Page 137 of A War Around Us

“I’m aware, but I’m desperate, Gia. Please,” he pressured with a gentle plea. “I need to contact Andrea.”

“I’ve told you I don’t know where she is.”

“But you do,” he fought. “Damn it, I know okay.”

Silence.

“Fine,” Salvatore said as his hand balled, and his voice lowered. “Can you at least tell me if they are still okay?”

Silence.

“Mario won’t stop.” I heard my mother’s soft cry.

“And I’m working on that. Please don’t run. Not yet.”

“I can’t promise you that.”

“Damn it, just give me time. Think of the danger you’ll bring to them, and that’s including your own children.”

“They are strong.”

Salvatore cursed too low, and his back leaned against the doorcase. “No they are not. They are children.”

My mother sniffed.

“Stop using, stop plotting, and leave Andrea out of your plan.”

“It’s too late.”

“No it’s not.” Salvatore stopped, quickly straightened and turned to the sound from the end of the corridor. “I must go, but please—Do. Not. Run.”

When people said the walls could hear, the walls could weep, they told the truth.

I heard and wept in silence.

It was the last time I saw Salvatore, and two days later, my mother was found dead.

If I’d once feared father, nothing compared to my next two years of life.

I was four, and as Viktor had said, insignificant memories beat the ones I wished to remember. However, today, they weren’t insignificant at all.

I was four, scared and without a mother’s skirt to hide behind.

I was four, and I understood death and pain.

I was just four.

If it wasn’t for the kind eyes that pierced mine, I wouldn’t have recognized the man who stood shakily behind Lucca’s chair. But the more I looked at him, the more the memories of Sal mirrored that man.

The strong features, the red stone finger, and the deadly demeanor were all familiar. But his thick black hair wasn’t covered by a fedora. Instead the fedora concealed the faint shadow of what his condition had taken. The oxygen tank, and his inconstant coughs were also new.

Salvatore was my father’s age, and yet he looked double and on the verge of death’s bed.

It was cruel, really, knowing how strong my father breathed as Sal struggled with each puff.

I now knew who Salvatore was. His kind eyes had always been reserved for me when he was around, as if he hid the monster inside, shielding the child he often found in the bushes, under tables, and corners. He could’ve been like any other black-suited man who walked into my father’s study, ignorant and mean to the little girl who hid so terribly.

Instead, he acknowledged my existence, and he was warm while doing so.

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