The Screen That Held My Father’s Name

The paper trembled in my hand.

Ask him who cut the brakes on her car.

A cold, suffocating weight settled in my chest.

I remembered the night my mother died. I was seven. The police officer standing in our cramped living room, holding his hat. He told my father her car had skidded on black ice and gone off an overpass.

An accident, they said.

But my father had never been the same after that night. That was the week he quit his job, packed us up, and moved us to a different neighborhood. I always thought it was grief.

I walked slowly back into the living room.

Luca looked up, immediately sensing the shift in my posture.

“Emma? What’s wrong?”

I ignored him. I walked straight to my father.

He saw my face, and the faint smile vanished from his lips.

I held up the letter.

“Dad. How did Mom die?”

The room went dead silent. Tommy frowned, stepping forward. “Em, what are you doing? You know how she died.”

“Did I?” I kept my eyes locked on my father’s face. “Did she hit black ice, Dad? Or did someone cut her brakes?”

My father’s face turned the color of ash.

He didn’t answer. He just stared at the letter in my hand.

“Thomas,” Luca said, stepping closer. “What is she talking about?”

“Vanessa left me a letter,” I said, my voice rising, sharp and jagged with panic. “She said Mom was going to sell Isabella’s secrets to the FBI. She said you knew.”

I dropped to my knees in front of his chair, grabbing his hands.

“Tell me she’s lying, Dad. Tell me Vanessa is lying!”

My father closed his eyes. A single tear squeezed past his lashes, tracking down his weathered cheek.

“She’s not lying about the brakes,” he whispered.

Tommy gasped. I felt the floor drop out from under me.

“You... you killed her?” I choked out, pulling my hands away as if his skin burned me.

“No!” My father’s eyes snapped open, fierce and full of agony. “God, no, Emma. I loved your mother more than my own life!”

He leaned forward, his voice cracking.

“Your mother found out what I did for Lorenzo. She found out I was a leg-breaker. She was horrified. She gathered evidence to turn Isabella in, thinking it would force me out of the life.”

He swallowed a sob.

“But Isabella found out. She ordered one of her men to cut the brakes on your mother’s car.”

“Who?” Luca demanded.

“A mechanic named Rinaldi,” my father said bitterly. “James Rinaldi’s older brother. He did the job.”

I stared at him, numb.

“I found out an hour after it happened,” my father continued. “I went to Lorenzo. I begged him for permission to kill Isabella. But she was his sister. He refused. So, to buy my silence, to keep me from going to war against his own family, Lorenzo let me walk away. He paid everything off.”

He looked at me, his eyes pleading for forgiveness.

“I couldn’t tell you the truth, Emma. If Isabella knew I knew she ordered the hit, she would have come after you and Tommy next. I had to play the grieving, broken widower. I had to disappear into a blue-collar life to keep you safe.”

Tommy sat heavily on the arm of the sofa, running his hands through his hair. “Twenty years, Dad. You carried that for twenty years.”

“I did what I had to do,” my father whispered.

I stood up, wiping my tears. I believed him. I saw the twenty years of torment in his eyes. He hadn’t killed her; he had sacrificed his own soul to protect us from the people who did.

I walked over and hugged him. He buried his face in my shoulder and wept.

Luca stood by the window, looking out over the Chicago skyline.

He looked physically sick.

“My family took your mother,” Luca said, his voice hollow. “My aunt ordered her death. My father covered it up.”

He turned to face me.

“I have no right to ask you to stay in my life, Emma. The Moretti name has brought you nothing but tragedy.”

I looked at him.

“You aren’t your father, Luca. And you aren’t your aunt.”

Before Luca could respond, Marco walked rapidly back into the room.

“Boss. It’s done. The FBI has the film. They are raiding Isabella’s properties right now.”

Luca nodded. “Good.”

“But there’s something else,” Marco said, holding a small, polished wooden box.