Chapter 10 - The Ring in the Ash
Spring in Chicago always arrives late, dragging its heels through mud and wet leaves.
By April, the ice on Lake Michigan had finally cracked and floated away into deep water.
The Calumet shipping terminal was running at twice the efficiency it had under Enzo’s corrupt oversight.
The captains who had once taken orders from the Moretti syndicate now answered directly to the Romano board of directors.
Every dollar that moved through the ports was clean, tracked, and fortified by legitimate legal contracts.
On a Tuesday morning, I drove alone to the Calvary Cemetery in Evanston.
The trees were just beginning to show tiny buds of pale green against the gray sky.
I walked down the winding stone path until I reached the small, quiet hill overlooking the water.
A simple white granite headstone sat beneath the branches of an old weeping willow.
It bore no last name that could link it to bloodshed or betrayal.
It bore only five words carved into the polished stone:
Our Little Angel, Forever Free.
I knelt down on the damp grass and placed a bouquet of fresh white lilies against the granite base.
I stayed there for an hour, listening to the gentle rhythm of the lake waves hitting the rocks below.
There was no anger left in my heart.
Anger was an exhausting emotion that tied you to the people who harmed you.
What I felt was something far colder and much stronger: absolute peace.
As I stood up to smooth my coat, I saw a familiar black sedan idling near the cemetery gates three hundred yards away.
A state correctional vehicle sat behind it, its amber lights flashing slowly.
Enzo had been granted a thirty-minute supervised release under heavy guard to attend his mandatory asset liquidation hearing nearby.
He had used his one permitted request to have the transport van drive past the cemetery road.
He was sitting behind the reinforced steel mesh of the rear window, wearing handcuffs and a waist chain.
Even from that distance, I could see his face pressed desperately against the glass.
He was watching me stand by the grave of the child he had never bothered to save.
He was watching the woman who had brought him to his knees without ever raising her voice.
He knew that within an hour, he would be boarded onto a federal transport plane bound for the supermax penitentiary in Marion.
He would spend the next thirty years in an eight-by-ten concrete box where the lights never turned off.
He would eat alone, sleep alone, and wake up to the memory of sixty-six unanswered calls every single morning of his life.
I did not wave.
I did not turn away in theatrical disgust.
I simply pulled the silver lighter from my pocket and flicked the flame to life.
From my purse, I pulled the final remaining photograph of our wedding day on Lake Como.
I held it by the corner until the fire caught the paper, watching the faces of the young couple turn to black curling ash.
I let the wind carry the burnt fragments across the green grass toward the water.
Then I turned my back on Enzo Moretti for the last time.
I walked back to my car, slid behind the wheel, and drove out through the iron gates toward the open road ahead.
The sun finally broke through the clouds, warming the pavement beneath my wheels.
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My father had always told me that a Romano never looks back at what burned behind them.
And for the first time in five long years, I was completely, beautifully home.
