Chapter 31

**Lily**

I felt the blood drain from my face. What? How? When? Judging by how this news was affecting me, I was into him.

“Is he okay? What happened?”, I managed to get out. I started to tremble, and my emotions were going all over the place.

“I don’t know all the details to be honest. I just know that he got caught in a gang shooting somewhere, and he got hit in his shoulder. He lost a lot of blood, but he will be okay. Nothing vital was hit. But he was unconscious for a considerable time.”, Vita told me solemnly.

“How did he get caught in a shooting?”, I wondered. Vita shrugged.

“I don’t wonder anymore, I know my brother longer than today. He is a living and breathing mystery at times.”, she said. A lot of emotions were hidden in that answer. Pride, frustration, love, and admiration. It was clear that she loved her brother.

“He must have wandered into a bad part of town. He does that more often. We try to stop him from doing so, but he never listens to us.”, Vita tries to explain. Her answer seems logical, but something is off, I just can’t put my finger on it.

“And now?”, I ask, not really knowing what the next step is.

“He woke up this morning. So, knowing my brother, he probably is working again.”, she scoffed. “We just didn’t know he had a date with you. Otherwise, we would have told you.”

“So, you would tell me if you knew we had a date planned, but you didn’t tell me regardless.”, I asked. I felt my anger rising again, and my hands curled into fists on my side. Clearly, I was still not rid of the anger, and for sure the alcohol was not helping. Vita’s cheeks flushed. She was not used to being called out like this. She chose to stay quiet.

We stayed like that for a few minutes, staring at each other. It was a game of chicken, and we were both too immature to be the bigger woman. Then Vita sighed.

“Let’s go back.”, she said, and together we walked back. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly where my doubts came from, but something in my gut told me that this wasn’t the complete story. Tonight wasn’t the right moment to go into it.

We walked back in silence. I pondered whether I wanted to go home after this news, but I felt that I didn’t. I still wanted to have fun tonight. All the events of yesterday and tonight had sown doubts in my mind, and I found myself second guessing my feelings and Matteo’s actions. It wasn’t that I doubted that he was injured, not at all. Vita had looked like she was sincere about that fact. But Matteo didn’t seem the person to just stumble upon a shooting.

And the biggest question of all: was he really that into me? I was back in a place that I didn’t want to be because it was a dark place in my mind. I physically shook my head as if I could just shake the thoughts out of my mind.

“You okay?”, Emma asked concernedly when she saw me coming back. I nodded to her, and I dragged her back to the dance floor. Away from worries and negativity. Call me selfish, but I first needed to understand for myself just how much I liked Matteo. Apart from the sex.

Sunday was going to be a quiet day, I’d decided. After the talk with Vita, I didn’t have many drinks anymore, so the hangover today was practically nonexistent. So, I had donned jogging pants and a hoodie, and sat myself on the couch with Google translate and the box with letters and documents from my mom’s house. No better time than the present to unravel some secrets!

I browsed through the box to pick out the letters and tried to put them in chronological order. It wasn’t easy, because whoever this Mario was, he didn’t have the clearest handwriting. But in the end, I managed. Kind of.

It was weird to read him write about my mom in a romantic way. To know that there have been men in her life, though I never knew about them. It was strange to read this man talk about meeting her during her holiday in Italy. Faintly I remembered one of the women after my mom’s funeral talking about this. At least now I could understand how it had changed her life, she met a man!

A man that seemed to be head over heels for her, judging by the way he was writing to her. It was very, how to say, colorful! I smiled at the thought in my head. He was talking about being happy to have met her in Palermo when she went to have fun with her friends. How she had caught his eye immediately. How his friends had pestered him into talking to her!

How he had enjoyed spending time with her, having sex with her. I shook my head at the idea of my mom having sex with someone. A visual I could do without.

But as the letters progressed, the narrative seemed to change, but I couldn’t understand it properly. Maybe Google Translate was botching it up? It talked about my mom being Serbian and having the wrong last name? It must be wrong because my mom was American!

Mario was writing about how his family would never accept her unless she gave up her birth right and if she would break all contact with her family. What the hell was her birth right then?

In the next letter, Mario spoke about being so incredibly happy that she would sneak away from her family for him, and that she would marry him. That he couldn’t wait for her to join him in Palermo. That he was going to give her the most beautiful plot of land so that they could build their dream house there in Cefalu. How he couldn’t wait to introduce her to his brother, Nero, and that his trusted bodyguard Salvatore would pick her up when she arrived.

I put the letters down for a bit to let all the information sink in, because according to this Mario, my mom was Serbian instead of American as I always believed. And she was going to marry him and to live with him in Palermo.

I rubbed my hands over my face. It seemed that with every bit of new information, I was getting more and more confused. It didn’t make any sense to me because mom had never ever talked about this. Surely, if he was the love of her life, she would have mentioned it at some point? Why would she have never said anything about being Serbian? It didn’t make any sense at all.

All these mysteries from my mom combined with my own doubts made me feel very unstable. Normally, it was okay. I would never be the most confident person around, but to have everything you believed to be true being contradicted made me feel unsettled.

I started to cry. I just wanted my mom at this point. Some comfort from her hugs. I felt the tears flowing over my cheeks, as I tried to wipe them away and get myself together. I never felt as alone as I do now.