by Jen Tirone
I turn around and I don’t know how I didn’t die in fright.
Gio is standing here in the kitchen.
In Michael’s kitchen.
After five months, worrying and praying over him countless times, wondering how he was doing, my answer was standing right here in the kitchen, dirty, disheveled and grossly thin.
He looks like he hasn’t eaten or slept in weeks.
“Gianna, dio mio, I missed you,” he tells me in a calm voice, walking up to hug me in his arms.
He holds me tightly to him, sticking his nose into my hair, breathing me in.
“Gio...” I was breathless, I don’t even know what to say.
I was scared out of my mind right now.
“Don’t look at me like that, bella,” he shakes his head, “I had no other choice!” he yells, his calm composure slipping, causing me to jump.
But he doesn’t let me go.
“Is the fucking pig Adair sniffing up your tail because he’s protecting you? Is this a safe house?” he asks, giving me an out—I just can’t take it.
I won’t betray anyone anymore.
“Doesn’t matter, we gotta go. Get the baby, and don’t pack anything but what you would need for her. We’re going to Italia. I should have listened to you when you begged me to go back. But that doesn’t matter now. Let’s go,” he rushes me, giving me a slight push at the shoulders to go do as he’s said.
“Gio,” I whisper, because I don’t know how to bring myself to say the words to him in a stronger voice, “I can’t.”
“What?” he steps back to look at me better.
“I’m not going with you,” I say. ”I warned you I wasn’t going to do this anymore,” I trudge on, even though it pains me to, my heart feeling like it’s being severed into pieces with a jagged saw.
“Gianna, look, I’m sorry. I made a mess of all this, I own that. But I’ll fix this. I promise. We’ll go back to Italia, we’ll have a nice life like we used to. We’ll all be so happy there. We’ll make a little brother or sister over there for the baby,” he tried to entice.
“They’ll have the life I should have given you. You’ll never know how sorry I am that I didn’t. It’s G & G Sempre, baby, c’mon,” he pleaded to me in Italian, “We have to go right now.”
My stomach squeezes itself into a tight knot. He thinks this is just one of those times I’m being stubborn and has to cajole me. I don’t think he’s ever going to understand or even accept it.
“No, Giorgio. I’m done,” I tell him with as much finality and clarity I can convey.
“I don’t understand. What do you mean, ‘you’re done’?” he asks me calmly, yet the look of anguish on his face was enough to scar me forever.
“You have to leave. I told you we would no longer be together. I love you, Gio, but we’re done,” my voice breaks.
“No,” he says immediately, shaking his head adamantly.
“No, we’re not done. You won’t ever be done. You’re mine. You’re always going to be mine. We will never be over. Ever,” he says… becoming unhinged with every avowal.
The fear violently takes hold of me.
I don’t know what to expect from him right now. I take a step back and he’s immediately on me grabbing my arms. “I’ve told you before, Gianna, your mine until the day one of us dies. I will never let you go,” he growls in my face.
He’s wrapped a hand in my hair now, the other around my waist so I can’t go anywhere.
His brown eyes, his chiseled face, are menacing.
Too little too late, I now realize this man, the boy I loved my whole life, was unmistakably obsessed.
“Giorgio, please, let me go,” I whisper.
But he won’t budge.
He stares right into my eyes, deep into the depths of my soul and takes hold of it in every sense of the word.
He was vibrating with emotion, the tremble in his body terrifying, because he wasn’t trying to hold himself back.
No, he was actually letting go.
He’s snapped.
Frantically, I try to scramble out of his grip, but all I managed to do was turn around in his arms, which only enabled him to better his grip of my hair and he slams me, face first into the refrigerator.
Oh God, I can’t breathe.
The pain radiates through my entire face and I cough because I can’t even get a breath through my mouth, the blood is spewing too quickly from my nose making me choke on it.
Shock overcomes my entire body and my knees give out from the onslaught of pain. I can’t do anything but hold my hands at the bridge of my nose, writhing on my knees and trying to keep myself upright.
But he turns me over to my back and that’s when I see it in his eyes; it’s not him anymore. I can’t fight him off, my nose broken from the impact and I can’t stop focusing on the excruciating pain in my face.
Giorgio straddles me and yanks both my hands away from my face to scream that he can’t ever be without me. It feels like he’s going to snap my wrists as hard as he’s squeezing them.
I try, I really do, to buck him off me with my hips, but I’m no match for him.
I’m petrified I’m going to die.
Memories start to flood my eyes, Gio and I playing in the water in Salerno, running around town holding hands, our real first kiss, the tenderness of our wedding night, seeing Michael the first time, dandelion wishes, that one stolen night of rapture, holding my little Mia in my arms the first time, seeing her in Michael’s.
He lets go of my wrists and grips my shoulders, lifting me up toward him and slams me back into the floor with immense force; I almost blacked out from the impact on the back of my head. The cracking sound I not only heard but felt, was nauseating. Except instead of giving in to the dizziness, I used my hands now that they were free to slap at his face, scratch his eyes and pull his hair.
Anything I can possibly do in defense but he wraps both his hands around my throat now, and there isn’t anything I can do to get his grip to loosen. I kept trying.
“Goddamn it, you’re mine! MINE!” he growls.
And he starts squeezing.
Hard.
This is it.
I know it.
He’s lost all ability to reason, incapable of realizing what he’s doing with his own two hands.
He’s not grasping the finality of this… there’s no coming back.
I struggle as best I can against him, against the pain and the panic that’s rising. Imploring him, but it’s too late now.
He’s so far gone and taking me with him.
There’s no way out of this.
It’s over.
And with this realization, my mind eases as my struggle begins to fade… an eerie calm settles over me just then.
“If I can’t have you, Gia, NOBODY FUCKIN’ WILL!” he bellows.
It’s as if he doesn’t have a choice in this.
His eyes now are not only frantic but in agony. They’re telling me everything there is to say: he can’t help himself. He won’t.
Oh God.
I knew this could happen… I just refused to believe it would.
I gasp a last time, trying to pull in the last breath of air before the darkness completely consumes me.
Seconds before he manages to snuff me out completely, I think of Mia too briefly. I use the final moment of my consciousness to conjure up the image of my beautiful Mia, with those big green eyes and that cherubic, sad, doll face.
My baby girl, what will become of her after this?
Giorgio... the beautiful boy I loved...
Michael, my sweet, sweet man... I never got to tell him I love him...
The last thought I struggle to actualize... is my wish and my goodbye...
Farewell, my loves.
“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
“My name is Giorgio Antonio Moretti... and I—” a wretched sob escapes him, “I killed my wife,” he finishes in a whisper.
“Sir... we’re send
ing help on the way now, can you explain what happened?”
“There’s nothing you can do! Ah dio. Ahhh dio, she’s gone,” he’s uncontrollably crying now.
He’s sitting on the floor against the cabinets with her in his lap. Her unresponsive body lies there as he clasps her tightly to him.
“Sir—”
He drops the line and begins shaking her.
“Gianna!” he screams at the top of his lungs.
He removes his shirt and tries to clean some of the blood from her face, but only ends up smearing it all over.
His hands are violently trembling as he tries to run his fingers through her hair, then stroking his knuckles down the side of her cheek.
He’s inconsolable over her.
“Tesorina. What did I do? What did I fucking do?” He wipes the back of his hand against his eyes, and then has to turn to his side to wretch on the floor.
He vomits bile and throws his shirt over it to cover the mess.
He pulls her toward him again, adjusting her, so she’s sitting in his lap, with her head lying on his shoulder.
With his eyes closed and her in his arms, he whispers to her how desperately he loved her. He couldn’t be in a world where she didn’t belong to him.
He wouldn’t.
He was sorry. So, so sorry, but he just couldn’t.
He heard sirens approaching and the panic began to overwhelm him.
They were going to take her body away from him.
This would be the last time she would be in his arms.
Forever.
“Gianna,” he kisses her lips. “Ti amo, bella. G & G, sempre,” he kisses her again, telling her he loves her.
Knocks are at the door, commotion is taking place outside, but nothing is penetrating the bubble Giorgio is in with his Gianna.
Nothing matters but her in his arms, even lifeless like this.
Finally, the door splinters and slams open.
Several uniformed officers rush in with their weapons drawn but he doesn’t even look up.
All he does is commit to memory one last time her plump lips he’s kissed all his life. The hair he’s had his hands tangled in numerous times since he was only a boy. Her green eyes, although missing life in them, will always be what he sees when he closes his own.
“YOU MOTHERFUCKER!”
He was yanked from the floor and hit brutishly in the face, he almost let Gianna go.
“I’ll kill you, you fucking bastard!”
He couldn’t recognize anyone, much less the man who was losing it and hitting Giorgio with all his strength.
He took another blow across the face and men were scrambling everywhere.
“What did you do to her?” the same man yelled.
But Giorgio didn’t bother to fight anyone back; there was nothing left in him.
He accepted every hit he received with numbness.
He even began to welcome it. It was better than remembering the way Gianna looked at him in those last seconds of her life.
Everything started to tunnel around him.
When he realized he was flat on his stomach and his hands were cuffed behind his back, he turned his head to his right and saw four men holding on to a man who was frenzied, trying to fight them off of him.
Belatedly, he knew he recognized him, but in his own distressed state, he couldn’t care.
The officers and first responders were holding Michael back from getting close to Giorgio again.
“God, please, she can’t be gone!” Michael’s voice broke.
None of the officers on scene could say anything to him in comfort, and not to the paramedics when they asked around if next of kin could be notified.
They understood immediately seeing their partner, their fellow officer in agony over the victim, that he was involved with her somehow. She was in his house.
None of them knew how to handle this delicately enough.
A first responder moved toward Gianna but as soon as he knelt near her, both men lost their mind.
“Get away from her!”
“Don’t fucking touch her!”
They screamed in unison.
It was clear they were both going to have to be removed in order to handle her body and conduct their investigation with the murder scene before them.
“Detective, you have to leave—”
“That piece of shit took her from me, and sat there for the last half hour smothering her lifeless bod—” he couldn’t finish.
He was overcome with anger again and tried to reach for Giorgio, scrambling across the floor with three men on top of him.
“I’M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU!” he promised him.
“Detective, stop it! You have to stop it. You can’t kill him—even though the son of a bitch deserves it! We won’t let you rot in prison right next to him,” an officer spit out.
They couldn’t stand the sight of Giorgio Moretti, what he’s done to her and what it’s done to their colleague, their friend.
The contempt in the air coming off of everyone was stifling.
Another set of officers came in and managed to remove an inconsolable Michael, and reluctantly began reading a wretched Giorgio his rights.
As soon as they stood him up and began to drag him out, he too was inconsolable having to part with her.
A despondent Michael went to see her in the morgue later that night.
When he was at his parents’ house with their daughter, their beautiful baby girl, he had told his parents he didn’t care what happened in the past, he would be marrying that woman as soon as he could.
She was it for him.
His family, both in support of him and in love with their newest addition to the family were happy with the news, despite the troubled circumstances they had come packaged in.
The only wanted their son, their brother, to be happy.
He was outside smoking a cigarette, daydreaming of the next time he planned to kiss her… make love to her, when his father went outside with the abhorrent news.
“Son, your chief is trying to reach you. Something terrible happened at your home—”
Michael was already running out to his car.
Speeding, running every traffic light, it was a short distance from his parents already, shorter with his urgency.
When he saw his work associates running yellow tape around the perimeter of his home, his heart withered in colossal agony.
Too many damn people were in his way of her. It was difficult to get past everyone deliberately keeping him from getting inside.
It couldn’t be.
His chief, whom Michael confided in that he and Gianna Moretti had a daughter together, and Moretti’s wife was now living in his home while a warrant was out for her husband’s arrest, was present amongst the officers outside.
With his presence, he knew it was bad.
Please, he begged God, don’t do this to me. Don’t do this to us. He punched and kicked and pushed his way in.
It couldn’t be real. But it was; she was unresponsive in his enemy’s arms.
She was gone.
It was over for them before it began.
Asking the coroner to give him a moment with her alone, he was trembling, not ready to look at his love knowing she wasn’t going to look back at him.
Not ever again.
He pulled the white sheet off of her slowly, delicately.
He was ruined.
Gianna lay there, departed in soul and his went with her.
He noticed blood under her fingernails and his stomach twisted, knowing that his girl tried to fight until the end.
“I’m so sorry, love. I wasn’t there for you,” he blamed himself.
Afraid to touch her, he knew he wouldn’t be able to ever let her go if he did.
Reluctantly, he had to go to their daughter.
Hold her tight.
Keep her close.
She was all he would have left of Gianna.
It took everythin
g in him to leave her.
Gianna Vitale Moretti’s funeral took place a week later.
The Morettis had legal rights over her remains.
Marital privilege from the power of attorney they had from Giorgio.
Michael vowed to take the rest of them down.
Make them all suffer.
He didn’t care anymore if he had to go against the side of the law he was on to do it either.
They would all pay, most especially Giorgio.
Chiara Moretti opted for an open casket, so that Gianna’s family who had just arrived from Italy could see her.
Michael thought she was such a fucking bitch, displaying her to everyone like that.
Michael felt she deserved better than that in her last moments on Earth. She should have respect, surrounded by the real people who cared about her.
Not this fucking fiasco they staged for all to see in morbid glee.
Gianna’s family wanted nothing to do with the Morettis ever again.
Her mother, Apolognia, spit in Chiara’s face and told her longtime childhood friend, her family through generations of closeness, that they were dead to the Vitales.
The Morettis destroyed their bambina. The Vitales would do everything in their power to destroy them back. They were all too ready to help the detective in any manner.
Justice had to be served for this tragedy.
Mia had been taken into child services for the time being, until paperwork could be processed to grant Michael full rights to his daughter.
If he hadn’t had the director of the hospital help with the correction of Mia’s birth certificate application that night, he might have lost Mia to the Morettis forever. He wouldn’t be able to prove the paternity, and Giorgio was married to Gianna still.
The director was witness to Gianna attesting that Michael was the father, and he was present for their signatures.
In retrospect, he was so grateful he flew off the handle with her that night. His anger and urgency saved him in the end.
The lawyers the Morettis hired couldn’t work a way out of this.
The Vitales were confused, but all too eager to accept their granddaughter’s blood had no trace of Giorgio Moretti in her.
When Giorgio appeared in jumpsuit and handcuffs to the funeral with police escort, Michael went blind.
