Capo Dei Capi (Secrets of the Famiglia Part 1) novel Chapter 17

I have no idea why they don’t just talk once in a while.

My mood lightens at the thought of how stupid it is to work in a job where you can’t talk to the people you are protecting unless they deemed it so.

It feels like they’re selling their souls.

An unexpected breeze brings a welcoming chill seeping through the silk wrapped around my body.

I knew I would end up here tonight, it’s one of two places in Seattle I feel alone and safe to just let go. Be me.

Never has it crossed my mind, I’d seek this familiar place so early on in the evening. Today is a big day for my sister, I should be down there with them.

I feel like a fraud.

They think I am a charlatan, and they are right to believe I am a fake. I will never be like them, the Italians. I will never have their pure-blood.

I know my thoughts are unwarranted.

My father has always looked at me with pride. He once confessed in a drunken state that I was ‘The reminder’ that my mother existed.

What if I resembled him, reminded him of himself? Would he look at me the same way, like I was more than just something?

It was the question I asked him that night as he stared at me but didn’t open his mouth to speak.

His silence told me more than his words could.

I was nine.

I open the glass door, removing my heels. It's unfortunate to say that it isn’t the first time my mind goes to that one thought.

My father’s love for me, so great, so powerful that I would never doubt it.

But even his love runs on a condition.

My friend Kylie told me once, she loved her family unconditionally, whether they felt the same or not. Would I ever experience something as meaningful as just hearing those words spoken about me?

Or am I not born so lucky, as fortunate as I like to believe.

Is my curse loneliness?

Will I ever belong?

My dress drags on the floor as I wander to the far side of the green room. A room that is made of glass and filled with white, yellow, and peach roses.

A beauty to the sightless eyes, but to tainted ones like my own, that has measured beauty and lived through pain can see what this place represents - A memorial room for all those innocent lives lost in the games of power and war.

The beauty, uncanny, but trapped in a magical glass castle only to die in that same castle, a gruesome death.

I was once an unseeing eye until I noticed a flaw in the picture, red roses.

Deno hates red roses. I asked him why, he said, “I don't want this place tainted by death.”

I argued, telling him it represented love, he laughed and shook his head,

“To love is to die painfully. There is no love without loss.”

That day I honestly stared into our future Capo’s eyes, and I swear I saw a longing for something more than what made him so powerful. But when I blinked, he was as emotionless as the day I first met him.

The nippy air brings a cooling sensation, as I welcome the bliss of the cold deep in my lungs. I embrace the chill sliding intimately within me.

Scented roses follow as I breathe deeper, welcoming the silence. The stars are my comfort as I gaze into the darkness. I smile, knowing for this moment I am not Aliyana Capello. I am just a barefoot girl in a greenhouse, wearing a beautiful dress staring at the stars. Free, yes, I am free.

A chilly breeze teases my skin.

I rub my cold fingers along my bared arms. Free

“Aliyana,” My eyes close, as that voice slices my thoughts of freedom, stealing this small moment.

Sucking in a sharp breath, I straighten my back. Saying nothing for a moment is all I am capable of doing.