He Replaced His Wife And Lost His Mafia Empire Chapter 21
When the private plane landed in Santa Barbara, both my parents were waiting.
My mother didn’t ask about the divorce agreement first, and she didn’t ask whether the Moretti family would keep causing trouble.
She just hugged me and said, “You’re home.”
My father took my suitcase, his eyes fixed the entire time on the slight stiffness in my right foot when I walked.
He didn’t lose his temper on the spot.
That night, Miles told me our father had sat alone in the backyard for a long time and poured every bottle of liquor Dominic had ever sent us down the drain.
My room was exactly as it had been when I graduated from college.
At the back of the closet sat an unopened cardboard box.
It held winter clothes I had mailed home in the first year of my marriage. Dominic had said the colors were too bright and that a boss’s wife should dress more quietly, so I had sent away every piece I liked.
My mother had never thrown them out.
I opened the box, and inside was a red coat.
I used to wear it under the California sun without ever worrying if someone thought I was too noticeable.
My mother asked if I wanted to try it on.
I hesitated for a long time, then finally did.
The woman in the mirror was still too thin, and the color had not yet returned to her face. But that bright splash of red reminded me that before I ever became a boss’s wife, I had my own tastes, my own license, and my own career.
The next day, my parents took me for a walk by the sea.
My right foot moved slowly, and everyone matched my pace. No one urged me on, and no one decided in advance how far I ought to go.
When I got tired, I stopped.
No one called me a spoilsport.
There were half-finished novels on the bookshelf and flowers by the window that my mother changed every week. In the closet, even the coat I had left behind before moving away was still hanging there.
For the past five years, I had always felt that admitting I missed home would mean admitting my marriage had failed.
Now, sitting on my familiar bed, I finally let myself cry.
Not because I still wanted Dominic.
But for the version of myself who had been shut out again and again and still kept trying to hold everything together for everyone else.
My mother sat down beside me and drew me into her arms.
“You don’t have to get better right away.”
“And you don’t have to prove that every day after leaving him is a happy one.”
Those words were nothing like the rules of the Moretti family.
There, I had to be composed forever, capable forever. Even after being humiliated, I still had to make sure breakfast the next morning ran perfectly.
Here, I was allowed to hurt. Allowed to be tired. Allowed to do nothing.
There was no Chicago snow outside my window.
Winter sunlight spread across the carpet, so warm it felt almost strange.
I put the revocation of authority statement in a drawer and deleted the last encrypted program on my phone that had tied me to the Moretti family.
Then, for the first time, I slept deeply, without waiting and without fighting.