Part 4 — I Agreed to Carry the Mafia Boss’s Son to Save My Father’s Life, but After the Birth His Plea Took My Breath Away

Dante snatched the phone from Marco’s hand.

“Vito, listen to me.”

Laughter sounded on the other side.

“No, you listen to me, Dante. The child will be under my protection until you are no longer alive.”

Dante pressed his eyes shut.

“If you touch him, you will lose everything.”

“You have already lost. Even your lawyer no longer believes you.”

The call ended.

Marco ran to the window and pulled aside the curtain. A black car had stopped in the hospital courtyard. Two men were standing beside it.

“We can no longer stay here,” he said.

Dante looked at the lawyer.

“Diana, prepare to leave.”

“I have already prepared,” the woman answered. “But there is one thing you need to know. Vito has your mother’s old power of attorney. He claims that he is the chairman of the foundation’s supervisory board.”

“That is impossible.”

“It is possible if your mother signed it while she was undergoing treatment.”

Dante fell silent.

His face slowly hardened.

“My mother would never do that.”

“Her signature is on the document,” Diana said.

I looked at the baby. His tiny fingers clasped my index finger.

“Then we have to find out whether it is real.”

Dante nodded.

“You must not stay here.”

“I am no longer an object that you can hide somewhere.”

“Elena, there are people outside who will come for the child.”

“And you think we will survive just by running away?”

Dante could not find an answer.

That night we left the hospital through the back exit. Marco went ahead, Diana followed behind us with the documents, and Dante walked beside me, dragging the baby’s crib with both hands.

At the other end of the city we took shelter in Diana’s small apartment.

At four in the morning she found an old recording. It was a video of a foundation meeting, filmed two days before my mother’s death. On the screen my mother was sitting in an armchair, tired but conscious.

Vito was standing in front of her.

“Sign, or Dante will not wake up again,” he was saying.

My breath caught.

Then my mother took the paper, took the pen in her hand, and instead of signing, looked at the camera.

“If you are seeing this, Elena, know that my signature is not there.”

The recording ended.

For a long time no one said anything in the room.

Dante stood by the wall and looked at the screen. For the first time I saw his shoulders collapse.

“She knew,” he said.

“She knew everything,” Diana answered. “And she left us a recording to prove it.”

In the morning Dante’s lawyer called.

“Mr. Morelli, I will no longer continue your case.”

“How much is Vito offering you?”

“It is not about money. He told me that if I did not act against you, they would harm my children too.”

Dante closed his eyes.

“Do you understand, Elena? Everyone who stands beside me is in danger.”

“Then for the first time you must stop protecting everyone alone.”

“What are you offering me?”

“The truth.”

That word frightened him more than the enemy’s cars.

We contacted the police. Diana handed the recording, the contract, and Vito’s power of attorney to the investigators. Dante opened the financial records of all the years. Every account, every hidden transfer, every name.

Three days later Vito came to our old house, certain that Dante would play his game again.

A camera was hidden in the office.

“You will make the child sign,” Vito told Dante. “Then I will arrange everything.”

“You forced my mother to sign.”

Vito laughed.

“Who will believe a dead woman’s word?”

Dante placed the old recording on the table.

“You yourself will believe it.”

The laughter disappeared from Vito’s face.

Dante turned on the recording.

Vito’s own voice sounded in the room: “Sign, or Dante will not wake up again.”

Vito stood up from the chair.

“This is illegal.”

“But it is your voice,” I told him.

He turned toward me.

“You came to this house only for money.”

“Yes. But I am leaving it with the truth.”

Police officers would break down the door.

Vito tried to escape, but Marco blocked his way. Within several minutes they had put handcuffs on him.

Dante stood by the wall and said nothing.

When Vito was taken away, only the red light of the camera remained in the room.

Diana rewound the recording.

Dante heard his own voice for the first time from the night when he made the contract with me.

“You have to give birth to my child and then disappear.”

These words sounded in the room again.

Dante lowered his head.

“Did I say that?”

“You did,” I answered.

“What kind of man was I?”

I looked at him for a long time.

“A man who thought control was a substitute for love.”

Dante closed his eyes.

That evening I returned to his house only to collect my things.

In my old room everything stood as I had left it. A small suitcase beside the bed. A cardboard box by the window. And on the table, the pen with the silver fish.

Dante had picked it up from the floor and kept it for me.

“This belongs to you.”

“No. This is your signature.”

“Now it is your choice what you will do with it.”

I took the pen.

I financed my father’s treatment with the money written in the contract. He knew everything only on the last day, when the doctor told him that the operation was possible.

“Were you really lucky?” he asked me.

I smiled at him.

“No. I simply sold myself very expensively one day.”

“And bought yourself back?”

“No, Father. I simply understood that I had never been for sale.”

Six weeks later I rented a new apartment in the northern part of the city. It was small, the stairs creaked, and the railway could be seen from the kitchen window.

But there I was able to sleep for the first time without listening to security outside the door.

I named the child Luka. Dante did not object to this name.

He came every week, but only when I let him.

In the first months he stood at the door for a long time.

“May I come in?”

“Not today.”

“Okay.”

And he left.

This time only the person who was unable to learn to hear my “no” was punished by it.

Three months later Luka smiled for the first time when Dante brought him a small wooden horse. Dante picked up the child and looked at him silently for a long time.

“Do not raise him like me,” he told me.

“Then change yourself.”

“I am trying.”

“Trying will not be enough.”

“I know.”

My father recovered after the operation. Now every morning he stood on the balcony and adjusted the same old copper watch that he had been gripping on his hand at the hospital.

And I began working in a small workshop and earned money translating documents. Every day I saw people signing things that they had not read to the end.

I told everyone the same thing:

“Read first. Then sign.”

In winter Luka drew our house on a sheet of paper. It had three windows, a big sun, and four figures: me, him, Grandpa, and Dante.

“Why is Dante so far away?” I asked.

Luka turned the pencil around.

“Because he is knocking on the door.”

I laughed. Then suddenly tears came to my eyes.

I received Dante’s last message in spring.

“I sold the house. I transferred the foundation’s money for the protection of children. If you ever trust me, I will be here.”

I looked at the screen for a long time.

Then I wrote to him:

“Your being here is no longer enough. If you ever come, knock on the door. I will decide whether to open it for you.”

He sent me only one word.

“Okay.”

That evening I took the pen with the silver fish out of the drawer. Its tip was still stained with ink, as if the signature from nine months ago had not completely disappeared.

I placed the pen on the table and arranged it beside Luka’s drawing.

Then I opened the window.

The first snow was falling outside.

The past was no longer a door.

It was only a pen on my table—and a hand that no one would ever force to write anything again.