Page 157 of The Strength Of A Woman

Our wedding was the best. I wore his favorite gown, and mine, and we had a small party after.

We took a ton of pictures.

Rory was the most excited of all the guests. She said she’d never seen anything so beautiful.

Maybe because Callum and I could show the world how much we loved each other.

Perhaps because there were no extended families and the news hadn’t made the rounds.

The crime lords were still busy figuring out the new redistricting of power.

I loved our wedding. It was all I had dreamed of.

The next couple of weeks were filled with administrative tasks.

Once Varela and Gallo were out of the picture, O’Hara, De Rossi, and Diamond became the new undisputed mafia bosses.

A triumvirate that prompted many people to request meetings with my husband, seeking clemency for past crimes and trying to get in his good graces.

While all that was happening. I found out I was pregnant with our first child. And then Nona and Cosimo announced their engagement.

Then I got word that Julian York was arrested, and he was facing years in prison.

Callum said he spared his life by pushing him into the system, so he called that a win.

One late night, Callum received a call, and he didn’t talk much. I watched his expression change as he was answering with clipped words.

‘Mm-hmm. Yeah. All right.’

That was all before he hung up.

I knew it was an important call and had to ask him what that was all about. We'd promised each other that there would be no secrets between us.

He said he received news about my father. No one had heard from him in years.

He left the country. He was a fugitive.

I found it odd.

‘How come?’ I asked.

‘I had people searching for him. I wanted to know about his whereabouts.’

Callum sounded sincere. I’m convinced there was no lie buried in his words.

‘What is the news?’ I asked.

‘My men found him. Located his address, rather. Before they had the chance to talk to him, he got into an altercation with a neighbor and was killed. He was living in the slums in some city in South America,’ he added, evasive, yet nothing in his voice hinted at the fact that it might’ve been a made-up story.

I still don’t know whether he wanted to lessen the blow a little and to avoid rekindling some past trauma or whether my father indeed lost his life at the hands of someone else.

He was that type of man, so everything was possible.

We never talked about that man again.

I never considered him my father, since he neglected me as a parent and abused me as a man.

With that, a heavy door of forgiveness for myself shut over my past.