After He Blinded Me The Don Begged For Forgiveness Chapter 13
When the FBI cuffed him, he didn’t resist.
Just before they led him out, he held me lightly against him.
He pressed his forehead to mine.
“Anna.”
“I want you to know. I never stopped loving you.”
My heart.
Skipped a beat all the same.
I didn’t know whether I should be glad.
He raised his hand and brushed the hair from my face.
The way he had, awkwardly, when he was first learning how to care for me.
“Anna, take care of yourself.”
“I’ll go find Caroline and beg her forgiveness. Will you let me?”
I didn’t answer. I listened to his heavy footsteps fade away.
He was gone.
I leaned against the wall.
My fingernails scraped down the plaster, a piercing sound.
I suddenly remembered.
The night I got my first period at twelve—it was him who had gotten up in the middle of the night to wash my clothes.
He had smiled and said, “Our Annie is growing up.”
Every birthday, he would prepare a cake for me, smearing a little frosting gently on my cheek.
He’d said, anything Annie wished for, he would make it happen.
When I missed Mom and Dad.
He held me, and said, wherever he was—that was my home.
But Padrino, you never kept your promise.
I never went to see him.
The federal trial, first instance, second instance. I was never there.
He had become the most powerful Don the FBI had spent years trying to bring down. The charges were enough to keep him in hell for life.
The day before the lethal injection.
He called me from the prison. One last call.
He was silent for a long time.
So long that I thought the line had gone dead.
I didn’t speak either.
Finally, he spoke.
“Our daughter—is her name really Caroline Vance?”
“So I can find her when I get there.”
“You won’t find her.”
I held the phone close. “When she was leaving, I told her—if you meet anyone with the name Costello, walk the other way.”
On the other end of the line, he laughed softly.
It was the gentlest laugh I had heard from him in twelve years.
“Alright.”
“Anna, goodnight.”
He was gone. I didn’t claim the body.
I heard that, at the end, a priest gave him the Anointing of the Sick.
He was holding an old rosary.
That rosary had belonged to my mother. After my parents were buried when I was twelve, he had taken it from my hand and said he would keep it safe for me. For the rest of his life.
In his final moments, he spoke only one name.
Not Caroline.
Anneliese.
I keep watch over this empty Long Island estate.
In the garden, the datura still bloom every year under the moonlight.
But I know.
No one else will ever come here.