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and moved fast with an aim that was true. I was ready to do it then Rebecca, truly, and if there was chance that I too would die then I would do so willingly with the name of my father on my lips.
    “I lay down on my stomach, the broad jacket spread out over my body and the gun perched and aimed beneath me. I had them in my sights, my aim was on Libano and I was ready to do it when another entered the alleyway. It was the doorman of their club, a big dumb hateful brute who had probably caused as much pain and suffering in his own life as any of them. If he had known what I was really there to do I would have died before I’d even seen him. I would have died and Libano would have lived.
    “But he was stupid and mistook me for a homeless boy. Presuming me asleep, he kicked me in the side and when I turned to look up at him, my over-sized coat still covering the gun beneath me, the terror I felt so arrested me that I could not utter a word. You drunken little rat, he said, if you don’t get out of here we’ll break your legs. I nodded wildly, words now returning as I apologized and promised to move as soon as I regained my strength. The brute told me he would be back in two minutes and if I wasn’t gone by then they’d make me pay for my indolence. When he turned and went back to the door, I got up and—hiding the gun beneath my father’s coat—hurried away. The time was not right, I knew. I had been spared for a reason.”
    “What was it?” Rebecca asked, thinking now that if something had made him doubt his mission then, it might be possible for it to do so again.
    “It was my mother,” Piero said, firmly, solemnly, “she needed me, she was all I had, and it was a terrible thing that I was prepared to leave her alone like that just to exact my revenge. I knew that I was needed at home, that I had to be with her, and that I would have to wait from then until the time was right to really do what was called of me. That was why I was spared.”
    He looked at Rebecca, his gaze open and serious and careful. “If my father had lived I think they would both have gone far into old age, strengthened and nourished by the force of their love. But after his death, she was never the same. In ten years she seemed to age three times that and though I looked after her to the best of my ability, loved her with the same power that I had always loved them both, there was nothing I could do to mend her broken heart. Three days ago, I found her, cold and still in her bed. Finally she was with the one she loved again and soon I would be with them too. But first I had to fulfill my obligations in this world. I spread my mother’s ashes on the grave of my father and then I took the bus to Montagna Del Mare, knowing that Libano and his accomplices dined here on this day every week. That is where I was today before I found you.”
     

9
     
     
    Rebecca felt the pain and anguish of her empathy for him well up inside her like a wave of daggers. Now at last she could fully understand him, fully understand his sense of purpose. This bright, clean hopeful soul had had everything he’d ever held dear to him taken away by the callous cruelty of wicked men. No wonder he was so ready and willing to take such drastic action in the name of revenge. His life had been robbed of everything else.
    “Oh my God,” she whispered, “Piero, I’m so sorry.”
    She reached out to take his hand and though he lifted his other in protest he did not stop her from taking it in hers and squeezing him tight. He tried to dismiss her pity but his voice broke off into nothingness, a quaver of emotion that even he could no longer subdue. It was a moment before he had the strength to speak again.
    “Now I am alone,” he said, “and the circle can finally be complete. Now there is nobody to miss me when I’m gone, to need me in their life. Now, there is only me and Libano.”
    She squeezed his hand tighter, studying his beautiful face which seemed to be