by Lana Sky
He’s so caught up in retracing his steps, that he doesn’t even say goodbye.
And I’m left alone to pore over Donatello Vanici’s secrets in peace.
Even as I reenter the pink room, doubt has me second-guessing everything. It’s selfish to lie to a man about his own sister. Selfish to read the words of a dead woman.
Reading them in this house feels wrong. I wish I could sneak onto the porch, but gauging Donatello’s reaction this morning, leaving would only give him an excuse to rage. I consider locking the door, but I wind up crouching on the edge of the bed without doing so.
Let him rage. The sting of the lie he told Vincenzo aches badly enough to blind me to any caution. He’s controlled the narrative for so damn long…
It’s about time I glean some knowledge of my own.
As quietly as possible, I open the box, hunching over the contents. In the harsh glow of the ceiling light, the letters look pristine, as if stolen from Donatello’s desk this morning.
Some of my favorite moments were spent curled at his feet, watching him work through my lashes. Nothing in the world could compare to his face when he forgot to maintain that hard, stern frown. His lips would droop, and some of the intensity would leave his gaze. Not much, but just enough. I could see into his head, then, or so I thought. See every concern and woe to trouble his mind…
But as I scan the first letter, I realize that it’s a good thing my child-self couldn’t actually do so.
I woke up with the taste of you on my lips, and I finally knew what peace was. He wrote. I stiffen as the page slips from my grasp, landing face-up on the floor. All I can do is stare at it.
I didn’t need the confirmation, but now I know for sure how hollow his sexual taunts to me really were. None of them packed the same punch as the ones he penned years ago.
I need you, Liv. Every day like fucking air to breathe, I need you. Don’t forget that. I know it hasn’t been easy. I love you more for sticking it out. I love you.
If I didn’t know his handwriting so well, I’d assume I found someone else’s stash of love letters. Not Donatello Vanici’s.
Heart racing, I set the first letter aside and grab another. This one isn’t quite so intimate, and the handwriting is different from his. Lighter.
Don. I miss you. I miss you.
I never knew Olivia well, but I can sense the pain she must have writing this. Missing a man whose smile could light up a room. Someone so caught up in his work at times it could seem like he was in another world.
I never feel better than when I’m inside you, he replied in his next letter. When your body is the only thing tethering me to this fucking planet, your moans in my ear. I live for that, Liv. All I want is to give you what you deserve. I’ll make it up to you for all the nights you’ve been alone…
The next page is in my hands before I realize it. Soon, I lose track of how many I devour.
It’s an addictive feeling as much as it is repulsive. For once, I’m truly inside the head of Donatello Vanici. The man he used to be, anyway. Someone so driven he’d do whatever it took to succeed—and yet so blinded by ambition he didn’t notice the changes taking place in his own wife, evident on the pages.
I had been far too young to grasp her emotions, then. With this newer perspective, so many old memories have greater context—the wistful way she used to stare from the window during the long days Donatello was gone. I missed him too, but I couldn’t imagine the sheer depth of her loneliness. Her aching, desperate loneliness.
You stay with me for one night every ten, and it’s heaven, baby. And it is hell to wake up knowing you’re going to leave me again. I love you so much. I’ll never doubt that you believe you’re doing this for us—but sometimes I just need you. I need you to be with me.
It’s strange how you can feel so connected to someone merely by the words they leave behind. The connection between Olivia and Donatello is as palpable as the paper in my grasp.
Their love should seem as inspiring as it did when I was younger. Beautiful. But I feel an ominous sensation gnawing through my gut the more I read. Because of Donatello’s innuendo? Or the fact that Olivia’s missives become shorter the deeper into the stack I go…
So I fucked up, Donatello wrote one day, a blunt admission when compared to the previous romantic exchanges. It’s the echo of the monster he would eventually reveal himself to be—always enraged. We’re in the same damn house, and you can’t talk to me? Talk to me. Write me a fucking letter if you have to. Talk to me.
Sometimes it feels like this is the only way we actually understand each other, Olivia replied. I miss you.
When I reach for the next folded note, I realize that it’s one of the final few remaining. Donatello’s writing is stark across the page as if he pored over every letter, pressing against the paper until it tore in places.
You can’t even look at me, he wrote. Even when I’m inside you, you’re miles away. I know I did this. You have the right to be pissed. But I need you to talk to me, Olivia. Tell me what I can do to fix us. I love you too much to let you slip away.
Was their marriage in more trouble than I realized? Olivia’s response isn’t on the next page—but the slashed handwriting conveys the author’s anger even before I read his words. You don’t want me. You don’t seem to want this baby. What the fuck do you want, Liv?
I read those lines over and over, gripping the page so tightly a rip appears in the middle. Safiya never witnessed this tension, so brutally spelled out. Wracking my memory, I can’t recall a single fight between them.
For the first time, I’m wary of what else I might discover. The past feels as fragile as a house of cards—and as much as I loathe Donatello, I don’t want everything from those days tainted. Still, I grapple for the next letter…
And a shadow falls over me. At the same time, my nostrils flare with a scent that has become engrained on my subconscious—a potent, lethal musk, fresher than the traces embedded in these pages.
I finally look up, already resigned to what I’ll find—Donatello Vanici himself standing in the doorway. He could be a figment of my imagination if he weren’t so drastically different from the man I remember, the same passionate figure forever immortalized in his own letters.
This man has aged decades in seven years, his hair unkempt, his eyes narrowed to slits. Behind him, the door sways, and I wonder if he threw it open, letting it slam.
If so, I’d been too engrossed in the past to notice. The ink beneath my fingertips seems to prove what I felt in the car—I wasn’t wrong. He wasn’t always like this. An irrational impulse to preserve the evidence has me shoving the box behind me.
But it’s too late. He’s already spotted the haphazard stack of read letters on my lap, and recognition flits across his face. I hate shock on him. It’s brief but jarring, undercutting his rage with a dangerous glimpse of what lurks beneath—pain. Unimaginable in quality, comparable only to a stab wound.
Straight through the heart.
A grunt rips from his chest, and he staggers, his hand grasping for the doorknob. The color drains from his expression, humanizing him for a heartbeat.
Before rage swiftly sets in.
I tense, expecting him to lunge. Instead, his eyes flit up to mine, ice-cold. “Where the hell did you—”
“No!” A tiny voice pierces the thin wall, loud enough to drown out his growl.
“What the hell?” Donatello stiffens, bouncing on the balls of his feet as if torn between lurching at me or investigating the sound.
Then several more shrieks pierce the air. “No! No!”
Alarm washes over me as I recognize that high-pitched cry. Kisa.
“Fuck.” Donatello turns, racing into the hall. I’m already on my feet, following him despite every instinct warning me not to.
As we advance down the hall, a masculine voice rings out. “I have to, honey. Just let me—”
“No! I said no!”
The door to Vin’s old room is already
ajar, and inside, Luciano stands over a crying Kisa.
“She took her bandage off,” he explains.
Sure enough, she’s clutching her injured arm to her chest, sitting amid a pile of bloodstained bandages. The fact that she’s still wearing her bloody clothes adds a ghoulish quality to her vacant expression. She’s a broken doll, her dark curls astray, those big blue eyes utterly lifeless.
“I’m trying to help her redo it,” Luciano explains. “But she won’t let me—”
“No!” Kisa screams, coming to life to bat away his attempts, her arms flailing. “You can’t cover it.”
“We need to,” Luciano insists, crouching to her level. He grabs a nearby metal box that has First Aid written across it. “Let me fix it. You might open the stitches—”
“No! No, you can’t! If you cover it up, I’ll get sick and die like Mama! You can’t.”
I take a step toward her—and the color drains from her face. As a gust of warm air grazes the back of my neck, I realize why.
“You’re making a lot of noise for someone who is in danger of getting sick and dying,” a man declares from behind me.
As he stalks forward, I do a double take. The strange dichotomy of the two Donatellos is on display once again. The only change? His voice. Underlying warmth softens the guttural baritone just enough to differentiate from the customary growl he uses with me.
Regardless, Kisa whimpers. My heart flinches at the sight of him towering over her like the monster from a fairy tale. She’s so tiny. Helpless.
I don’t think. I just react, reaching for the hand he extends toward her. His eyes cut to mine, and I freeze. I can’t name what passes between us. Understanding? After days of torment and animosity, the fleeting hint of clarity strikes me to my core. He won’t hurt her.
Do I truly believe that? I don’t have the chance to decide; he’s already crouching down on one knee, much like Luciano had.
“Let me see it.” He extends his hand out to her.
“No.” Her tone wavers, but far softer than the one she took with Luciano. “I’ll die. I’ll get sick and die.”
“You ever been shot?”
Kisa blinks while Luciano curses under his breath. “She’s just a kid—”
“Have you?” Donatello presses, but a softer inflection betrays he isn’t trying to scare her. Yet. “Because I have.”
He tugs aside the collar of his shirt, revealing a wealth of scars marring the tanned flesh. My breathing feathers with recognition. Less than twenty-four hours ago, I felt each one up close, sensing the varying textures beneath my fingertips. Every scrape. Every scratch. Every scar.
Kisa’s eyes widen at the sight of one wound in particular—a silvery circle along his right shoulder.
“You know what saved my life?” Donatello asks, readjusting his collar. Then he reaches for the first aid kit. “Bandages.”
“No,” Kisa whines as he fishes out a clean length of gauze. “Mama hurt her arms, and then she wore bandages, and then she went away!”
My brain takes that statement, translating it from the childish phrasing to a darker reality. Mama hurt her arms. Then she went away. Could she really be alluding to the worst-case scenario?
Luciano winces, his expression pained. “Kisa—”
“I knew someone who hurt her arms too,” Donatello says while arranging various utensils on the floor before him. “She didn’t die because of the bandages. I think your mama had the same sickness, and I can tell you for a fact that you don’t have it.”
The sad part is I don’t know if he’s lying or not. His tone straddles the boundary between gruff and unemotional. If he isn’t bluffing, then it’s yet another example of how little I really know about him.
Kisa observes him cautiously. “How?”
“Because I said so,” he declares. “And I know everything.”
Despite the curt tone, Kisa seems to mull over that line of logic. “Is that why you hurt my daddy?”
“Honey, you’re bleeding.” Luciano hisses through his teeth, noting the bright scarlet streaking across the front of her already filthy pink shirt. “You need to let us fix it. Now.”
She eyes both men for another tense few seconds before finally, extending her wounded hand toward Donatello.
He’s efficient in his movements, briskly cleaning her wound with antiseptic and testing the integrity of the stitches. Apparently satisfied with their state, he rebandages her arm with a familiarity that makes me suspect this isn’t the first time he’s bound a wound.
Given his line of work, it probably won’t be the last.
“Keep them on,” he warns once finished. “Take them off again, and you risk that cut getting infected. It might not kill you, but it definitely could wind up in you needing your hand amputated. That means cut off. Understand?”
She nods, inching closer to Luciano, who places a hand protectively on her shoulder.
Donatello stands, turning for the door. His eyes meet mine a second time as he passes me, but I can’t decipher the emotion they convey. Something that makes me shiver even as he finally leaves the room. Perhaps the look contained a dare.
Or a warning.
I banish the unease in favor of turning my sole focus to Kisa. I help Luciano wipe the blood from the floor and her skin, but he hisses in disgust at the sight of her shirt.
“Could you grab a new one?” He nods to indicate a box in the corner of the room, and my blood runs cold.
It’s dented, aged with time, but I recognize the contents as I approach. My old clothes—Safiya’s clothes—all bought on Donatello Vanici’s dime. He even picked them out for me…
No. I disconnect from the assorted garments, searching through them as I would any random clothing. Eventually, I resurface with a fresh light blue shirt and jeans, handing them both to Luciano.
“What the fuck is up with him?” he asks, cutting his eyes toward the doorway. Then he seems to remember the child within earshot, and he clears his throat. “Time for bed, Kisa.”
I watch her obediently take the clothing and scramble into the closet to change. The question she asked Donatello keeps echoing in my brain. Is that why you hurt my daddy?
After he claimed to know everything.
What could—at least in her mind—warrant her own father worthy of death? The possibilities are chilling. I don’t want to know the answer.
Though…would I have wished the same on Gino Mangenello? Looking back, I never mourned him the way I have the man who betrayed me.
But Gino wasn’t the person I expected to tuck me in at night. His voice isn’t the one I remember murmuring bedtime stories to me as I drifted off. As it stands, I barely even knew him.
I didn’t know Donatello either, apparently. The man from my past and the current iteration might as well be two different people—but at least now I have proof. I wasn’t wrong, and I wasn’t a fool for trusting him, at least not then.
Something changed in him—and I think it went beyond Olivia’s death. Fabio’s reaction to the silver box all but cements that.
Some memories are better left buried…
What did he mean? Renewed curiosity spurs me into the hall, my fingers flexing impatiently at my sides. I know Donatello saw me with the letters—I’m taking a risk by even returning to that room.
But they alone provide insight into a side of him I’d been blind to as a child. Perhaps they contain the answer as to why he did it. Why he left?
I can only hope he assumed they were nothing of importance. Just trash.
When I round the doorway of that pink room, I don’t know if I’m surprised or relieved to discover the silver box lying on the end of the bed. As I come closer, though, I realize the letters I left behind are gone. A tendril of dread runs down the back of my neck before I even open the box. Only one slip of folded paper remains inside it, but it’s stark white.
New.
When I unfold it, the message is simple, penned in fresh ink that smears as I run my finger acr
oss it.
You want to nose into the past? You come ask me directly.
8
Don
All those letters I wrote to Liv… I don’t even know where the witch found them; I just know they’re real. To make sure, I bring them beneath my nose and inhale the crisp scent they still carry.
Lilacs and honey. Closing my eyes, I see her clearly for the first time in so damn long, still beautiful. Still mine. That upturned nose and hazel eyes. Liv…
I continue to breathe her in—but another, fresher smell doesn’t belong, itching my nostrils. Roses. It’s an insidious stench, overpowering Olivia’s until she vanishes completely.
I wonder how many letters the little witch read.
Writing them was Liv’s idea. “Come on! It’s silly, but it’s also romantic,” she explained, flashing her crinkled smile. Silly or not, I would have carved the notes into my skin if she asked me to. So, I settled for scribbling a piece of my soul down on paper every damn day. For her, only her. Like lovestruck teenagers, we traded the notes back and forth, leaving them under the pillows on our bed.
After all this time, I can’t even remember what they say. Not a damn one. Anyone else might crave the chance to re-explore these snippets of the past, but I toss them aside. For what it’s worth, little Willow can win this battle. I’m not brave enough to unearth these memories. Hell no.
The past is dead.
For good measure, I shove the letters in a desk drawer and turn my focus toward the one thing I have any damn control over—the future. Once I adjust my insurance policy, Vin will be protected, and my little wife will finally get to see her revenge enacted…
Everyone wins.
I smile at the thought, but the satisfaction doesn’t last long. A familiar scent catches my nostrils, fresher than the stench infecting the letters. Roses. The source appears in the doorway the second I identify it, her hair loose, a new slip of paper in her grasp.
I blink to see if she vanishes like Olivia.
She doesn’t; my imagination isn’t wild enough to conjure that haughty fucking expression. She and Fab project a similar smugness. Like they know something I don’t, while they conspire together, visiting Vincenzo without me. Did he give her those letters in the first place?
