"Okay." Horrible emotions choked my throat, and that single syllable was all I could force past my lips. The man who had killed my child was asking me for an apology.
"Mia... why aren't you asking anything about me?"
"No need." My fingers tightened around the phone until the case bit into my palm. "I already have my answers."
I did not wait for him to respond. I ended the call and the phone slipped from my hand onto the cold hospital sheets, and I broke into sobs so deep they seemed to crack open my ribs, immersing my entire being in a pain that had no bottom.
My parents had been against my relationship with Xavier from the start. Don Vittorio Valducci, the Capo di tutti Capi, the most powerful man on the Eastern Seaboard, had looked at the Salvatore Family's modest operation in the Jade Quarter and seen nothing worthy of his youngest daughter. Donna Elena had wept. My brothers had raged. Yet when they realized I loved this man too much to live without him, they gave our union a chance. They brokered the alliance. They let me go.
And it was all in vain.