Goodbye, Mr. Marchetti Chapter 07

Goodbye, Mr. Marchetti Chapter 07

Vittorio kept at it.

One day I stopped outside my office and faced him.

“Do you want to go back?” I asked. “Back to how we used to be?”

His eyes lit up. “Yes.”

I took a step away from him.

“I don’t,” I said.

“You never looked back, Vittorio. And I won’t look back now either.”

That night, the night I climbed down from the balcony, I was shaking so hard I couldn’t stand, and my

mother held me tight.

I still had people who loved me.

One person had left. That didn’t mean my life was over.

I drank the soup. I fell asleep in her arms.

The pain was still there. But I no longer wanted to die.

That bowl of soup was the rope I grabbed on the way down.

I started eating again. Going outside. Reading.

Six months later, Enzo woke up.

He’d never be quite the same. But he was alive.

“We’re together,” Mom said. “That’s what matters.”

We rented a new apartment.

A year later, Enzo went back to work.

I picked up a textbook.

My parents had always carried the guilt of me dropping out. So when I decided to go back, to sit for the

exams myself, they didn’t hesitate.

I’d been away so long I’d almost forgotten how to hold a pen.

But Enzo helped.

“Don’t worry about it,” he’d say, ruffling my hair. “You’ll get it. And if you don’t, that’s what I’m here for.”

My scores slowly climbed.

I got in at twenty-five.

Walking onto that campus felt like pushing open a door I’d believed was locked forever.

I studied. I lived. I found an internship.

The worst years, the ones I thought would kill me, hadn’t killed me.

I was still here. I was okay.

My parents didn’t have to grind themselves down anymore.

What was past was past.

Until I ran into Vittorio again.

“Vittorio,” I said, the last time he was waiting for me. “I almost lost my life for you once.”

“Let’s stop embarrassing ourselves. Okay?”

The man in the driver’s seat didn’t answer.

After a long silence, I heard him exhale.

“I’m sorry,” he said, as I got out of the car.

“Everything that happened was on me.”

“Can we try again? Start over?”

Try again.

I’d said that so many times. Please don’t leave me. Please don’t hurt my family. Please.

Now the roles had switched.

I’d heard things about him over the years. When you marry someone like Vittorio Marchetti and then disappear, people still talk.

There had been a time when he was at the top of his world, a king in his own domain, a beautiful wife at

home and a glamorous mistress on the side.

Every man in the city envied him.

Five years later, he said he had regrets.

I didn’t know if he meant it.

But I was about to find out exactly what his regret was worth.

I was on the balcony watering my mother’s plants when Sienna came to see me.

She looked more polished than before. Expensive clothes. Expensive bag.

But something in her eyes was hungry. Dangerous.

She stood in the doorway and wouldn’t leave, so I opened the door.