He stood in the threshold, his dark eyes sweeping over the half-packed boxes, the neat stacks of his possessions. His expression hardened into something cold and unreadable—the mask of the Young Don, the face he wore for enemies and strangers.
He seemed to sense something different in me. Something shifted. But he couldn't place what had changed.
He didn't pause to ask.
He walked straight past me toward the bedroom, his footsteps deliberate against the obsidian tile.
The sounds that followed were violent—drawers wrenched open, cabinet doors slamming, the rustle of fabric being torn aside.
Then he stormed back out, tearing through the clothes and personal effects I had already folded with care. His hands moved with desperate fury, scattering everything across the floor.
"What are you doing?"
I stepped forward.
But his arm shot out like a blade, catching me across the chest. The force sent me sprawling to the ground.
"Where's the voice recorder?"
His voice.
Dio mio, his voice.
How long had it been since he'd spoken to me directly? How many months of silence, of cold shoulders, of messages typed on screens because he couldn't—or wouldn't—spare me the sound of his words?