I scoff – Manuel needs us there? Does he even hear himself right now? I shake my head, putting a hand to my head. Once before, I would have lashed out with a fierce tongue, attacked my father, but I have no fight left in me. He stands before me, throwing apologies around and confessing his love for the family, professing how Manuel needs us, but my feisty attitude has abandoned me and left me with a hollow gap he’s only making excessively worse.
“You never knew what Manuel needed before. Why would you now?” I ask, my tone ice-cold and cutting. “You never knew what any of us needed, so why do you think you do now? Manuel doesn’t need anything else anymore. He’s gone, Sal. My baby brother is dead and if anything, he got the peace he wanted every single day he was alive.”
“I understand that,” he utters, closing his eyes with emotional grief.
“Do you?” I snap, asking him harshly.
My father will never know the strangled memories that reside within me. He will never know how poisoned my thoughts have been, or how lost I allowed myself to become. My father will never revel in the battle I cast upon myself for family, for love, for happiness, for absolution. He will never understand how much I fought with myself to decide the right path in life and how much I turned my back on.
“You never chose to understand anything but the game you played with every one of our lives. You never saw past the money and the power and the absolute hell you reaped on Earth. Now, now you decide to come back to us with some sort of modest grief as if you deserve to feel anything in the aftermath of Manuel’s death.” I can feel the tears beginning to fight their way to the surface of my eyes, ready to glaze over my vision with a blurry film, but I keep them locked down for a little while longer. “You don’t, Sal. You don’t deserve to mourn for a son you cared less about and you do not get to stand there and resent ever making me feel unloved because it’s been too long. You’re too late.”
“Amelia,” he struggles to interrupt me.
“No!” I bellow, my body seizing up. “I have laid here for two days wondering what I was going to do with my life.” I take a deep breath and use every ounce of my grief to fuel my final statement to my father. “So, I made the first steps. I don’t want to be your daughter anymore,” I remark honestly, laying my gaze firmly on him, waiting to see how my words affect him. “You can fight and try and sway me, but right now, you are just the man who destroyed me.”
“You don’t mean that,” he replies, fearsome terror igniting in him. “Amelia, please, don’t be rash.”
“Oh, this isn’t me being rash. This is me being the sanest I have been since Mama died. For years, I stuck by you, hoping and praying I would see some sort of reminder that my father is the man who brought up six children in a loving home, but you aren’t. You are past the point of saving, but I’m not past the point of saving myself from you, Sal.” I watch him barely react as my words ring true to his conscience – the one that’s laid dormant for years. “There’s a child of yours out there who will love to hear from you,” I comment dryly, hearing the bitterness in my own voice, and it makes me recoil. “But they are not in this building.” I take a deep breath. “I’m sure Giovanni is just waiting for you to bail him out and make this all okay with the family again. Go and dote on the child who only ever did right in your eyes.”
“This isn’t the right thing,” he tells me, taking a staggered step forward.
“You let him run!” I shout and hiss as I erupt the pain in me. I grit my teeth, hoping my father doesn’t see my fleeting vulnerability as something he can abuse to get close to me and pander to my needs. “When I heard he got out of the house that told me all it needed to. You could’ve stopped him. You used enough force on me in the past, but sweet, golden boy, Giovanni gets a free pass to murder his own and run free! You allowed him that, Sal! That is all on you and it always will be. You made us into the people we are today. You had a hand in making us who we all are, but believe me now, Giovanni is your biggest mistake, and I cannot see how this will end well for either of you.”
“I will hunt him down, Amelia, I will do that. I will make sure he pays for what he has done,” he counters, trying to ease my mind with empty promises. “I don’t know how, but I will make sure he pays. He has to pay for this. I am losing my entire family, and it’s Giovanni’s fault. He was always going to bring us down and it took me until now to realize that. It’s time to make the Dio Lavoro be what it always was meant to be. It stood for family once upon a time; it needs to return to that state. Giovanni is an altercation that can be changed, and we can resume making amends and fixing relationships.”