Goodbye, Mr. Marchetti Chapter 09

Goodbye, Mr. Marchetti Chapter 09

She walked away.

The hallway went quiet.

I stood in my own doorway like a stranger.

Vittorio rubbed his eyes. He looked exhausted.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know she’d come here. It won’t happen again.

“About what happened, I never thought it would go this far.”

I didn’t need his explanations.

I smiled. It was easy.

“Mr. Marchetti,” I said, “what happens between you and your wife is none of my concern.”

“Please, just keep her away from my family.”

“But if you ever change your mind about the divorce, let me know.”

My indifference hurt him more than my anger ever had.

He put his hand against the doorframe.

“I know you don’t believe me,” he said. “But I mean it. I had the apartment renovated, restored to the way it

was before.”

“I’ll handle Sienna. I’ll handle everything. Just give me one more chance.”

I said nothing.

I just waited.

In the silence, Vittorio came apart.

He left.

But he didn’t quit.

He was waiting outside my office every night. No matter how late I worked, he was there.

He pulled strings and got Enzo a promotion. Paid for my father’s medical exams.

He went to the market with my mother.

We all ignored him. Every single one of us.

Finally, Enzo went to see him.

He brought the videos. And the journals from my worst months.

“If you really want to help her,” Enzo said, “let her go.”

“She almost died because of you, Vittorio. If you have a single shred of conscience left, let her go.”

Vittorio watched the footage.

I don’t know what he saw in it.

But he kept coming back.

“If you won’t come to me,” he said, “I’ll come to you.”

So I stopped hiding from him.

He drove the same old car, slow and deliberate. The cars behind him leaned on their horns.

He stopped outside the restaurant where we’d had our first real dinner together.

“I haven’t eaten,” he said. “Sit with me for a while.”

I sat down. I watched him order the same things we’d ordered the very first time.

I still said nothing.

He looked at me across the table.

“What is it?” he asked. “Serena, say something. Yell at me if you want. I don’t care. Just say something.”

But I had nothing to say.

Not anger. Not grief. Just nothing.

His face darkened.

He cut his steak in silence.

“Mr. Marchetti?”

A man was standing by our table, grinning.

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

“I’ve been waiting a long time for this.”

Before anyone could react, the man grabbed a steak knife off the table and drove it into Vittorio’s side.

Vittorio twisted. The blade missed the ribs and sliced his wrist instead.

“You destroyed my family,” the man said. “I watched my daughter die because of you. My wife is still in a cell.”

“Today you pay for it.”

He was the father of the child. The case had been Vittorio’s first courtroom win, the one where the mother had come at Vittorio with a knife outside the courthouse. The one I’d stepped in front of.

The man Vittorio had put away.

The man kept swinging.

I took a step back and let the crowd close in front of me.