Goodbye, Mr. Marchetti Chapter 03

Goodbye, Mr. Marchetti Chapter 03

My brother Enzo was still looking at Vittorio like he wanted him dead.

“What do you want?” Enzo said. “You touch her again, we’re both dead. I don’t care.”

My father coughed, his chest heaving.

“She never did a single thing wrong by you,” he said. “Please. Leave her alone.”

He started to lower himself to his knees.

Vittorio reached him before I did.

“I’m not here to hurt anyone,” Vittorio said, his voice flat. “I just want to talk.”

My mother stood between everyone, her eyes wet.

“We don’t want anything from you,” she said. “We just want you to stay away from us.”

“She spent years getting better. Don’t you come back here and undo that.”

My parents were getting more and more agitated. I pushed Vittorio toward the door.

“Go,” I said. “Please.”

“We don’t want anything. We just want things to go back to the way they were.”

In the scuffle, my sleeve slid up.

The scar was right there. Ugly. Permanent.

Vittorio’s gaze caught on it.

He went very still.

I pushed him out and shut the door.

Behind me, I heard my parents exhale.

Enzo unclenched his fists.

“I won’t let him hurt you again,” my brother said. “I swear.”

My throat tightened.

It had always been this way. Enzo standing in front of me, taking the hits.

When I’d stepped in front of that knife for Vittorio, Enzo had blamed himself.

When Vittorio had taken up with someone else, Enzo had blamed himself for that, too.

After the knife, my body was never quite right again.

After the wedding, I stayed home. Vittorio joined the most powerful family in the city as their private counsel.

He started turning his back on me more and more often.

“Serena,” he used to say, “I want to give you the world. Everything beautiful there is.”

I believe he tried. I really do.

But he also left me covered in scars.

Three years into our marriage, he met someone else.

She was a client, a trafficking victim brought to the city by force on the orders of one of the family’s lieutenants.

He never should have crossed that line.

But Sienna reminded him of his mother.

So he took the case under pressure, without charging a cent.

When I first saw her, Sienna looked hollow, emptied out, like something had been scooped from behind her eyes. She wouldn’t let anyone touch her.

Except Vittorio.

“Maybe she just feels safe with me,” he told me. “It’s good for the case.”

I looked at the bruises on her arms and thought of Vittorio’s mother. The way they’d found her in the river.

I understood why he wanted to help. So I said nothing.

For months, whenever she called, he went. No matter how late.

“She’s fragile,” he said. “If I’m there, she stays calm. It helps the case.”

It bothered me. But every time I looked at her empty eyes, I told myself to be patient.

When Sienna was in a good mood, she’d hold onto me and cry.

“You both saved my life,” she’d say. “Both of you. When this is over, I’m going to move somewhere by the ocean. Start over.”

Her ideas about the future had been different at first.

Vittorio came through. He put the lieutenant away.

The day Sienna came to say goodbye, I drove her to the airport.

Standing outside the terminal, I saw them kissing.

Snow was falling into both their hair.

I stood there freezing, and neither of them saw me.

In that blizzard, I was the only one who fell apart.

Vittorio held her close, shielding her face from the world.

He walked her to her car and left me standing in the dirty slush, like a stray dog.

“Serena,” he said later. “This is my fault. But don’t take it out on her.”