Smoke spiraled from the rusted metal trash can, drifting listlessly into the slate-gray sky.
I watched the edges of the photograph blister, turn black, and finally crumble away.
It was a picture of Dante and me from three years ago, captured while we were eating gelato in Rome. He had been smiling then—a genuine, unguarded smile that I hadn't seen in a lifetime.
I dropped the last photo into the flames. It was the only thing I had left of him. Now, I had nothing.
One day left.
I turned away from the dying fire and began the trudge toward the cemetery. My steps were slow, heavy with exhaustion. The blood loss from yesterday had left the world tilting on its axis, and the LVAD alarm had chirped once this morning—a mechanical warning that the motor keeping me alive was straining.
I needed to say goodbye to my parents.
The Rossi family plot was located in the older, overgrown section of the cemetery, banished far from the manicured lawns of the Vitiello mausoleum. As I crested the hill, fighting for breath, I saw a figure standing by my parents' graves.
It was Sofia.
She was holding a shovel. Two of Dante’s guards stood behind her, leaning casually against the hood of a black SUV, the smoke from their cigarettes mingling with the mist.
"What are you doing?" I screamed, the sound tearing raw from my throat.
Sofia turned. She smiled, bright and sharp. "Oh, good. You're here. I thought you might want to see this."
She jammed the shovel into the soft, rain-soaked earth of my father's grave.
"Stop!"
I ran. I didn't care about my failing heart. I didn't care about the agony in my chest. I ran until my lungs burned like acid.
Sofia laughed and dug deeper. The urns weren't buried deep; we couldn't afford a concrete vault, only the dirt. Her shovel hit something hard. Metal.
She reached down into the mud and pulled out the bronze urn containing my father’s ashes.
"You killed Dante's father," she said, addressing the urn as if it were a living thing. "It's only fair you don't get to rest either."
"Give that to me!" I lunged at her, desperation fueling my weak limbs.
She sidestepped effortlessly, and I collapsed into the mud. She unscrewed the lid.
"Dante said he wanted justice," she taunted. She whistled sharp and loud.
From the back of the SUV, two massive Dobermans leaped out. They were Vitiello guard dogs, muscle and teeth, trained to kill on command.
Sofia tipped the urn, pouring the gray ash onto the wet grass.
"Dinner time."
The dogs rushed forward, sniffing the remains of the man who had taught me to ride a bike, the man who had saved hundreds of lives as a doctor. They began to lick the ashes, mixing the sacred dust into the mud.
"NO!"
I scrambled up, blind with rage, grabbing Sofia by the hair. I didn't think. I just wanted to hurt her. I slapped her, my nails raking across her perfect face.
"Get her off me!" Sofia shrieked.
Strong hands clamped around my waist and threw me backward. I flew through the air and slammed against a granite tombstone. My head cracked against the stone, and warm blood instantly trickled down my neck.
Dante stood over me.
He looked at Sofia, who was clutching a thin scratch on her cheek, wailing like a child. Then, his gaze shifted to the dogs eating my father.
He didn't call the dogs off.
"She scratched me, Dante! She's crazy!" Sofia cried, playing the victim.
Dante looked down at me. His eyes were void of anything human—cold, empty, abyssal.
"You attack my fiancée?" he asked, his voice flat. "While she is paying her respects?"
"Respects?" I choked out, pointing a trembling finger at the dogs. "She fed my father to the dogs, Dante! Look!"
Dante glanced at the desecration on the grass, his expression unchanging.
"Your father was a dog. It seems fitting."
The cruelty was so absolute, so heavy, that it crushed the last ember of fight within me. I looked at him, the man I had sacrificed my heart for, the man I had loved more than my own life.
I started to laugh.
It was a wet, gurgling sound. Blood bubbled past my lips.
"You're right," I wheezed, the hysteria taking over. "It's fitting. Everything is fitting."
I wiped the blood from my mouth and looked up at the gray sky. The rain began to fall harder, washing the ashes into the earth, mixing them inextricably with the mud.
"Let's go, Sofia," Dante said.
He took off his jacket and draped it tenderly over her shoulders to protect her from the rain.
He didn't look at me again.
"Leave her," he told the guards. "She can walk home."
They got in the car. I watched them drive away through a blur of rain and blood.
Slowly, painfully, I crawled over to the spot where the dogs had fed. I gathered a handful of the wet, ash-streaked mud, pressing it desperately to my chest.
"I'm coming, Daddy," I whispered into the silence.
"I'm coming home."
