Page 72 of From Italy With Love

“I have to go.” I couldn’t do this anymore. Couldn’t stand there listening to her cry while our son reached for a mother who wasn’t there.

“Wait.”

I hung up. The phone slipped from my hand and hit the floor. I didn’t pick it up.

Henry was crying now, his little face scrunched up and red, and I held him against my chest and rocked him mechanically, my mind already somewhere else.

Already calculating. If she couldn’t leave because of her father, then her father was the problem. If her father was the problem, then the Society that protected him was the problem.

And problems could be solved.

They just required the right approach. The right leverage. The right amount of ruthlessness. I’d spent my whole life being careful. Being strategic. Playing the long game. But the long game wouldn’t get me my wife back.

So maybe it was time to play a different game entirely.

Time stopped meaning anything after that call.

Days blurred into weeks. Weeks blurred into months. I stopped counting. I woke up. I took care of Henry. I made calls. I gathered information. I planned. I became a machine, efficient and cold, focused on a single objective: dismantling the Society piece by piece until there was nothing left to protect Nolan Kelley.

Until there was nowhere left for him to hide.

Sinclair called weekly with updates. Madigan was fine. Madigan was still at home. Madigan asked about Henry. I told him to tell her that Henry was fine. I didn’t ask if she asked about me. Sinclair could sense what I’d become. Could sense the cold calculation in my eyes, the way I’d shut down everything that made me human.

Good.

Let him see. Let him understand that the man who tried to be good, who tried to build a peaceful life away from the blood and violence—that man was dead. He died the day Madigan walked out of that door. What was left was the monster. The one who knew how to hurt people. How to destroy them. How to take what he wanted by any means necessary. And I wanted my wife back.

Henry was growing. Six months became seven, then became eight. He started crawling, then pulling himself up on furniture. He babbled constantly, sounds that almost formed words but not quite. I watched him discover the world with a detachment that should have terrified me but didn’t. I loved him—God, I loved him more than anything—but there was a wall between us now. A barrier I couldn’t quite break through.

Because every time I looked at him, I saw her. Every time he smiled, it was her smile. Every time he reached for me, I remembered her hands, and the ache of her absence became unbearable.

So I shut it down. Locked it away. Focused on my work.

During the day, I was ice. I was strategy. I was a weapon being sharpened for a specific purpose, but at night, when Henry was finally asleep and the house was quiet and dark, I allowed myself to feel as I pulled out the leather journal I’d bought in town—expensive, bound in soft leather that reminded me of her skin—and I wrote.

I wrote everything I couldn’t say out loud.

Everything I couldn’t let anyone see.

All the longing and heartbreak and rage that I kept locked inside during the daylight hours.

The journal became my confessional. My therapy. My lifeline.

The only place where the real Salvatore Valentinetti still existed.

April 15th

Dearest Madigan,

It’s been weeks since you called. Months since I saw your face.

Henry said “Dada” today. His first real word. I should have been happy. Should have celebrated. Instead, I just felt empty because you weren’t here to hear it. Because his first word should have been “Mama,” but you’re not here for him to call for.

I wanted to call you. Wanted to hear your voice so badly that I actually picked up the phone. But what would I say? “Our son said his first word, and you missed it because you chose your family over us”?

That’s not fair. I know it’s not fair. You didn’t choose him. He’s keeping you prisoner, but it feels like you chose him. It feels like you chose them over us, and I don’t know how to forgive that.

I don’t know how to forgive you for breaking my heart.