21. Elio
Chapter twenty-one
Elio
The blinds are half-drawn when I walk in.
Aria’s father, Karl Abruzzi, is a far cry from the last time I set eyes on him.
His skin is pallid under the pale glow of the overhead light. He turns his neck towards me, glancing with an expression I can’t quite decipher. His sunken cheeks look even more hollow as he lifts himself into a sitting position.
His entire body seems to be feeble, but his eyes are as sharp and piercing as those of mother hawks.
“You’re Elio,” he says finally, his voice croaky but firm.
“Yes, Sir.” I step closer, keeping my shoulders relaxed.
His sharp eyes do a quick sweep over my tailored suit and polished shoes. “You own the Donatelli Empire.”
A soft chuckle momentarily hitches my response, but I nod slightly instead.
“Hmm.” He shifts in the bed, his gaze steady and unflinching. “Let me tell you something, young man. My daughter is my world. If you hurt her, I don’t care how much money you have, I’ll make your life miserable.”
The corners of my mouth twitch. “Understood, Sir.”
“I mean it,” he says, the tone of his voice gaining strength despite his physical frailty. “She deserves someone who will treat her right, not someone looking to show off his checkbook…”
“Your daughter means a lot to me,” I cut in with a steady tone, “I’ll take good care of her. You have my word. As a matter of fact, I came to give you this.”
My fingers reach for the silver envelope I had tucked into my breast pocket earlier this morning.
His slightly trembling fingers reach for it. “What’s this?”
“It’s a cordial invitation to our wedding, Sir. The date has just been set.”
He raises his eyes to me, turning the envelope in his hands as if he’s contemplating whether to open it or not.
“Congratulations. I’m happy for you both. I hope my daughter is happy, too.”
The lines on his face crease deeper as he takes the card out, running his eyes through it.
“Aria is more than happy, and it’s going to stay that way. Please help me keep the news just between us. She doesn’t know this is out yet, and I plan to surprise her.”
He tucks the envelope away in the side table’s drawer just as Aria enters the room, her heels distinctly clicking against the linoleum floor.
She walks in like a goddess, her dark hair left to tumble over her shoulders, down to her back, her eyes lined heavily, and her lips painted in blazing red. Seeing her like this awakens a deep sense of pride in me, knowing that I am the only man who has ever tasted this woman. And I’ll be damned if I let anyone change that fact.
Now, I cannot believe she went to work looking like this. Who did she dress to impress?
She freezes when she sees me, her dark eyes widening in surprise before narrowing into a glare.
“Hey, honey.” Whatever she wants to say automatically gets shoved down her throat as she turns her attention to her father.
She curls herself up in his open arms, closing her eyes as if to savor the smell of antiseptic and the combination of drugs that fills the air.
“I’m so glad you’re finally leaving this place. It’s like you’ve been in here forever.” A bright smile crosses his face. “I’ll get the nurses so they can get you prepared to leave, okay?”
He bobs his head in a nod as she rises, a wide smile lightening up both their faces.
“You’re coming with me,” she whispers, hooking her arm onto mine and leading me out of her father’s room.
We’re only a few steps away from his room when she yanks her arm away from mine, swirling to meet my gaze.
“Elio,” she says sharply. “What in God’s name are you doing here?”
I raise a brow, gesturing toward her father’s room. “Paying my soon-to-be father-in-law a visit.”
She storms toward me, grabbing my arm. “A visit? Without telling me?” Her voice is low and calm, but the anger in it is unmistakable.
“I didn’t think I needed permission.” I smile with amusement at the contrast between her red lips and her peach-colored skin.
“You had no right to come here without telling me!” she snaps, her dark eyes flashing.
I lean my body against the wall, crossing my arms. “I was trying to help.”
“Help?” She glares at me, her voice rising. “Elio, I don’t know what games you’re playing, but this is my father. Okay? You don’t just show up to meet him unannounced?”
“Easy, Princess.” I close the tiny space between us, tucking her hair away from her face. “Listen, I’m not playing games with you, alright? You’re mine now…” Her lips part invitingly, but I take two steps away from her, shoving my hands back into my pockets as a nurse strides towards us, “...and I don’t play games with what’s mine. It’s as simple as that.”
“Fuck off, Donatelli, I’m warning you!” With that, she inhales deeply, exhaling through her mouth, her large, dark eyes now filled with fury, before pushing past me back down the hall.
My teeth grind against my jaw as her hips sway mercilessly until they recede into a corner. The marriage ?fake or not? is the last step to making her unquestionably mine, and to successfully go through with that, I must be in her father’s good books.
What kind of son-in-law would I be if I can’t even check in to see how my future father-in-law is doing?
Father-in-law. It sounds extremely strange just thinking of it. Turning on my heels, I make my way back to his room. While she’ll be processing his discharge papers, I’ll be here, giving Karl Abruzzi every reason to like me.
***
Aria’s father is already sitting up by the time we get back to his room. His wrinkling hands are now free from all the needles previously inserted into them. He’s looking more alert, as if the news of his discharge took ten years off him.
Aria places her hands all over him, making a fuss about what part of his body still hurts and if he’s sure he wants to return home alone or if we should take him home ourselves.
“We’re taking him home,” I say. Surprisingly, he nods without protesting. Aria turns around to catch my gaze, giving me a sneer. My teeth clamp down on my lips immediately, biting back a grin.
“Well, I guess that’s it then.” She places an arm around his shoulders to help him up. “We’ll get your belongings at the reception desk.”
“I’ll go bring the car closer to the exit doors,” I say, completely ignoring the two pairs of piercing dark eyes from Aria and Karl Abruzzi.
***
“That was a nice car you got there, Son.”
My eyes dart towards Aria, and a wide grin spreads across my face. “Thank you, Sir.”
Her eyes widen unbelievably.
“Son?” she calls out after her father, who is trying to open up the blinds in the living room of his place, which is where we ended up after Karl’s hospital discharge.
“It’s a good thing you called the cleaning agency to take care of this place earlier on, Aria. It would have been a mess by now,” he says, completely ignoring his daughter’s previous remark.
Aria shakes her head, still holding me in her piercing, disapproving gaze.
“I’ll just go prepare something for you to eat.” She turns around to walk away, but her father’s voice stops her.
“Why don’t you make a meal for all of us? It’s my first meeting with your fiancé, after all.”
She opens her mouth to say something, then changes her mind and clamps it shut again, storming into the place I believe is the kitchen.
Karl’s house sits quietly on the corner of a modest street. A single-story bungalow with peeling white paint and a small, neatly tended front yard. This is the kind of house that speaks of family, love, and beautiful memories.
The living room is cozy, with a faded but well-kept sofa set, a coffee table polished to a shine, and an old television resting on a sturdy wooden stand.
Family photos line the walls, some slightly crooked, showcasing Aria’s life in snapshots: her high school graduation, a family vacation, a photo of her father in uniform, proud and young. There’s no picture of her mom or any other family member. I wonder if they’ve all been stashed away to help her and her dad move on from the painful losses.
There’s a faint scent of lavender in the air, likely from the bowl of potpourri on the table. Old, but classic.
“You know you can go join her in the kitchen. You’ve been staring in that direction since she left this room,” Karl’s voice calls out from the sofa where he’s seated.
My lips curl in a small smile of appreciation as I stand up, taking the same path I saw her walk through.
I rest against the doorframe, watching her as she rummages through the fridge and cabinets, pulling out ingredients.
My heart lurches in my chest as our last discussion about Frank Paterson flashes through my mind. There is no way I’d have told her that Ezra murdered Frank, and that I’m trying to cover up for him by framing a not-so-innocent man.
She cannot know the truth. Something deep in my gut hasn’t fully accepted her as an ally to my mafia business yet. And my feelings for her have nothing to do with my business. Or, at least, I am trying to keep them separate. Besides, her dad is the Deputy Chief. She could become excited one day and decide to tell him all about the story.
“What are you making?” It slides from my tongue as a low growl, a futile attempt to reorganize my mind. The small bottles in her hands tumble to the ground as she turns around to face me, eyes wide with alarm.
“Hey, easy…”
“I’ve got it,” she snaps, her voice wavering as she bends to pick them up.
I take large strides towards her to help, but she’s got them before I can assist. My eyes catch her uncoordinated and jerky movements as she sets a pot of water on the stove and opens a jar of tomato sauce.
When she tries to cut the garlic, the knife slips, nearly nicking her finger.
“Careful,” I say, stepping forward and grabbing the knife from her. “What are you trying to make, for God’s sake?”
“Spaghetti,” she replies, not looking at me. “With meat sauce and a side of garlic bread.”
I stay back, amusement and suspicion growing side by side in my gut like twin parasites. It’s clear she’s on edge, but her fidgeting is completely uncalled for, except she has something to hide.
Still, I let her work alone since she doesn’t want my help, content with enjoying the sight of her trying to maintain control while she whips spaghetti up for dinner.
The smell of simmering sauce fills the kitchen, mingling with the aroma of buttered bread warming in the oven. Aria glances at me occasionally, her lips pressing into a tight line as if she’s willing herself not to say anything.
When she’s done, and we go out to serve the food, her father is already seated at the head of the table, looking better than he did at the hospital.
His face relaxes into a wide grin at the sight of the meal. “This looks great, sweetheart.”
“Thanks, Dad.” Aria blushes slightly, avoiding my gaze as she sets down the plates.
One forkful of spaghetti into my mouth, and my phone vibrates in my pocket. It’s Cortez. He’s called twice already. This has to be something urgent.
I wipe my mouth with a napkin, excusing myself. Aria raises a brow at me but I give her a reassuring smile and step into the hallway to take the call.
“Cortez, Parla con me (Talk to me).”
“ Capo , we’ve been able to track the number from the burner phone. It belongs to Bruno Moretti…”
The rest of the words sound like a blur to my ears. My grip tightens around the phone, and my teeth gnash together in rage.
The Morettis. Bruno Moretti is just second-rate scum, and he had the audacity to rob me? He had the effrontery to infiltrate my men and turn one of them against me?
That pussy-assed fucker!
Rage spreads through my veins like wildfire. Cortez is saying something about some recovered text messages, but I don’t care. All I want is to grab Bruno by his neck and twist until his neck snaps and his bone juts out at an unnatural angle.
“Ready every ammunition you can find, Cortez. I will not let Bruno Moretti and any of his goons live to see another day. I’ll make sure I wipe their entire lineage off the surface of the earth so they find no way to exist anymore.”
“ Sì, Capo.”
The line goes dead.
I begin to pace around, chewing on my lower lip, hands trembling in fury.
I had expected the attack to come from a bigger, more organized family. The Morettis are supposed to be too minute to come up with something like this against someone like me but since they’ve even attempted, there’s going to be a bloodbath now.
“Elio?” Aria’s voice pulls me from my thoughts. “Is everything okay? Dinner’s almost over.”
I nod, dragging a forceful smile onto my face and following her back to the table.
“You haven’t touched your food yet, and it’s getting late,” Karl says, glancing at the clock on the wall. “You two should stay here tonight. There’s no need to drive back so late.”
“Um…no, Dad.” She turns to look at me, shaking her head slightly. “Elio and I both have work tomorrow.”
Aria’s father waves a hand dismissively. “Nonsense. What do you think, Donatelli?”
“I think it’s a great idea,” I say, forcing a polite smile. Aria turns around again, but I don’t indulge her. Something about the warmth in her father’s offer hits me harder than I expect.
The easy affection between them is foreign to me, a sharp reminder of what I never had with my own father.
Her father nods in approval, easing himself out of the chair.
“I’ll be off to bed now. Don’t stay up late, you two.” He turns to Aria. “Like you rightly said, you have work tomorrow.” He turns around, giving me a nod as if to say ‘good night,’ then strolls into his bedroom.
A chill man, I see. If only he didn’t go after mafias…
Aria swirls on me, but I shrug my shoulders up in a defensive gesture, scooping spaghetti into my mouth so I don’t have to respond to anything she says.
Luckily, she only grabs her plate and storms into the kitchen.
***
I cannot tell why, but her jitters bother me. The way she trembles when I walk a few feet close to her, avoids my eyes, but keeps stealing glances at me when I’m not looking…I know something is wrong. And it’s more than just nervousness that I’m at her father’s house.
My hand slides into my pocket again to retrieve my phone and redial Cortez.
“ Capo ,” his tone is low, more subdued than it was a few moments ago.
“What have you got on Aria? Did you tap her calls like I asked you to?”
“Yes, Capo , the girl’s clean.”
“You mean she’s never had one suspicious call?” I can almost hear Cortez shaking his head at the other end of the call.
“No, Capo . She’s only been speaking with her dad, her friend Mia, and people from work. Although speaking of her workplace, I’ve got some recordings from her conversations with a guy at her office which I think you should listen to.”
“Send them.”
It only takes a couple of minutes before my phone chimes with the recordings?three of them.
I wonder why Aria was so overly frightened when she saw me with her dad, if she has nothing to hide. Could she have already ratted me out to him?
My finger clicks play on the first recording, hoping it would leak something…anything, out to me.
“Aria Abruzzi.” I can swear that I have heard the familiar accent in that voice before. Just as my brain is trying to place it, Aria responds on the call.
“Friedrich, hi.” Ah…so it’s that jerk from the gala? “Look, I’m truly sorry about what happened at the gala, okay? My fiancé didn’t mean to hurt you...”
So now that miserable animale (animal) made my girl apologize for what I did? My fingers clench into a fist on my lap.
“Oh yes, he meant it, Aria. Did you see how he looked at me? I had to get my thumb fixed at the hospital. Do you know how humiliating that was for me?”
Aria sniffles in the background. “Friedrich, he couldn’t have tried to crush your bones using only his palm. He just has a strong grip like that. I’m really sorry.”
The Friedrich guy scoffs, “No offense, but that guy is psychotic. You need to think about who truly has your best interest at heart…”
As a preventive measure against hurling my phone across the room, I dump it on the sofa beside me but I can’t stop the rage coursing through me.
The thought of Friedrich speaking to her that way, and of her having to pacify him because of me, makes my blood boil.
She walks out of the kitchen that same instant, and I’m tempted to call her over and demand an explanation, but that would be me telling her that I wiretapped her calls.
“You have a comfortable mansion, which your nice Porsche can take you to in thirty minutes. Why did you decide to stay here instead?”
I’m already pissed, and in no mood to start an argument with her, so I just shoot to my feet.
“You have a father who cares so much about you. It would be rude to decline his genuine offer.” My hands brush against the worn leather of the couch as I pick my phone up.
With Mendez missing and Donald Henshaw dead, I need some time to clear my head?somewhere away from my own residences. So this is my getaway plan, but of course, I don’t mention it to her.
“Any father would do that…”
“Not my father.” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. “Your father is a good man; cherish him. If I were you, I would worship him. Many fathers didn’t even want their children, let alone love them.”
“You’re speaking of your father.” It’s not a question, but the sudden softness of her voice stops me in my tracks. “Was it him who’s responsible for all those scars on you?” The soft crunch of her footsteps tells me she’s walking towards me. “Oh, Elio, what did you ever do to him?”
“I existed.” I turn around to look into her large eyes, now dimmed with something I would never accept from anybody else: Pity. “The man loathed me because he had me.”
“But why? Didn’t he want kids?”
She places a hand on my arm, leading me back to the couch I stood up from.
“I don’t know what he wanted, but I know what he didn’t want: responsibility besides himself.”
She opens her mouth slightly, a gasp escaping her lips.
“What about your mom?”
“My mom was given to him because her dad owed my dad’s family…” She clamps her palms over her mouth. “The man never loved her and always treated her like dirt. He would go out to gamble with money my mom gave him, and if he lost it, it was her fault.”
A lump forms in my throat as the memories come flooding into my head. “Then, when I was born, he expanded his transfer of aggression. According to my mom, he beat her a lot when she was pregnant with me to get rid of me. And then, when I was seven, Dad brought home a pregnant woman. He used to beat her, too, but not as much as Mom. He hit me and Mom so much that it became very weird on days when he didn’t?like the day Cortez was born.”
Her eyes widen with shock. “Cortez?”
A small smile touches my lips as I nod. “Yes. He’s my half-brother.”
“So he became more considerate after Cortez was born? I mean, your father?” Her eyes reach to hold mine as a furious growl rolls past my throat.
“Considerate? Princess, he doubled over into a vile beast. Cortez… his mother didn’t stay long after he was born. She ran. My mother tried her best to look after him as an infant… to look after the both of us.”
My voice has lost its ability to deliver a smooth speech. All these years, I thought I had grown past the excruciating pain attached to this memory, but now I know, it’s only been hiding under my seemingly perfect composure.
“W... what happened to your mom?” Her voice is soft now, almost a whisper.
“He killed her.” There’s no smoother way to say it. “He bashed her head against the sharp edge of a table when I was only thirteen. I believe he smashed her skull…”
A sharp gasp from Aria causes me to stop. Her fingers are curled into my shirt, tightening her grip on my arm as if she, too, can feel the pain in my heart.
“Please tell me someone called the cops,” she whispers shakily. Her voice is so low that I have to bend my ear to her lips to catch them.
“Hate to break it to you, but no one did.” A brief, unexplainable spasm of laughter hits me. “Even in that last moment, there was a smile on her face. Cortez was yelling his lungs out, so my dad picked him up and took him out. I never saw him again. He was only six.”
A tear slips down her pearl-colored cheeks, sliding down the curve of her chin.
“I’m so sorry, Elio.”
“Don’t be,” my voice is unusually stiff, “some people are fated for misfortune even before birth. I was unlucky to be one of them. I left the house when I was fourteen because I couldn’t take it anymore. Every time I walked around that table, I saw my mom lying there with her brains spilled all around.”
She sniffles, taking a palm to cover her nose and mouth to prevent the sobs from blowing over into wails.
“Ezra found me years later while I was picking food from a garbage can. I started out as his guard and worked my way up to his second-in-command before he finally handed the empire over to me upon his retirement.”
Aria reaches out to place an arm around my shoulders, wiping tears off her cheeks with the other hand. “Listen, you can’t blame yourself for any of this. You’ve always been more than enough—your dad just made some really bad choices. Bad stuff happens to good people sometimes, but that’s all in the past now.”
I smile…a faux, empty one, as I place my arms around her slender back.
Perhaps I’m way bigger than my father’s abuse now, but shadows of the past still loom over me like unappeased evil spirits.
They made me who I am today…ruthless and unforgiving.