Chapter 211

Chapter 211
TEN YEARS LATER

DON LUCA

Don Luca stood at the window of his study watching the sun set over the estate. Ten years had passed since Allegra died, ten years since Angelo had walked away from them piece by piece until there was nothing left but a stranger who wore his face.

Kiera entered the room and wrapped her arms around him from behind.

"You're thinking about him again."

"I'm always thinking about him." Don Luca turned to face her. "We failed him, Kiera. We let him slip away and now he's become something we can't reach."

"We didn't let him slip away. He chose to leave." But her voice lacked conviction.

Don Luca moved to his desk and sat down heavily. "I refused to bring Allegra to the main house. I made a decision I thought was right and it cost me Angelo's trust."

"You made the decision to protect him and reduce his pain."

"And look what good it did." Don Luca gestured toward the window, toward the city where Angelo had built his empire. "He's more ruthless than I ever was. More cold. He's everything I tried to prevent him from becoming."

Kiera sighed and sat across from Don Luca, his face was lined with worry.

"Emilio called again today. He's still trying to get Angelo to come home."

"And?"

"Angelo hung up on him."

Kiera squeezed his hand comfortably and Don Luca's jaw tightened. He had built his empire on control, on strategy, on reading people and knowing exactly how to handle them. But Angelo was beyond his reach now, operating in a world Don Luca had deliberately kept him from until grief and rage had pushed him there anyway.

"The twins ask about him constantly." Kiera's voice was soft. "Adore especially. She keeps all those drawings he threw away. She taped them back together and kept them in her room."

Don Luca's jaw clenched

"Maybe we should stop trying, I think we need to accept that Angelo is gone and is not coming back”.

"You don't mean that." Kiera replied, aghast.

Don Luca looked at his wife. "We've been chasing a ghost for ten years. Angelo made his choice. He chose violence and power and isolation. He chose to become exactly what I spent my whole life trying to rise above."

"He chose survival the only way he knew how."

"No, he chose revenge. There's a difference." Don Luca stood and poured himself a drink. "I hear things from my contacts. Angelo isn't just running operations, he's destroying anyone who gets in his way. He's brutal and merciless and everything I trained him to be but without the restraint I tried to teach."

"Then we failed him as teachers."

"We failed him as family." Don Luca took a long drink. "I told him I'd protect him, that he'd always have a home here. And then when he needed his mother most, I said no. I made him watch her die in that guest house,what did I expect would happen?"

Kiera stood and took the glass from his hand. "You expected he'd grieve and heal and let us help him. You expected he'd be strong enough to survive it."

"He survived. But he didn't heal. And that's on us."

They stood in silence for a moment, two people carrying the weight of a promise they couldn't keep.

"Adonis mentioned something yesterday." Kiera's voice was careful. "He said he heard rumors at school. About Angelo's operations. About how brutal he's become."

"What kind of rumors?"

"The kind that makes me afraid for him. The kind that makes me think we're going to get a call one day saying he's dead."

Don Luca's hands clenched. "He's too smart to get himself killed."

"Erasmus was smart too but he gave up his life to save me and that's why I am never going to give up on Angelo."

"What do you suggest we do? We've tried everything. Calls, messages, visits to his office where his people turn us away. Angelo has made it clear he wants nothing to do with us."

Kiera was quiet for a long moment. "Maybe we need to stop trying to bring him back to who he was. Maybe we need to accept who he is now and love him anyway."

Don Luca pulled his wife close and held her. They'd survived so much together. His accident, his memory loss, the slow painful recovery. They'd rebuilt their family from broken pieces.

But Angelo was the one piece they couldn't fix.

"I'm tired, Kiera." His voice cracked. "I'm tired of failing the people I promised to protect."

"You haven't failed. Not yet. Not while we're still trying."

But Don Luca wondered if trying was enough. if love was enough. Wondered if anything would ever be enough to bring Angelo home.

KIERA

That night Kiera couldn't sleep. She got up and walked through the quiet house, past the twins' rooms where they slept peacefully, past the guest rooms that were always ready for visitors who never came.

She found herself in Angelo's old room. They'd kept it exactly as he'd left it ten years ago. The bed was made, the desk clear, everything neat and impersonal because Angelo had learned early not to leave pieces of himself behind.

Kiera sat on the bed and looked around the empty room. She'd failed this boy. They all had.

She remembered the day he was born, she had helped Allegra with the labor and Erasmus had fainted at the sight. She smiled at the memory of his face red as he wailed, flaying his tiny hands.

She remembered adore's first birthday, he was the one that came to inform her that Adore was vomiting and then she remembered the night Allegra overdosed and Angelo's face when they found her.
The cold empty look in his eyes at Allegra's funeral when he'd turned away from all of them and walked into a future that didn't include them.

"I'm so sorry, Angelo." She whispered into the empty room. "We should have done better. We should have been better."

Kiera closed her eyes and let the tears come. She'd cried so many tears for this boy over the years. Cried for his pain, his loss, his transformation into someone she barely recognized.

But crying didn't bring him back. Nothing brought him back.

She turned off the light and closed the door to Angelo's room. Tomorrow she'll try again. Tomorrow she'd call, she'd reach out, she'd hold onto hope.

But tonight she let herself grieve for the family they'd lost, for the boy who'd slipped through their fingers, for all the ways love hadn't been enough.

She walked back to her room and snuggled herself beside Don Luca. His arms instantly wrapped around her and he placed a kiss on her cheek.

“I love you” he murmured and she smiled.

“I love you more than anything in this world”. She replied and with a restful smile playing on her lips, her eyes drifted shut as she fell asleep sheltered in the arms of the man she loves.

THE END...(CHECK NEXT PAGE FOR TEASER)

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