Chapter 36 Giovanni
GIOVANNI
Harsh blue and red ambulance lights streak the stonework of the Caruso compound when I pull down the long driveway at a speed too fast to be safe. I slam on the brakes, kicking up gravel, before I exit my SUV with my gun in my hand and the engine still running.
The scent in the air isn’t suitable for a family residence.
It reeks of controversy.
Relief batters me when I recognize the generous frame of the person the paramedics are wheeling down the front stairs. Valentina’s aunt is strapped to a gurney. She’s pale and clammy but breathing. Dante is following closely behind her. He’s also pale but uninjured. Shockingly.
After storing my gun, I stride toward the paramedics and say in a commanding tone, “Take her to San Giorgio’s and make sure they know she’s a Caruso.”
The driver nods without pause. His loyalty will be well rewarded.
While waiting for them to load Maria into the ambulance, I pull out my phone and bring up the number of the phone I organized for Concetta’s room weeks ago. It’s the “free” iPhone she’s never questioned.
Not wanting the loud ring setting all women over fifty seem to have to wake Valentina, I send a text message instead of calling.
Me:
Maria is conscious and fine. Being transported to San Giorgio’s now.
Her reply is delivered fast.
Concetta:
Thank you.
She must type at the speed of lightning, because before I can request an update on Valentina, another message pops up.
Concetta:
The doctor said they’re keeping Valentina under sedation until he’s confident they didn’t miss anything. That gives you plenty of time to grab Valentina a change of clothes... and perhaps the baseball bat from my apartment!
Her suggestion re-sparks the darkness inside me. She knows what’s coming, but instead of shying away from it like she did a relationship with my father in her late teens, she wants to be a part of it.
I like that almost as much as I’m obsessed with her daughter. If she’s no longer afraid of what my family name means, she won’t object when I gift it to her daughter.
Me:
Consider it done.
When my phone whooshes, announcing my text has been sent, I store it back in my pocket and turn to face Dante. “What the fuck happened? When I tried to call to get someone to check on Maria, my calls went unanswered. I thought we were under attack.”
The instant our father became unwell, we became primed for our enemies to make a move. It would be the first internal mafia war since the Cosa Nostra was almost wiped out, but only a fool believes loyalties won’t be tested when he’s got everything to lose.
Dante rubs the back of his neck while muttering, “It’s complicated.”
“Complicated?” He did not just fucking say that to me.
Like a man not in fear for his life, Dante jerks up his chin before shifting his narrowed eyes to his right. My teeth meet forcefully when I follow his gaze.
Valeria is in the foyer of my family home, milling around like a fucking guest. Her composure screams the fragility of a porcelain doll with a large crack down its face, but that’s it. That’s all she is. Upset but relatively uninjured… and somehow still breathing.
My blood pressure spikes.
How the fuck is she still walking after everything she did?
My brothers were meant to handle this, yet here she is, breathing in the air she tried to permanently snuff from Valentina’s lungs.
The rage I’ve been struggling to contain all day is too much. I move before thinking. Dante shouts for me to stop, but I don’t hear a word he speaks. The fury burning me alive is too deafening.
Valeria flinches when I storm toward her, and a ton of excuses tumble out of her red-painted lips. “I didn’t know.” Her hands rise to protect her face like my punishment will only involve my hands. I’m not going to smack her around like her father did her entire childhood.
A bullet is much more effective.
When I yank my gun out of its holster, she talks fast. “All I did was ask the IVF nurse to place your sperm inside Valentina. That’s it.
I didn’t want to get fat taking hormones for egg production, and you weren’t interested in the old-fashioned approach, so I picked someone I thought would remain a random.
Someone I assumed you’d have no interest in.
It just helped that she had a similar name.
But that’s all I did, Giovanni. I swear. ”
Her tone is drenched in as much honesty as it is desperation, but I’m done playing nice. “Valentina was poisoned.” I crowd in closer until my shadow replicates the darkness I’m about to shove her in. “With the cake you gave her.”
Her eyes widen as sheer panic slides over her face, her mask ripped away. “I didn’t know he was going to do that.” Her crackling whisper can’t hide the truth in her statement. “I swear to God, Giovanni. I had no idea. He just asked me to give her the cake.”
An icy chill rolls down my spine as my wish for vengeance doubles. Good, because I have too much adrenaline to disperse for only one hit.
“He?”
That one word kills Valeria better than a bullet ever could. She looks panicked. Rightfully so. She knows I’ll be digging more than one grave tonight.
“Who is he, Valeria? And why would he want to hurt Valentina? The only person stupid enough to think they’d get any benefit out of her death is you…” My words trail off as the answer to my question wounds me like a bomb exploding in my face.
Two weeks ago, in this very fucking compound, I cut all ties with Tommaso when he delivered Valeria to me already injured. That wasn’t my request. I said I wanted eyes on her, but he took it upon himself to split her lip, bruise her eye, and give her a bloody nose.
I told him it was the last straw. If he couldn’t follow orders, he wasn’t the right fit for the Caruso name.
His mocking laugh rang in my ears for hours. “You don’t have a choice,” he said, like he had every leg to stand on. “My grandchild makes me family. There are rules not even you can break when blood is involved.”
And that’s when I made a fatal mistake. I told him the truth, straight from my heart to his ears. I told him Valentina wasn’t carrying Valeria’s child. She was carrying her own.
My confession turned his leverage to dust. It stripped him of any power he wrongly believed he held, and now Valentina is paying the price for my mistake.
My chest is splitting open, but it doesn’t douse the rage burning through me.
If anything, it feeds the flames.
Tommaso poisoned Valentina.
He tried to kill her to punish me.
To control me.
And now he and his daughter will die for his stupidity.
My focus drifts back to Valeria when she snivels, “I’m sorry, Giovanni. I didn’t know he’d do this when I told him there was no chance you’d pick me over Valentina, especially since she is carrying your child. I swear, I didn’t.”
I crouch down and look her in the eyes. “You think this ends with an apology? That I’ll let you walk because you said you’re sorry?” I fist my gun so firmly my knuckles go white. “Your father just declared war on my fucking family… for you!”
“No.” Her usually stern expression deteriorates as tears spill down her cheeks. “This has never been about me. Not our contract or the baby. It’s always been about what he wants. I didn’t have a choice. I’ve never had a choice—”
“I don’t care! Valentina almost died. So now you, and everyone in your family, will learn what happens when you come for what’s mine.” Her snivels ramp up to full-on sobs when I slowly inch back the trigger.
“Giovanni…” This plea doesn’t come from Valeria. It comes from Dante, who is standing at our side with his arms folded across his chest. “There’s more to this than you know.”
“I don’t give a fuck.”
“You might not, but Valentina may.” He steps closer, placing himself in the firing line. “You also know what Valeria is saying is true. You may not like it, but it doesn’t make it any less honest.”
“You’re on her side?” My words spit from my mouth. “She tried to kill the woman I love.”
“No, she didn’t.”
In sync, Dante and I rocket our heads to the side. There’s no sign of the illness that’s been ravaging our father’s body for the past year when he assists Matteo in tossing a battered and bruised Tommaso into the foyer of our family home, and then he slams the door shut behind Elio and Nico.
The war I was anticipating earlier is in effect, except the Carusos aren’t being brought before the courts. The Guiffridas are.
My father’s voice is a vicious snarl when he looks down at Tommaso and says, “That was all his doing.”
Tommaso’s expression is carved from arrogance, but there’s something else there now too. Behind the nicks and bruises is a fear he tries to mask with confidence. “There are rules you can’t ignore, Giuseppe. My grandchild gives me immunity.”
My laugh is bitter. “The grandchild your daughter just admitted can’t possibly be hers?” I shift on my feet to face Valeria. “What did you say again? You didn’t want to get fat, so you paid the IVF nurse to insert my sperm directly into Valentina.”
Tommaso’s expression announces his wish to add to the bruises that have faded on Valeria’s face, but he continues to play the game with narcissistic tendencies he always utilizes.
“Not that grandchild.” He locks his eyes with mine, then gleams like blood isn’t smeared across his teeth. “The one in Valentina’s stomach.”
I stagger back as if he swung at me with an axe, but he isn’t the only one skilled in acting. “Accusations like that will get you killed… slowly and painfully.”
My father’s voice breaks through the drumming in my ears.
“It isn’t an accusation.” Blood dots Tommaso’s chin when my father proves age doesn’t weaken a man’s protective instincts.
He kicks Tommaso in the stomach, folding him in half.
“It took Concetta’s reaction to Tommaso’s arrival for me to locate the final piece of the puzzle.
” His following confession sideswipes me.
“Valeria isn’t Tommaso’s only daughter. Valentina is his daughter, too. ”
“What?” That didn’t come from me. It came from Matteo, who’s forming a protective wall in the entryway with the rest of my brothers.
My father’s demeanor is so calm anyone would swear he was discussing the weather.
“When Valentina was born, a much older and ill-advised midwife ganged up on her younger and more vulnerable patient. She told Concetta that a father’s name must be on the birth certificate, no matter how horrid he was, or their request for asylum in the United States would be denied.
Concetta was so fearful he’d find them quicker in Sicily than he would in the US that her handwriting was barely legible when she placed his name on Valentina’s birth certificate. Valentina’s surname was registered as—”
“Raimondi instead of Raimondo,” I fill in as the fog slowly lifts.
My eyes shoot to Valeria as my father continues unraveling the massive net holding my family hostage.
“Everyone missed the truth because Tommaso went by his mother’s maiden name until his thirties.
He didn’t want anyone to know he was associated with the man who used to beat his mother to a pulp every night, even with him not doing a damn thing about it.
” He spits at Tommaso’s feet, disgusted.
“You were a grown man for half their marriage, yet you watched your mother be beaten every fucking night.”
When Tommaso doesn’t attempt to refute his claims, bile rises in my throat. I shouldn’t be surprised by his cowardice. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Tommaso turned out the same as his father—violent, manipulative, and rotten to the core.
As my father’s anger eclipses the leadership that brought our family great power, his tone lowers. “He changed his name when he found out at his father’s funeral that the Guiffridas had ties with several influential families. The most notable…”
“The Carusos,” I say with him, the haze fully lifted.
My father nods. “That was a month after Concetta fled the country.” When his anger gets the better of him, his boot lands in Tomasso’s stomach for the second time tonight.
Tomasso only smirks.
Valentina’s pregnancy makes him believe he has the world at his feet. He thinks it ties him to the Cosa Nostra for life.
I’ve yet to reach the same conclusion.
He didn’t lie when he said there are rules that protect him, but those same rules will cause his demise.
“You poisoned her,” I say, eyes locked on Tommaso. “You tried to kill your own daughter, and the woman I love, to punish me.”
Fools who think they have immunity are always the fastest to catch.
The loose skin under Tomasso’s jaw wobbles when he jerks up his chin. “I didn’t know she was my daughter at the time, but since your father can’t keep his nose out of where it doesn’t belong, I was gifted a lifeline not even you can take away.”
Idiot.
He just showed his hand, and he’s holding nothing but jokers.
“You got that, right?” I ask, stalking closer to Tomasso, my steps deathly quiet.
“From every fucking angle,” Nico replies on behalf of the family.
With comms down to keep this in-house, my brothers had to record Tomasso’s confession on their phones. Their footage is all the evidence I need to receive a full pardon for killing him.
When I pinch Tommaso’s forehead with the barrel of my gun, his breathing spikes. He still tries to play it cool, though. “You can’t kill me. I have immunity.”
“Had,” I correct. “If you’d done your research before trying to weasel your way into the Cosa Nostra, you’d know that term became null and void the instant you went after the spouse and child of a sanctioned member.
” I whack my chest with my fist to highlight who I’m referencing.
“It doesn’t matter how high up the chain you are, all spouses and children are protected under mafia law, which means I can use any force necessary to ensure the threat is neutralized. Including death.”
Tommaso’s throat works hard to swallow as he stares at my father, seeking the truth.
I know the exact moment it dawns on him that I’m not lying. His pupils widen and the fascinating scent of fear seeps from his pores.
“She’ll never forgive you if you kill me. I’m her fath—”
I pull the trigger, splattering the sparkling marble tiles of the foyer with his brain matter.
Then I turn the gun on his eldest daughter.