Valentina
Sicily, present day.
After the hectic morning of leaving England for good, where I lived for the past eight years, I am at the airport, waiting while they collect my luggage, breathing in the salty night air of Palermo. I return as a true Sicilian, the gentle mafia girl, completely polished, with no trace of the rough diamond my mother used to say existed in me.
Father proved that a few years ago, during his last visit to the boarding school. While his rough voice sentenced my fate, he waited for my anger and distress, but I simply stood before him with composure, drifting back to that day when we buried my mother.
I would marry the man with the severe gaze, and it was not a proposal. It was a warning that I simply pretended had never happened, after the first anxiety attack
