I straighten in my chair and clear my throat. “I’m just asking about everyone there.”

“Salli and Francesco are fine. Angelo and everyone else, too. If that’s what you mean.” His mismatched green-gray eyes gleam with devious amusement as if he knows that’s not what I mean.

Fine. I’m done pretending I don’t want to hear about him.

“How is he doing?” I murmur.

“He?”

“You know. Stop playing with me,” I snap.

Enzo smiles. “Working, like you. Looking for potential spouses, like you.”

“I’m not looking for potential spouses. They keep pestering me to be the next Costa leader, and I always said no.” My voice lowers. “He’s looking for a wife?”

“Sicily is traditional, Costa. He needs a wife.”

I tell myself that Jasper isn’t the marrying type, but is that true? Maybe he’ll give in to fulfill his duties.

The idea of another woman sharing his bed, of him fucking her, owning her, and bringing her that type of pleasure makes my blood boil.

He told me I’m free, but am I? Really?

25

Jasper

Whoever said it’s easy to move on should get a bullet to the head.

No, that’s lenient, a knife, and not to the heart. They should die by a thousand cuts.

Time heals everything is the lie of all lies. It’s the fucking epitome of lies.

There’s no such thing as fucking healing. It’s an open wound that just keeps getting infected the more time passes.

That’s what’s been happening since I told my little Petal goodbye. For real. No stalking, no lingering about.

It’s been a couple of weeks since I returned to Sicily and took over the family. Now that no Costa threat looms in the distance, everyone was able to pick up their lives and start anew.

The lands have flourished and everyone is expecting a great season. The parties and drinking fests have been lively and full of food and laughter.

I stood there with them amidst all the joy and I felt none of it. I smiled with them and ate and drank, but I was dead inside.

Every time I walk into the house like now, I can almost see her ghost, smell her strawberry shit in the air.

But she’s not here.

It’s quiet, eerie even. There’s no trace of her slight humming or even of the fucking cats’ sounds. I never thought I would think about those two fuckers, but here we are.

Salli offers to make me coffee, but I tell her to call it a night and have fun with the others outside.

Angelo has brought Rebecca and her daughter, and he’s been taking care of the people here with me. No idea if he’ll marry Serrano’s widow, but from the way he made her apologize to me, I guess he intends to keep her here for some time.

Inside the bedroom, I throw my jacket on the chair and slump on the bed — the bed on which she slept.

Her scent has disappeared with time. Now, it’s only a mimicking of her ghost and emptiness.

Deep, raw emptiness.

There’s something about feeling so fucking hollow you’d do anything to erase it. I drank and slept and ran and worked, but nothing filled that hole.

Even with my duty toward the people here, nothing could erase the nagging need to take the first plane and go back to her side, or at least watch from afar.

But then what?

She’ll push me away again. She’ll always look at me and see someone who killed her father, took away her family, and I’m not ready to live seeing that look on her fucking face every day.

Enzo gives me updates about her, nothing too detailed so I don’t get too obsessed. He only told me that she took over Costa’s legitimate business and is trying to weed out everything else.

He’s helping her out, considering that he was Costa’s legitimate arm. He’s basically a line between the two of us, and while I’m glad she has him, it’s not...enough.

All I think about is this need for more...for fucking everything.

I want to touch her, kiss her, fuck her or just hold her.

Yes, I miss choking her and making her fantasies come true, but what I miss the most is as simple as those days she’d wrap her limbs around me and sleep in the crook of my body like that’s where she always belonged. She does.

I stand up and head to the balcony, lighting a cigarette on the way. The moment nicotine fills my lungs, I inhale deeply and close my eyes for the slightest bit.

Come on fucking time; it’s around the moment where all this should end, no?

For some reason, I’m not even sure it will.

For some reason, I know that I’ll be old and gray and she’ll still be the last face I see before I sleep and the first one I see when I wake up.

There will be no changing that no matter how much time I spend with others or how much that fucking Enzo tries to convince me to get married, settle down.

Fuck that and fuck him.

Marriage was never on my radar, and the only person I would’ve changed my mind for will never be mine again, at least not in the way I hope.

I slide into the chair by the table and bring out a scrap of paper I’ve been scribbling on for the past two days.

Maybe Enzo should take it on his next visit there.

Maybe this will end it all.

Petal,

It’s been exactly forty-seven days and nineteen hours since we last said our goodbye.

I’m not a writer, and I never will be, so I’m not sure what’s gotten into me when I decided to write this to you. All I know is that something is perching on my chest and I need to purge it somehow.

Enzo has been telling me you’re doing well, and it makes me proud to see you taking everything in your hands. I knew you were strong.

I even knew it since you were little Joe with his chubby cheeks and girly habits of picking daisies.

I made you think you were annoying and a burden back then, but the truth is, you were the only one anchoring me to the world, and I was scared about losing you, so I pushed you sometimes and made you think you weren’t all that much.

Then, my worst nightmare came true and you left. You cried so hard that day as you hugged my legs, and I never forgot the way you buried your head against my stomach and refused to go with your new family. It made me feel shit I had no business feeling. It made me want to grab you and take you away.

Subconsciously, that thought remained with me even after we grew up. That’s why even before I recognized you, I wanted to keep you for myself, hide you for myself, and just be with you.

It’s an unhealthy obsession, I know, but aren’t all the best people flawed in some way? Aren’t we all imperfect somehow?

I know I am, because even after my vow to let you go, I can’t stop thinking about you, dreaming about you, and even your fucking cats. I hate that they have you and I don’t. I have issues, I know. Don’t tell my therapist when he starts existing.

Anyhow, this long-winded unnecessary letter is for the sole purpose of telling you that you matter even without a family; even without anything, you matter more than you’ll ever know.

You mattered since you were little Joe. You gave purpose to my life since you were a child and that only heightened when you grew up.

Now that you’re gone, my life has no meaning anymore.