Chapter 15
Bianca
“ Maman! Look! Neko! ”
I laugh, watching my son be absolutely riveted by the cat strolling around the park. Brave animal, to come to this section full of little kids with grabby hands and too much enthusiasm and love.
“He just spoke in three languages,” Anne-Marie, the mom sitting next to me on the bench, says with awe.
I laugh a little. “Yes. We speak to him in all three at home.”
For our cover in Japan, I need to speak French, and he also goes to a French-speaking daycare. I speak English to him, as well. Hiro addresses him entirely in Japanese, hence the fluency of flowing into three tongues and being able to convey exactly what he means.
It’s a joy to see him being so open and talkative. Just last month, the team of doctors who have been following him since birth gave us the all clear. He made all the milestones expected of a three-year-old child at pretty much the same pace as one born at full term despite being born at just thirty-one weeks.
Enzo approaches the cat and lets it sniff his hand. Soon, he’s petting the animal, a look of pure wonder on his little face.
When he smiles, my heart bursts with love, at the same time it constricts with pain. That smile, it’s his father’s. It’s Leo’s.
I so wanted to name him Leo when he was born. But that would’ve been too obvious. So I settled on Lorenzo—Enzo for short. Lorenzo Picard has the initials LP, like Leo Pellegrini, or Lorenzo Pellegrini if he’d been born in the US with his father aware of his existence. Leo would’ve offered to marry me as it’s the honorable thing to do, especially in our world when you get a girl from another Mafia family pregnant. We would’ve been a family…
I tear myself from this idea and watch my beautiful little boy get up and start to run after the cat who got scared by another squealing child. But at one point, he trips and falls.
I’m out of my seat in a flash and rush to him. My chest is on the point of exploding when he lifts his head and stares at me, tears brimming in his big dark brown eyes.
“It’s okay, koji ,” I say as I run a hand over his messy dark hair. The locks look just like Leo’s, down to the cowlick slightly off the center of his forehead. “It’s okay to cry.”
He burrows into me, and I cradle him close. Guess fun times are over for today. It’s best we head home. I get my purse and the bottomless baby bag I’ve been carrying everywhere for the past three years from the bench and prop my little boy at my waist, being careful not to graze his skinned knee any more.
I wave goodbye to Anne-Marie, then it’s a short walk back to the apartment building. Enzo’s small sobs are muffled in the crook of my neck. The sniffles are going to come soon. Good thing I can get him cleaned up once upstairs then put him down for a nap.
The elevator doors open, and I get out, heading to the left to my apartment. I get in, surprised to hear Hana’s voice reverberating in the quiet interior. The sound shakes Enzo out of his half-asleep state, and he starts crying.
“ ?a va aller, mon petit c?ur ,” I croon as I hurry inside. I catch a glimpse of Hana in the living room, her back to me, phone held in front of her on a video call.
I swallow and rush past. She’s talking to Mattia. I can’t let my brother see me. As things stand, he could have heard me. I try never to be at home when she calls him, for fear he might hear me or see me if I pass inside the same room Hana’s in. He thinks this is Hiro’s house, where he lives with Bérénice, his partner, and their son, Koji. Koji means little one in Japanese; it’s our nickname for Enzo. Hana wasn’t expecting us back before another hour, at least, hence why we caught her on this call.
I stop inside the hallway, listening.
“Wait, who was that?” Mattia asks.
“Just Koji with his mom,” Hana replies, sounding evasive.
Does Mattia pick up on this, that she’s brushing him off?
“It just…” he starts. “Bianca sounded just like that when she spoke French.”
“Hearing a woman speak French triggered you,” Hana says.
I gulp and close my eyes tight. I’ve known all this time she was protecting me, but hearing her now, it dawns on me. Hana is gaslighting my brother, her own husband, and she’s doing all this because of me.
I can’t let this go on, can I? But what other choice do I have? I can’t go back. Even if Mattia gets suspicious—and why would he after almost four years—even he won’t ask me to come back to New York should he decide he actually heard Bianca and not Bérénice on the phone right now and flies over to check.
No, I’m letting doom grab hold of my mind. I have to focus. I’m doing all this for my son, and that’s what matters.
Enzo is already tuckered out by the time I get to the bedroom. I put him down carefully on his bed. There’s no point trying to get him cleaned up and changed now as he’ll just wake up in a foul mood and sniffle for the rest of the day. I get an antiseptic wipe and run it on his skinned knee, then leave the room.
On the threshold of the living room, I stop. Hana’s still on her call, and I bite my lip when I hear Mattia’s voice again. I never knew how much I would miss him. Knowing he’s there and that I left my life as Bianca Bonucci behind is one thing, and I was able to deal with that. Then Hana came after Enzo’s birth, and when she thought I was asleep, I heard her talking to Mattia. Hearing his voice, it reminded me how far he is from me, how I can never go back to see him again.
Today’s no different. My heart squeezes, tears forming in my eyes. I can’t let them fall.
I hear Hana say goodbye and end the call. When silence echoes for a full minute, I step out into the living room, making sure to face her and not risk ending up being picked up by her phone camera.
“It’s okay,” she says. “Coast is clear.”
“He heard me, though.”
“No, he thinks he heard Bérénice.”
I sit down across from her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you’d be on a call. Enzo tripped at the park and—”
Hana jumps to the edge of her seat. “Oh my God, is he okay? Does he need a doctor?”
I smile, still charmed by her mother hen tendencies. It’s been this way since she came here two months ago. Tensions were running high in New York, Mattia worried the Albanians might come after the families of leading Mafia men. He sent her back to Tokyo where he knew she’d be safe. When she was here after Enzo’s birth, the two weeks she spent with us, he was in an incubator in the NICU. She cared for me more during that time.
“It’s just a skinned knee, Han. He’ll be right as rain by tomorrow.”
“Still. Shouldn’t you monitor for fever, for an infection?”
I stare at her fondly. I was just like her a few years ago. At the first sign of any trouble with Enzo, I’d be speed-dialing his doctor, who conveniently chose to not understand my English and broken Japanese and continuously told me to let my son grow as all these little ailments weren’t known as growing pains for nothing. Hiro, poor guy, was the recipient of all my new mom anxiety back then.
Today, I know when to let life run its course and when to get alarmed. Motherhood does that to you. I’m not blasé, but I can weigh the importance of everything affecting my son’s life.
Hana still has the anxiety-clouded goggles of someone who hasn’t gone through these trenches yet. My heart clenches for her. She and Mattia have been trying for a baby all this time, and still nothing.
“He’s fine,” I reassure her.
She deflates with a big sigh, but something tells me there’s more to her sagging than the relief surrounding her beloved nephew.
“What’s the matter?” I ask her.
She sighs again. “Mattia wants me to come home.”
I frown. “It’s safe for you?”
“Yes.”
A lulling pause settles in the room. Hana has this way of keeping things secret. She’s good at compartmentalizing. So this silence? I know there’s something she’s not telling me. Should I press her for more?
“I don’t want to go,” she finally says.
I tense up. “What do you mean? Something wrong between you and Mattia?”
She shrugs. “No, but…”
“But what?”
“I like it here.” She pauses. “With Koji.”
So that’s it. These past few weeks, I’ve loved the reprieve she’s brought where my parenting duties are concerned. It’s not easy being a single mother. Hana loves feeding Enzo, even on those days when it feels like achieving world peace would be easier than getting a piece of broccoli into him. She enjoys bath time, especially ending up covered in suds with all her clothes drenched. She has infinite patience with him when they lie on the rug discussing his horde of dinosaur figures.
She wants to be a mother so badly.
“Have you thought about IVF again?” I ask her.
She shrugs. “Maybe. I don’t know. I think we might have to.”
“Aww, honey.”
All I want is to hug her. But Hana’s a very private person, not liberal with her affections, except where Enzo is concerned.
“I wish you could come home with me,” she says, voice small and barely audible.
I open my mouth, though no words come out at first.
“I can’t.”
Her silence sets a pregnant pause in the room. It gets to me, this quiet, scrambling my mind.
“Wait,” I say. “I can?”
She nods slowly.
“How?”
“Bianca’s not been declared dead. There was only a memorial, not a funeral. Legally, she’s still alive.”
I wave a hand in the air. “I know this. But the other thing…”
She looks the other way, biting her lip.
I frown at her. “What are you not telling me?”
Hana’s good with secrets—look at me here, all these years living under another name. Her own husband has no clue about it.
My mind is churning, all sorts of ideas feeding it. When this happens, I know it’s best I get the facts or I’ll dig myself an extra-deep hole and then plunge head first into it in my quest for answers.
“You say there’s peace now,” I tell her. “How did it happen?”
She swallows, hard, and looks out the floor-to-ceiling panes behind me.
“Han…” I warn.
She can’t start opening a can of worms and stop after just hinting at it.
“Fine,” she mutters. “Don Eduardo Pellegrini was killed last month, in retaliation for the death of Ardian Abrashi which happened at the hands of Leo Pellegrini.”
I gasp. “Leo killed Ardian?”
“Sounds like it. It was brushed off as an accident, a bad fall.”
I remember when it happened. Less than a fortnight after I’d landed in Tokyo. Hana called Hiro’s landline to tell me I was safe, that the marriage deal was off.
All this time, Leo took care of this matter. Hana and I had set out clues that would’ve incriminated Ardian for my disappearance, for my presumed murder.
He took matters in his own hands.
For me?
I can’t stop my heart from swelling at this thought. Did Leo step out for me, killed my fiancé so I’d be free of the deal my father made for me? I recall him telling me he could do this for me, for us, in that loft in Tribeca. We would’ve had the entire Abrashi family to deal with, I’d reminded him.
Was that the start of the war?
I didn’t keep myself abreast of what was going on in New York. It’s a life I’d left behind.
But each time Hana has come back, a slice of that existence has returned. It’s here now, with me, in this room.
As I process this information, another realization slams into me. My back lands with a whoosh against the cushion behind me, the notion hitting me like a freight train going at full speed.
“Leo’s the new Don,” I say.
Hana nods. “Yes. Mattia was just telling me the syndicate has approved his position.”
My jaw hardens. “Reluctantly, I’d bet.”
She frowns. “How did you know?”
I laugh, but it carries no mirth. “I know their world, Han. They can’t refuse him the position because his father made it clear he was the Pellegrini heir.”
“But…?”
“But they can make life a living hell for him now. They’re the Old Guard, in the syndicate. They don’t like young, fresh blood making it into their ranks.”
Hana shakes her head. “I don’t get it.”
I grimace. “Theirs is a world built on rules, on certain conventions and traditions they adhere to like parasites clinging to their unwilling host.”
I think of this, and my heart breaks for Leo. He adored his father, where I have always loathed mine. Don Eduardo was more like a wise older friend to him. I didn’t even find it strange when Mattia invited him to his bachelor’s party. He kept an eye on us all yet also partied with the younger set, a perfect bridge between our two generations. Everything our world needs with the syndicate on one side and the young cohort our age.
They’re going to try to make Leo into one of them. And when that fails, as Leo is a man who bows to no other who hasn’t earned his respect, they’ll brow-beat him into submission. Little by little, they’ll make him come to heel.
Beautiful, strong, dependent Leo.
They can’t do this to him. I can’t let this happen, though who am I —
An idea flits inside my mind. I do have a way to help him. However, that’s locked in a vault in New York, in a safe deposit box that requires my retinal scan to open the lock.
I can’t help him if I can’t set foot in New York again. Maybe a quick jump? I can send him the memory stick anonymously. What will I do with my son, though? I can’t leave him here, nor can I take him with me.
Another realization makes me blink, freezing as horror slices through me.
A Don needs an heir.
They’ll force Leo to marry, beget a son.
Except, Enzo is already his heir. My son is now the child of a Mafia Don.
It’s not like I didn’t know this. But Leo should’ve become a Don in twenty years, at least. Enzo would be an adult then, having lived his life away from the dark and violent ways of the Italian-American Mafia. If he wanted to get to know his father at that point, I wouldn’t stop him.
This? This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not when my son—our son—is a child, completely defenseless and a prime target should anyone ever find out who he is. The child of a Mafia heir is one thing; the son and heir of a Don is an entirely other matter.
I could stay here. But I’m coming face to face with a conundrum in Tokyo, too. Hiro is the heir of his oyabun —this is becoming clearer with each day that passes. Japanese society knows me as his unofficial partner; we’ve never denied this, even though it’s clear Enzo isn’t his son. Hiro will be the boss of a yakuza clan one day. He’s made no move to settle down yet, but he will have to marry someone one day. It can’t and won’t be me—we love each other like siblings. When that day comes, he won’t be able to protect me and Enzo like he’s doing now.
Enzo, who’s the first-born son and apparent heir to a controversial Mafia Don. The syndicate itself could send someone after him should they ever find out.
The only one who can protect us is Leo himself…
I gasp and inhale in a deep breath.
I ran away for one reason and one reason alone: to protect my child who hadn’t even been born then. When Enzo came into this world, I knew he held my life in the palm of his tiny hand. I would do anything for him. Because of him.
He’s the only thing that matters.
I gulp down hard and blink the living room back into focus.
I also miss my brother. I didn’t think I’d miss him so much, after what he did to me, forcing me to go ahead with the wedding to Ardian even after all I uncovered. But Hana’s told me how much he’s regretted this decision, how hard he took my disappearance, and also how much he wants to make amends…amends he thinks he’ll never get to make.
I can’t deny him this–it’s time he knows I’m alive and well. I have to face him, and face my past, too. I can’t run. Not anymore.
“Han?” I say. “I…I might need to go back to New York with you.”