Chapter 25
DOMINIC
Iwent immediately into the study and shut the door. The house already felt different. Empty.
I took a seat behind the desk and opened my laptop.
It was better that she left. Better for her.
What could I offer her? Life as my—what?
Wife? I couldn’t condemn her to that. Gia had been born into this world, but she could get out.
She needed to get out. For all her talk of vengeance, she couldn’t stomach it, couldn’t take the reality of it.
I knew that. I did. I think it’s one of the things that drew me to her.
As fierce as she was, inside her, the light of her innocence burned bright.
In a way, I sought absolution.
She was clean.
And I had no business dirtying her, no business staining her with my sins.
I opened the desk drawer and took out the letter Effie had written me, picked up the phone, and dialed. I only checked my watch after it started to ring and realized it might be too late to call her, since it was past ten at night.
But then she answered.
“Hello?” came her little voice.
I smiled, tears warming my eyes as my heart thudded.
“Hi, Effie. It’s me, Dominic.”
“Uncle Dominic! You called!”
I heard her elation, and it felt so fucking good.
“Well, you made those delicious cookies, how could I not?” I said.
There was a pause. She didn’t know what to say, how to proceed.
“Effie, I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to call.
I’m very sorry, and you don’t have to say you forgive me.
I just want you to know I made a mistake, and I hope I can make it up to you now.
I’m going to do everything I can to do that. ”
“Oh, Uncle Dominic.”
I heard her sniffle.
“I’ve already forgiven you, silly. I just really miss you.”
“Me too, honey.”
“Where are you, Uncle Dominic?”
“I’m in New Jersey, but I am planning a trip to Florida very soon.”
“You are?”
“Yep. I just have to talk to your mom to arrange some things. Maybe you can show me around?”
“I’d love that! And I’m a great tour guide. I know everything around here. Hold on!”
I heard Isabella’s voice in the background, asking if she was still awake.
Effie made up an excuse that she had to get a drink of water, and she would get back to sleep if her mom would stop interrupting.
I laughed at that. A few moments later, she came back on the line. This time, she spoke in a whisper.
“Sorry about that. My mom thinks I’m a little kid.”
“Well, you are a kid, and I probably called you pretty late. Don’t you have school tomorrow?”
“Yeah, but no big deal. I’ll be fine.”
“I’m not so sure. I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we say good-bye for now, and you save my phone number and call me tomorrow after school. In the meantime, I’ll call your mom and see if I can’t arrange a visit.”
“That would be great. I will call you at five minutes after three tomorrow when I get off the bus, okay?”
“I am writing it down in my agenda.”
“Uncle Dominic?”
“Yes?”
“I’m not supposed to tell anyone, but I’m super excited and can’t wait. Since you’re so far away, it’s okay if I tell you, right?”
“I won’t tell a soul.”
She giggled. “I’m getting a baby brother or sister soon,” she whispered. “Mom told me last week.”
Isabella was pregnant. I felt taken aback, left out almost. Like everyone was getting on with the living of their lives, and I was stuck here, in the past, alone.
“That’s great, honey. I’m excited for you.” I hoped she couldn’t hear the effort it took me to say that.
“I’ll be able to babysit her too. And I’m not doing it for free!”
I laughed. “Nor should you.”
“Effie!” I heard Isabella’s voice. “Give me that phone, young lady. You know you’re not allowed to be on it after eight.”
“Gotta go!”
She hung up. I smiled to myself, wondering when we’d finally tell her the truth. Tell her I was her father.
I held on to the phone, knowing it would ring in the next minute, and right on cue, it did. I answered.
“Why are you calling her at ten o’clock on a school night?” Isabella asked.
“Because I should never have stopped calling her.”
We made arrangements for me to fly to Florida the following week.
Surprisingly, Isabella wasn’t opposed to it.
Maybe it was because we were in agreement that we wouldn’t tell her until she was an adult that I was her father.
It was just safer that way, especially now that I’d taken over the Benedetti family.
I had enemies before, and I would have more now.
And I wouldn’t make her a target for those enemies.
Reuniting with Effie was more wonderful than I could have imagined.
I needed her sweet innocence, her clever way of looking at things, and her carefree nature.
I spent a week in a hotel nearby and took her to school and picked her up daily.
Over the weekend, we drove down to the Keys to visit Salvatore and Lucia and meet my other nieces and brand-new nephew.
Lucia tolerated my presence but was too tired to do much of anything but feed little Sergio, who was born weighing over ten pounds and had the exact same eyes of his namesake.
But all the while we were there, I felt like an outsider. Effie loved and accepted me. Salvatore too. But I didn’t belong in their world. I felt like I cast a dark shadow on their doorsteps, and the fact disgusted me. I didn’t want to be that.
When I returned home, I went to the house in the Adirondacks.
To Franco’s big, spacious mansion. For the next eight months, I took care of family business, keeping as busy as I could, but walked through the house like a ghost. I kept everything Gia had worn until her scent wore off the clothes, and even then, I packed up the duffel bag and set it in the closet beside my things.
I thought in time I would forget her. Or at least stop missing her. But I didn’t. It didn’t seem to matter how much time passed.
I kept track of her. She and her mother sold the house she’d grown up in near Philadelphia.
Her mother moved back to Italy, where her sister still lived, and Gia rented an apartment in Manhattan.
I went into the city often, and each time I did, I got as close as the front door of the building before turning around.
She didn’t need me in her life.
I decided I hated the house in the Adirondacks.
It only held dark memories of times past, of hatred and jealousy and an old world I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a part of anymore.
All those years, I’d wanted nothing more than to be boss.
All that time, I hadn’t realized what it meant to be that.
That my father would be dead. That anyone who mattered would be gone.
I felt more alone than I ever had in my life, and in a way, as long as I stayed here, I knew I would be stuck in this cold, empty past.
It was on the morning I decided to put the house on the market that I saw the newspaper article.
Angus Scava had been indicted on charges of drug trafficking, racketeering, and tax fraud, and was a person of interest in several murders, including that of Mateo Castellano. The key witness? Victor Scava.
I guess he wished he’d cut out his nephew’s tongue now.
I closed the paper and stood. Going to the window, I opened it and inhaled a deep breath of fresh, cool autumn air. Summer was at an end.
I decided something else that morning too.
I took the keys to my SUV and walked out the door, calling my attorney, Mr. Marino, the executor of my father’s will, on the way.
I gave him instruction to not only put this house on the market but Salvatore’s as well.
I also instructed him to find me a place in New York City.
One that had never belonged to anyone before me.
One that would be mine from the start. It would be the first step in my truly taking over the Benedetti crime family.
I didn’t do this in anger. I didn’t do it to retaliate. I simply did it because I needed to. I did it because I didn’t want this anymore, not alone. I didn’t want this empty house. This empty life. I wanted her. I wanted Gia.
A king needed a fucking queen. And I’d been a fool to let her think she could walk away.
I drove into the city, arriving at lunchtime. I knew where Gia worked. She waitressed over the weekends while attending law school during the week. I walked into the restaurant, The Grand Café, and looked around the busy place, spotting her instantly.
“I want a table in her section,” I told the host.
“Do you have a reservation, Sir?” he asked.
I glanced down at the stocky little man and took out my wallet. “Here’s my reservation,” I said, handing him some bills.
He cleared his throat, and I followed him to a table.
She didn’t see me when I was seated, and I opened my menu to wait for her.
My heart beat frantically. Although I knew she had no boyfriend and hardly any friends, I wasn’t sure how I’d be received.
She kept to herself, and I imagined her existence to be as lonely as mine.
She came over, writing something in her tablet as she introduced herself. Then she looked up.
Our gazes locked, and she stopped midsentence. No, midword.
She had her hair pulled back into a messy bun, and she’d let her bangs grow out and had pinned the thick, glossy dark fringe to one side. She wore a white button-down shirt and black pants and the ugliest shoes I’d ever seen, and she couldn’t have looked more beautiful to me.
“Wh…” Her voice caught in her throat.
“It’s been a long time.”
She broke our gaze and glanced around. “I…Dominic…”
“Sit down.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see you.” I needed to see you.
She looked around the café. “I…You… I can’t do this.”
She quickly walked away, untied her apron, and disappeared through a doorway.
I got up to follow her, not caring that I almost knocked a trayful of drinks out of a waitress’s hands as the door swung open and I entered the bustling kitchen.
“Sir, you can’t be back here,” someone said.
I saw the back of Gia’s head as she disappeared out another door.
I followed, ignoring everyone, and pushed through the door that led into an alley.
The stench of the city and the trash containers overwhelmed my senses, and I wondered how the two standing across the way smoking cigarettes could stand it.
Seeing me, they quickly dropped their cigarette butts and put them out before going inside the door I’d just exited.
“Gia!” I called out, looking in one direction, then the other, where I spotted her leaning against a wall. Arms folded across her belly, the sunshine bounced off the natural red tones in her dark hair as she waited there for me, head bowed.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said, looking up as I approached.
To be this close to her, to see her, hear her… “I should be right here,” I said, reaching out to touch her, but pulling back, afraid she’d run off, disappear. “In fact, I should never have let you walk away. That was my biggest mistake when it came to you.”
She watched me, confusion in her eyes.
“I made a lot of them, but that was the biggest. Letting you believe Scava, that you were somehow some sort of monster—that was another one. Making you watch that night—” I shook my head. “You’re too clean for that. I should never have let you see—”
“Stop. I don’t want to hear.” She put her hands over her ears like a little kid.
“Gia—”
“You have to go,” she said, cutting me off.
“Gia?” Someone opened the door and called out.
I took Gia’s arms.
“You have customers,” the woman said, her cautious gaze on me.
“Just a minute,” Gia said, never looking away from me.
“You okay?” the woman asked.
Gia nodded. “I’ll be in in a minute.”
The woman went back inside.
“I’ve gone to see Effie,” I said. “And I’m selling the houses—”
“You need to go,” she said, cutting me off. She straightened and wiped her eyes, attempting to clear all emotion from her face. “You can’t be here. You just can’t.”
The door opened again, and this time, the woman returned with two men.
“Gia,” one of the men said, walking out. “Everything okay here?”
“Go, Dominic. I don’t want you here.”
The man came to stand a few feet from us. “You heard her. You need to leave, Sir.”
“Gia.” I reached out for her, but she turned her back and disappeared behind the man and back inside the building.
“Sir,” the man said.
I glared at him, then saw the woman watching me from the doorway. I turned and walked away. But I didn’t leave. Well, I walked out of the alley, but I didn’t leave the city.
If she wouldn’t have me, then I’d make her keep her promise to me.
I drove to her apartment building and rang random apartments until someone buzzed me in, anger and confusion and rejection circling like a hurricane in my head.
It was easy to get into 4A, her shabby little place with its single bedroom, tiny kitchen, and living room barely as big as my bathroom.
Light almost penetrated through the window, but not quite, not with the shadow of the building across the street blocking the sun.
I looked around the space, opening every drawer, knowing I had no right, but feeling pissed off enough to not care.
I’d opened my heart. Fuck, I’d poured it out.
And she couldn’t be bothered to give me the fucking time of day?
Well, fuck her.
I’d remind her of her promise.
I unscrewed the lightbulb overhead, took my pistol out of the back of my jeans, and set it on her coffee table. Then I sat back on the couch, watched the door, and waited.