003. The Pain of Grieving [1]

Special mass release for the novel's launch, 03/20.

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MIA

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Even then, I still avoided them all for a year, as the apartment I shared with papa was in my name, and I pretty much didn't let anyone inside it, since I was still struggling hard with my grief. I was the one who was the closest to papa, I've always been, while the others were all closer to mama and our Italian roots.

Papa wasn't just my papa, he was my hero, my real best friend, my master, my fan number one, my confider. He was all I wanted to be. He was my favorite person in the whole world, and I only allowed myself to be vulnerable with him.

He was the pillar that kept me standing, he was always with me no matter what.

Which is something that Misha definitely relates to, as zia Sasha died back when he had just turned 10, from a private jet crash, and he was as glued on her as I was with papa. In my memories, I remember how he changed in the years that followed because of it. We weren't close back then, but I felt agony consuming me every time I saw him, I wanted to help him out, but the last thing he needed was a kid he didn't even recognize trying to butt in on his worst moment.

So, I just did all I could in secret and in my own way.

I would write letters of comfort, telling stories I came up with to try taking his mind from the pain for a second, which I would sign under 'Luna Nera', which means Black Moon in Italian, and put it in an envelope I would make for him, with a different drawing of him every time. I got my drawing skill from papa, and I was amazing at it, though I never showed anyone but Leo and papa my drawings. Not even mama or nonni.

The envelopes were always scented with a Versace fragrance of cinnamon which papa bought for me when I asked him, especially because Misha always had a cinnamon scent in my mind, and I would also draw either a different tree or a different flower on the black envelopes with my white pen. Respecting the time of his life and the loss of zia Sasha, his mama, who had always been no short of a second mama to me. And though I didn't understand his pain at the time, I just wanted to try comforting him the way I could.

Together with the envelopes containing a drawing in black and white, and the letters, plus five dried petals of a red rose, since there was a garden full of them in our villa, and papa taught me how to dry them, I also sent him a Belgium dark chocolate with hazelnut and caramel bar, which zia Sasha had told me it was his favorite once when I had gone shopping just with her a random time as a kid. Then, I would bribe Moreno, the old steward of the Campobello, to leave it in his room and keep it a secret that it was from me.

I did that every Tuesday night from when I was 8 to when I was 12, before I moved to the US, all so he would read it on Wednesday, which used to be his favorite day of the week. Not for 5 full years, but from the first week of November of the year I was 8 and he was 10, some time after zia's passing, to the last week of June of the year I was 12 and he was to turn 14, which was when I moved to the US with papa for me to study Mechanical Engineering in the MIT. Exactly for three years and eight months, which totals 44 months, which again totals 176 weeks. 176 letters, 176 drawings, 176 designed envelopes, 176 chocolate bars, and a total of 880 dried rose petals. I also used up four different perfumes for it.

Did he read it all? Did it help? Did it console him even if for a little bit? Who did he think wrote the letters? Did he even care about it? These are things I've always asked myself, that I've always wanted to know, but never got an answer, as we were never close and he never seemed to talk about the letters to anyone. But I didn't mind it, after all, I didn't do that because I wanted him to know it was me, I did to try helping him out when I couldn't do it the way I wanted.

And when I went through the same, with papa, while all alone in the US, I knew I had done something good back then, because even though I was unable to speak to anyone about it, if I had received letters of genuine affection and worry from someone I didn't know, when I most needed comfort but didn't know how to ask, since I had just lost the one who gave comfort to me, I wouldn't have felt so shitty. So helplessly alone as I did. Not alone, but lonely.

Just like zia's passing because of a private jet crash affected Misha's life to the degree of him going for the MIT School of Engineering, for Aeronautics and Astronautics, just to be able to avoid other people from having the same fate, to make better jets and airplanes, and to take over the billionaire Aeronautic company of the Campobello famiglia in Europe when he graduated later on, papa's passing also affected me.

Not like with Misha, since papa's death wasn't an accident but murder, which I almost turned into a doubled murder back there, as the gun the guy used to shot my papa on the head and heart fell from his hand and to my feet, and I picked it up, in a peak of adrenaline and shot him on the shoulder and on the opposite side of his chest instead of where his heart was because I wasn't thinking right, before the police got to me. Then I fell to papa's dead body and cried like the fuck of it, holding his lifeless body in my arms, his blood spreading all over me.

Instead, as soon as I finished my course in Mechanical Engineering, after talking to the headmaster of MIT, who was friends with my papa, and he told me he wanted me to explore my potential further on the Engineering School of MIT, I applied for the same course my papa did, of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. To feel closer to him, and to be qualified to take over his billionaire cyber security and physical security company that operates all over Europe, and that he left for me together with many real estates and vehicles, when dividing his property between me and my six siblings.

Plus his ownership of a Switzerland winter resort in Geneva where we went many times to ice skate and ski, as I was the only one out of my siblings who enjoyed it. All of his diaries and notebooks on his personal studies of hacking, code, Engineering, and business tips he noted for himself, dating back from his 17 years. As well as his ownership of Givenchy, Versace, and his childhood home.

Everything else was divided into my siblings. Each of the six of them also got two different brands, as papa owned 15 at total. The last one was left for Nila.

I only got back to going home like before when I was 17 and starting my 2nd year of my second course. But it was never the same. Everyone constantly walked on eggs with me, and they didn't dare to even mention papa's name near me, always whispering around as if I was made of porcelain and would break at each second. Which was annoying since I had never even cried in front of them, but they were careful since they watched the broadcast of the Boston news, where they were recording the assault at the bank, and caught papa's murder and my lapse of madness where I picked the gun and shot the fucker on live.

It was thanks to me going crazy and shooting him that the police was able to intervene, so I was left unpunished and they even congratulated me in Boston. As if I gave a shit about that. And all the famiglia in Italy watched it, they watched my breakdown on fucking live TV. Everybody did.

I still have nightmares with that, even now, though I deal with it way better than before, since I'm now 20 and I just graduated from my second course in MIT a week ago, together with all the others who also graduated from their 1st courses.