Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 109674 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109674 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Disgust for my father washed over me.
Nestore got down on his knees and began to remove the earth with his bare hands, an almost feverish look in his eyes. I directed the flashlight at the ground so he could see properly. Eventually, Nestore gripped the upper skeleton and dragged it up. The limbs remained stuck, and the skull fell off and rolled over the mossy ground. Nestore only held his father’s torso in his hands but tossed it aside with a look of disdain. He knelt again and began to separate his father’s bones from his mother’s, until only her remains lay in the grave. I ripped a few roses off the hedge and threw them into the grave with her. Nestore said she loved those roses, so it seemed fitting to bury a few with her. Nestore stayed on his knees beside the opening. I shivered when I noticed the strands of long dark hair still attached to the skull. The top of the skull had damage, like a head injury sustained before her death. Images of her running away from an enraged man, him catching up and beating her with a heavy object, flashed through my mind. Had she died right away? Had she bled out amid the roses she loved so much? I hoped they had given her a sliver of comfort in her last moments.
Sadness overwhelmed me thinking of Nestore, who never got to say goodbye to his mother. I knew the heaviness of this grief. I’d often wondered how my life would have been with my mother in it, but she was a stranger, and my father would have only managed to make both our lives miserable. Nestore closed his eyes and lowered his head. Maybe he finally said the goodbye he was denied many years ago.
I waited patiently, without a single word, wanting to give him the chance to allow grief and find closure. Maybe this would help him.
He pushed to his feet and covered the remains with soil. “I’ll have a gravestone made. She deserves a true resting place, even if I’m the only one left to grieve her.”
I touched his arm. “I’ll grieve her too. I’ll grieve her for the mother you lost, for the love you were denied, for everything taken from you because of your father’s rage.”
Nestore met my gaze, warmth filling his eyes, and it nearly broke me. So often in the past few weeks, he had gazed upon me with anger and triumph, yet rarely with kindness, but here I saw my Nestore.
Nestore wrapped his arms around me, his warmth a cocoon of comfort. I inhaled his scent, now mingling with an earthy note. For a while, we stood like that, my cheek pressed against his chest, before we pulled apart, and Nestore took my hand. His gaze lingered on the grave before his focus turned to the remains of his father, carelessly tossed aside.
His expression hardened, and he swallowed before he gave a decisive nod as if he’d discussed something with himself and found a solution.
I watched as the tiger tossed my father’s skeleton through the air. He took it into the lake with him, then dove under the surface only to emerge with it in his snout again. After all the pain my father had caused my mother and me while he’d been alive, it was good to see him bring some joy to this tiger in death.
As with Achille’s remains, my men had strict instructions to dump whatever remained of his body into the ocean for it to be swept away and eaten by fish. Nobody would be mourning him.
I felt lighter now that my mother had found peace in her own grave.
When I returned to the upper part of the garden later in the morning, I found Amelia on a bench, eyes closed, her face angled toward the sunny sky, expression peaceful. It was one I never saw inside the manor, and I finally made the decision I had been too weak for years now. I didn’t move closer to my wife, not wanting to disturb her moment of peace.
Instead, I called Niccolo.
“Nestore, what can I do for you? Do you need to slaughter more Bratva assholes?”
“I need you to find a demolition company for me.”
“To demolish what exactly?”
“Romano Manor.”
Silence.
“Umm. Repeat that.”
“I want to tear down Romano Manor and fill the basement with concrete.”
“Okay,” he said slowly. “And then what?”
“Then Amelia and I will build a new palace to call our home, but first, the old place needs to go.” It would be even more splendid, created by our wishes. The men who came before me would have no say in our future.
I heard the click click of him typing on his laptop in the background. “All right. Are you sure?”
“I am,” I said firmly, my eyes on Amelia. She didn’t notice me yet. Maybe she was asleep. Was this the only place where nightmares didn’t haunt her?