Chapter Seventeen
Luca
The living room carries sound differently since the house emptied out. You can hear the vents, the soft click when the AC cuts out, the way the pool filter hums through the glass.
Late afternoon light slants across the rug and stops at the feet of the coffee table.
Giovanni takes the chair opposite me. He’s got a slim folder on his knee and a phone face down on the armrest.
Vito won’t sit. He paces, one hand in his pocket, the other cracking a knuckle against his thigh like he’s keeping time only he can hear.
“Good news,” Giovanni says without preamble. “Our people are almost finished with the last pass on the new box. They’re confident the anchor won’t see you leave.”
“Like last time?” I ask, lifting a brow.
My brother—the man who stepped in when I was away—doesn’t blink. “Better. We shaved the chatter down and widened the cushion.”
“If there’s a blip? What will it read as?”
“Give it a little more time, and there won’t be any,” he reassures me.
Vito stops pacing. “So we’re green.”
Giovanni gives him a look. “Not yet. We will be.”
Vito grins like it’s all the same thing. It isn’t.
I bite back the sigh. My impatient son. When will he learn?
I lean back, and the strap at my ankle rubs against my skin.
“The delay actually helped,” Giovanni says, speaking like he rehearsed it. “We let the noise die down. You’ve been boring. Only going where you’re supposed to. It pays. When we start walking again, we’ll be the last place they look.”
“Time and distance will make me look clean,” I say.
He nods. “Exactly.”
Vito rolls his shoulders like he’s itching to do something. “Fine, but when will we be ready bec—”
A look from me shuts him up quickly.
“When we are,” I say quietly. I turn back to Giovanni. “We loop everyone in tonight. Tight circle first. Then outward as needed. No one freelances. We don’t need any spotlights on us.”
I turn back to Vito with brows lifted.
“No freelancing,” he repeats.
“And you keep your mouth shut,” Giovanni adds.
“I said fine,” Vito grumbles, but I know he’ll listen.
Giovanni did more than keep the seat warm while I was gone. He kept the house standing.
When Carlotta died, the rooms went quiet.
Antonio and Giovanni filled them. Groceries showed up.
Cars got inspected. School forms were signed.
Someone always sat in the front row for every stupid recital and short-lived hobby.
If something broke, it was fixed by dinner.
If a kid needed shoes, they had three pairs before I even heard about it.
They didn’t just run the family in my absence; they raised my family.
When the kids got older, Giovanni pulled my boys under his wing without making me ask. Nico barely needed a hand, always watching carefully, thinking before he made a move. He watched and learned.
Vito… Vito needed more. He needed attention.
He needed supervision. He needed a patient hand, and that was Giovanni’s hand.
Vito was all heat, a fuse looking for a match.
Giovanni gave him time I didn’t have and a temperament I never learned.
It kept my son from breaking himself on the same walls I did.
Caterina insisted on being useful in a way that had shocked us all.
She had lifted her chin, looked me in the eyes, and told me she was going to college, daring me to disagree.
How could I say no to my little girl?
First in the family to go. Top of her class, then straight back to us with a degree and a spine of steel. Every ledger tight, every audit clean. I had to watch from a plastic chair and ten locked doors while my little girl turned herself into the most invaluable, indispensable person we had.
Pride was a strange thing in a place like prison, and it still hits me like a punch.
The ache of not having been here for my family never dulls. It just gets quieter when I don’t have too much time to think about it.
Usually, all I have is too much time.
Today, however, is when we start putting the plan into action.
Vito’s still up and pacing, walking back and forth. Nico would have sat and listened; Vito needs motion to hear you.
Giovanni follows my look and gives me a small nod I don’t have to translate. I know what it cost him to hold all the pieces together while I was gone. I know what it bought me.
“Tonight,” Giovanni says. “We bring the rest of the family in and decide who else. We keep it as tight as possible.”
“I can talk to—” Vito starts.
“No one,” Giovanni cuts in. “You will talk to no one. You just be here tonight. And keep your mouth shut. No victory laps before we’ve won.”
Vito breathes out hard, nods. “Fine.”
He wants action so hard it’s written across his shoulders. I know the feeling. The waiting carves you out from the inside. But waiting is what you do if you want to be alive to enjoy the result of your patience.
Giovanni taps the folder on his knee and stands. “I’ll start making calls.”
Vito pivots toward the slider, impatience tempered down to a simmer. He stops long enough to look at me. “We’re close,” he says, like he needs me to know he can see the finish line.
“Won’t mean anything if we can’t finish,” I answer.
“I know, Papá,” he says. “I know how much this means to you.”
“To all of us,” I correct.
For a brief flash, I see disagreement in his eyes. Just for a moment, then it’s gone.
He nods. “I’m going to head out. See you tonight, huh?” he says, stepping back.
“Tonight,” I say.
The glass closes. The silence returns. I rub my thumb across the edge of my cup and find I don’t remember drinking what was in it.
Five weeks.
I could pick up the phone. I don’t. Not because they’re likely tracking my calls; I can get around that. But because calling her again would be a mistake. For her, for me. She doesn’t need me making this harder for her. She doesn’t need me at all.
But I want to know if she’s eating. I want to hear her make that little sound when she tastes something she likes. The one I heard over the phone when I was walking her through cacio e pepe.
I want to know if she’s sleepwalking through her days like I am, drinking coffee and pretending her whole life hasn’t changed.
If I wanted to, I could know where she is every minute of every day. Nico is still keeping an eye on her after all, plus the public calendars, public buildings.
I don’t look. I don’t ask. It would be too easy to fall into such habits.
Our people say the box won’t notice when I leave. I trust that they’re right.
I could go to her again. One more time. One more night.
Five weeks without seeing her, hearing her, touching her. All contact had gone through Roberto, and that’s the way it should be.
Another night would be a mistake. Roberto says the first night was a mistake.
He’s wrong.
The night in her bed was not a mistake. It was not a test. It was a choice.
If I let myself think about it, I can taste her skin on my tongue and feel the way she went soft and then uncoiled under my touch.
I think about her hair undone and the small sound she makes when I find the right spot, the right pressure.
Has she thought about me at all?
Pathetic, I tell myself. Enough with this.
This is weakness, and I can’t afford weakness right now.
I’ve planned this for years, and we’re so close I can taste it.
Soon, it will be over, and my life will be mine to do with as I please.
Then I can think of her. Then I can consider…
I lean back with a whoosh of air.
She’ll know.
Elena will know.
She won’t be able to put me behind bars—I’ve made sure of that—but she’ll know it was me. She already knows I got out that night undetected. She knows what I’ve done, what I’m capable of.
Anything happens to that bastard Nick Dixon or Lucia, I’m the first name that would come to mind.
And that will seal my fate.
For the very first time, I feel something slip through me. An unease of sorts.
The same small slide of doubt I saw in my son’s eyes.
Before I can think any more about it, the glass doors open again, and Nico walks in.
His jaw is locked, and his eyes flick once around the room, then land on me.
Before he even speaks, I know.
Whatever it is, it’s going to change everything.
Again.
“Papà,” he says. “I need to tell you something.”