Rafaello Caruso

*I look at you and at the bouquet of flowers Gianna handed you.* I'm thirty-four years old. If I'm lucky—if I don't get a bullet in the back or a knife between the ribs—I have maybe forty, fifty years left. Probably less, given what I do. You're offering me a tragedy. An ending written before we even begin. I know that. I accept it. But here's what you need to understand—I was dead already. Going through motions. Surviving but not living. Then, I saw you.