6. Massimo
Chapter 6
Massimo
" W hat about our son?" She says, frustration edging her voice. "What if he really is alive and you are just denying any possibility of that? How will we find him… how will we find the truth?"
"Truth." I breathe out heavily. Fucking truth.
Every time I think I know the truth it slips away from me - changes – moves – morphs.
All I have to focus on now is keeping my family safe while we are all together in this lodge.
I can't be distracted by her stories. Her dreams. Her manipulations.
Maybe exile drove her to madness, and what I'm seeing now are just the ramblings of a woman lost in her own grief.
"Vera, stop. How could someone hide my own son from me for six years?" I snarl, my blood boiling, my heart burning. " He died. We need to accept that. You need to accept that."
"I don't know." She shouts, as upset as I am.
"I can't deal with these stories. You know how dangerous this time of year is, despite the truce between the mafia families. I need to focus on security—on keeping my family safe. We're all here, in one place, and you're asking me to take a massive risk by trusting you. I can't. I can't put everyone at risk like that. My priority is the family."
"Our son is your family." She hisses with accusation.
I turn my back on her, clenching my fists so hard my nails dig into the palm of my hand. I am torn between the anger I feel towards her - and the love that I have tried for years to bury and deny - but keeps threatening to overwhelm me. It isn't real. None of it was real, so the love was never real either.
I have to remind myself of that.
I have to keep my thoughts in line.
Without looking at her I ask the obvious question. "How do you know our son was not stillborn, Vera? Three doctors were present. Three doctors confirmed it. One of those doctors was working with us through every checkup, over nine months. Why would he do something like that - lie about the baby being stillborn?"
"I don't know. Maybe fear? Threats against his family? Maybe he got offered more money than he could say no to - what makes people do stupid things?"
"Why don't you tell me?" I turn to face her, staring directly into those bright green eyes. "What makes people betray the ones they say they love?" my words are spiked with venom. Her face scrunches in emotional pain.
"Massimo this isn't helping." She sighs.
"You haven't answered me." I glare at her. "Why do you believe our son was not stillborn?"
She pulls her mouth tight, rubbing her hands against her eyes. "All these years, I thought I was imagining it. You know - the doctors told me it was like a hallucination - my body, as a mother, so desperate to hear my own baby crying that my brain was willing to trick me into believing that he was crying."
"Crying? I was there. I didn't hear it – there was a lot going on – but – I would've heard it," I stammer, trying to think back to that moment. When they told us he was still born I think I shut down. I blocked everything out. My memory of that moment is fuzzy and degraded with pain.
"I heard him. I swear it. No matter how many times they tried to convince me I was imagining it. I know I heard his cries as they carried him away."
I sigh, torn by the desperate need to believe my son is alive, but knowing that believing it means I have to accept the words of this liar. This traitor.
It also means that I have to face the agony of not having spent the last six years with him.
"You expect me to go on a massive hunt for my son based on your word, and your word alone - that you heard him crying. You want me to just believe you? How am I supposed to do that? "
"Because it's true. Because I was framed, made to look like the villain-- and I think they did it all just to get our son. I was nothing more than collateral damage in their plan to kidnap our baby."
"For what purpose, Vera? What did they gain from this?" I shout.
She stands up off the bed, puffing her chest out and pushing her shoulders back. Her eyes are fierce when she speaks.
"I don't care if you question me - I will do my best to answer everything - but don't you dare act stupid. You know very well the power your heir would have when it comes to negotiations and leverage." Her words bite into me. "Besides, if someone wanted to distract you – to hurt you and incapacitate you – what better way than to take away our son and – and me."
Of course, I know it's true. What she says makes sense.
I just can't process all of this.
I bite the inside of my cheek. Holding back my words and my thoughts. I can't let her into my mind.
I have to think.
I have to be rational.
But how do you stay rational when you are filled with hope.
Hope based on what? Her word? Her unrelenting conviction that our son is alive.
But hope that keeps growing no matter how hard I fight against it.
"What do you have to gain from me believing this lie?" I ask, quietly, more to myself than her.
"What?" She shakes her head, narrowing her eyes at me.
"You heard me."
"Nothing. If I was lying about my own child being alive - it would hurt me more than you - there is absolutely nothing I could possibly gain from sending you on a hunt for a baby that died six years ago."
She turns her back on me to try and hide the tears that I have already noticed.
I force myself to take several deep, slow breaths. This is getting out of hand. My emotions are running so high, they're clouding my ability to think clearly.
"Why Elio?" I ask after the silence in the cellar grows too thick.
"All the clues I have collected over the years point to someone very close to you. I thought it might be him – and then I overheard something while I was here too. I know - I know it's hard to accept. He is your cousin. He has known you since the beginning. But who stands to gain the most from your downfall? Who wanted the position of power that you now have?"
I sigh, not wanting to answer her, not wanting to say my cousin's name. I don't want to accuse him of something so serious without any real evidence.
But then again - isn't that what I did to her six years ago? That photo Eliot showed me – it could have been anyone. It looked like her, but it was blurred and taken from a bad angle. It could have been anyone.
What if she's right and my son is alive - what if she was framed?
If that's true, then the hell that she has been through over the past six years is unspeakable. Exiled, without her son, without me, watching me marry another woman. How would she not hate me for what I did? Or maybe she does hate me, and this is her way to seek revenge.
I stare at her for a long time, trying to force my thoughts into some kind of order. But my heart is overruling my logic, and that's a dangerous thing.
"I have to think," I say abruptly.
"Massimo, please come back and talk to me."
"You haven't given me anything solid -- nothing but your word."
"I know. I am asking you to trust me and help me investigate further. I can't prove any of it without you. That's why I risked coming here in the first place. And you have to know - if I was willing to take that risk it must be for good reason." She pleads.
"I have to think, Vera," I say again, turning away from her.
She looks broken. Deep inside me, all I want to do is reach out and hold her – but I can't. I need to be the leader of this family. I need to choose them over everything else.
I walk out, closing the door behind me. I'll have to fix that broken slat. I can't have Bella sneaking down here again.