Chapter 23
Bianca
Leo left to go back home. There are many matters to attend to, as he’s a Don now. The whole Borgata ’s operations rests on his shoulders.
He’s told me he wants his nonna in on the secret of my reappearance and Enzo’s existence first. This thought makes me squeamish. It’s not like I didn’t think my coming back would become public, that people would know. But Leo’s grandmother is a fearsome woman. Don Eduardo had been a strong and powerful man, but he’d never been intimidating. His mother, on the other hand? She’s the unofficial queen of the Mafia circuit in New York; all the women in the families respect and bow to her.
To have such a person in my corner will be a huge advantage, but will I actually have her in my corner? I slept with Leo when I was engaged to another man. I had a child with him out of wedlock, and worse, I kept this child a secret for so long. I’m not na?ve—she won’t take a look at Enzo and her heart will melt, all grievances forgiven and even erased, like it happened with my father.
It's quiet inside the house. Enzo tired himself out in the pool after breakfast, Leo going in with him. I’d had to avert my gaze more than once at the sight of him in nothing but tight briefs, the water clinging to the dark hairs on his well-built chest and strong legs, his arms bulging with honed muscle. I remember Leo being hard and fit—oh, how I remember this, the memory of our time together a film I sometimes allowed to play in my head when alone in my bed at night. But this man? He is fine, and I found myself salivating more than once as he splashed in the pool with our son.
Enzo had the time of his life in the water. Leo isn’t reckless, but he is way more carefree than I am around our boy. I’m what is called a mother hen—Hiro loved to tease me about it, and Leo has thrown the description out a time or two already. I laughed softly, because he’s right. Watching him with his son, though, I could see how much of a balance he’ll bring to the kid’s life. Relenting where I’m too careful, indulgent where I’m strict, yet also forceful in just the right degree when it matters.
Together, they laughed, and that’s the memory I will keep of this morning, the sound of their joyful glee as they bonded for the first time. No, the first time was when Enzo climbed into Leo’s lap when he saw his father putting peanut butter on his blueberry pancakes. The look of wonder on Leo’s face as Enzo parked his little butt in his lap—priceless. My heart squeezed almost to the point of breaking when he bent his head to kiss his son’s hair.
All this is running in my head, yet I know there are more things I need to address. Starting with where I’m going to stay now that I’m back.
I glance up when Mattia and Hana return home after their brunch. It seems there’s a bit of tension between them. I frown. This is all because of me, because Hana kept my secret. Still, a surge of hope flares in my chest when she turns to him with an almost pleading look on her face, and he doesn’t turn away from her, like he did last night. He’s not smiling, but the nod he gives her, it’s a start.
“Leo’s gone?” my brother asks as he comes sit across from me.
“Business to attend to,” I reply.
“Koji?” Hana asks as she settles next to me.
“Napping.” I turn to Mattia. “Father wants me to come stay at his place.”
His eyebrows meet in a frown. “You don’t want to.”
The way he says this makes me stare at him for a long moment. The man I knew from before I left would’ve point blank told me our father is right, that I should bow to his wishes. This Mattia, though, he asks me for my opinion, even though it wasn’t couched as a question.
The quiet force in his tone told me, more than anything else I’d witnessed so far, how much my brother has come into his own. As has Leo. They’re no longer young men flitting about life with the goal of handling their families’ affairs much farther down the line. Their time is now, and they seized it.
I can trust them. This isn’t the era of my father who spoke and his word was law.
“No,” I confirm.
Mattia’s eyes narrow on me, as if he’s weighing his words.
“You can stay here,” he finally says.
Hana grips my hand. “As long as you need.”
Mattia confirms with a nod.
A sigh of relief rushes out of me. I like it here, and Enzo’s already taken to this place like a duck to water. I don’t want to bring even more change into his life right away. I also don’t know what living arrangements Leo will want us to have—I don’t allow myself to think this far ahead. We need to take it step by step, me and him.
“Leo and I have arranged for security around this house. You’ll be safe here,” he says.
“I haven’t seen anyone around.”
He smiles. “Precisely. Our guys are good.”
Something strikes me in the way he said ‘our’ guys, and I gasp. “You’ve sworn Omertà to Leo!”
“Of course.” He shrugs.
What else did I expect? These two have been thick as thieves for all their lives.
They were always supposed to be the next generation of our world. Except, this wasn’t supposed to happen before they reached their forties, at least, when our respective fathers would’ve retired or bowed out of the game entirely. Don Eduardo being killed, it changed things. It gave Leo a seat at the table of a syndicate still boasting a majority of old men set in their ways. Their kind doesn’t like much less welcome new blood.
It dawns on me suddenly what a mess I’ve actually created by coming back. There’s no way we can keep my identity secret, no way I can use my cover name here. The ruse will be up at one point, and the longer we dally with revealing the truth, the worse it’ll be.
I wrap my arms around myself as a shiver wracks through me.
“What now?” I ask Mattia.
“We’ll have to inform the syndicate.”
I nod.
“How do you want to go public?” he asks.
I realize he’s giving me a lifeline. By having control over the narrative of my disappearance then my return, I’ll have some strings in my hand, at least.
However, I did this once, and look at the predicament we’re in now. Or if not, the clusterfuck we’ll be in soon once the other Dons come to know I’m still alive.
This reminds me I have a way to help Leo out, and ultimately, Mattia and my father, too. It’s one of the reasons I decided to come back. It’s a given they’ll keep me and more importantly, Enzo, safe, but I can also help them out.
“Can you take me in town today?” I ask my brother.
“Why?”
“There’s something I have that might help. It’s in a safe deposit box at the Kontar Bank.”
He frowns. “Do I want to know about this?”
“It’s for Leo.”
“Okay,” he replies. “But…put on your disguise.”
I didn’t apply any makeup on this morning. As such, I don’t look like Bérénice so much. That look fooled both my father and brother; no one’s going to recognize me as the missing-presumed-dead Bianca Bonucci.
“I’ll look after Koji,” Hana says with a smile.
I get up. “No time like the present. Let me get ready, then we can go.”
Mattia nods, and I meet him next to his car ten minutes later. He ushers me into the back seat of his SUV, and I frown when a big, burly man slides into the front passenger seat. Right, security. Guess we’ll have a bodyguard with us.
It takes us about half an hour to get to the financial district with the mid-afternoon traffic. I’m in and out of the bank in as much time. One of the reasons I chose this place is the strict confidentiality regarding its clients. No one here signaled a safe deposit box in Bianca Bonucci’s name all this time, and the prestige manager-slash-concierge who attended to me today didn’t blink an eye at my reappearance. Security wasn’t flagged, so we were good—the retinal scan wasn’t affected by my makeup and clearly recognized my iris.
The USB stick now in my possession, we returned to Lenox Hill, where I asked Mattia to call Leo over, letting him know he should bring a laptop with him. I’ll need a phone since mine still has a Japanese SIM card in—I’ll let Mattia and Leo decide about this. Dons usually have special devices they dole out to their crews and people.
Leo replies, asking if he can come over for dinner. Hana and I start preparing food as we wait for him to arrive in the early evening.
Enzo is a little ball of energy when he wakes up from his longer-than-usual nap. Guess the time difference and jet lag is also affecting him despite us having gone west, which should’ve made it all less harsh. He’s a rocket who propels himself into Leo’s legs when the latter steps into the house shortly after seven.
Leo laughs and catches his son in his arms, pulling him in for a long hug before settling the kid onto his hip. I can’t help the goofy smile on my face as I watch them. When Leo comes up to me and presses a kiss to the side of my head, a part of me sighs inside. This, the domestic picture we present right now, it’s what I’ve always wanted. Alas, it’s not a given for us, not at the moment.
Everything inside me sobers, and I bite my lip. We have our biggest hurdle still ahead of us.
“You brought a laptop?” I ask him.
“It’s in the car.”
“Can you get it, please?”
Enzo refuses to come to me when I try to untangle him from Leo’s arms. Leo ends up taking him along to retrieve the computer. I’m holding the USB stick when they return. This isn’t something I want to expose in front of my son, though. How can I get him to give us a moment alone?
Hana comes to the rescue, probably reading the room and also knowing the device I hold has precious information for our entire family.
“Koji, come help me put cheese in this sauce.”
He’s scrambling down and rushing to her in the next instant. We’re making mac & cheese from scratch. Hana will have her hands full keeping him from eating all the grated cheese, but it gives us the respite we need.
“Come,” I tell Leo.
At the last second, I’m hesitant to take his hand. Where are we going, the two of us? I know he wants to be in his son’s life, which means I’ll have a place in there, too. But us? We haven’t spoken of any serious matter since the steamy kisses we exchanged last night, and I’m in limbo now, fully taking in the ramifications of my return.
“Hey,” he says as we enter Mattia’s office and he closes the door softly behind him.
“Hey,” I mutter back, peering up at him from under my lashes.
“What’s wrong?”
I bite my lip so hard, I can taste the coppery tang of blood. When I release my lower lip, Leo’s thumb comes up to brush it softly.
“What are you doing?” he murmurs.
“I…” The words elude me, and I can only blink up at him.
“We’ve got this,” he reassures, his fingers unfurling on my jaw, palm warm and strong.
I burrow into his touch, my eyes closing briefly.
“I made a mess of everything,” I blurt out.
Leo inhales sharply, the sound swift and visceral in the quiet of the room.
“We’ll figure it out,” he says.
I nod. My hand has closed on the memory stick, its sharp lines biting into my palm and reminding me I hold something which could help.
I hand it over to him. “I looked into Ardian before I left.”
His face clouds over. “That fucked up shit he was into?”
“Not just.” My Sorbonne friend had sent me four files—I only looked into the last one while I was planning my escape. “He kept diaries, jotting down notes on everyone he’s ever met.”
“You have those?”
“They’re four years old by now, but some of it might still help you.”
He takes the device from me and plugs it into his laptop.
“File number four,” I tell him. I won’t risk having him opening the photos or videos of those fucked up torture porn things my ex-fiancé was into. One viewing was enough to scar my mind.
I watch him reading the notes jotted on the images, snapshots of diaries probably kept as a security measure in the cloud, too. His eyes flit left to right quickly, and I’m reminded he’s a fast reader—Mattia used to tell me Leo read two to three books a week when they were younger.
“You’ve read all this?” he asks, looking up at me with narrowed eyes.
I nod. “Will it help?”
“It might.” He sighs.
What he doesn’t say and that I however hear—this is material for blackmail, and that’s something he’s not ready to get into. Not yet. Not unless as a last recourse, anyway.
My shoulders deflate. All this could’ve been for nothing.
“I’m sorry,” I say again, my lip trembling. What chaos have I gotten us into?
Leo’s out of his seat in a flash, his arms closing around me as he pulls me to him. I snuggle into his embrace, my cheek pressed to his chest, his heart beating under my ear. Its pace is rapid and thudding, which doesn’t calm me at all.
“It’s not your fault,” he murmurs close to my ear.
“It is—”
He’s pulled away so fast, I’m reeling, words cut mid-sentence.
“I won’t have you berating yourself,” he says, voice strong, clipped, forceful.
I can’t escape the compulsion woven in them even if I tried. And I don’t want to even try—at the end of the day, I am just a woman in this game of men called the Mafia.
“Leo,” I mumble, breath hitching.
“Shh.” One hand is solidly anchored at my waist, the other coming up to press onto my neck, his fingers grazing my jaw. “You did the right thing. You protected our son.”
As I look into his eyes, the conviction in them travels to me and seeps into my blood.
Our son. Enzo.
“He’s all that matters,” I say softly, Leo’s certainty infusing me, too.
His fingers tighten on my face, and he forces me to face him even more, to give him my eyes, my whole attention.
“ We ,” he stresses. “We’re all that matters.”
I gulp softly, wanting his certitude to thread into my every cell.
“You leave the rest to me,” he adds.
As he claims my mouth in a ravenous kiss, desire powers through me.
Desire, but also dread. Leo’s on the rampage. I don’t fear for us, but the people who’ll stand in our way? Lord have mercy on them.