“Done.”
“That easily?”
“Your father negotiated harder.”
I smiled.
For years I had believed Dad’s final chapter was the whole story: sickness, bills, hospital rooms, whispered apologies.
Now I understood there had been another version of him too.
A man who once opened a locked door for a stranger in trouble.
A man who had looked directly at someone everyone else feared and decided that helping him did not require approving of him.
A man stubborn enough to refuse a fortune because he wanted his daughter’s future to remain hers.
Dante opened the car door for me.
Before getting inside, I looked back at La Stella.
The night of the attack, Marco had told me I should have stayed invisible.
For most of my life, I probably would have agreed.
But Dad had never really taught me to disappear.
He had taught me something much more dangerous.
When something was wrong in front of you, you did not need to be powerful to act.
You just had to decide that doing nothing was worse.
That was why my father had saved Dante Russo years ago.
And without ever knowing the story, it was why I had done exactly the same thing.
