong thing, not that I have any idea what’s right to say in a moment like this.

“We don’t have to stay here,” she finally says, softly breaking the heavy quiet between us.

“This is the best place to be right now. I can keep you safe here.”

“We could go to…wherever you live,” she says hesitantly. We both realize just how little I’ve told her about myself.

“Naples,” I tell her, adding this to the list of things I’ve shared that I shouldn’t.

“I’ve always wanted to see Naples,” she says excitedly.

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