The next day, the sky looked gloomy even though the sun was shining. Clouds hung over Todt Hill like a reluctant premonition. Inside the black car gliding smoothly through the affluent districts of Staten Island, Joey sat silently in the back seat, wearing a gray hoodie and sunglasses even though the weather wasn't too bright.
Beside him, Domenico sat calmly, wearing a dark suit and leather gloves. Not a single word had been spoken since they left the mansion. Joey hadn't objected when the man asked him to accompany him to an "important place," though from Domenico's tone, he knew the real purpose was more than just a routine visit.
Dr. Raffaele Bernasconi—a 41-year-old male psychiatrist with jet-black hair and facial lines hardened by experience. Raffaele was no stranger. He had handled Joey when the boy was still living in Calabria, during his most vulnerable times. For Joey, the man had once been a somewhat calming presence. Now, years later, they met again—with different wounds.
The building where Raffaele practiced was tucked away on a quiet street corner in Brooklyn Heights. An old red-brick building with a small sign: Studio Medico Raffaele B.
Domenico got out first, then opened the door for Joey. No bodyguards. No Fabio. This was too personal.
The interior smelled of an old library and lavender flowers. The atmosphere was quiet, the air cool. No music, just the sound of the wall clock's second hand ticking like an echo in Joey's still-heavy head post-fever.
"Domenico," Raffaele greeted as they entered the consultation room, sounding familiar enough. His voice was deep, calm, with a still-thick Northern Italian accent. "And... Joey Carter. You've grown so fast."
Joey smiled awkwardly, then sat on the sofa near the window, while Domenico took a seat on the other side of the room.
"Is this some kind of interrogation with warm lighting?" Joey muttered, trying to act relaxed though his hands trembled slightly.
Raffaele smiled faintly, bringing out a cup of tea and a file of notes. "No, Joey. This is just a place where people can be silent, and that in itself is enough."
Domenico didn't utter a single word for the first thirty minutes. He just watched Joey and Raffaele talk—with Joey occasionally resisting, deflecting the conversation, or trying to deflect with humor. Unfortunately, Raffaele was too experienced to be fooled by an actor.
"I heard you've been having quite intense nightmares, Joey," Raffaele said slowly.
Joey looked out the window, his eyes squinting slightly. "I don't remember anything."
"But you remember the feeling of them."
Silence.
Joey finally nodded slowly. "Like someone pulling away all the comfort I ever knew, then giving it back—only to take it away again brutally."
"And who is the figure giving it?" Raffaele asked, though he knew the answer.
Joey turned his head, glancing at Domenico for a moment. The gaze wasn't accusatory, it just showed how deeply their relationship had shaped both trauma and dependence.
"Him," Joey said flatly. "But he's also the only reason I'm still alive."
Domenico finally moved. He crossed his legs, looking at Joey with an unreadable face. The man wasn't angry, seemed slightly open.
"Do you feel like he controls your life?"
Joey let out a small laugh. "No. I'm the one who gave up that control. Because sometimes... it's easier to be controlled than to be responsible for your own wounds."
Raffaele jotted something down in his small notebook. "You're being very honest today."
Joey shrugged. "Maybe because I know who's paying you."
Domenico suppressed a smile.
"Seems your relationship is becoming healthier?" Raffaele guessed, looking at them alternately.
Joey shrugged, glancing at Domenico. "A little," he admitted. "He's starting to learn how to be a normal human." And a good lover.
Domenico laughed. Not a hearty laugh, more like the groan of a man unsure whether to be offended or touched.
"Learning?" he repeated, tilting his head. His gaze was sharp but with a glint of amusement. "I thought I was already quite good at that role."
Joey snorted, crossing his arms over his chest. "You've always been good at claiming things. But not at taking care of them."
"I don't deny that. I'm not changing because I want to be good, but because I'm afraid of losing you." That sentence was spoken without excessive emotion, without a tone of desperation. Just a simple statement.
Raffaele observed them in one frame—Joey shrinking into his oversized hoodie, Domenico sitting calmly though full of invisible tension, and the sterile white room where their conversation was taking place.
"You know," he said finally, "you used to treat this boy like—"
"—a pet?" Joey cut in quickly, flatly, almost without pause. "I won't forget that."
Domenico didn't deny it, though his jaw tightened.
"But now," Raffaele continued, "the past two days while I was checking your condition, Joey, Domenico took care of you more than a doctor cares for a patient." His gaze shifted to Domenico. "Remarkable. I used to think you would remain a very cruel and untouchable man until old age."
Domenico just raised an eyebrow, his expression implying, and you were very wrong.
Joey half-smiled. He had once stopped hoping Domenico would change.
Domenico moved slowly, his hand reaching out to touch Joey's shoulder.
"I don't want you to hope," he said. "But I want you to know that I'm trying to be better. In my own way. Slowly."
"Love isn't about methods, Domenico," Joey whispered. "It's about courage. And all this time, you've only had the courage to dominate. Not to love."
Raffaele smiled faintly. "I believe everyone can become better. Even if that means starting from scratch."
Joey looked at the man for a long time. His eyes were no longer sharp, but not yet softened either. Still full of wounds, but also slightly open.
"I know the fastest way for you to become a good man, Dom." He said it. Raffaele was curious, Domenico even more so. "If you really want to change. If you want to be a good man—for me."
Domenico looked at him. "How?"
Joey took a breath, then exhaled slowly. "Stop."
"Stop what?"
"Stop from that world. Your dark world. The mafia, the violence, all of it. Start a new life. Open a restaurant. Cook. Live like a normal person."
Raffaele hadn't expected Joey to have the courage to say that.
Domenico chuckled softly, almost bitterly. "A restaurant?"
"Yeah. An Italian restaurant. You can cook, right? The pasta you make is delicious."
Domenico looked at him for a long time. As if weighing the world he had built—and what would happen if he destroyed it all for a blonde-haired young man.
"And you think that's enough to fix everything?"
"It's not about fixing," Joey looked directly into Domenico's eyes. "It's about stopping new wounds. If you stay in that world, our relationship will always be full of blood. If you want this relationship to be healthy, we have to start from—mmph!"
Joey couldn't finish his sentence because Domenico silenced the young man's lips with his own, right in front of Raffaele, who had long known the nature of their relationship.
Raffaele just sighed. They were still the same as before—messy, but real.
After more than an hour, the session ended with calm words from the psychiatrist. "You're not broken, Joey. Just cracked. And a crack isn't the end of a shape—sometimes it's the beginning of a new one."
As they walked out of the practice room, Joey commented while tightening his hoodie, "If that wasn't the most 'psychiatrist' metaphor I've ever heard, I don't know what is."
Domenico escorted Joey back to the car, his hand touching the young man's back for a moment. Slowly. Not controlling, just accompanying.
The young man sat inside with earphones plugged in, pretending to play music from an old cassette player he took from the studio. He knew Domenico would have a private talk with Raffaele. And he knew he shouldn't interfere.
Inside the practice room, Raffaele closed the door softly, then took off his glasses and sat back in his chair. His hand touched his temple, a faint weariness visible on his face.
Domenico was still standing. His sturdy frame almost filled the entire side of the room. His arms were folded across his chest.
"How is he?" asked Domenico, in a soft voice used only when he was speaking as a human being, not as the Don.
Raffaele looked at him for a moment, then answered slowly, "Cracked. Just not shattered yet."
"Dangerous?"
"Not at this moment. But if he continues living in denial and isn't given enough space to have boundaries, he will collapse. Slowly. In silence. And you won't be able to fix him after that."
Domenico looked down, his jaw tightening.
Raffaele leaned back in his chair. "Dom, I know how our world works. I won't give you a moral lecture. But Joey is not part of that world. Even since you took him from California—he was never part of this. He was just a little boy who lost his mother and never learned how to feel safe."
Domenico took a step closer, then sat in the chair where Joey had been. His voice was lower than before. "You know my reasons for taking him."
"I know," Raffaele nodded. "Still, the initial intention doesn't justify everything."
For a moment, no one spoke. Only the ticking of the wall clock, once again the backdrop to their conversation.
"I tried to protect him, Raff," Domenico said finally, quietly.
"In your way."
"I don't know any other way," the man murmured.
Raffaele sighed, then looked at Domenico with the look of a man tired of admonishing his brother. "You're the most powerful man I know, Dom. Yet in front of Joey, you don't even know how to be an ordinary man."
"I am not ordinary," Domenico replied flatly.
"That's exactly the problem," Raffaele stood up while grabbing his file of notes. "Joey doesn't need a protector. He needs a place to come home to, not a cage locked from the inside."
Domenico didn't respond. His eyes were dark, his jaw tight, but he remained silent.
Before the man stood up to leave, Raffaele added one more sentence—not as a psychiatrist, but as an old friend who knew the human side of Don Cassano.
"You love him, but love isn't forgiveness for wounds left untreated."
Domenico stood up. "And you read too many novels," he retorted, cynically—but without anger. The man's voice just sounded tired.
Raffaele smiled faintly. "Because novels are more honest than politics, and more human than the mafia."
Domenico looked at him for a moment, then walked away without saying anything else.
As the door closed, Raffaele just stood there watching. "If you're too late to change your ways in the end, that boy will leave. And he won't come back."
*
Joey and Domenico arrived at the mansion almost at ten at night. The place was silent as if uninhabited. Only a few guards greeted from behind the gate; the rest was dark, cold, and empty. Joey looked at the vast front yard without a sound. Strange, he thought, how big this place was, yet it always felt lonely.
They walked side by side toward the main door. Once inside, the familiar scent of the house wafted through—a mix of old wood, masculine perfume, and something else too familiar to him.
Domenico hadn't said a single word since leaving Raffaele's place.
Joey spoke first. "I'm serious about that suggestion," he said while loosening his hoodie. His voice was flat but clear enough. "You know... about quitting the mafia."
He glanced at Domenico while leaning against the wall. "Just imagine it. A small restaurant. You cook. I sit at the cash register. We sell pasta to ordinary people, not bullets to troubled people."
His tone sounded like a joke, but his eyes were waiting for the man's reaction.
"Sarah would probably tell you the same thing," he added lightly, mentioning a fictitious name. "You know, the type of woman who would say, 'Dom, quit before it's too late.'"
Domenico stopped taking off his coat. He looked at Joey for a moment, his breath held. Then he chuckled softly—not an amused laugh, but the kind of weary laugh of a man who knew the way out wasn't as easy as opening a restaurant.
"And you want to be my Sarah now?" he finally asked.
Joey shrugged. "If it can save us, why not?"
*
"I want to go home," Joey said softly. There was no rebellious tone this time—it sounded sincere, like someone truly exhausted. "I mean it this time."
Domenico stopped walking, then turned around. His gaze was blank for a moment before a faint smile lifted the corner of his mouth.
"Two days of fever seems to have made you forget a little. You're already home—with me."
Joey shook his head. "I don't like staying here."
Domenico raised an eyebrow, his voice still calm but cold.
"So you prefer living in your tiny apartment and getting attacked by strangers for the second time? Or the third? Maybe this time they'll succeed in shooting you in the head."
Joey fell silent. His memory dragged him back to that moment—when a masked stranger pointed a gun at his head, a bullet almost piercing his brain. Joey's breath caught, his eyes downcast.
"That place is no longer safe," Domenico added, his tone softer though still piercing. "I can't guarantee your life if you choose to leave here."
Then, with a slow movement, he approached Joey and stroked the back of the young man's neck.
"Get more rest," he whispered. His tone changed to that of a father—or perhaps a possessive lover. "You look like a lost child who doesn't know his own home."
Joey didn't answer, though deep in his heart—he knew what he called home felt exactly like the most luxurious prison in the world.
*
That night, Joey couldn't sleep.
It was understandable—he had spent the last two days in an unconscious state. Now, his eyes were wide open, staring at the dim ceiling. His body was better. His fever had subsided, the headache was much reduced, leaving only boredom and a suffocating feeling, filling the cavity in his chest like stale air that wouldn't go away.
Joey touched his forehead. He sighed, then murmured softly to himself.
"If I stay here any longer, I'll go crazy."
He pushed aside the blanket, rising slowly from the bed. The marble floor felt cold under his bare feet.
Domenico was in his room tonight. Whether the man was already asleep or not, Joey didn't know. But if he was—Joey had a plan. Something he had been thinking about since this afternoon.
Escape.
Not forever. Just long enough to breathe free air, to return to a place that—though unsafe—was at least not a gilded cage. He wanted to go to Charlie's house. The place that, oddly, felt like a real home.
Joey opened his bedroom door slowly. The door hinges were almost silent. In the hallway, only the dim wall lamps were on, bathing the room in a golden glow. His steps were light as a thief's—and in many ways, he was stealing something: himself.
Domenico's bedroom door was slightly ajar. Joey approached, stopping at the threshold. He leaned in a little, peeking.
That face—the source of all the safety and all the destruction in his life. If Joey died tonight, perhaps the last image he'd carry would be that man's face.
Domenico lay on his back on the bed. His eyes were closed. His broad chest rose and fell regularly. On the nightstand, a glass of water and a box of medicine were neatly placed.
The digital clock beside the bed showed 2.36 AM.
Joey observed for a moment. A part of him hesitated.
"Sorry, Dom. I just need to be free. Just for a little while," he whispered softly.
He retreated slowly and turned around, going back to his room to grab his wallet and jacket. Joey wasn't taking a suitcase; there was no sound of zippers or rolling suitcase wheels to wake anyone.
The only things he carried were his choked breath and the thin courage that was almost cracking.
Joey stood in front of his bedroom door for a few seconds, making sure there was no sound from Domenico's room. Once sure everything was quiet, he put on his jacket and slipped a few dollar bills into his pocket.
"I'm just borrowing," Joey whispered to himself as he walked down the hallway. "Not stealing. He won't even realize one of his cars is gone for a night."
His steps were light, quick, and very practiced—as if his body already knew how to move in a house that wasn't his but that he visited too often. Domenico's mansion in Todt Hill had many doors, hallways, and guards.
He carefully descended the stairs to the lower floor. The sound of the ticking clock and the rustle of the night wind provided the backdrop. At the end of the hallway, one of the guards was on duty, sitting on a leather chair with a newspaper in hand. Joey hid behind a wall before moving back and choosing another route.
"Okay, Plan B," he muttered, half-smiling to suppress panic.
The door to the garage area was located on the east side, just one hallway from the kitchen. He used to go that way if he needed something at night—sometimes food, sometimes just needing air.
Upon reaching the garage, Joey found several cars lined up neatly. A black Ferrari, an antique Mercedes, and one car Joey recognized: an old gray Jaguar, not too flashy for a mafia boss's standards. Joey chose that one.
"This Jaguar doesn't scream 'I'm a mafia kid' too loudly," he thought. The keys were on a small hook near the garage wall—Domenico's old habit that hadn't changed.
"My God, he doesn't even lock this car?" Joey raised an eyebrow.
Yet, that was what made him hesitate for a moment. Why was it too easy?
Holding the keys, he looked around again. No alarm sounded. No hurried footsteps. The garage remained silent.
"If I get caught, I can say I have insomnia and just need fresh air." He practiced his innocent expression in the car's window reflection. "And say I want to listen to music while sitting in the car. In the garage. In the middle of the night. Alone."
Joey sighed. "Okay, that sounds ridiculous."
He had no other choice. Walking from Todt Hill to West Village was impossible. Taking a taxi wasn't an option—his face was in the tabloids. The young actor involved in a murder case. One blurry photo could trigger a media storm and maybe hasten his death.
He looked at the keys in his hand.
"Charlie, wait for me."
Joey got into the Jaguar, closed the door softly, and started the engine as quietly as possible. Then—with choked breath and a heart full of speculation—he began to roll out.
The car moved slowly along the stone-paved road toward the mansion's front gate. The night air of Todt Hill pierced the Jaguar's windows, and Joey could see his breath forming a thin mist on the dashboard surface.
"Just a little more," he whispered, gripping the steering wheel tightly. "Just a little more and I'm free."
The tall iron gate loomed before him. The garden lights shone dimly, reflecting off the car's polished body. As the Jaguar stopped right in front of the closed gate, Joey pressed the button to lower the window.
A guard approached. His face was expressionless, without a smile. He didn't open the gate immediately.
"Someone wishes to see you, Mr. Carter?"
Joey tried to stay calm. "I just need to go for a short drive. Get some fresh air."
The guard didn't move. Didn't answer either.
Then, from behind the shadow of the gate wall, someone emerged.
His steps were slow but sure. A long black coat fluttered in the wind. His hair was slightly disheveled, and his face was half-hidden in the dark. Joey could recognize him in one second.
Of all the faces Joey feared meeting tonight, only one did he know would appear at the moment he needed him most, and also at the moment he wanted to run the farthest.
Domenico Cassano.
[]