Michael smiles slightly at my reaction, and lifts his index finger under my chin, gently closing my mouth.
"Tomassi Rossi, Emilia's father, was a detective who had been sniffing around Alfonso for months. Nobody really knows how he died, but it was clear as day who the killer was."
I shake my head slowly. "Emilia must have been devastated. How did she and her mother even cope with such sudden loss?"
"She didn't have a mother. Lost her at a young age. No relatives, either."
My heart constricts painfully. Poor girl. I can imagine exactly what she went through. Suddenly losing your parent and being orphaned is a trauma that reshapes your entire existence. I know that pain intimately, though unlike her, I had somewhere to go, someone to take me in. No matter how horrible my uncle and his family were to me, I still had them. And despite how
everything went to shit between us and Dario's subsequent death, I'm still grateful to Uncle Aldo.
But she had no one. No one.
