The Photo

CHAPTER 3:

I couldn't breathe.

The silver frame in my hands was shaking. The woman in the photo was smiling so brightly, so kindly, with long wavy dark brown hair, hazel eyes, light morena skin, and a small mole near her left eye.

I have the same mole. In the exact same place.

The little boy she was holding was maybe 13 years old, with black hair and cold grey eyes even then. Damien. A young Damien, before he became a monster. He was smiling too - a real smile, not the cold smirk he gave me. He was holding his mother tightly.

"Isabella and Damien, 2005."

The handwriting on the back was a woman's handwriting. Soft, elegant.

Isabella.

Isabella Vitale.

The name hit me like a train. I had heard that name before. Not from Damien. From my father.

When I was seven years old, before my mother left, I remembered my father coming home late one night, drunk, crying. He was a driver for a rich family then. He kept saying a name over and over.

"Isabella, I'm sorry. Isabella, forgive me. It was an accident. I didn't mean to - "

I thought he was talking about my mother. My mother's name was Sofia, not Isabella. But I was seven. I didn't understand.

Now I understood.

My father was a driver for the Vitale family fifteen years ago. He drove Isabella Vitale. And something happened. Something that killed her.

And Damien knew.

He had known all along. When he came to our apartment in Rome, when he looked at me, when he said "Take my daughter" - he wasn't just collecting a debt. He was taking revenge.

I looked at Damien, who was sleeping on the other side of the huge bed. The pillow wall was still between us. His face in the soft light from the fireplace looked almost innocent. His black t-shirt had ridden up slightly, showing his toned stomach. His arm with the tattoo "Isabella" was resting above his head.

He looked peaceful. For the first time since I met him, he didn't look like a Don. He looked like a boy who missed his mother.

And I was wearing her face.

I put the photo back quickly, but my hands were shaking so loud the frame clinked against the nightstand.

Damien's eyes opened instantly.

Mafia Dons don't sleep deeply, I would later learn. They sleep like wolves - one eye open, one ear listening.

"What are you doing?" His voice was rough from sleep, low and dangerous.

"Nothing," I whispered, pulling away.

He sat up. The sheets fell from his chest. "You were looking at my mother's photo."

It wasn't a question.

I didn't answer. I just hugged my knees, still in the black silk nightgown he gave me. I felt exposed, like he could see through me.

"Why do you have my photo?" I asked, my voice shaking. "Why does your mother look like me?"

He stared at me for a long time. Then he stood up, walked to the window, and looked out at the dark Sicilian sea. The moonlight made his silhouette look like a statue.

"My mother was 35 when she died," he said quietly, his back to me. "Fifteen years ago. 2010. She wanted to leave the Mafia life. She wanted to take me and go to America. She was tired of blood. Tired of my father, who cheated on her, who hit her. She told her driver to drive her to the airport. Secretly."

My heart stopped.

"Her driver was Marco Rossi. Your father."

I knew it. I knew it but hearing him say it made it real.

"What happened?" I whispered.

Damien turned around. His grey eyes were full of pain now, not coldness. Real pain.

"My father found out. He ordered my mother to be stopped. He called Marco and told him - if you let her leave, I will kill your wife and your daughter. You have a little girl, right? Elena? Seven years old?"

I covered my mouth. I was seven in 2010.

"Marco was scared. He stopped the car on a mountain road. He tried to convince my mother to go back. My mother refused. She got out of the car. She tried to walk. Marco panicked. He got out too. He pulled her. They fought near the cliff. My mother slipped. She fell."

Silence. Only the fireplace crackling.

"It was an accident," I whispered. "My father said - it was an accident - "

"An accident?" Damien laughed, but it was a painful laugh. "My mother fell 100 meters. Her body was found two days later. And your father ran away. He left her there. He didn't call for help. He ran back to Rome and told my father she left with another man. My father believed him for two years, until we found her body."

He walked back to the bed and sat on the edge, close to me but not touching.

"For thirteen years, I looked for the driver. Marco Rossi. He changed his name, he hid in Rome, became a gambler, lost everything. And then, three years ago, he started gambling in my casino. I found him."

"So you - you made him owe you two million?"

"No," he said. "He really owes me two million. He is a terrible gambler. But I let him keep gambling. I let his debt grow. Because I was waiting for the perfect payment."

He looked at me. "And then you grew up. And you look exactly like her."

I was crying now. Silent tears running down my face.

"You bought me because I look like your dead mother? That's sick!"

"I bought you because your father killed my mother and left her to die," he said coldly. "And because when I saw you in that cheap diner last week - I went to see you before I went to your apartment, Elena - I saw you smiling at customers even though your feet were bleeding, I saw you give your tips to a homeless kid - I knew you were not like your father. You are innocent. And innocent things should be possessed. Protected. Owned."

"I am not a thing to be owned!" I shouted, standing up from the bed. The black silk nightgown clung to my body. "My father is a criminal, okay! He killed your mother! But I didn't! I was seven! Why are you punishing me!"

"Because you are all he has!" Damien stood up too, towering over me. "He loves you more than his life. Taking you hurts him more than killing him. And you - you have his blood. You have to pay for his sin."

"I don't have to pay for anything!" I pushed his chest, but he didn't move. He was like a wall.

"You do," he said, grabbing my wrists gently but firmly. "You signed the contract, Elena. You are my wife. You will pay by staying here, by being mine, by giving me what your father took from me - a family."

"A family?" I stared at him. "You think I will give you a family? I hate you!"

"Hate me then," he whispered, his face close to mine. I could feel his breath. "Hate me for one year. But you will sleep in my bed, you will wear my clothes, you will eat my food, and you will be mine. And after one year, if you still hate me, I will let you go. I will clear your father's debt and give you money to start a new life in America. But for one year - you are mine."

He let go of my wrists.

I was shaking with anger, with fear, with something else I didn't want to name.

"Why do you have my photo? I mean, why do I look like her?" I asked again.

Damien went to his closet and pulled out an old wooden box. He opened it and showed me.

Inside, there were dozens of photos. All of Isabella Vitale. Young, smiling, with her son.

And in every photo, she looked like me. The same hair, the same eyes, the same mole.

"My mother was half-Filipina," he said quietly. "Her mother was from Cebu. That's why she has morena skin, dark hair. You are half-Filipina too, right? Your mother is from Philippines?"

I nodded, shocked. How did he know?

"Your mother Sofia left and went back to Philippines when you were seven. That's why you look like my mother. Same blood."

He closed the box.

"That's why I can't let you go, Elena. From the moment I saw you in that diner, I thought my mother came back."

He touched my cheek. This time I didn't slap him. I was too shocked, too sad.

"I don't want to be your mother's replacement," I whispered, tears falling.

"You are not," he said, his thumb wiping my tear. "You are Elena. You are fire. My mother was water. You are much more dangerous."

We stood there in the huge bedroom, in front of the fireplace, him in black pajama pants and me in black silk, two broken people connected by a dead woman and a father's sin.

Then there was a loud knock on the bedroom door.

"Don! Don Vitale!" It was Luca's voice, urgent. "We have a problem! The De Lucas are here! Sofia De Luca is downstairs! She says she is your fiancée and wants to see your new wife!"

Damien's face turned cold instantly. The vulnerable boy was gone. The Don was back.

"Sofia," he muttered, like a curse.

He looked at me. "Stay here. Don't come down. Don't let anyone see you like that."

He grabbed a black shirt and put it on quickly, covering his tattoos.

"Is Sofia your fiancée?" I asked, feeling a strange pang in my chest. Jealousy? No, impossible. I hated him.

"No," he said, opening the door. "My father arranged it before he died. I never agreed. But she thinks she owns me."

He looked back at me one more time, from head to toe in the black silk nightgown.

"And now she will see I already own someone else."

He closed the door, leaving me alone in the huge room with the photo of his mother who looked like me, with the knowledge that my father was a killer, and with the sound of a woman's high heels clicking angrily downstairs - my rival, the woman who thought she was going to be Mrs. Vitale.

I walked to the window and looked down. In the driveway, there was a red Ferrari. And a beautiful blonde woman in a tight red dress was getting out, screaming in Italian.

Sofia De Luca.

The villain of my story had just arrived.

And I, in a black silk nightgown, with my father's sin on my shoulders and a Mafia Don's obsession in my heart, was not ready.