Serafina

The day of our meeting with my father arrived.

I wasn’t ready.

Enzo knocked on the bathroom door. “Sera? Are you alright?”

“No,” I called. I was terrified. “Not really. But I’ll be out in a minute.”

“I’ll be downstairs with Luca. Come to his office when you come down. We need to leave in twenty minutes. And Sera?”

I turned to face the door. “Yeah?”

It was so quiet that at first, I thought he’d changed his mind about whatever he was going to say. And then, in a low voice he said, “It will be okay, baby girl.”

I listened to his footsteps as he crossed the...