Ângelo Fontana
Upon disembarking from my jet and setting foot on Italian soil again, especially in the city of Genoa once more, I smile, removing my sunglasses and taking a deep breath, walking toward the rented car waiting to take me to my true destination.
This time, I was prepared, armed to the teeth, and ready to annihilate anyone who dared to get close. My Italian clan was handling my patrol, knowing that all of them are fully trained to kill, which gave me more confidence to return to the country. They would follow my every step here on Italian soil.
I failed the last time I dared to come here alone. I was anxious and distressed, truly desperate, believing it would be too late when she called me crying, urging me to rush to the hospital.
But this time, I wouldn't falter a single step. This damn time, my father would be screwed if he got anywhere near me. He would never catch me so unprepared and vulnerable again, no matter how dire the moment I faced in life. My security was no longer trivial, and my life still had a reason to remain intact. I wouldn't surrender to death. And that reason was here in Italy.
Inside the car, I grabbed my phone and opened the camera feed from her room, Lavínia's, the little owl wearing a collar. I could spend hours there, entertained, watching the pretty thing try to get rid of the collar, getting shocked with every attempt to remove the accessory—an accessory that matched her pale skin in a sublime way.
Suddenly, the cemetery became my favorite place. Just for the libertine absurdities we committed on my friend's tomb.
I could be at the end of the world, yet I'd still keep an eye on her. I didn't rule out the possibility of her being captured, because now it was real—her father discovered that the disfigured, burned body sent as his daughter wasn't actually Lavínia's. I'd be on high alert, and I didn't care if I seemed like a sicko to her.
My men in Syria had investigated her father, the gambling boss, sending me photos of various moments of the wretch talking to professionals handling death verification and autopsies for body identification. In other words, I wasn't wrong when I suspected he would indeed check if the body was his daughter's. This whole thing smells rotten, and when it's fully decayed, and I stand face-to-face with the real truth behind why her father wants her dead, that's when I'll go on a killing spree with all the wrath of the demons that drive my being.
That scum thinks Lavínia is alone now.
Little does he know I'm preparing her to kill him. Not just him, but everyone involved in this mess who gets in our way.
During the days I'll be here, I ordered my men in Switzerland, protecting her, to teach her how to fight and handle all kinds of weapons we use, once the little bitch recovers from her flu. In the cemetery, I noticed she didn't know how to hold the gun securely or in her dominant hand. They were highly trained, just like everyone who works for me. I trusted the training they'd give her, but not them. If there's one thing we shouldn't underestimate, it's trust in people.
I don't want Lavínia to be a fragile porcelain doll. I'm protecting her from the world because I haven't yet taught her that she's a warrior and that this world could be hers if she wanted it.
Even though we both hate each other, I need her, and she needs me. I have the strength and power to transform her into the woman she is but is afraid to let out.
Arriving at the hospital, I demanded that my men stay undercover and shoot to kill at any suspicious movement. The hospital already had a patrol of armed men I paid a fortune to protect the person inside, my only family. But even so, being back in Italy, an attack could happen at any moment—not just from the enemies I made over my years as a hitman, but from an enemy like my father, the drug trafficker, who wants me as dead as anyone else.
I entered the reception with some security guards, which wasn't allowed, but euros and dollars move the world, and I have that damn money in every currency and exchange rate possible. Out of every 10 families in the world, 8 are now seeking my services, hiring a hitman to solve their problems, no matter what country they're in.
Grabbing my badge, I entered the elevator and went straight to the private room that housed only one patient and had all the necessary equipment, a room I knew the way to perfectly from coming here so often.
Leaving the hitman Ângelo outside the room, with an open heart, I entered.
"My God! Thank God you're here," Sofia said excitedly, abruptly standing from the armchair and coming to greet me, hugging me.
"How are you?" I ask as I pull away, touching her shoulder and looking into her eyes, searching for any lie in case she said something in the next few minutes.
She crossed her arms and took a deep breath.
"You ask me that every time you come here. I've already told you I'm fine and don't need anything," she laughed and took a step back, turning and walking toward the bed. "Come, Ângelo. Come see him," she extended her hand, beckoning me with a gesture, and I sighed, rubbing my face in a sign of agony, the agony of the helplessness that settled in me every time I entered that room. Finally, I moved my feet, and the heart I only felt I had when I was near him raced, beating hard.
I approached the bed and, fearfully, observed him without saying or showing anything, looking at him with all the love a soul as sinful as mine could still muster. The only love that endured in me, despite being the worst and most perverse among all men on this earth.
"He's growing so fast," Sofia commented, watching me pull a chair and sit as close as I could to him.
I clear my throat, in a frustrating attempt to keep any tears at bay, which would be cruel torture not to do.
"Any news?" I ask with a weak, low voice, a disillusioned voice.
"I'd love to lie to you and say there was a slight improvement. I'd love to lie and say that for a millisecond I saw him vaguely move an eyelid or a finger on this monitor, but unfortunately, no… everything we want most seems farther than impossible."
She confided with a choked voice, and it didn't take long for her to walk around the bed and go to the armchair to cry, an armchair she practically lived and resided in.
Impenetrable, not letting my weakness show or losing my composure, as I've done countless times in this room, listening to the sound of the machines hooked up, I swallowed the lump in my throat and took his little hand, so warm and small, and holding it, I stroked his black hair, just like mine. He looked so much like me.
The hardest part was knowing that the patient in this state had no perception of the environment, no level of consciousness, felt no pain, had no awareness of me, and even less of himself.
Looking at him unconscious was reliving moments of anguish and despair. He went through several hospitals, following the guidance and demands of many doctors. I took him from north to south, traveled the world in search of any treatment that could give me the slightest hope, and only here in Italy could I truly leave him. Right here, where I'm sworn to death by my own father.
Years have passed, and it hurts so much to constantly see that during all this time, he was fed through a tube and underwent physiotherapy while unconscious to prevent his muscles from atrophying.
The little one here went through so many surgeries I can't even count, surgeries to correct shortening in his arms and legs, and received medication the whole time to improve his overall health.
Do you know the exact day I died?
When I looked at him for the first time after his diagnosis, there he was, so small and defenseless in a hospital bed, intubated after the terrible accident we had, where we lost his mother, and I, this wretched assassin here, didn't get a scratch. I died alive when I looked at him and saw him like this, as he is now, eyes closed, no motor or verbal response, in a state of deep unconsciousness from which he doesn't wake, even with vigorous stimuli.
Life charged me for my sins, and it didn't hesitate to strike where it hurt most, ripping out my soul.
Even if medicine and doctors told us his condition was irreversible and that he would soon truly enter a terminal phase, I wouldn't give up on him.
I still believed in the possibility of a rebirth of all his brain tissues. He would wake up one day.
Amadeu Fontana, my 5-year-old son who has been in a coma for over 3 years after an accident, sometimes entered an extreme vegetative state but soon returned to the coma. My son, the little boy I wouldn't give up on until his heart or mine stopped beating.
"Son? Today, Dad's going to tell you the story of a little owl with beautiful eyes…"