Chapter 24 #3
“She was a highly-trained Valtivar,” Ansaldo continues as my mind continues to reel. “One of the best, in fact. And your nonna was a Themis, serving on the council her entire tenure.”
A Themis? No wonder she’s always been so knowledgeable and authoritative. It’s a miracle she was able to hold her tongue over the years so I wouldn’t question her wealth of knowledge. The same way she kept everything else from me, I suppose.
He unclenches his hands before his next words, splaying them out on the polished mahogany and allowing me to catch a glimmer of the gold signet ring on his right index finger. What is that symbol…?
Then, I recognize it. I scoff aloud. How could I have been so blind?
I placed Nonna’s signet ring that Cec gave me as assurance on the bedside table the moment I got here, but I don’t need it to know that the one Ansaldo wears and the one my nonna spoke about so often are nearly identical, except for the fleur-de-lis on the side of mine.
Another lie.
“Do you find something I said humorous?” Ansaldo asks.
“Not at all,” I say past the frog in my throat. “Continue.”
“When she was on assignment in Boston, she met your father, an American—”
“Wait,” I interrupt him. I grip the wooden armrests and sit up, forced to shuck off the uncaring facade. “Are you saying my mother wasn’t American?”
He watches me closely. “Your mother was born and raised in Italy.”
I sit back again, reeling from this new bit of information. Nonna swore up and down that my mother was born in the States. More lies. My mother’s birthplace isn’t protected by any blood oath. She didn’t trust me with the truth.
She didn’t trust me with anything.
While I don’t doubt the lies Nonna told were her ill-fated attempt at protecting me, probably from the very same order I willingly walked into, that doesn’t make them any less heinous.
If she’d been more open with me, I could’ve been much more prepared for all that I’m enduring now. Perhaps avoided it altogether.
How many other lies has she told me about my mother—my father too?
Ansaldo continues, having no inkling of my inner turmoil.
“Your mother and father entered into a courtship without the order’s knowledge, keeping it a secret for nearly a year.
Your mother, more than anyone, knew that entering into a relationship with a non-order member is and always has been against the rules. ”
He glances at Bes and back to me. The unspoken words settle between us: and it always will be.
I almost laugh. Even if Bes did feel that way for me, he loves his precious rules too much to bend them, much less break them.
Our lack of fraternizing inside and outside these walls, despite ample opportunity, speaks for itself.
“Not only did she lie to the order—”
“Seems to be a family trait,” I mutter.
“—but she was somehow able to keep mention of your father out of all formal findings she relayed back to us.”
Pride swells inside me. It would’ve been easy enough to omit something from a telegram or a letter.
My guess is he means the telepathic sharing of information Bes told me about last night—an ability that has yet to be proven to me.
Blood oaths are one thing; telepathy is impossible.
Bes will have to speak directly into my brain to convince me otherwise.
“When we received word from another operative stationed in her area that she’d broken her oath and married the man, even bearing his child…”
He breaks eye contact with me, working his jaw.
I narrow my eyes at him. Did he feel something for my mother beyond a duty to the same organization?
Or maybe he’s still furious she betrayed them all?
He said she knew more than anyone that entering into a relationship was against the rules…
perhaps he was the reason why. Perhaps he outed her before.
Perhaps she’s the reason he took the oath in the first place.
“I don’t understand,” I cut in. “You say there’s no fraternizing, yet Cec is your son and Bes your nephew. How are they here if no rules were broken?”
Ansaldo flinches. I wonder why. “There are a few blessed unions between ancient families of the order who are allowed to marry and procreate. My family is one of them, and so is yours.”
Perhaps that’s why he’s angry about my mother: she was originally intended for him. I move on from it swiftly, though. I don’t care about Ansaldo’s love life and I want to hear the rest of my mother’s story.
I gesture for him to continue.
He obliges. “We sent a team to extract her, hoping she’d come peacefully. Instead, she killed all but one of the five Valtivar, fleeing before the last one could take her.”
I see it in my mind’s eye: my mother struggling in the iron grasps of the Valtivars who’d once been her colleagues.
Maybe even her friends. The very same people she trusted with her life, had now come to rip her away from her family.
From her husband and child. There’s no telling what a person might do in that situation, even if that makes them a killer.
What I don’t want to admit to myself is that she probably killed dozens of people while in the employ of the order, and four more before…
“My mother passed when I was only a baby. If she escaped, how did she…?”
Die. But I don’t want to say the word aloud.
Ansaldo clenches his hands before speaking, and I already know I’m not going to like the next words out of his mouth.
“To get away from those she marked as her enemies—”
I interrupt him, my anger rising and crashing inside me like a tidal wave. “They made themselves her enemies.”
Ansaldo shifts uncomfortably. Good. The order may have seen it as an extraction mission, but my mother saw it as an assault on her family.
The Fiore’s are fierce, Nonna likes to remind me. We can be reasonable. But come between us and the people we love? There’s no telling what we’ll do.
“Your mother ran down the road, screaming for help. But she slipped on some ice and…”
He trails off.
I look away and take a stuttered breath. Killed by ice? Goddamn ice! No wonder Nonna never likes to talk about my mother’s death. What an awful way to go.
Even if it was technically the ice that took her life, it was the order who drove her to that moment. And, assuming Ansaldo is telling the truth, a freak accident doesn’t absolve them of the crime.
“When the last surviving Valtivar returned without your mother, we knew she was dead. Lucia broke her Themis oath that very night by having her tattoo and the skin around it removed, with no notice or indication of where she was heading. Though we could guess. She hadn’t met your father, and knowing she had a grandchild out in the world, I’m certain she felt a great need to be with you and raise you in your mother’s place. ”
“I’m shocked the order allowed her to leave,” I say, hating how small my voice sounds. Nonna was willing to have her skin ripped off to escape the order? That doesn’t leave the best taste in my mouth.
“Yes, well, she’d taken her blood oath,” he replies pointedly. “That oath can’t be undone. We knew we could trust her to keep our secret.”
Bes moves in behind me, placing a hand on the chair, fingers brushing my shoulder. Hurrying swiftly past the ache squeezing my chest at my nonna’s sacrifice, I consider my words carefully before speaking them aloud.
“As disturbing as all this is, it doesn’t explain why my nonna has recently been in contact with you. If she truly left and never looked back, then why do Bes and Cec know about her?”
Ansaldo’s gaze wanders from mine, bouncing between the two young men.
“I have no idea what they told you, but Lucia has always remained a personal friend of mine, given the long-standing connection between our families.”
I shake my head. “I don’t believe you.”
He watches me in that analytical way of his, not giving anything away.
“She was concerned—and rightfully so—about your expedition to the Temple of Seti the First. We assigned Bes to the museum in Cairo eighteen months ago to protect the artifacts there from being pilfered by the Third Reich, and she thought you could use the assistance. Or, at the very least, have someone looking out for you when she couldn’t be there. ”
I suppose that makes sense.
“The only way your nonna was going to allow someone from the order to get near you,” he continues, “was if she knew them. And her faith in me lent itself to my nephew.”
Misplaced faith, but sure.
Bes, I understand. But Cec?
I point to my other side. “What about Cec? He can barely see his own hands in front of his face. Not sure what the reasoning was there.”
Cec grunts. “Aye. One might think you didn’t like me very much, Hawkins.” Yet there’s no heart behind his complaint.
“We both know that’s not true,” I tell him flippantly, waiting for his father’s answer.
“We sent Cecilio to ensure you made it here, to give the two of you a direct line to the order and access to our resources. Bes…” His attention deviates over my left shoulder again.
“We hadn’t seen him here in years. He was always asking for his next assignment immediately after finishing his old one, presumedly so he wouldn’t have to come back here.
To be honest, he was too unpredictable to be left to such an important task on his own, and he trusts no one more than my son. ”
“Appreciate your confidence in me,” Bes mutters.
I have the urge to take his hand in mine—he’s learning about his true part in all this for the first time, and it must sting.
“Hold on.” I hold up a finger, struggling to catch up to the maelstrom of thoughts my brain attempts to sift through.
“I think you need to get your story straight, Uncle Arturo. Because it sounds like all my nonna wanted was for Bes to help me retrieve the museum’s precious artifact and get back home in one piece.
But you just said you sent Cec to ensure I made it here. It can’t be both.”