When they stepped outside, Emily was bombarded by reporters thrusting their microphones and cameras in her face. Her mother and brother stood on either side of her, trying to shield her from their rapid-fire questions.
‘What conditions were you kept in?’
‘Did your abductor hurt you?’
‘Emily, how do you feel knowing your father was behind your abduction?’
‘Will you ever forgive him?’
‘Sarah, what do you want to say to your husband?’
The police held the media back and ushered the Morettis into one of their vehicles.
‘I’ll meet you at home,’ Daniel said unexpectedly when Sarah and Emily were buckled in. ‘There’s something I have to do first.’
Sarah gazed at Daniel and nodded, as if she implicitly understood his intentions. Daniel squeezed his sister’s hand in a silent gesture of unity and warmth, and she knew not to ask any questions.
When the car door was closed, Emily sat in silence and took in the storm of emotions that overcame her. She was hurt and angry and bereft all at once. Until that moment, her father had been a hero to her. He was the father who had taught her how to make authentic Napolitano sauce, the father who had read her children’s books in Italian, French and Spanish so she could speak other languages, the father who had made her return candy she had stolen so she would learn that the things she wanted had to be earned, the father who ran with her every morning until she was faster than him, the father who made her believe that anything was possible if she worked hard enough for it.
So, Emily cried as if she were grieving, because that father was now dead to her. In his place was a man she didn’t know. A man she would never forgive.
DANIEL
Once his mother and sister were on their way home, Daniel walked back inside the hospital preparing to face another of its visitors. Unbeknownst to Emily, in the same building a few floors below where her room had been was the very man who put her there. Their father.
Marco was being treated for his self-inflicted injuries and he would then be transferred to jail to await his trial. Hospital inmates were not permitted visitors, but Vittoria had granted Daniel a secret exception.
Daniel greeted the officer who stood outside the forensic room which was especially built for prisoner-patients. Daniel was patted down, had his pockets checked and his phone taken for the duration of his visit.
Daniel paused with his hand on the knob and peeked through the square glass partition on the door. The room was more like a broom closet with padded walls and a restraint bed. His father was shackled to the bedposts by his ankles. The space was cleared of lamps, telephones, remote controls – basically anything that couldn’t be bolted down.
A large bandage covered his fractured cheekbone. His broken hand was in a cast, with a sling over his shoulder.
From the police report, Daniel had a haunting image of his father emerging bloody and broken from the woodland, staggering to his car believing that he would fool everyone into believing that the hammering to his body was at the hands of the abductor, when all it did was hammer the final nail into the coffin of his guilt.
The police had followed him to the farmhouse to gather irrefutable evidence of his involvement in the abduction. Daniel could only imagine their horror when they watched him inflict such monstrous injuries on himself.
Daniel was still struggling to absorb the bitter truth that his father was the one behind his sister’s abduction. That he had hired a man from Naples, the son of a drug dealer, to kidnap his sister in a vain attempt to trigger his mother’s memory so he could get his prized necklace back.
Looking at his father now through the glass made fury rise in him, but with it came an unexpected sense of sadness. This was never how he imagined he would see his father. Shackled, stripped of his dignity, another nameless inmate, a subordinate.
Daniel opened the door cautiously. His father stared numbly ahead, unmoved by the intrusion.
‘Papà,’ Daniel said quietly, getting his attention.
Marco turned to face him and Daniel felt a sort of grotesque horror seeing his father’s injuries up close. His left eye was bloodshot to the point that the hazel of his iris had filled with blood and it drooped down, black and unseeing. That side of his face was so swollen that his upper lip looked like an extension of his cheek.
Marco only had use of one hand and so he lay there, awkwardly, with no way to escape Daniel’s accusatory glare. He seemed smaller, like an eagle whose wings had been clipped. He was not the strong and overbearing man Daniel had known him to be. The power had shifted.
Daniel stared at his father, his eyes cold. ‘What drove you to become such a bastard?’ Daniel spat out.
Marco cradled his broken hand close to his chest. ‘Daniel, don’t you talk to me like that,’ he said, trying to feign some authority. ‘I’m your father.’
Daniel laughed, mockingly. ‘My father,’ he said with a grin. ‘Aren’t fathers supposed to protect their children?’
Marco’s cheeks flushed as he looked down at the cuffs around his ankles, a vein in his forehead throbbing.
‘Let me give you a lesson on fathers. They don’t put their children in harm’s way so they can get what they want. They don’t lie. They don’t cheat. So, before you tell me how to treat you, first learn how to treat your children.’
Marco was silent, so Daniel pressed on. ‘Do you regret what you did?’
Marco tried to shift his body but the metal of his ankle shackles rattled against the bedpost as if it were a loud echo of his mistakes. He spoke softly. ‘I regretted it even before it began. I’d given Don the money and made the arrangements. And then, two days later I went to visit my father, who I hadn’t seen for twenty years. He’d aged but other than that he hadn’t changed. He was still attached to his liquor, a broke alcoholic who hated the world and hated me more. He used to always tell me I was worthless, that I wouldn’t amount to anything, that I was a coward.’ Marco paused and rubbed his beard. ‘He confessed that my mother hadn’t abandoned me like I had always thought. She’d come back for me once she’d found a safe place for both of us to live, and instead my father had lied and told her I wanted nothing to do with her. The revelation was shattering. He’d not only been a pathetic father but he’d deprived me of a mother.’ He sighed heavily. ‘After I saw him that day, I changed my mind about the abduction. I didn’t want to be a bad father. I didn’t want to be anything like him. So I went to Stefano’s apartment to find Don, but no one was there.’ Marco’s voice began to waver. ‘I’d foolishly given him my number and not taken his.’ He looked up at Daniel. ‘He was supposed to call me before he did anything, so I thought I still had time,’ he said as his eyes began to well with tears. ‘I got drunk that night in an attempt to numb my emotions so that I wouldn’t feel anything at all. And when I woke up, the damage was done. I was too late.’
‘You don’t expect me to feel sorry for you, do you?’ Daniel said bitterly, realising now how good an actor his father was, so well versed in manipulation. ‘You had a shitty childhood, I get it. But that doesn’t excuse you from what you did. You had choices. You had a wife and two children who loved you. And now, thanks to your own actions, you’ll never get to see any of us again.’
Marco could only turn his head to hide how wounded he was by his son’s words. ‘You’ll forgive me one day. You’ll understand why I had to do what I did. I needed to try to prompt your mother’s memory. It was my only hope of finding the necklace.’
Daniel leaned against the padded wall and stared at his father. ‘So you put the life of your helpless sixteen-year-old daughter on the line.’
Marco wiped his chin with his shoulder but to Daniel it looked like a nervous twitch. ‘You make it sound far worse than it was. I knew she was going to be okay. She’s very resilient,’ Marco said simply.
His justification for what he’d done was infuriating. ‘Is that why you chose her and not me?’
Marco scrat
ched his head. ‘You would have fought back. I couldn’t take the chance. But yes, ultimately, because I thought she would cope better than you would have.’
His father’s words stung but he kept his composure. ‘I was never good enough for you, was I? I wasn’t academic enough. I wasn’t charismatic enough. I wasn’t malleable enough. You couldn’t mould me into your little protégé.’
‘That’s not true, Daniel. I’ve always been proud of you.’
‘Bullshit!’ Daniel stepped closer to his bed, towering over his father. ‘I dropped out of university six months ago, by the way,’ he said flippantly. ‘Academia’s just not my thing.’
Marco’s eyes narrowed. ‘But you travel to university most days of the week, and you’re always in your room doing assignments.’
‘Those “assignments” are music compositions I work on for myself, for the career in music you steered me away from because it wasn’t manly enough and didn’t live up to your expectations. And when I was “travelling to uni”, I was actually travelling around Italy enjoying life. And it was on one of those trips that I happened to catch you locking lips with your student, Sofia.’
Marco swallowed and sunk lower into the bed.
‘How could you do that to Mamma?’ Daniel spat.
‘I’m human, Daniel,’ he shrugged. ‘I made a lot of mistakes. I guess I got my comeuppance, because Sofia was the one who ended up betraying me. If it wasn’t for her, this could have all ended peacefully.’
Daniel studied his father in disbelief as he spoke, wondering if he even bore the capacity for remorse. ‘Peacefully? It could never have ended peacefully. This wasn’t some ancient history you could write a happy ending for. You’ve scarred me and Emily, you know that, don’t you?’
Marco kept his eyes downcast. ‘If I could take it all back, I would. Believe me.’
‘I never want to be like you,’ Daniel said, defiant. ‘That’s why I’m not going back to uni to become some academic just to make you proud. I’m going to make my own choices. I won’t make any of the mistakes you have.’
Marco looked up now, the swelling on his face appearing more pronounced. ‘Daniel, you need to go back to university. Music isn’t a career. Don’t throw your life away. Please,’ he begged.
Daniel laughed. ‘Don’t throw my life away? Look at you. You’re in jail and you’re telling me not to throw my life away. I care more about happiness than I do about fame or money. If you were just a little bit less self-absorbed, you might have noticed that you had a loving family and a good career, and been content with that. But that wasn’t enough for you, was it? Instead, you got greedy, and you drove yourself mad with your obsession with that damn necklace.’
‘It wasn’t an obsession,’ Marco said through gritted teeth. ‘That necklace is one of the most valuable jewels in the world, the only one of its kind, a unique piece of history. Finding it would have made me famous.’ Marco spoke fervently and with gusto, but to Daniel he merely sounded like a madman. ‘I couldn’t just let it go when it vanished overnight,’ his father continued. ‘I was that close. The world needed to know we found it.’
Daniel wanted to hurt his father. He wanted to hurl words at him like blows so that each one would burn, would bruise, would leave a mark. ‘Your father was right, you know – you did amount to nothing,’ Daniel said with ice in his voice. ‘Look at you, you’re chained to the bed like an animal. This will be your last contact with the outside world and then you’ll be incarcerated. You never got the necklace. Your career is over. Your family hates you. You have nothing now. Nothing.’
‘I made a mistake, Daniel. And I’m sorry,’ he said, meekly.
Daniel stared at him coldly. ‘You’re just like your father.’
Marco tried to wrestle his legs free of the shackles and they rang out like alarm bells as they hit the bedposts. ‘I’m nothing like my father. Nothing!’
The officer opened the door and made a quick survey of his prisoner. ‘Everything okay here?’ he asked Daniel.
Daniel swallowed and acted unperturbed. ‘Everything’s fine,’ he said.
The officer gave Marco a stern look and then returned to his post.
‘This is the last time you’ll ever see me,’ Daniel said impassively.
‘Daniel, please don’t say that.’ Marco’s eyes began to well with tears. ‘I’m truly sorry for what I’ve done. You’re my son. I love you.’
It was the first time in Daniel’s adult life that his father had uttered those three words. He wanted desperately to hold onto them. It would have been so much easier to forgive his father, to count down the days till his prison release, and then pack this dark chapter away and pretend it didn’t happen. But some things were unforgiveable.
‘You’re not capable of loving anyone other than yourself,’ Daniel said, meeting his father’s eyes. ‘Goodbye, Papà.’
With that, Daniel turned and walked out of the hospital and out of his father’s life forever.
SARAH
When I walk into the jail and take in my husband’s incarceration for the first time, I feel an almost guilty pleasure knowing I am about to enact the ultimate revenge.
At the security checkpoint for visitors, I’m patted down, my pockets are searched for contraband, and then I’m instructed to walk through a metal detector before being led to the visitors’ hall. There are rows of wooden tables bolted to the hard cement flooring and a mezzanine level above, where guards patrol with a watchful eye.
I spot Marco staring blankly ahead. He’s still bandaged and bruised. He’s been here a week since being discharged from the hospital.
I sit down in front of him and Marco startles. He gazes at me, his eyes widening in surprise at my visit, and then he looks down at the graffiti etched onto the wooden table.
I dressed up for the occasion. I washed and blow-dried my hair. I put make-up on to hide my tired face. I wore a tight-fitting blue dress that he used to tell me he loved me in. Due to the stress of Emily’s disappearance, it fits me like it did a decade ago. He has taught me firsthand about the power of facades, so I want to show off mine – the strong, powerful, vindictive wife and soon-to-be single mother.
When he finally has the courage to look me in the eyes I am almost ashamed at myself, for I can see, deep within that hardened shell, the man I fell in love with. Underneath his bruised and battered face lies a boy damaged from a tough childhood and a man who never found his way. I used to be drawn to that vulnerability because it made me feel needed; I could give him the love he never had. But now I see right through his soppy sob story. No harrowing history can compensate for being a bad human being.
‘Hello, Marco,’ I say smugly, as I make myself comfortable across from him. He seems nervous, which only fuels me more. ‘Surprised to see me?’
‘I was told I had a visitor. You were the last person I expected to see.’
He studies me, taking in my sprightly tone and how together I seem. I feel almost exhilarated at how unprepared he is for what’s to come.
‘You must be lonely here. Locked up, all alone. Indefinitely,’ I say, feigning sympathy. ‘I thought you could do with a familiar face.’ I smile. ‘You must be pleased that you finally got your name in the papers.’ I make an exaggerated sigh. ‘Although, I suppose not for the reasons you had always envisioned.’
Marco stays silent, eyeing me cautiously. I’m going to draw my unexplained visit out, say everything I have to and then reveal the real reason I’ve come to see him.
‘So, you must know by now that your lovely little mistress is part of the reason you’re here?’ I maintain eye contact until he shirks away, squirming with shame and guilt. ‘It must suck to be betrayed by someone you thought you knew.’
He rubs his thumb under the stubble on his chin and then starts to scratch at it like a nervous tic. ‘Look, Sarah, I know you won’t believe me –’
I interrupt him before he has the chance to finish his sentence. ‘Believe you?’ I say with sarcasm. ‘Of course
I should. You’re the father of my children. The man who told me when we got married that no matter where we travelled to, I was his home and that was all he needed. Sei tutto per me,’ I say mockingly in Italian. ‘You’re everything to me. Do you remember how you used to say that to me, Marco?’
He keeps scratching at his chin. I want to whack his hands away from his face so he has nothing to fidget with. He takes a deep breath and tries again. ‘What I wanted to say was, I’m sorry. Truly.’
‘For having an affair with Sofia?’ I say with an eyebrow raised. ‘For hiring a drug dealer’s son to abduct our daughter? For letting your greed overpower the love you should have had for your child?’ There is ice in my tone but I maintain my composure. ‘What part are you sorry for, Marco? Be more specific.’
‘All of it,’ he says, and shrugs so heavily it’s like his shoulders have deflated. ‘I’m ashamed of what I’ve done. I never thought it would get so out of hand.’
‘I thought you were an intelligent man. You’re very capable of analysing the past but you failed miserably at predicting the future consequences of your actions. Tell me how you envisioned faking a kidnap-for-ransom of your own child was not going to “get out of hand”.’
He touches the dressing on his broken cheekbone. ‘It was only meant to take a day or two.’
‘And then my memory would miraculously return? Did you factor in the possibility that your plan would fail and my memory might never come back? Would you have just kept our daughter locked up in that attic indefinitely?’
‘I knew it would be a strong enough trigger. It was the only motivation that would be strong enough.’ He seemed to be talking aloud to himself and his tone of denial told me he still hadn’t accepted the repercussions of his actions.
‘Or so you thought,’ I interject, snapping him back to the visiting hall.
The Perfect Couple Page 29