Paper Trails 2 | Draft

27.

Disclaimer: I have not been to Italy, and therefore, most of the information I have is based on research. If anything I have is incorrect, please (respectfully) point it out and I'd gladly correct it. I am not trying to offend anyone. Same goes for the language. I am not fluent, so any phrases or sentences I use are what I got off of google translate or websites such as [wordreference]. I know google translate uses the literal translation, so idk, there might be some discrepancies. Once again, if I make any mistakes, feel free to point it out and I will fix it.

**There will be a translation of the conversations at the end of the chapter so you don't have to look it up every time.

"Maybe we feel empty because we leave pieces of us in everything we used to love."

*****

Naples, Italy is not at all what I expected, but that wasn't a bad thing. It has a certain reputation, as most places do. Niccolò warned me of this.

"So were you born in Naples?"

He'd been quiet for the first two hours on the plane, and I knew something was bothering him. I also knew he wouldn't tell me if I asked, so I didn't. I understood. Sometimes we needed to work through things ourselves—and that's fine. I fell asleep at some point, and when I woke up Niccolò was holding glass of scotch (big surprise). I wondered if he'd gotten any sleep at all. I read a magazine for a little bit, but as I grew restless, I decided talking to Niccolò might help me relax.

He shook his head. "My family lived in Torino up until my father passed. Then we relocated south to Napoli."

"That's Naples, right?"

He looked at me. "Yes."

"But...Naples has, like, a bad rep, right? Crime and shit. Why would your mom want to live there?" I hoped what I was saying wasn't offending him, but he didn't look bothered. I was just curious, though, I'm sure he understood.

"She did not. But Napoli is where my father grew up. It is where my uncle grew up. My uncle offered to fly us there, and I begged her to say yes. I wanted to see where my father lived. Where he was raised and how he was raised. And I wanted to understand him. He loved Napoli. I wanted a chance to love it, too." He scratched his jaw. "So my mother gave me that chance."

"What was it like? Living there?"

"What most people know of it is what they hear. Dirty, poor, dangerous. Its name has been dragged through dirt, and degraded. But it was home. Very different from Torino. Not as pristine, I suppose, but very vibrant. Beautiful. And I did love it. People were kind to me. Even strangers."

He described what it was like walking the streets, he talked about some people he met, and he told me what it looked like.

"You never felt scared?"

"Scared?" He chuckled. "Of what? La mia famiglia? I learned very early that fear is what gets us killed. It's what got my father killed. It is what's killing my madre."

I didn't ask anything else after that. Something was clawing at me, and I couldn't figure it out. Maybe it was the same thing clawing at him. Nerves. I knew why I was nervous. For one, I was going to be in a whole new country. Italy. I'll be where Niccolò grew up. And then that makes two. I'll be meeting his family. His uncle. His mother, maybe. And a whole bunch of people in this...syndicate.