Page 2 of Silent Vows

Followed by Carmine’s oily response, “Then you know what needs to be done.”

I pause at the doorway, my hand trembling on the handle. Through the small window, I can see the still form under the white sheet, and reality crashes over me. This isn’t one of my paintings where I can control the shadows, where I can choose what to reveal and what to hide. My father is dead. My carefully constructed world of art school and normal life has just shattered.

Inside the room, the machines are silent. The sheet covers him completely, but I can still see the strong line of his jaw, the hands that used to lift me onto his shoulders when I was little. The hands that probably killed people. The hands that definitely ordered deaths. But also, the hands that held mine steady the first time he taught me to paint, telling me that art was my escape, my way to be something different than what we are.

My legs give out and I sink into the chair beside his bed. Just yesterday morning, he was at the breakfast table, drinking his espresso and reading the paper like always. He asked about my thesis exhibition, his dark eyes crinkling at the corners when he smiled. “Show them who you really are,bella mia,” he said, squeezing my hand. “Art is the purest truth we have.”

Was he trying to tell me goodbye? Did he know something was coming?

I reach for his hand under the sheet but stop myself. I don’t want to feel the coldness, I don’t want that to be my last memory of him. Instead, I remember him warm and alive—teaching me to mix colors when I was five, steadying me on my first bicycle, wiping away tears after my first heartbreak. Always strong. Always there.

“Papa,” I whisper, my voice breaking. “Papa,please.”

The grief hits me like a physical blow, and suddenly I can’t breathe. My chest feels too tight, each breath a struggle. Thefluorescent lights are too bright, too harsh, turning everything into a grotesque still life—the white sheet, the gray walls, the chrome railings of the hospital bed. My artist’s eye tries to break it down into shapes and shadows, a futile attempt to make sense of the senseless.

A sob tears from my throat, raw and primal. I press my fist against my mouth to stifle it, but it’s like trying to hold back the ocean. Years of careful control shatter as the tears come, hot and endless. I cry for the father I knew—the one who sat through every school art show, who taught me to see beauty in shadows.

And I cry for the father I didn’t know—the one who ruled New York’s underworld, who had enemies dangerous enough to put him here.

Memories flood back, taking on new meaning. The way he always checked the cars before we got in them. The armed men who followed us at a discrete distance when we went shopping. The nights he came home late, tension lined in his shoulders, but he always stopped to kiss my forehead and ask about my latest painting.

He tried so hard to give me a normal life, to let me live in the light while he handled the darkness. But the darkness found us anyway.

“I should have listened more,” I whisper, gripping the edge of his bed until my knuckles turn white. “Should have let you teach me about your world instead of hiding in mine. Should have told you I loved you this morning instead of rushing off to the studio.”

My tears fall onto the white sheet, creating small dark circles. Like paint on canvas, I think hysterically. Like the drops of midnight blue that fell on my sneaker just an hour ago when my whole world was still intact.

“I’m so sorry, Papa,” I whisper. “I should have been here. I should have…”

But I don’t know how to finish that sentence. Should havewhat? Accepted the world he tried to protect me from? Paid more attention to the danger instead of hiding in my art?

The door opens behind me, and I know without turning that it’s Matteo. His presence fills the room like smoke, dangerous and impossible to ignore. I try to wipe away my tears, to rebuild my composure, but it’s like trying to rebuild a sandcastle after the tide has already come in.

“Your father would want you to be strong now,” he says quietly.

A hollow laugh escapes me. “Strong? I’m an art student. I paint pretty pictures. I’m not…I was never…” The words tangle in my throat.

“You’re Giovanni Russo’s daughter,” Matteo says, his voice gentle but firm. “You’re stronger than you know.”

I don’t know if I believe him. Instead, I look at my father’s body one last time, trying to burn every detail into my memory. The proud line of his nose beneath the sheet. The way his presence fills the room even in death. The last time I painted him, it was a Father’s Day gift—a portrait of him in his study, reading glasses perched on his nose, warm lamplight softening his features. I made him look kind, approachable.

Now I wonder if I ever really saw him at all.

His voice echoes in my head:Remember who you are, bella mia. You’re an artist, yes, but you’re also my daughter. And in our world, that means something whether you want it to or not.

“Come,” Matteo says gently, and this time when his hand touches my shoulder, I don’t pull away. “There are things we need to discuss.”

I press a kiss to my father’s sheet-covered forehead, my tears falling freely now. “Ti amo, Papa,” I whisper. “Perdonami.” I love you. Forgive me.

As I follow him out of the room, I can feel the weight of eyes on us—Carmine’s calculating gaze, my mother’s tearful stare, and the curious glances of the hospital staff who probably think we’re just another grieving family. If only they knew what was really happening.

If only I knew.

But one thing is becoming terrifyingly clear—the safe, separate life I’ve built for myself was always just an illusion. A pretty picture I painted to hide the truth. And now that illusion is shattering, leaving me with nothing but shadows and the weight of all the things my father never told me. All the things I was too afraid to learn.

My heart feels like a canvas slashed to pieces, and I don’t know how to repair it. All I know is that my father’s world is coming for me, whether I’m ready or not.

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