Chapter 117: 117 ~ Mira
Jace was in a mood.
I walked into his room and found him just sitting there, staring into space.
I hesitated for a bit before eventually asking him what was wrong.
He showed me a stiff grin. "I’m fine."
"You don’t look okay." I said, scanning his features.
I cared too much about him but today I couldn’t help it.
"You’d probably get mad if I tell you what it is." He said.
"Well?" I insisted after several beats of silence.
I watched him swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.
"It’s been fifteen years since my father died."
I felt my blood run cold.
Don Vittorio. The man whose face I had struggled to remember every time I saw his photograph. Not until the secret was revealed to me by Massimo.
It had been fifteen years since the man who murdered my father right before my eyes met his own death. How nice.
I stared at Jace but I wasn’t seeing him. All I could see was his father’s face as the scenario replayed itself in my eyes.
~Flashback~
My mother and father were arguing. It was so intense, my little mind struggled to understand what was going on. But they had been arguing often and it usually ended with my mother in tears and my father storming away.
On this unfortunate night, I was crouched over the coffee table in our tiny living room next to my brother as we did some homework. The yelling began again but it was shrill this time.
When my father came out, there was a bag hung over his shoulder. He was in a hurry. He was trying to escape. I saw the urgency in his movements.
He came to my brother and I and gave us hugs. He placed kisses on our foreheads, then he told us he loved us.
But just as he was about to leave, they stormed in.
The screams started again. I saw my mother beg on her knees.
My father stood like a soldier ready to accept his fate.
There was something the man in front said. I couldn’t fully understand it because it was Italian.
Then he glanced at me. I held my brother as he hid has face in my chest, shivering.
I met his eyes.
Maybe I was imagining it but there was a flicker of warmth in there. Like he almost reconsidered what he was there to do. He lowered his gun for a second.
I was almost relieved.
That was when the worst happened.
My father, in a fit of rage or maybe in a bid to escape launched towards him him and...
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Three shots straight to my father’s chest.
Blood splashes everywhere and a guttural scream from my mother who had gotten shot in the arm by one of the men by his side.
They left almost immediately after.
I stood there and watched my father take his last breath, unable to move.
It felt like an out of body experience. Like someone had just played out a movie right in front of me.
But this was no movie. It was my life.
The life of a little girl that was ruined forever.
~Flashback Over~
My breath hitched as I came back to reality.
My brother was too young to understand but those memories had imprinted themselves in my mind. I only kept them buried.
I hid them so well it was almost like I had forgotten what made me Mira. Mirabel bore too much aches so when I was taken to the orphanage home with my brother after our mother passed, for everyone that asked, I was Mira.
Too bad Mirabel was already in my records.
Snap out of it, Mira. I said in my thoughts.
I sat there and fought back the tears that stung my eyes.
"Come here," Jace’s voice was heavy with emotion.
Before I could stop it, I let myself be pulled into his arms as he comforted me.
He was the one who was supposed to be grieving. How did I make it about me all of a sudden?
"I’m sorry."
I was quiet for a bit before speaking again. "What are you apologizing for, Jace?"
He swallowed. I stared languidly at how his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.
"Everything."
I forced a smile, fighting the tears that were threatening to spill out of my eyes.
Then I nodded. I nodded like I understood what that one word meant. Did it make me feel better? Maybe not but I appreciated the slight numbness it seeped into the pain that clouded my chest.
"Would you tell me why you married me now?"
His thumb trailed circles on my bare back as he intertwined his fingers on the ropes that held my top together.
"I need to show you something." He finally said.
"What is it?"
He moved away from me and I immediately missed his warmth.
I watched as he opened a hidden drawer underneath his bed.
He took out a finely embroidered box, opened it and brought something out of it.
That envelope...
It looked familiar. It was the exact one he took out of my hands when I snooped around his home office back in New York few years ago.
"What is it?" I asked as he handed it to me.
"A letter."
"For me?"
"For both of us, I guess."
"From your father?" I asked.
"Yes."
"And you hid it from me?"
He was silent for a bit before he exhaled.
"Just open it, Mira."
Slowly, I opened the brown piece of paper. The cursive handwriting was familiar.
It read thus;
’Jacopo,
I write this to you because I fear that death is upon me.
I am a man who has known war, pain, bloodshed and death. But never guilt for my dealings. Worse still - regret.
Except for one experience....
It was April, 2006.
Guiletta had come to me crying about a man who had broken her heart. He was married and had toyed with her.
A true Romano never lets anyone hurt their own. I have taught you this.
But I was a Don blinded by rage. So I took it up and had threats sent to him. He seemed unfazed by it.
I wanted to let it go but Giuletta wanted blood.
So I let her make me hunt him down. I monitored his every move. I knew he was about to escape and that was when I went to finish up what started months before.
He was one courageous man. He had no fear.
When I entered his home that night and saw the two young children there, I had a rethink.
The innocent little girl that stared up at me with fire in her eyes but a plea nonetheless caught my attention.
As a family man myself, I thought to let him off with a warning. I planned to tell my sister that I had finished him up. She would definitely have believed me.
But just as I was thinking of leaving, he brought out a knife and lurched at me. I pulled the trigger before I could stop myself. It was as easy as drinking water.
I watched him fall to the floor as the bullets hit his chest. It was too late.
One of my men stupidly shot at his wife too. I killed him after we left. He was supposed to follow instructions.
It was supposed to be an easy in and out. But for days after that, the guilt settled in my chest. It was unlike something I had ever felt.
I kept a close eye on the family. My guilt intensified when I realized that his wife never recovered from the shock of losing her husband and died a year later.
I couldn’t outrightly take the children under my wing so I took care of them anonymously.
I write this to you because I have made a vow to myself that that little girl is going to be your wife-"
I crumpled the piece of paper just then. I didn’t have it me to read any further.
"Mira..."
"Don’t say anything." I managed to speak after several beats of silence.
The tears I had been holding back all this time poured down my cheeks in their torrents.
"It was all a lie?" I asked rhetorically. The answer was obvious.
Everything I had known this marriage to be was one big fat lie. A facade used to cage me.
So all this time that I thought the universe saw through my pain and sent random help from strangers after my parents passed, my brother and I were someone’s redemption cause?
"Mira-"
"Don’t." I said through gritted teeth. "Don’t even think about touching me Jacopo."
This was the first time I would call him that. It sounded strange even to my ears and tasted weird on my tongue.
His jaw clenched.
"Your father died fifteen years ago," I started off, swallowing the painful lump in my throat.
He was quiet so I continued.
"My father was killed three years before. So how long have you had this letter?"
"It was given to me by my mother on the day my father was buried. It was supposed to be a gift for my coming of age ceremony but he was gone before then."
"So you’ve known about this for so long and every time I asked you, you hid it from me?"
I felt rage burn through my bones as I got on my feet and faced him squarely.
"I didn’t know how to tell you, Mira."
"You’re despicable!" I spat.
He shut his eyes and exhaled.
"Perdonami, amore mio," he said.(Forgive me, my love.)
The shakiness in his voice did something to my chest I couldn’t explain.
The sobs that had been bubbling in my throat broke out and he scooped me up in his arms before I could fall to the ground.
I stayed there and wept.
When he joined his forehead to mine, I saw his own tears too. They cascaded down his face looking foreign to his stoic features that I had gotten used to over the years.
Then and there, it registered more than ever that this man was human too. No matter what he tried to portray to the world out there, he let himself be vulnerable with me. And I didn’t know what to do with it.