“What?” she asked, wrapping her arms around my neck.
“What did you expect to find in my email, Vale?”
The question seemed to hit her hard. Valentina let go of me immediately, her face taking on an expression I only saw when she was in her Assistant District Attorney mode.
“We'll talk later,” she replied, glancing at the golden Cartier watch on her wrist. “We have to be at the restaurant in ten minutes or we'll lose our reservation.”
It was my turn to back away.
“Vale, I'll repeat: what did you expect to find in my email?”
“Nothing, Camillo! Happy?” she retorted, trying to leave the office. I blocked her way, staring at her closely. “Let me through.”
“You're lying.” I growled, and she lifted her chin, as if trying to swallow something prickly. Valentina was slightly shorter than me, but at that moment, I saw her as some kind of dark giant, making me feel the tiniest man on Earth. Every part of my body was shaking. “Vale... Tell me why you've been hacking into my email for the past few months. What do you want to know?”
She huffed and pulled me by the arm, closing the door behind me. When she stood face to face with me again, she uttered the words I feared most. "I care about you, Camillo. What your famiglia does is wrong, revolting."
I wanted to vomit.
“It's business, Valentina. That's all.”
“No, Camillo, it's not just business!” Her words were whispered exclamations. “What they do is illegal and immoral. But you're not your famiglia, Vita Mia...”
“The societàis a business like any other.” I defended myself, trying to escape the touch of her hands, now caressing my face. The same hands in which I had placed my life, my heart, my credit cards, and my entire future.
“The ‘società’, as you call it, is a mafia.” She retorted, grabbing the lapel of my blazer, holding me close to her body. "Your famiglia is part of the 'Ndrangheta. There is no società, there is an ‘ndrina that profits from illegal activities."
The tip of my nose touched hers. I could feel my heart pounding in my ears. “We only sell products, nothing else.”
"I know what you sell. Gemstones, but also cocaine. Lots of cocaine. And weapons.“ She spat. ”Camillo, you control South American cartels, you do business with members of the Cosa Nostra in New York, and you even collaborate with Eastern European mafias in arms trafficking..." I wanted to pull away from her touch, but I was too horrified to react. I didn't recognize the woman in front of me. She couldn't be the same Vale who used to be tangled up in the sheets with me, making promises of love and a future together. “As if that wasn’t enough, there are the murders. Your famiglia has been responsible for the deaths of so many people around the world that it's impossible to list all their names on a single sheet of paper. And I don't want that for you. For us.”
Whenever I heard that love could turn into hate, I laughed. I never believed it could be true. At that moment, I wasn't so sure anymore.
I pushed Valentina away from me.
“Camillo...”
“You knew who we were when you agreed to this marriage.”
“I did it because I knew whoyouwere! Because I knewyouwere more than a criminal and that, ifyouwanted to,youcouldstart over as a decent man.” She appealed to a part of me that I didn't even know if ever existed.
I never hid the famiglia business from Valentina. It took me a while to tell her, that was true. Maybe I omitted a few details, and I could understand that it wasn't easy for an ordinary person to accept that their partner was part of a world vilified by society. However, I tried hard to show her that we were people like any other and that what we did wasn’t that unusual. And she... She always seemed understanding. She even became my confidante and advisor, guiding me when I needed it most. Now, I realized that I had confused patience with understanding and manipulation with allegiance.
“If I have this ring on my finger today, it's because I always knewyouweren't a monster like your father or your uncle... And because I love you, Camillo.”
I allowed myself a sneer. "And what does your ‘love’ want? To convince me to give up my famiglia? To leave everything behind and start from scratch, while pretending I don't have parents, a brother, an entire famiglia in the country where I was born? Was that your plan all along? To manipulate me into giving up everything on my own?”
She narrowed her eyes.
“No one leaves the mafia so easily, that's common knowledge.” She snorted, disgust spread across her beautiful face.
Mafia...A scornful smile appeared on my face, but in truth, I wanted to cry.
No one in our world appreciated the term. We accepted it from the police, but we refused to acknowledge it. We were just businesspeople whose enterprises governments couldn't extort to subsidize their politicians' libertine lifestyles and who couldn't be subjugated by equally corrupt judicial systems. If an ordinary person knocked at the door of a state agency, asking for help to feed their child, they would be given a pile of bureaucracy and promises that one day they might receive a crumb of bread. But when an ordinary person knocked at the door of businesspeople like us, they were given a place at our table and a job, as long as they were discreet and followed our rules. In Italy,lesocietà like ours saved more lives and helped more families than any government in the last fifty years.
“There are only two ways out of these organizations, Camillo.” My eyes widened when I heard her add those words.No... No, no, no. “When they are killed, or when the organization is taken down.”
“What did you do...?” I demanded, my voice failing me. I grabbed her arm tightly, squeezing it until I heard her groan in pain. “WHAT DID YOU DO?!” I ended up shouting, completely losing my temper.