Part 4 — A Few Hours Before the Wedding, I Saw Four Children, Each of Whom Saw My Face, and My Father Stopped Smiling for the First Time

The phone froze in my hand.

“Who are you?” I asked.

In response, I heard only breathing.

Then the call ended.

Vittorio immediately came toward me.

“Do not go to the harbor.”

This was no longer a father’s command. It was a frightened man’s plea.

“Why?”

“Because you will find nothing there except a new trap.”

Elena shook her head.

“No. Someone is waiting for you there. I have been waiting for this call for six years.”

Sloane put the wedding-dress cover on the floor.

“Dominic, this wedding is not happening anymore, is it?”

There was pain in her voice, but not the theatrical offense to which I was accustomed at our family parties.

“No, Sloane. It is not happening.”

She lowered her eyes.

“Then tell the truth for the first time.”

That same evening we had to leave the restaurant under police escort. Elena showed the investigator the messages she had sent in advance, while I filed a complaint against my father for coercion, concealment of evidence, and the unlawful taking of the children.

Vittorio was silent the entire way.

He stopped only in front of the courthouse.

“Dominic, you do not know what you are doing,” he told me.

“I know that my children grew up without me for six years.”

“I protected them from you.”

“You protected your own image.”

The next morning my father called all the lawyers. One refused him. Another returned his fee. The third stated directly that he could no longer remain in the case because the documents held by his firm itself created the basis for the accusation.

Vittorio tried to regain control.

He called the banks.

He ordered the directors of the companies to freeze my accounts.

He offered Sloane’s father a new agreement.

But that night Elena’s recording had already been sent to the editorial offices of several newspapers.

The words that Father had denied for years were now heard by millions of people.

“If you leave this house, I will convince everyone that you are sick.”

Vittorio heard his own voice in the courtroom for the first time.

The recording played on the large screen.

His young face was visible.

His voice was heard.

His threat.

His coldness.

Those present in the courtroom looked at him, then at one another.

Vittorio put a hand on the chair.

“It is edited,” he said.

Elena answered calmly:

“Then explain to us why every second of the file is in the original archive of the hospital camera.”

The defense lawyer pressed his lips together.

“Mr. Moretti, there is no longer an answer to this question.”

Vittorio looked toward me.

For the first time I saw in his eyes not power, but emptiness.

The court granted temporary custody of the children to Elena and me. Then the rest of the proceedings began: examination of the accounts, discovery of forged contracts, and employees’ testimonies. My father admitted only that day that Elena’s disappearance had happened on his orders.

But for me, the court was still not the most difficult thing.

It was the empty room in our old house.

Six years ago my bed stood there. Now there was only a dusty window and four small marks left on the wall, as if someone had once pushed beds against it.

In the drawer of the desk I found the old paper wrapping of the small copper clock.

And that day I gave the clock to my eldest son, Leo.

“Was it really mine?” he asked me.

“It belonged to your mother.”

“Then why did you keep it?”

I could not answer for a long time.

“Because I was afraid that I had lost her forever.”

Leo turned the clock over in his hand.

“Now you have not lost it anymore.”

These words fell on me more powerfully than any accusation from Vittorio.

Three months later we moved into a small house in Cambridge. The house was not luxurious. The kitchen window closed badly, the third step of the stairs creaked, and there were four chairs of different colors in the living room, because I no longer wanted to spend money buying matching furniture.

I opened a small real-estate consulting firm that worked independently of the family.

Elena began working in a library.

The boys started school.

On the first morning all four dressed in different ways. Leo chose a green shirt, Niko a yellow one, Sammy a striped one, while Davi put his shoes on backward.

“I get there faster this way,” he explained to me.

For the first time I laughed without hiding fear behind the laughter.

The first snow came in winter.

The boys made four small snowmen in the yard. One held a wooden spoon in its hand, another an old hat, the third a single glove, and around the fourth they wrapped my tie.

“Dad, was it for your wedding?” Sammy asked me.

“Yes.”

“Good that it belongs to the snowman now.”

Elena looked at me from the kitchen.

“For the first time I agree with your son.”

In the end Vittorio sent me a letter.

It said that he was ill, that the family would fall apart without him, and that he wanted to see his grandchildren only once.

I read the letter to the end.

Then I asked Elena:

“Do you want the boys to see him?”

She thought for a while.

“When they want to themselves. Not before then.”

I sent Vittorio a short reply.

“I cannot promise you that you will see them. The children’s safety will no longer depend on another person’s desire.”

The reply came that same night.

“You will miss me someday anyway.”

I looked at the screen and for the first time felt nothing that forced me to act to save him.

Not anger.

Not fear.

Only peace.

I put the phone down.

The next morning Leo placed the copper clock on the kitchen table.

“Look, Dad. It still works.”

I wound the clock.

Its ticking filled the room.

For six years I thought that this sound was counting lost time.

But now it joined the laughter of four children.

And for the first time I realized that time does not go back.

It simply begins a new path.

The clock ticked.

We were home.