Part 4 — The Mafia Boss Took My Quiet Smile as an Insult, but When He Entered the Room, His Face Suddenly Turned to Stone

The policeman stood beside the bed and held the document as if he himself were afraid of it.

It was six in the morning. Fog had settled on the clinic windows, while medicine dripped through a transparent tube into my wrist.

“Where did you find this document?” I asked.

“In your bag.”

“There was nothing in my bag.”

“Then someone quietly put it there.”

The door opened. Damian came in. There was a black hole in his right shoulder, but the doctor’s bandage had already been removed.

“Go outside, officer,” he said.

“I cannot go. Ms. Brooks is under protection.”

“I will protect her.”

“For four years, it was precisely your protection that hid this property.”

Damian stopped.

The policeman placed the document on the bed.

“According to the old property records, Thomas Brooks owned controlling shares in the harbors, warehouses, and several enterprises. He left the property to his daughter.”

I could not laugh.

“My father had nothing. I lived in a small apartment.”

“Because the property was stolen before it could be transferred,” Damian said.

“Who stole it?”

He lowered his eyes.

“Marco.”

During the next hour, the phones did not stop.

Marco’s lawyer called Damian and demanded that he destroy all the documents.

Damian answered:

“You are already too late.”

“Mr. Romano, is that a threat?”

“No. This is the first truth I am saying aloud.”

The call ended.

Then Mrs. Higgins called. Her voice was trembling.

“Sir, Marco is at the house. He says that you used Hazel against him.”

“Stop all the guards.”

“If he comes in?”

“This time, open the door for him.”

I looked at Damian.

“Why?”

“I want him to hear his own words.”

That same evening they brought us back to the mansion’s security room. Monitors blinked on the walls. In the center lay the voice recorder that had been taken from my father’s desk.

Marco entered accompanied by two men. He wore a dark coat, and the same calm expression was still on his face.

“All this is ridiculous,” he said. “One old voice and Damian’s cleaner’s imagination.”

Damian picked up the remote.

“Listen.”

The recorder turned on.

Marco’s voice sounded in the room:

“Damian needs Elena to remain human.”

Marco went pale.

His other words also sounded from the recorder:

“If Thomas talks, we will take care of the girl too.”

My breathing stopped.

Marco slowly looked at me.

“This is edited.”

“It is your voice,” I said.

“Anyone can imitate a voice.”

Damian stopped the recording.

“But not your signature. Nor the bank transfers. Nor the camera that captured you beside Elena’s car.”

Marco stepped back.

“For four years you thought I stood beside you,” Damian said. “In reality, every day I drank coffee with the man who killed the woman you loved.”

Marco’s face collapsed.

“You yourself asked me to close Elena’s case.”

Damian lowered his eyes.

“I asked you to find the truth. But you used my grief as a shield.”

Marco reached toward the gun.

The guards threw him to the floor in one second.

I was not happy.

I only became very tired.

When they put handcuffs on Marco’s hands, he said to Damian:

“You will not be able to stay beside her for long. She too will leave you one day.”

Damian did not answer.

Marco was taken away.

Only Damian and I remained in the room.

“Is everything over?” I asked.

“No.”

An unknown number lit up on his phone. He answered.

There was a woman’s voice on the other side.

“Marco was only the executor. The order from four years ago came from the Romano family.”

Damian froze.

“Who are you?”

“Elena’s sister.”

The call ended.

Another sheet of paper lay on the table. A signature could be seen at the bottom—Damian’s father’s.

But the heaviest words were written below: “Damian knew that we were tampering with the car.”

Damian looked at the sheet, and for the first time I saw strength fall away from him.

“This is impossible,” he said.

“Maybe your father was the one who ordered it.”

“I spoke to him that night.”

“And what did he tell you?”

Damian closed his eyes.

“He told me that Elena would not return.”

His voice broke.

The next day the police arrested Marco, but the investigation also reached Damian’s family. Damian opened every account, handed over every record, and testified against his own father.

I decided to leave the city.

A week later I entered the empty room where I had lived before. The uniform hung on the chair. My mother’s copper swallow remained in its pocket, with a small mark where it had scratched my skin that night.

Damian stood at the door.

“Stay,” he told me.

“In your house?”

“No. In my life.”

I shook my head.

“I have not even returned to my own life yet.”

He understood this.

For the first time, he did not object.

Three months later I moved from Chicago to Milwaukee. I lived in a small apartment where the sound of the tram could be heard from the window. I began working at a women’s shelter and studied legal documents in the evenings, so that other people would not lose what my father had lost.

Damian went to court, testified, and shut down a large part of the family’s illegal business. The newspapers called him a hero.

I knew he was not a hero.

He had simply chosen the truth for the first time, when lies were no longer easier.

He came to me on Sundays. Sometimes he brought coffee, sometimes a book. He never tried to touch me without permission.

One morning my neighbor’s little daughter, Lily, drew me a picture. There was a large house in the picture, and two people stood beside it. The woman had a broad figure, and the man had a black coat. A small golden swallow flew between them.

“Is this you?” I asked.

Lily nodded.

“Are you no longer afraid of that man?”

I looked at the snow through the window.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because now I know where someone else’s shadow ends and where I begin.”

Several weeks later Damian sent me a letter.

“If you ever want to return, the door will be open.”

I looked at this sentence for a long time.

Then I answered:

“Leave the door open, but I have nothing left to return to.”

He wrote me only one word:

“I understand.”

It was his greatest apology.

That evening I took my mother’s copper swallow in my hand. In the window light, its small wing flashed gold. For four years I had carried this thing against my body, as if I were carrying the past.

Now, for the first time, I put it on the table and did not hide it under my clothes.

The first snow was falling outside.

The swallow was no longer heavy.

I no longer hid myself.