Love is Just a Moment Read Online Free PDF

that very moment that the mean-spirited hateful man who had visited our farm in recent weeks to speak to my father was the one responsible. I knew that it was Libano who had killed him.”
    Rebecca winced for the pain of that little boy who’d had so much stolen from him, so suddenly, so early in his life. She reached out and took Piero’s hand, stared at him longingly, her eyes wide and shimmering as they filled with tears.
    “Piero,” she said, “I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
    “It is the past now,” he said, his voice firm and cold, “history, that cannot be changed or undone. All that I can do now is avenge my father and honor that goodness that carried him throughout his life and filled him with the strength to be a man and stand up in the face of such evil. In my suitcase I carry a pistol and when I hold it I will do so with the same precision with which I held the mandolin when I sang to you earlier. And as it did then, my father’s voice will guide my hand once more.”
     

8
     
     
    “But Piero,” Rebecca sighed, her voice uneven, desperate, “don’t you see? Then you’re only playing their own horrible game. If you do something to those guys, those sick assholes over there, then they really have won. You’re just feeding into the violence and hatred. Is that what you think your father would have wanted from you? Is that how he would have wanted you to live?”
    Piero’s stony composure broke for a split second and for just a moment Rebecca caught a glimpse of that scared and uncertain little boy who had endured such tragedy so many years ago. It made her want to wrap her arms around him, press his head against her shoulder and cover him with kisses. Never let go. But it was only there for a moment and then Piero regained the determined, fatalistic expression that had taken him over since Libano’s limousine first snaked its way up the mountain road.
    “No,” he said, “that is not what he would have wanted, but nonetheless it is what I will do. For all his great strengths and character, my father was not without fault. He should not have let Libano leave the farm that second day he came calling with such outrageous demands and threats, he should have known that these thugs do not make such warnings lightly. My father should have killed him when he had the chance.”
    Rebecca winced again, she could feel him slipping through her fingers with every word. With every second that passed he seemed to grow more determined to carry out his terrible goal and, as he did, it seemed like more and more of that beautiful, kind soul she had come to know in him was being quenched like a faint flame in the winds of a howling, midnight storm. Soon there would be nothing left but hatred and malice. She had to do something to stop him, to save him before it was too late.
    “If you do this,” she said, “I will never forgive you.”
    Even though she meant the words with every fiber of her being, Rebecca immediately regretted them as she saw the pain it caused on his face, the solemn resolve, twisted now by agony and remorse. But perhaps it was right that he should feel it—because it would break her heart to lose him now in such a terrible way, truly, it would. He had to be made to understand that there were more souls in this world now than just him and the men he had come there to face. Just like Libano had when he destroyed the life of a good man years ago, if Piero killed him now it would leave only tragedy behind.
    “Rebecca…” Piero said, his voice now hoarse and barely a whisper, “please. I hope that someday you will come to understand. Someday you will realize why we found each other today. It is proof that my destiny is true, that I should be given such a wonderful experience of beauty with such a beautiful soul as yourself. I have to believe that.”
    Her brow furrowed as she stared at him, her heart brimming with such mixed and contradictory emotions that it physically hurt. She felt