Ricardo
Chapter Two
Julia O’Brien is Dante’s friend.
That should settle it.
It’s a simple fact, a clean boundary. One of the few lines in my life that should require no interpretation at all.
She is twenty-six. She is my son’s friend. She works for my brother.
There. Settled.
Except the thought refuses to stay where I put it.
It follows me through meetings. Through long conversations with men who mistake politeness for weakness. Through dinners with my brothers. Through late hours in my office, when the city is black glass and scattered lights beyond the window.
She says my name directly. No hesitation, and no attempt to flatter me.
I like that. Maybe a little too much.
She does not simper or stiffen. She does not try to impress me, which is rare and more interesting than it has any right to be.
Most people change the moment they realize they are speaking to a Conti.
Some try to flatter us. Some get nervous.
Some offer whatever they think we want. Some try not to be noticed at all.
Julia looked at me as if she could handle me.
Not foolishly or carelessly.
She understood there was a knife somewhere in the room. She simply did not rush to show me her throat.
That kind of woman is dangerous.
That kind of woman makes a man wonder.
And wondering is exactly the problem.
I think about her as I drive through Chicago, one hand on the wheel, the other resting against the center console while traffic crawls ahead of me.
Julia O’Brien is not in the car. She is not in front of me.
She is not saying my name in that steady voice or looking at me as if she has already decided I do not frighten her enough to make her foolish.
Still, she is there.
I think about Mario’s office. The coffee.
The way she kept working while I sat across from her.
The way she answered me without rushing to fill every silence.
She did not flirt, exactly. She did not perform.
She treated me like a man she could speak to plainly, and I have spent too much of my life around people who speak to me through calculation.
Julia calculates too. She would have to. Judge Patrick O’Brien’s daughter would have learned that before she learned half of life’s kinder lessons.
But she does not make herself smaller when she calculates.
That is what I remember.
I also remember green eyes. Freckles over the bridge of her nose, faint beneath her makeup, more visible when the light catches her face. A composed mouth that does not soften easily, which makes me think of what it would take to make it soften for me.
No.
Dante’s friend.
Dante, who stopped by Mario’s office to take Julia to lunch again. I remember him throwing his arm around her and calling her Jules while they passed my office, and I tried not to be too obvious about paying attention.
I know it is friendship. I know Dante does not want her in the way a man wants a woman. He looks at Julia with affection, with protectiveness, with the ease of someone who has known her through years I was not part of.
That should make me grateful.
In some ways, it does.
I like knowing that she has someone so protective of her. And I like knowing that my son is capable of such protectiveness.
But it does not make me like the situation anymore.
Not because he has done anything wrong. Because he occupies a place in her life that I do not.
He has Jules.
I have Miss O’Brien, Julia, and a cup of coffee I have thought about far too often.
The light turns green. I ease the car forward and leave the densest part of the city behind me.
I should be thinking about the boy’s new home.
It started after Victoria officially moved in with Mario.
I cannot blame the twins for wanting space. Mario’s house has changed. Not badly, by any means. It’s warmer, like the house in Italy was when Anna was alive.
Victoria is a few months pregnant now, engaged to Mario, and the two have apparently been acting like newlyweds, so the boys say. So the boys generously decided that the new couple needs their privacy.
Then Lorenzo’s boys decided they wanted in on a little independence, too. As usual, they managed to convince Dante to join in on their antics as well.
So, all five of them have gone in and bought themselves a bachelor pad.
I snort at the idea of it. The phrase is absurd.
A bachelor pad is an apartment or house with a leather couch, a television too large for the wall, and a refrigerator full of beer and takeout containers.
Not a gated estate with eight bedrooms, a wine cellar, imported tile, a private gym, a pool with a waterfall and a grotto, staff quarters, reinforced gates, and enough security infrastructure to make a foreign minister comfortable.
Tomasso told me I was being narrow-minded and to open my eyes to the possibilities.
So here I am, pulling into the drive of a sprawling estate with old-world Italian bones; limestone arches, a tiled roof, cypress along the front approach, and the best security money can buy.
The house sits far enough back from the road to make surprise difficult and surveillance expensive. Mature trees border the property. Cameras are hidden, but I know where six of them are before I reach the gate.
Private security in addition to the system.
I never would have allowed them to buy if it hadn't been securable.
I stop in front of the gate and wait.
A camera turns slightly toward the windshield.
I stare back.
The gate opens too slowly.
I make a note to have that adjusted.
I drive through, continue up the long approach, and pull into a circular drive that currently looks like a very expensive storm has passed through it.
Two moving trucks sit near the front steps.
A delivery van is parked at an angle that would make any competent driver ashamed.
There are boxes stacked beneath the portico, furniture wrapped in plastic, three rolled rugs leaning against a column, and what appears to be a marble statue of a headless Roman soldier sitting in the middle of the lawn.
I turn off the engine and stare at it.
Why is there a headless soldier on the lawn?
The front door opens.
Tomasso appears with a floor lamp over one shoulder and a grin on his face.
That answers very little and explains too much.
“Zio Ricardo!” he calls.
Behind him, someone shouts, “Do not bring that through the front!”
Tomasso shouts back, “It is a lamp, not a bomb!”
“It is ugly!”
“You just don't have taste.”
“And your taste is all in your mouth,” came the response.
I step out of the car.
The July heat hits first, followed by the smell of fresh paint, cut grass, cardboard, and young male confidence. A dangerous combination.
Tomasso jogs down the steps with the lamp still over his shoulder. He is Mario’s son in the face, but there is a lightness to him that Mario has never possessed. Matteo carries the weight. Tomasso dodges it, dances around it, occasionally sets it on fire for entertainment.
“You made it,” he says.
“I said I would.”
“Yes, but Papà says that too, and then he sends three men with clipboards.”
“Your father has wisdom.”
“My father has trust issues.”
“Your father has sons.”
Tomasso considers that. “Fair.”
I look toward the headless soldier. “What is that?”
“Art.”
“No.”
“It’s classical.”
“It is headless.”
“That’s how you know it’s old.”
I stare at him.
He smiles wider.
I point at the lamp. “Where is that going?”
“My room. Edoardo objects, but he does not get a say in what goes in my room.”
From somewhere inside, Edoardo’s voice cuts through the open door. “I suppose if you wanna look like you live in a brothel from 1978.”
Tomasso lifts his hand toward the house. “Maybe I do.”
I walk past him toward the front steps.
The inside is worse.
Not structurally. The house itself is beautiful.
High ceilings. Dark wood beams. Pale stone floors.
Ironwork along the staircase. Arched doorways.
A wide foyer that opens into a sitting room on one side and a larger formal room on the other.
Whoever designed the house understood old Italian influence without turning it into theater.
The boys, unfortunately, are doing their best to correct that.
Boxes are everywhere. Open, half-open. A crate of dishes sits beside what appears to be a set of boxing gloves.
Someone has placed a stack of folded towels on a bar cart.
A very large television leans against the wall beneath an antique mirror.
There is a mattress in the foyer, blocking half the walkway, and a framed poster of a vintage race car propped against the bottom stair.
Matteo stands in the center of it all with a clipboard, of course.
He looks up when he sees me, and relief flashes over his face quickly.
“Zio Ricardo.”
“Matteo.”
“Thank God.”
Tomasso comes in behind me. “Dramatic.”
“You labeled four boxes ‘Important Stuff,’” Matteo says without looking at him.
“It was all important.”
“One had shoes. One had protein powder. One had poker chips. One had nothing but sunglasses.”
“All important.”
“There were seventeen pairs of sunglasses.”
“For different moods.”
“You have two moods. Hungry and insufferable.”
I raise a hand. “Enough.”
Both of them stop.
A miracle.
Temporary, but still.
I look around. “Where are Dante, Edoardo, and Alessio?”
“Dante is upstairs pretending to supervise so he doesn’t have to carry anything,” Matteo says.
Tomasso nods. “Edoardo is actually supervising. Alessio is missing.”
“Missing?” I ask.
“Emotionally,” Matteo says. “Physically, he is somewhere on the property.”
A crash comes from deeper inside the house.
Everyone goes still.
Then Alessio shouts, “I’m fine!”
A second voice, likely Edoardo’s, says, “What about the thing you dropped?”
Tomasso grins. “Found him.”
I close my eyes for one second.
When I open them, Matteo looks apologetic, and Tomasso looks delighted.
“This,” I say, “is why your fathers drink.”
“My father drank before us,” Tomasso says.
“Because he sensed what was coming.”
Matteo presses his lips together like he is trying not to laugh.