Chapter 26
26
BENNY
T he first time I see my son, it’s in a stranger’s apartment. A glimpse of his face, big dark eyes, messy dark hair, round cheeks. He streaks past me into Daisy’s arms. When he barrels into her, she scoops him up, never letting go of him.
I register that he is whole and safe. I have to turn my attention to the next step, eliminating the threat. Delivering the message personally that anyone who lays a finger on my family will pay in blood. I don’t have the luxury of sitting beside my own child and looking him over, making sure he is okay. I have to mete out justice as brutal as it is instant. I tap Gino to drive them home.
I help Daisy to her feet as she struggles under his weight, carries him herself. His legs are long, dangling at her sides for a second before he wraps them around her and clings like a baby koala. I touch her hair and she leaves, never even looking away from him for an instant.
She was scared out of her right mind tonight. That may explain why she wouldn’t let go of me, held onto my hand and leaned on me and looked to me for cues as to what to do, whether to sit or stand, accept tea or not. Like I was her whole world. When, in fact, her whole world is that little boy she’s been raising in secret.
This whole damn time, I’ve had a son and never knew. It’s eating me up even as I push it back into a vault so I can deal with Grigo Cappelli for the last time.
I nod to his mother and say I’ll wait outside. I give them fifteen minutes. Then I knock on the door. She sends him out, eyes red but her face resigned. He follows me to his car and hands me the keys without a word. I thought he’d be obnoxious and loud, threaten and beg and try to bargain. He’s silent. I’d say it’s unnerving but the whole damn day has been unnerving.
We go for a drive to one of my warehouses. I do what I have to do, and the cleanup crew is there to take over. By the time I take a shower at my place it feels like I’ve aged twenty years since this morning.
Drained and miserable, I know I won’t sleep. I work out, then flip open my laptop and search. I get on the school’s web site, look at recent photos. There he is, holding up a paper with big lopsided numbers written in little boxes, row after row of them, along with a couple other kids. “Great job Lily Wong, Jaxon Holloway, and Liam Cooper who wrote their numbers to 100 today!” the caption says.
He's in kindergarten. He can already count and everything—I missed all that. Crawling, walking, first tooth, first everything. It’s a punch to the gut. I pick up my phone to call Daisy, but I have a message from her.
Meet me for breakfast at 8? Same picnic spot, I’ll tell you everything. Thank you for bringing him home.
I read it six times before I agree. There’s no way in hell I’ll get a wink of sleep. My mood swings from shock that my dad is dead and that I have a secret child to absolute rage that she cheated me out of my son’s entire life up to this point, that she only told me because she wanted my help. He’s a Falconari from head to toe, and he was so brave sitting small and pale on that Facetime call, running past total strangers to get to his mom after the day he'd had.
I wonder if he’ll need counseling. I make a note in my phone to set up an appointment with my old counselor because I’m going to need it. Too much happened today for me to process it on my own. I’m going to need help coming to terms with the loss of my dad and now a brand-new son along with a ton of complicated feelings about it.
I pace the floor, knowing I can’t close my eyes till I know everything. I message Daisy to see if she’s still up. She is, and I drive to her mom’s house. She meets me on the porch.
She’s barefoot, and her hair is wet. She’s in sleep shorts and a tank top. I go hard at the sight of her like that, and I kind of hate myself for it. It’s inevitable, the way my body responds to her. Even now, knowing how she betrayed me, everything she took from me callously, selfishly, I still want to yank her shorts down and back her up against the house, make her sob my name and confess that she’s mine.
“Where do you want me to start?” she asks.
I scrub my hands over my face and sit down on the old porch swing. She takes a seat beside me but not too close. I have good memories of this swing, kissing her here, whispering about our future together, fingering her until she squirmed and I had to kiss her to swallow her cries. Those memories have no place here though.
“The beginning, I guess,” I say.
“I found out I was pregnant; I was scared, and I left town. I drove as far as I could. I was in a panic and I just wanted to hide out, never be found. I left everyone I knew behind. I thought I was doing the right thing at the time, but I was wrong, and my reasons—look, if I was too afraid to be with a guy in the Mob, I shouldn’t have been with you to start with. A pregnancy didn’t make it a more dangerous lifestyle, it just made it permanent to me in a way I couldn’t face. Before that I knew I could walk away. But once there was a baby, that tied me to you for the rest of my life. And we were kids. We had a great time, lots of fighting and making up and it was like the roller coaster on Coney Island in a lot of ways. Ups and downs, exciting and a little danger just for fun.”
She sighs, and I know she’s trying not to make excuses, not to justify what she did. I appreciate it, but the truth is, everything she says just makes me mad at this point.
“I wouldn’t even let my mom have a picture of him in a frame because what if someone came over and saw it and knew. Because all you have to do is look at him for one second and you know he’s Benny Falconari’s kid.” She had a rueful lopsided grin at that. “He’s so amazing, Benny. You won’t even believe it. He’s sweet and smart and funny. He’s the best parts of us and none of the bad. I’m so sorry I did this to you and to him. I don’t have a right to ask you to forgive me for such a huge betrayal,” she stops and sniffs, trying not to cry.
I don’t say anything for a while. I just look down at the ground and sit there, weighing what to say next.
“Remember the nights I used to sneak you out your window?” I say finally. She looks surprised and nods.
“Yeah, we’d drive around in your truck, lay out under the stars.”
“Wanna go for a ride?” I ask her. She bites her lip and nods.
“Let me go tell my mom and grab some shoes.”
I get in my truck and I’m almost surprised when she dashes back out of the house and runs to the passenger side.
She climbs in my truck and shuts the door.
“Where to?” she says.