Chapter Twenty-Seven
GIANNI
Montclair, New Jersey
T he ride back to Montclair is silent. I suppose there’s not much conversation to be had once the dust settles.
At least Anton has stopped asking me about the events leading up to the warehouse fire.
I’ll tell him, eventually, once I’ve processed them myself.
For now, I just want to exist with my wife without the threat of death looming over our heads.
An hour later, I pull into my underboss’s driveway. Instead of getting out and putting an end to this strained awkwardness, he sits there, drumming his fingers on his thighs like a masochistic asshole.
“So, that was an interesting meeting,” he says, finally.
“That’s an understatement.” And water is sort of wet. I don’t know what kind of banter he’s going for here, but it feels as natural as shaving with a machete. “Any update on the women from the warehouse?”
He and Owen whisked them off to our safe houses in Newark, and Sera made them her life’s work.
I was against my sister getting involved, but Becca flexed her Marchesi arm and issued an ultimatum that it was Sera or her, and I chose the lesser of the two evils.
I haven’t mentioned them since; not because I don’t care, but because I can’t stop picturing Becca as one of them, and it awakens a rage I’m trying not to unleash.
But Becca asked about them this morning, and I’m not ready to allow that bridge.
“They’re as stable as can be expected,” he says solemnly. “Physically, they’re healing, but the mental damage … that’ll take time. Only half speak English, so Taz is searching for someone trustworthy to translate Czech and Ukrainian.”
I’m not surprised Taz is back to work. Becca and I both tried to get him to take at least a week off, but the stubborn asshole refused. I can’t blame him. His pride took a hit along with his skull when Flynn knocked him out with a brick.
He’s lucky it wasn’t a bullet.
He doesn’t agree.
Anton lets out a low whistle. “Yep. Definitely a crazy few days.”
I stare at him across the console. “Do you have something you want to say, Anton? Because if this is an attempt at small talk, you’re failing miserably.”
“I just…” He shoves his hand through his gray hair and tugs at strands he doesn’t have the luxury of losing. “A lot has happened in the last month, and I just wanted you to know that … that…”
“That’s not any better.”
He drops his hand in his lap and faces me with a sigh. “Thank you, Gianni.”
“For what?”
“For trusting in me. For believing me. You had every right not to listen to a word I said at Cucciola’s , but you took a chance on a man who was loyal to your father for damn near thirty years.”
I don’t know what to say. That’s some deep shit, way too deep for my liking.
I’ve only recently learned I have emotions, much less know what the hell to do with them.
I’m nowhere near ready for whatever this is.
Still, without Anton, Becca and I would probably be dead, so I offer the only thing I can for now. “Yeah, well, back at ya.”
Apparently, that’s enough.
“So, what now?”
Good question. Unfortunately, there’s no manual for a post-patricide revolution.
“I guess we go home, then wake up tomorrow and figure out how to run this mafia our way. You know, minus the constant threat of death and looking over our shoulders part.”
He chuckles. “Bullshit. Gianni Marchesi will never quit looking over his shoulder.”
He’s not wrong. Letting my guard down in Providence opened the door for a hailstorm of deception. I’ll never allow my walls to be that scalable again. Back then, I had nothing to lose. Now, I have everything to lose, and I’ll die before I let anyone take that away from me.
The man I am without Becca walks a path paved with footsteps I refuse to follow.
It’s a thought that drags me back to the night Sera went back to Newark. The night I sat at the club avoiding Becca. The night Anton spoke the words that pulled back a long overdue curtain.
“Watching love fade away is a pain I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. But fate gave you something others would kill for—a second chance. Don’t blow it.”
I tell myself it’s none of my business and to let the past rest in peace. But when my mouth opens, the question I swore I wouldn’t ask slips off my tongue. “Did you love my mother?”
“Gianni…”
“Answer the question.”
He exhales roughly. “With every piece of my heart.”
“Do you ever think of what life would’ve been like if things had turned out differently?” I watch him out of the corner of my eye. “If there were no oaths, or codes, or rules binding one family to another.”
“Every day of my life,” he answers, his expression somewhere between fondness and grief. “But we don’t get to choose our beginnings or endings, only what happens in between. That part’s all up to us.”
“You’re starting to sound like Becca.”
He smiles. “That’s actually a Rosalia Valastro Marchesi original.”
It feels like I’m being set straight and knocked sideways all at once.
For the first time, I realize how similar my mother and Becca are.
Both stubborn. Both opinionated. Both determined to save my soul.
I never imagined a woman more pure-hearted than my mother, then a prim and proper psychiatrist with glasses and an attitude threw an apple at my head.
“You think she had a hand in all this?”
It isn’t until he digs in his pocket and hands me a folded piece of paper that I realize I spoke the words out loud. “You tell me.”
“What’s this?”
“Your mother gave it to me the day before she died.” He gives me a half-hearted shrug. “Maybe she knew what was coming, maybe she didn’t. But she handed me that note along with her wedding ring and told me to give them both to you when the time was right. I guess that’s now.”
My throat tightens as I open the worn note. “Genesis 24?”
“One of the longest chapters in the Bible.” Anton opens the passenger side door and climbs out of the car. I stare after him, ready to lay on the horn when he leans down, one hand gripping the top of the door, the other braced against the roof. “The story of Rebekah.”
Twenty minutes into my search, I’m about to give up.
I’ve walked every blade of grass looking for her and somehow keep ending up at the same damn spot.
It doesn’t help that it’s almost dark, and my only guide is a half-lit lamp that looks straight out of the nineteenth century.
However, just as I turn to leave, I glance to my left, my heart crashing through the wall of my chest as I see a praying Virgin Mary statue.
Every step feels like I’m moving in slow motion. Once I’m in front of it, I can’t do anything but stare at the name engraved on the ornate headstone.
Rosalia Valastro Marchesi.
“Sorry I’m late,” I say, the words sounding raw and stilted.
“I brought you something. They’re peonies.
Your favorite. Twenty-two of them for every year I was a shit son.
” Placing the flowers on the stone ledge under her name, I scrub my hand down my face, four weeks’ worth of beard growth scraping against my palm.
“I thought when I got here, I’d know what to say, but I don’t.
What is it about mothers that make even hardened criminals feel like a fucking child?
” The curse echoes like a gunshot through the silent cemetery, and I grind my teeth. “Ignore that last part.”
I don’t know what the hell I’m saying. Coming here was a spur-of-the-moment decision and a questionable lapse in judgment.
After leaving Anton’s house, I had every intention of going home, but that damn note in my pocket seemed to fuse to my chest and take over my body.
Three turns in the opposite direction and I found myself at the one place I haven’t stepped foot in two decades.
“I turned into the man you tried to prevent me from being,” I continue with a sour laugh.
“Commendable effort, but I think we both knew it was a lost cause.” Christ, why is this so damn difficult?
“I’m sorry for all the times I said I hated you.
I didn’t. I just didn’t understand why you’d choose to die and leave me here.
But I get it now. I understand loving someone so much you’d sacrifice everything for them.
” I drag her worn, folded note from my pocket and tap it against my palm.
“Genesis 24. The story of Rebekah. I was thirteen years old when you wrote this. Six months ago, I would’ve chalked what happened up to coincidence, but I guess I’m not so skeptical of the whole fate thing anymore.
Becca would probably have a field day picking this apart, but I’m choosing to believe you knew how this would all play out. ”
A smile pulls at my lips as I think of how my mother would’ve reacted to meeting Becca. Something tells me they would’ve gotten along too well.
“You’d love her, Ma. She’s smart, beautiful, strong, forgiving, and most of all, she loves me—not the Marchesi heir, or Torch—but me , a man she only knew as an ex-firefighter with a messed-up head.
” My smile fades. “I also know about you and Anton. I’m sorry La Cosa Nostra took that chance at happiness from you.
You deserved more than what life handed you. ”
In another life, Anton and my mother could’ve been happy. I’d like to believe we could all see each other again someday, but I know the place Anton and I are headed is nowhere near her. So, we’ll have to settle for memories and concrete.
“Anton says you always told him that ‘we don’t get to choose our beginnings or endings, only what happens in between.’ I didn’t understand that until ‘what happens in between’ became worth fighting for.
I guess what I’m trying to say is thank you for saving my life that day. I won’t waste another minute of it.”
The wind picks up, and I’m hit with the scent of fruit, powder, and sunshine. Quickly tucking the note in my pocket, I quirk my lips. “How long have you been standing there?”