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To come back to Sardinia was something unthinkable to Trish. She had too many memories there, too many buried bodies. Abbacchio was killed in Sardinia. She first had controls over her stand en route to Sardinia. But most importantly, Sardinia was where her mother met him.
Was it fate? She often asks herself. Mostly on nights where she couldn’t quite close her eyes. Her mind being too loud, her fear being too close. When Donatella met her father, hadn’t she been able to tell what lies beneath? Her mother was in no way stupid. She was a witty woman, and sharp too. Trish couldn’t even hide a single candy from her back when she was little. Donatella got a sharp eye, a keen and ultimately feminine intuition. She should be able to see beyond the pretence, beyond the mask. One might argue that Diavolo came to her not as himself. Still, she should be able to see it, she should know when something is wrong and twisted underneath. But then again, maybe she was just in love. Maybe she saw it and loved him all the same. She nursed her love quietly, even after all those years. Near hear death, she remembered him as vividly as she saw her daughter by her bedside. She never marries, never seeks the love of another man.
A terrifying force a woman in love is.
But then Trish sat on the plane. First class. To Sardinia. Her destination is a little commune called Nuoro. Her mother wasn’t born in Nuoro but she spent much of her childhood there before moving to the more touristic cities near the sea.
Nuoro wasn’t what people might think of when they envision Sardinia. The sparkling beaches and rows of pristine white boats were not in sight and the mighty Tyrrhenian Sea was hidden away. The mount of Ortobene was a constant presence, a shadow that engulfed the entire commune in shades of dark green. The atmosphere was somber and on the day of her arrival, Trish felt like going to the nearest airport and fly back somewhere safe and bright, Naples or Rome or just anywhere else. But she stayed put. She had a little rendezvous with someone important. Why he arranged a meeting here of all places, she had no idea. Or more accurately, she had. But she refused to dwell on it because then that means that she needs to think, to reflect.
On the seventh day, she wore her most appropriate dress and went to the church. The evening mass had just begun. She chose to attend, secretly wondering whether all the few people there realized who she is. They would never imagine that the woman who sat quietly on the middle row, head bowed down properly covered by a dull-looking hat, is Trish Una. The most beloved star of Italy. The Italian Maria Callas, people liked to call her. She had the very splendour of a diva, also the beauty and talent to support it. But as Trish long suspected, strip her from her dazzling clothes and all her fine jewelleries and fur coat, and she ended up just as Trish. A pretty enough woman to turn heads, but still plain enough to hide as another kind of woman. The kind who lives her whole life on the city like Nuoro. The kind who will get married to the man she grows up and goes to church with. The kind who will have children and Sunday dinner basked in the sun. And isn’t that woman lucky? Because she doesn’t know the pain and loses and all sort of power beyond anyone’s wildest imagination.
The mass ended and people sorted themselves out. Something compelled them not to stay. They knew, in a manner, that staying there isn’t at all wise.
Trish stayed where she was. The church rapidly grew dark as the sun set just outside. Someone lit the lamp, and the frescos look like they glowed. Trish’s attention was fixated on the Virgin Mary. She was depicted with her arms open, her face forever in the calm profoundness of a marble statue. She didn’t know why but she clasped her hands and pray.
Giorno came through the door. His expression neutral as she took a seat near Trish.
They sat in silence for a few minutes before Trish opened her eyes and said, “Are you alone?”
“Yes,” the man said without looking at her. He seemed to be fixated on the Virgin Mary too.
“Where is Mista?”
“In Napoli. This is a short trip. Don’t worry.”
Giorno was dressed up to the nines. He wore a leather loafer and a burgundy coat. His suit was fitted perfectly, no doubt tailor-made by some of the best houses in Milan. In a small city like this, he stood up. An altar boy who left something behind hurried off with averted eyes when he looked at Giorno. The Don really wasn’t one to hide. Whether on his personal life or on his more professional one. He didn’t like to show off, he didn’t gloat, not exactly. Instead, he made people see. He demonstrated. And he is far from the fifteen years old of ten years ago. His idealism stayed the same. But adulthood is rough edges and compromises and Giorno was not the exception. A tender heart, he had. An iron fist, he also had. He was calloused and cruel in a way that a righteous person can only be.
“Do you have any business here?” asked Trish.
“We are working on some promising prospects in Cagliari. But there is still much time for it to reach its potential.”
“You don’t have any business then, in Nuoro?”
Giorno looked at her and said, “No, I don’t.”
“Why’d you want to meet me here?”
“Why, indeed.”
“This is my mother’s childhood city,” she said. “She was raised here by my grandparents before she moved to Porto Cervo. She said she doesn’t like Nuoro. She wanted to be near the sea, she wanted to meet people. Her friends back home, she said, are boring and lifeless. But if she never left, she would never meet my father. She would probably marry some guy and live peacefully here. She would never experience what she experienced after Diavolo.”
“Betrayal?”
“No, longing.” Trish sighed. “She longed for her past lover all of her life.”
“Do you think of Diavolo as a terrible man?”
“Oh yes, obviously. He is, or was, by all definition a very evil man. He put no regard on others, he used people and only think of himself, his gain. He used power solely to hurt. He tried to kill me, his daughter. Even until the very end, he showed no remorse. But you know what’s funny, Gio? I detested him the most because he left my mother. How come he left someone who loved him so much? How dare he?”
She glanced at the crucifix, almost accusingly. “And I detested my mom too,” she said bitterly. “For falling in love with a monster.”
“Perhaps she didn’t know,” Giorno said evenly.
“She knew alright. There’s no way in hell she doesn’t know. She just chose to turn a blind eye. Because apparently, being in love do that to a person.”
“It kind of does, yes,” Giorno agreed. His own thought drifted to his own mother.
Then he snapped out of his reverie, he looked at Trish whose feature was all soft and whose hair fell on her porcelain white shoulder. The thin column of her neck stood out against the little pearl necklaces she wore. A gift to her, an expensive one which he bought on a rather rare excursion to Hyderabad.
He said, “I should go to the confessional.”
She looked at him, bewildered. “What for?”
“I am a terrible terrible man, Trish,” he smiled.
And because she was her mother’s daughter, she said firmly. “No, you are not.”
“Say, Trish. Do you wish to do the same mistake as your mother?”
Her resolve wavered and she glanced down.
Here, Giorno is giving him a choice. To end it all and, in a way, to settle down quietly in a place where it all started. Or she could move forward. Even though she knew all too well what’s in store for her.
She asked, “What would you say on a confessional?”
“Many. But perhaps I will start with this; ‘Forgive me Father, for I am a very powerful man'. Because I am. And power is a hideous thing. I can take and take and take. Forever taking without giving. I can do that, Trish. Are you aware of that?”
Trish nodded. She saw him, on the day of the ‘death’ of Diavolo, she saw the beginning of something larger and much stronger than the ground she stands on. He gave her a vague explanation, and at that time it suffices. For years it suffices until it simply wasn’t. On one particular occasion, Mista came to one of her rehearsals, Polnareff and Coco Jumbo in tow. He looked genuinely afraid, something which she thought wouldn’t be possible on a hardened consigliere like him. He only said one thing, ‘He used it again’ and Trish immediately understood. Whatever Giorno used to defeat Diavolo back in the day, he used it again. Polnareff said it was rather justified, though he himself didn’t sound too happy about it. The day after, Trish flew to Naples. She met Giorno and had a long conversation with him, though without mentioning any kind of power nor Stand ability. But at the end of it, Giorno simply said, ‘Suppose Mista had come to you to burden you with information you don’t need. I feel like I should assure you, Trish. everything is under control. Please trust me.’
And Trish did trust him. His touch was soft, reassuring, and she couldn’t imagine him causing any destruction or suffering. But power can—and some argue—will eventually corrupt a person. Trish sincerely believed that Giorno is the exception. The golden boy, he was destined to triumph when all failed. Still, the chance is there. Because sometimes, when the light hit just right and his golden curl shone and his face looked almost too angelic to be true, he reminded her so much of a painting by Alexandre Cabanel. ‘Fallen Angel’ is the name of the painting.
Back to the church in Nuoro, she said, “I am sure you will not forget to give.”
“Ah, but it’s more than that. I also have my transgressions. I have killed, I have spilled blood, I have caused pain. I might justify myself, calling it something for ‘the higher good’. But then again, Cain also justifies himself for killing Abel.”
“You are not Cain.”
Giorno ignored her. “In the process of achieving what I want, I have sacrificed,” he said. His eyes glacier, distant. “Narancia, and Bruno, and Abbacchio. Their blood is on my hand. You might argue, my sweet Trish. But it was my fate that sealed their fate.”
He paused. His hand hovered just above hers. Again, his touch gentle, soft. “And above all, my biggest transgression is this: I want you, I have never stopped wanting you, and I don’t stop myself from wanting you. If I were a better man, Trish, you wouldn’t be here. But I am not.”
“Stop acting like I don’t have any agency,” Trish laughed humourlessly. “It’s by my own choice that I am here. I choose you.”
Giorno thought, there never was anything brighter than her.
“My terribleness Trish, I am afraid, ran very deep. Almost genetic, maybe. I don’t understand it myself. But I know it lurks there, on the periphery of my being. It waits for the right time to capture me and drag me to the dark. I should be afraid, yet I am not. I am a little curious even of what might lie in the place where sunlight cannot touch. I think Polnareff knows, sometimes he looks at me with this very peculiar look on his eyes. As if he expects me to turn into Diavolo or someone else in the blink of an eye.”
“What’s up with you, Giorno? First, you compare yourself to Cain, then to my father, what’s next? The devil himself?”
“But I am your Father. I am, in every sense that’s important, is Diavolo,” Giorno said. He gripped her hand, and she was forced to look at him. “I am the one who continues the very step of the man you hate the most. I am his successor. I can spout all the lies in the world, saying that what I am doing is reforming Passione, and it might be true to some extends, but the truth still stands. I might not be Diavolo incarnate, but I can be as bad, as terrible as him. And trust me on this, I can be worse. Do you see it, Trish?”
She saw it, as clearly as the low hanging moon outside, as clearly as the smell of limestone in the old church, as clearly as the crystal blue of his eyes.
She calmly said, “Yes.”
Apparently satisfied with her answer, he loosened his grip. “Will you marry me?”
And because, once again, she is evidently her mother’s daughter, she answered.
“Yes.”
Giorno’s kiss was chaste, reverent. Trish on the other hand was wildfire and desire. They stopped short before it could be a full-blown make-out session. They were in church after all.
Then, a priest was called. The same priest who oversaw the evening mass. Then two witnesses were called, one of them was the same altar boy who scurried at the first sight of Giorno. They were married in a quiet and rather hurried ceremony. Their vow was kept short and simple. There was undoubtedly an air of secrecy, of danger, around the newly wedded couple. But it was still a happy occasion all the same.
Signorina Una never left the church. Instead, it was Signora Giovanna who walked hand in hand with her new husband.
Of her happiness, there was no doubt. Of her sureness of Giorno and her unabating love and trust, there was also no doubt.