Chapter 10 - THE WISH HE MADE FOR HIMSELF
The explosion at the south gate injured no one.
That was the good news.
The bad news was the message.
A photograph of Sophie outside her school.
Proof that even after Vittorio Conti’s network began collapsing, someone still had eyes on the people I loved.
Loved.
I no longer avoided the word.
Maria hated the security increase.
She accepted it because the threat was specific.
Sophie was temporarily pulled from school.
She considered this a vacation.
By the third day she had turned my formal dining room into a classroom and assigned Caesar the role of “principal.”
I was apparently “the grumpy janitor.”
I owned the house.
No authority.
Humiliating.
Marco traced the message through three countries and a prepaid network.
The sender eventually connected to Lorenzo Conti, Vittorio’s nephew.
Twenty-nine.
Ambitious.
Stupid enough to believe fear could rebuild what evidence was destroying.
He controlled a handful of loyal security men and one remaining port contract.
Not a war.
A tantrum with guns.
Ten years ago I would have answered with bodies.
Luca’s letter sat in my desk.
Do not turn me into an excuse.
So I did something that surprised everyone.
I let the law take the first shot.
Through Isabella’s testimony and Marco’s contacts, investigators built a case tying Lorenzo Conti to the gate bombing, surveillance of Sophie, witness intimidation, and financial crimes.
We fed them evidence.
Real evidence.
Clean chain.
No disappearances.
No river.
It was deeply unsatisfying.
Also effective.
They arrested him at Newark Airport seven days later.
Sophie heard the news while eating cereal in my kitchen.
“So the bad guy went to jail?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t punch him?”
“No.”
She looked disappointed.
Maria looked proud.
I preferred Maria’s reaction.
The threat level dropped gradually.
Not to zero.
Mine never would.
But to something resembling life.
Winter arrived.
The mansion changed.
I did not notice at first.
Then one morning I realized there were drawings on the refrigerator.
My refrigerator had never held anything except wine inventory notes.
Now it displayed a purple dragon, Caesar wearing a crown, and a portrait allegedly depicting me.
I had six fingers.
“Artistic choice,” Sophie explained.
Maria kept her apartment.
That mattered.
They stayed at the mansion often.
That also mattered.
Some nights Maria and I ate after Sophie slept.
We talked.
Not strategy.
Not threats.
Ordinary things.
Her catering business.
My terrible childhood piano lessons.
Sophie’s teacher.
The fact Caesar had gained four pounds because someone—Maria—gave him kitchen scraps.
“I do not.”
“You do.”
“Prove it.”
“His veterinarian.”
“Traitor.”
One night Maria asked about marriage.
Not ours.
The concept.
“Do you still think of it as an alliance?”
“No.”
“What changed?”
“You.”
She rolled her eyes.
“That answer was suspiciously smooth.”
“I had time to prepare.”
“Try again.”
I thought.
“Luca’s letter.”
She waited.
“He told me to marry someone I actually love.”
Maria looked at me.
“And?”
“And I finally understand why that is different from choosing someone useful.”
She did not ask whether I loved her.
I told her anyway.
“I love you.”
Silence.
Maria’s eyes filled.
She laughed.
“Terrible timing.”
“Why?”
“I was about to complain about your dishwasher.”
“That is not important.”
“It leaves spots.”
I stared.
She smiled.
“I love you too.”
That was how it happened.
No orchestra.
No diamond.
No blood.
A dishwasher argument.
Luca would have approved.
Christmas came.
Sophie replaced fairy wings with reindeer antlers.
She demanded Caesar wear a bell collar.
He endured it with the expression of a prisoner of war.
I gave Maria no jewelry.
She had made her position on expensive gestures clear.
Instead, I gave her a key.
She stared.
“To what?”
“The kitchen.”
“I already have access.”
“Not here.”
I handed her a folder.
A commercial space in Queens.
Lease.
Not ownership.
Paid market rate by her company.
I had negotiated the landlord down but did not subsidize it.
She read every page.
“You did not buy the building.”
“No.”
“You wanted to.”
“Yes.”
“Very much?”
“Yes.”
She laughed.
Then kissed me.
Progress.
For Sophie, I gave three envelopes.
She opened the first.
A printed schedule.
“Mommy’s Sundays?”
“Her company approved them.”
Maria looked at me.
“I own the company.”
“You still needed a schedule.”
Second envelope.
A photograph of Caesar’s new dog bed at their apartment.
Sophie screamed.
“He can sleep over!”
“Two nights a week.”
“Five.”
“Two.”
“Four.”
“Two.”
“Three.”
I looked at Maria.
She shrugged.
“Conversation.”
“Three.”
Sophie hugged me.
Then opened the third envelope.
Inside was nothing.
She frowned.
“It’s empty.”
“Yes.”
“That’s a bad present.”
“It is a wish.”
She looked up.
“Whose?”
“Yours.”
“I already had three.”
“Now you have one for later.”
She thought about that.
“Can I use it now?”
“No.”
“That is cheating.”
“Probably.”
She slipped the envelope into her pocket.
Months passed.
The cases against Vittorio, Bianca, and Lorenzo Conti moved slowly.
The truth about Luca became public only in pieces.
Enough to clear the Bellandi bombing narrative from family history.
Not enough to make my own retaliation disappear.
I met with families hurt by the war I had started.
Some refused to see me.
Some accepted money.
Some accepted nothing.
I learned that apology did not purchase forgiveness.
Luca probably knew that too.
On the anniversary of his death, I went to Lake Como for the first time in ten years.
Maria came.
Sophie came.
Caesar did not because international dog travel involved paperwork even my power could not make less annoying.
We stood beside the lake.
Cold wind moved across the water.
I carried Luca’s medal.
The one Sophie found.
For years, I thought returning it to the lake would close something.
Instead, I kept it.
Sophie held my hand.
“Where is he?”
Maria looked at me.
I answered carefully.
“I do not know.”
“Mommy says people we love stay in stories.”
Maria smiled.
“That sounds like your mother.”
“She says it a lot.”
Sophie looked at the water.
“What story do you remember?”
A hundred came.
Luca putting frogs in my bed.
Luca stealing our father’s car at sixteen.
Luca wearing angel wings on Halloween and complaining he looked stupid.
I laughed.
Out loud.
Sophie looked up.
“There.”
“What?”
“You did it.”
“Did what?”
“My wish.”
The third wish she had once told me she would make.
Stop looking sad when nobody is watching.
Except she was watching.
Maria was watching.
Maybe that was the point.
I had spent ten years believing grief had to happen alone.
Sophie taught me otherwise.
We returned to New York two days later.
By spring, Maria’s catering company had more work than she could handle.
She hired six employees.
I was forbidden from intimidating late-paying clients.
A ridiculous rule.
I followed it.
Mostly.
Sophie turned six.
Her birthday theme was “real fairies and fake mafia.”
I was not consulted.
Children arrived wearing wings and tiny black suits.
Marco nearly died laughing.
I threatened him with paperwork.
At the end of the party, Sophie climbed onto a chair and tapped a spoon against a glass.
Everyone looked.
She lifted her old wand.
The tinfoil star had been replaced, but she insisted on keeping the original crooked shape.
“I have an announcement.”
Maria froze.
“What are you doing?”
Sophie ignored her.
She pointed the wand at me.
“Mr. Alessandro never used his own wish.”
I frowned.
“What?”
“The Christmas envelope was mine. You need one.”
“I had three.”
“Those were fairy emergency wishes.”
Apparently categories existed.
She stepped down and came toward me.
“Make one.”
Twenty adults watched.
I hated all of them.
Maria smiled.
“Go ahead.”
I looked at Sophie.
“What are the rules?”
“No bringing people back.”
Her expression became solemn.
That one she understood too well.
“No making people love you.”
Good rule.
“No million wishes.”
“Also reasonable.”
“And it has to be something you really want.”
I looked around.
Maria.
Sophie.
Caesar asleep beneath the table.
Marco holding cake.
A house no longer silent.
Luca’s medal beneath my shirt.
For the first time in ten years, the answer was not impossible.
“I wish this lasts.”
Sophie frowned.
“That’s vague.”
“Fairies are difficult.”
“Be specific.”
Maria laughed.
I looked at her.
Then at Sophie.
“All right.”
I knelt so we were eye level.
“I wish I keep choosing this life even when being the old version of me would be easier.”
Sophie thought seriously.
Then touched the wand to my shoulder.
“Granted.”
The room applauded.
I stood.
Maria kissed me.
Someone cheered.
I threatened the room with my eyes.
Nobody cared.
Later, after everyone left, I found Sophie asleep on the sofa with one hand still around the wand.
Caesar lay below her.
Maria stood beside me.
“You know she is going to take credit for the rest of your life.”
“She deserves some.”
“Some?”
I looked at the child who had walked into my study on Halloween because a hidden passage, an old fairy costume, and bad security placed her exactly where she should not have been.
She found Luca’s medal.
She exposed secrets.
She saved me from poison.
She stayed brave when monsters used her as leverage.
And she gave me three wishes when I believed I deserved none.
“Most,” I said.
Maria slipped her hand into mine.
The mansion was quiet.
Not empty.
There was a difference.
Ten years earlier, Luca died and I inherited an empire.
I thought power meant never needing anyone again.
A five-year-old fairy proved me wrong.
And if anyone in New York ever asked how Alessandro Moretti finally stopped being a monster, I never told them about the investigations, the Contis, the ledger, or the night at St. Agatha’s.
I told them the truth.
A little girl with crooked wings walked through a hidden door, looked at the loneliest man in the room, and offered him three wishes.
May you like
The miracle was not that they came true.
The miracle was that, by the end, I finally knew what to wish for.
