Chapter 13 - LAVINIA’S LAST CHANCE
Before the court hearing, Lavinia requested one private meeting with Antonio.
Her attorney attended.
So did his.
She wore a dark blue dress and the Bellaforte ring Vittorio had given her decades earlier.
“You’re really going to let strangers judge me.”
Antonio sat opposite her.
“You judged a three-year-old.”
“I raised you.”
“Yes.”
“You would not be sitting there without me.”
That was probably true.
It did not mean what she wanted it to mean.
Antonio said, “I might have become someone different.”
She laughed bitterly.
“Softer?”
“Maybe.”
“Weak?”
“Maybe not.”
Lavinia leaned forward.
“Your father would have lost everything if you had been soft.”
Antonio placed Evelyn Porter’s statement between them.
“Stop speaking for him.”
Her face tightened.
“He was dying.”
“He still knew what he regretted.”
“He regretted everything near the end.”
“Especially what you did to his children.”
Lavinia looked away.
Antonio waited.
Finally she said, “I was frightened.”
It was the first honest motive she had offered.
After Carlo, her husband, died young, Lavinia became obsessed with the idea that Bellaforte men needed to survive a world where weakness attracted danger. Vittorio traveled. Enemies existed. Violence surrounded the family.
She believed fear inoculated children against greater fear later.
Antonio understood the logic.
He rejected it completely.
“You were afraid the world would hurt us,” he said.
“Yes.”
“So you hurt us first.”
Lavinia began crying.
Not theatrically.
Not enough to undo anything.
“I thought you understood.”
Antonio looked at her.
“For years, I did.”
That was the tragedy.
Her motive made sense.
Her conduct remained indefensible.
Antonio gave her the only opportunity he intended to offer.
“Tell the truth in court. Stop calling it discipline. Stop using my father. Stop telling Lucas one day that this happened because you loved him.”
She said nothing.
Antonio stood.
“If you can do that, whatever relationship exists after the law is finished has somewhere to start.”
It was not forgiveness.
May you like
It was a door she could choose to walk toward.
Or away from.
