Chapter 16
Six years passed before Matteo Bellini walked through a door without a guard deciding when it would open again.
Ava was ten.
She waited beside Teresa in the parking area outside the federal reentry center, wearing a denim jacket and carrying the purple backpack she had once described to Matteo during their first prison visit.
It was not the same backpack.
That one had been replaced years earlier.
But Ava had deliberately chosen purple.
Matteo noticed.
He did not mention it until she hugged him.
“You remembered.”
Ava pulled away.
“You remembered too.”
Matteo had imagined this moment through hundreds of nights.
He had imagined carrying her.
Crying.
Promising he would never leave again.
Instead he asked:
“Do you want me to come home with you today?”
Ava looked surprised.
“Where else would you go?”
“I have an apartment nearby.”
Teresa had insisted on that arrangement.
Ava had lived with her for six years. School, friends, therapy, routines, birthdays, scraped knees, lost teeth, piano lessons.
Matteo could not return and behave as though incarceration had simply paused fatherhood.
“I thought you’d live with us.”
“I can eventually, if you want that and it works.”
Ava glanced toward Teresa.
Then back.
“Can you stay tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Then tomorrow we decide tomorrow.”
Matteo smiled.
“That sounds familiar.”
That evening they ate pasta in Teresa’s kitchen.
No bodyguards.
No senior men entering with whispered messages.
No one waiting for Matteo to finish before speaking.
Ava told him about school, a girl named Claire who cheated at basketball, and the science teacher who kept a tarantula in the classroom.
Then she brought out a wooden box.
Inside were six birthday cards.
All from Dominic.
One each year.
None asked to see her.
None called himself family.
None mentioned Helena.
The first simply said:
I hope your purple backpack survived school. Mine would not have.
The second:
You never owed me the name Daddy. I am sorry I allowed anyone to teach you otherwise.
By the sixth card, the messages had become shorter.
Happy birthday, Ava. I hope ten is good to you.
Matteo read every one.
“Did you know I got them?”
“I knew Teresa kept them.”
“Did you say I could read them?”
“When you were old enough to ask.”
“I asked when I was seven.”
Teresa raised an eyebrow.
“You asked whether Dominic had been eaten by a bear.”
“That counts.”
“No.”
Ava smiled.
Then became serious.
“Do you hate him?”
Matteo considered the question.
“No.”
“Do you forgive him?”
“Not completely.”
“Can those both be true?”
“Yes.”
Ava touched the final card.
“I want to meet him.”
The room became quiet.
Matteo felt an old instinct rise.
Decide.
Protect.
Control the outcome before danger could enter.
He had spent six years learning why that instinct could become the same weapon Helena used.
“What would meeting him mean to you?”
“I want to hear what happened from him.”
“You know what happened.”
“I know what you say happened.”
The sentence hurt.
Not because Ava distrusted him.
Because she had become old enough to understand that family history looked different depending on who survived which part.
Matteo nodded.
“We can talk to your therapist and Teresa.”
“And Dominic?”
“If everybody agrees the meeting is safe.”
Ava looked satisfied.
Then Teresa noticed an envelope beneath the front door.
No stamp.
No address.
Someone had delivered it by hand.
Matteo opened it.
Inside lay the Bellini ring Dominic had once removed from his finger and left on the conference table.
Matteo had not seen it since the federal seizure of the old offices.
Beneath the ring was a single sentence.
THE FAMILY STILL NEEDS A SUCCESSOR.
Ava read it over his shoulder.
Then looked at her father.
“Is that about Dominic?”
Matteo closed his hand around the ring.
“I don’t know.”
Ava’s eyes moved toward the six birthday cards.
“Or me?”
May you like
Matteo did not answer.
Because that possibility had already occurred to him.
