Chapter 37 – Luigi
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Luigi
T hey separated us. I made demands. I screamed. I almost pulled a gun out on a nurse, but in the end, the hospital staff carted Delphine away, claiming there were “complications” in her pregnancy and that she needed to be rushed away from me to have an emergency C-section.
I can’t handle this. We had a plan. I invited the family down from Buffalo to the hospital because they’ve spent all our time away tiptoeing around me and respecting my desire to keep my family private. I excluded the twins for obvious reasons.
They’ll have to do a lot more for me to earn my trust after their kidnapping stunt. I could have lost Delphine for good.
I could lose her now.
Nothing went according to plan. Dad, Mikey and Peter are still about forty-five minutes away from the small town hospital.
Nicoletta and Mom are traveling here in another car from their annual “girls’ weekend” in Hamilton, Ontario.
But they’ll all be here soon and I don’t know whether I’ll be a happy father or stuck in a tragedy.
“Luigi, I’ve been looking all over for you!”
Her loud, panicked voice catches my attention. I leap to my feet and Angela comes running down the hospital hallway, expertly rotating her body around every obstacle without looking while a dark-skinned man dressed in a wool coat trails behind her, looking at my sister like she’s magical.
Lewis.
I recognize him from the picture my father showed me taken by his private investigators when he sought proof of the affair that allegedly “caused” my sister’s ex-husband to smash every bone in her foot.
He has a deeply enchanted expression on his face as he watches her move and it’s hard not to see that this man loves my sister with it written all over his face.
She wraps her arms around me, ignoring the fact that I’m staring at the man I swore to my father I would kill if he ever came near our city.
If Delphine wants me to protect all of them, then I’ll find a way to do it.
Mikey and Peter love Angela just as much as I do, and I don’t think they give a crap about skin color or race the way our parents do.
“Where is she?” Angela says, her heart fluttering aggressively against her rib cage in a way that’s painfully obvious during our hug. “I’m going to kill someone if they don’t tell me where she is.”
“Emergency C-section.”
She turns over her shoulder, searching for support in the eyes of the man she chose over her family instead of her brother– the one crazy enough to bring a firearm into a hospital.
I shouldn’t allow the fact that she chose him to faze me, but it does. Lewis keeps his dancer’s body well-hidden in a pair of high-end wool pants belted at the waist, a black turtleneck and a black wool coat. He looks like an artist and more importantly, he won’t stop looking at my sister.
He won’t let her out of his sight the same way I am with Delphine.
And he doesn’t seem anything like the men in our family.
Not in his mannerisms, or his less than impressive height.
The guy is about five-foot-eight, which means if he changes his mind about hurting Angela, it will be easy to throw him into the Outer harbor with one hand.
“Lewis, this is my brother.”
“Nice to meet you.”
The guy shakes my hand with a surprisingly firm handshake and he doesn’t look scared as he makes steady eye contact while doing it. He puts one hand on Angela’s lower back as her body edges back towards his.
“Luigi Taviani,” I mutter, holding his gaze only momentarily before I seek comfort in Angela. Delphine is right to worry about my family after the hell they’ve put my sister through for this man. Lewis doesn’t strike me as a monster or like he could ever hurt my sister.
“I know you mean a lot to Angela and that means a lot to me. You will be safe here.”
“Don’t be dramatic, Luigi. Where the hell is Delphine?”
“I told you. They took her.”
“What the hell? Lewis. If my brother shoots someone, you don’t talk to anyone.”
Lewis looks terrified and like he can’t tell if she’s joking or not. But he must know on some level she’s telling the truth. He moves closer to her and I feel a pang of envy. I want Delphine close to me.
Luckily, I won’t have to shoot anyone. A nurse appears in the nick of time before Angela and I mutually push each other to lose our shit over Delphine’s disappearance within this hospital.
The nurse looks exhausted and my sanity hangs precariously as I wait for her to say something about Delphine and our baby.
"We have a lot of surprises for you, Mr. Taviani, but the doctor is ready to speak with you and have a conversation."
"Is Delphine..."
I can't bring myself to ask if she's dead. The terror is so primal that I can't get the words out. I don't want to make this real.
"Delphine is asleep right now, but she'll be able to wake up and hold the babies soon."
Angela verbalizes my one thought. "BABIES?!"
"Ma'am..." The nurse says in a hushed tone, meant to guide Angela towards using her inside voice.
"BABIES? SHE HAD TWINS? HOLY FUCKING–”
"Angela..." Lewis says in a calm tone, pressing his hand to her lower back and having the strange ability to actually calm my sister down and bring her tone of voice down to a sane baseline.
"Come this way, sir."
Angela and Lewis follow, even if the nurse never explicitly invited them. I don't chase them away and I'm glad that somehow, throughout all of this, Angela was here first. She keeps up with the quick pace through the hallways towards the postpartum recovery room.
"She's going to be okay, Luigi."
"We don't know that for sure."
"Yes, we do," Angela says. "She's our family. I don't want to think anything bad could happen to her."
"It would be horrible if someone were to drug her and strip her of her right to choose..."
"She's over it," Angela mutters. "Why aren't you?"
The nurse pushes open the door to Delphine's room and I forget Angela and Lewis are near me. I rush over to her bed and check the monitors and her body for breath as if I would have any capacity to change her situation were she dead.
I have to feel her heart beating for myself. I touch her arm, comforted by her warmth. I'm grateful that she's still here with me. The doctor lets me touch her and check on her with all of my unfiltered panic before she gets my attention.
"Mr. Taviani. Congratulations. You're the proud father of twin boys."
My head swims. I've never felt such an attack of uncontrollable dizziness in my life. Twins.
"There were no--"
"It's rare, but in some cases one twin will be hidden on an ultrasound because the two babies are sharing an amniotic sac. You're so lucky, they're beautiful..."
"Let me see my nephews," Angela says promptly while I stand there like an idiot, staring at Delphine and almost to the point of tears as I stare at her sleeping body.
She did this for me. For us. She carried those babies and protected them for all those weeks and finally, our lives have changed forever.
The deep, powerful, and instinctive urge to protect them sends crazy thoughts blazing through my skull.
"Mr. Taviani…”
The doctor continues with all the details of the procedure and what happened to Delphine as well as what she'll need when she comes home. If I thought this woman was vulnerable before, she certainly is now.
"I want to see them."
I finally manage the words after two minutes of listening to this doctor explain medical terms that I hope Angela is paying close attention to.
"Of course," the doctor says. "You can even hold them. Come around here..."
She walks me around to the other side of Delphine's bed where two tiny, sleeping and swaddled bundles lie together beneath a bright light. Their pale hands are intertwined with each other.
"They don't want to let go," the doctor says. "They were so close in the womb and they start crying whenever we separate them."
They're perfect. I never understood why parents were so obsessed with their children until the miracle presented itself before me in such a visceral way.
I'm scared to touch them. I feel too rough.
Too cruel. How did my father handle this situation?
I can't imagine Don Taviani in my position, holding a vulnerable creature in his grasp and feeling the weight of their existence.
Maybe this will change him the way it's changing me.
The doctor hands me my first son.
"This was the first one," she says. I wish I had been in the room when they came out, but the second I hold him, he makes a soft gurgling sound and I hold his warm body against my chest.
My little one. My son. The tears almost come, but the doctor hands me my second son and quieting the overwhelming emotions in my chest so I don't make a scene becomes my top priority.
The two boys still reach for each other and their gurgling doesn't stop until I hold them close together. Angela whips her phone out and takes a picture.
"We didn't have two names picked out," I whisper.
"I have an idea." Dad's voice emerges from the doorway and I nearly jump out of my skin. My fatherly instincts suppress that initial urge and instead, I hold the babies closer to my chest. I will never let anyone hurt them. Ever.
Lewis moves closer to Angela and the hospital staff freeze in place as if painfully aware of the tension erupting amongst all the members of my family.
"Peter, Mikey and Nicki are outside," dad says to me as he ignores Angela and approaches me with his hands outstretched, gesturing for the babies.
The hospital staff don't ask who he is or protest. It's obvious that dad and I are related.
We've always had a strong and noticeable resemblance to each other.
Reluctantly, I allow him to take my second-born twin son.
"This one will be Leandro," he says. "Little Leo."
"I'm sure Delphine will love that..." I mutter, kissing the first-born twin on the top of his head.
"She will love it," he says. "Because she's a part of this family, so I'm sure that comes with an appreciation for Italian names and culture."
He makes pointed eye contact with me. It's a tricky expression to interpret. He'll accept Delphine, but in return he expects... what, exactly?
"Delphine is a good woman."
"I'm sure," my father says, stroking my son's back. "She'll be faithful to you every day you're in Pittsburgh."
Ah, there it is. Pittsburgh. Again.