Chapter 62
Months later
“Thought you’d never show up again.”
Abaddon shrugs. “I’m not exactly the kind of man you want hanging around,” he says as we walk across the grounds of my estate.
“Have you taken a good look at my family on Elodie’s side? Or at myself, after I put an end to Fiorello’s life? None of us can really be called choirboys, my friend.”
He laughs. “And how did that sit in your head?”
“You mean killing Fiorello?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m not going to tell you that taking a life is something I ever want to make a habit of, but I also can’t say I wouldn’t do it again if my family’s safety were on the line.”
He nods in agreement as we look across the field at my wife, holding Leander in her arms, walking beside Mamma.
“You did it, Gianni. You’ve got the whole package now. A wife, a son, and your enemies destroyed or. . .disappeared.”
“What does that mean?”
“No one’s heard from Capria Mancini again,” he says.
“The rumor around Europe is that she ran off with a rich man wanted for fraud, hiding out on some island in Southeast Asia.”
“People do love to invent legends, don’t they?” Abaddon says.
“You don’t believe it?”
“No. Capria was lurking around Elodie, especially around the time of the wedding.”
“What?”
“I was watching from afar, but I knew she was nearby.”
“And why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I wasn’t the only one watching. Your wife’s family was keeping an eye on her, too.”
It doesn’t take me long to put the pieces together. “You think they. . .”
“Yes, I do. In the twenty-first century, no one vanishes without a trace. But if you want my advice, don’t ask questions. I can guarantee you that if something happened to her, it was because she tried to hurt Elodie again.”
“You know more than you’re saying,” I accuse.
“I do. But I’m not sharing it. You’ve reached the end of the rainbow, Gianni, and you found your pot of gold. Enjoy it.” He stops walking and turns to face me. “Before I go, though, there’s something I need to tell you about your father.”
“Related to the conversation we had the last time we spoke?”
“Yes. I told you I’d look into it, and I did. Your father was adopted. The adoption was sealed so tightly it was almost impossible to trace. He’s Sicilian. You were right to suspect it.”
I close my eyes, but I can still hear Mamma’s voice in my head, telling me what happened the day Ricco was born. “Go on.”
“I had a conversation with him.”
“You. . .?”
“No, I didn’t kill him. But I could, if it comes to that. I’ve got him somewhere.”
“What does that mean?”
“Some might say I kidnapped him last week when he was leaving the house of a seventeen-year-old girlfriend. I prefer to say I invited him to be my guest until I got the answers I wanted.”
“Talk.”
“As I said, Dino was adopted, but the whole thing was arranged so it would never be discovered. He was the result of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. They didn’t want him.
The woman who had him brought shame to her family, by the mafia’s standards.
Somehow, when he grew up, he found out who his real family was and went looking for them.
They were the same people who had hurt your ancestors. ”
“Fuck me.”
“He learned about his family’s tradition of harming Andresano women.
In fact, from what he told me, he was fascinated by it.
Even though he was raised by Catholic parents, normal people with no ties to organized crime, he always thought of himself as a bad boy.
Dino took it upon himself to fulfill that cursed tradition.
That’s why he approached your mother in the first place. ”
“Jesus Christ. Every time I think I can’t hate that bastard more than I already do, he proves me wrong.”
“He fell in love with Greta, according to what he told me, but he could never marry her—his Sicilian family would have killed him. So, he got engaged to Carina instead. When your mother found out, she wanted to end things. She kept her distance until your brother Ricco was born,” he continues, and everything he says lines up perfectly with what Mamma told me months ago.
“Very conveniently, he doesn’t consider what he did to her—taking her while she was drunk—as sexual assault.
He calls it seduction. The fact is, by doing so, he not only fulfilled the Sicilian ‘tradition’ regarding the Andresano women, but he also marked Greta, in the eyes of the mafia family, as his mistress. No one else could touch her.”
“A wonderful man, isn’t he?” I say sarcastically.
“A piece of shit, that’s what he is. Still, he destroyed your mother’s life, but he also saved it.”
“But he didn’t think about the two daughters he had with her. What about Donatella and Giovanna? They were in danger, too.”
“He couldn’t protect them forever, or the daughters you and your brothers might have, but he made a deal with his family that your sisters wouldn’t be touched until they turned twenty-one.”
“How generous. That doesn’t change anything, Abaddon. Any real father would have found a way to save his girls. Instead, he was busy upholding a cursed tradition, knowing it would ruin my sisters’ lives forever.”
“I know. And that’s why I still have him with me. Talk to Greta. Let her decide what to do. Tell her everything.”
I expected her to cry, but instead she just stares at me, her eyes empty of any emotion. No pain, no anger. Nothing.
“The last thing I wanted was to hurt you, Mamma, but I’m tired of keeping secrets. I don’t know what to do. Or rather, I know what I want to do, but I’ll let you decide.”
“What I want are two things, Gianni. First, that you don’t commit parricide.
You told me the girls aren’t at risk anymore because there are no longer any direct-line descendants of those damned men still alive.
The collateral branches won’t do anything to my daughters.
In a twisted way, they follow vengeance to the letter.
So, let him go. He’s ruined. The sons, without exception, despise him.
Carina and I have moved on. He will spend whatever time he has left on Earth alone.
When the little money he has left runs out, not even the young women he still manages to fool will stay by his side. He is nothing. He has nothing.”
The whole story is so sordid—a malicious act that ended up protecting its target but that ultimately created two more targets, Donatella and Giovanna—that it makes me want to vomit.
“Are you sure about that?”
“I am. However, I want to ask you one thing: never let him come near me again. I don’t want to look that man in the eye ever again, for as long as I live.”