After My Father Was Murdered, I Thought He Was My Savior Chapter 02
Five years later.
Palermo, Sicily.
The private wine cellar beneath the family estate.
Outside the private room, I accidentally overheard a conversation between Tommaso Rizzo and Don Rinaldo.
“Every time Valentina sees me, she looks like she wants to tear me apart with her bare hands.” Tommaso’s voice was full of mockery.
“But tell me, if that foolish woman finds out the man who betrayed her father back then is actually the husband who holds her every night, do you think she’ll lose her mind?”
My hand froze on the door handle.
It felt as if I had been nailed in place.
Tommaso continued, “Rinaldo, you’re ruthless. Valentina treated you like an older brother when you were kids. After she grew up, she slept beside you with nothing on. Yet never in her wildest dreams would she think the person who discovered her father’s undercover identity was you.”
A few seconds of silence followed.
“Shut up.” Don Rinaldo’s voice was as cold as wind over the winter sea.
“What? The mighty Sicilian godfather is pretending to be a saint now?” Tommaso sneered. “Her father was the man you called Uncle Giorgio since childhood. To please Noemi Ricci, you pushed him straight to his grave. Such devotion.”
A bottle slammed heavily onto the table.
“I owe Valentina and Uncle Giorgio a debt I can never repay in this life!” Don Rinaldo said through gritted teeth. “Everything I did back then was for Noemi’s safety. If you dare touch a single hair on Valentina’s head, I’ll make you regret ever being born.”
“How deeply you love, Godfather,” Tommaso said. “Too bad Noemi looks down on a man with blood on his hands. You should guard your Valentina properly. She thinks you’re her salvation, but you’re actually her nightmare.”
The crash of a glass shattering was deafening.
I forced down my trembling and turned, walking quickly toward the family bar on the top floor.
I poured myself a full glass of grappa and drank it in one swallow.
I never drank.
The harsh liquor choked me until tears streamed down my face.
The conversation I had just heard kept echoing in my mind.
So the person who betrayed my father back then was not Tommaso.
It was the man who had sworn to me at my father’s funeral.
The body burned beyond recognition had been his doing.
No wonder Rinaldo, who was always calm, had stared blankly at my father’s charred corpse in the funeral home.
Back then, I thought it was anger and grief.
Only now did I understand.
The man who had shared my bed for five years was the real murderer who killed my father.
All the tenderness he had given me over the years was only his way of atoning for his sins.
Laughable.
Pathetic.
Hatred surged through my chest.
Just as my fingers touched the glass, Rinaldo suddenly wrapped his arms around me from behind.
He was drunk.
He buried his head against my shoulder and murmured, “Valentina… where did you go? I missed you so much… Let’s go home, okay?”
Over the years, every time he got drunk, he would hold me like this and say he loved me again and again.
His men all said the respected Sicilian godfather never lied.
They said he truly loved me.
But now, all of it made me sick.
I said nothing.
Expressionless, I helped him into the armored car.
Rinaldo fell across my lap, and his tightly furrowed brows finally relaxed.
He looked like a defenseless child.
“Noemi… why… why couldn’t it be me…”
I finally heard the name he had murmured in countless late-night dreams.
Noemi Ricci.
The woman who had cost me everything was the woman he had kept in his heart all along.
So Rinaldo had never forgotten her.
For her, he had put on an act with me for five full years.
I had been too naive.
