Chapter 5 - THE LETTERS VITTORIO NEVER SENT
Francesca still had a box of their father’s papers.
She had taken it after Vittorio died because nobody else wanted personal letters mixed among corporate records.
Antonio flew to Boston the next morning.
He had not been alone with his sister in years.
Their reunion was awkward enough that neither pretended otherwise.
She placed the box between them.
“I always wondered when you’d ask.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You never wanted to hear anything that complicated Dad.”
Antonio accepted the accusation.
After Vittorio died, Antonio had chosen a simple version of their relationship.
Hard father.
Hard son.
Necessary cruelty.
Necessary inheritance.
Simple stories are easier to survive.
Francesca handed him a letter dated when Antonio was nine.
It was addressed to Lavinia.
Vittorio’s handwriting was unmistakable.
Do not lock Antonio in the pantry again.
Antonio stopped reading.
Francesca watched him.
He continued.
He is a child, not a recruit. I told you this after the winter incident. Hunger is not discipline. Fear is not respect. If I learn you or anyone else deprived him of food again while I was away, you will no longer supervise my children.
Antonio read it twice.
Then a third time.
The letter was never mailed.
A handwritten note on the bottom said:
Delivered by hand.
Francesca had another.
And another.
Arguments about Lavinia’s punishments.
Instructions to household employees that Antonio and Francesca were to be fed regardless of behavioral disputes.
A letter to Vittorio’s attorney discussing whether Lavinia should be removed from the property permanently.
But the attorney’s reply was missing.
Antonio looked at the dates.
The letters stopped when he was eleven.
That was also the year Vittorio suffered a major heart attack.
Afterward, Lavinia controlled the household almost completely whenever he was recovering.
Antonio remembered the punishments becoming worse.
He had always assumed his father’s illness made him more ruthless from a distance.
Now that assumption was collapsing.
But one question remained.
If Vittorio opposed Lavinia, why had Antonio spent forty years believing the opposite?
May you like
Someone had rewritten the story.
And Lavinia had repeated that rewritten version loudly enough that an entire family eventually accepted it as tradition.
