37. Ariana
37
ARIANA
Portia reaches into the hole between the exposed floorboards and pulls out two packets of sealed moleskin notebooks. At a quick glance, I’d say there must be at least twenty of them.
“To think she still did this, wrapped them carefully just like they are now and sealed them herself.”
With reverence, she wipes the dust off the plastic Ziplock bags, but there’s more. Ribbon with a wax seal that has never been tampered with. Portia kept her word.
She hands me a packet, and I’m suddenly weak with the weight of secrets carried between these pages.
“These are the older ones,” I say, noticing a small square of discolored paper with the years written in pencil on it. “You must have the more recent ones. Where do we start?”
“Ideally, we need to read all of them to get the full picture. Right from the beginning,” Portia says as she forces a nail between the ribbon and the wax to rip it apart. “But let’s just figure out what was going on in her mind during that last trimester.”
She rips open the Ziplock and pulls out a stack of moleskins. They seem to be ordered by date, because she hands me one and keeps the one right at the bottom of the stack with her. Even from here, I can see the journal she’s holding was never fully used. Where all the others show signs of complete wear with all the pages flipped and written in at one point, the one she’s holding looks almost new.
As I open my journal, a photo slides out and to the floor.
Portia reaches for it. “Heavens, there’s so few photos of them. Here, put a face to the name,” she says, pointing to the old photo. “This is Bianca Randazzo on her wedding day to Don Scalera. See, there’s Randazzo.”
Bianca Randazzo ? Heavens help me. Was she his cousin, his sister? My stomach seems to drop to the floor. Here it is—the whole connection captured in a fleeting moment.
“Were you there?” I ask, somewhat breathless, trying to hide my shock.
“No, but she showed me this photo once.”
I take it from her, my fingers quivering. Randazzo . I haven’t seen an image of him in decades. This one is taken from his side, and that tell-tale notch in his ear is clearly visible. Just looking at him like this tenses me up with fury, and I exhale with strain, trying to keep a hold on my emotions. Now isn’t the time.
Instead, I focus on Bianca. She was beautiful with lush chestnut hair, tanned olive skin, dark eyes, deep and somehow mournful in this casual wedding photo. But it’s Don Scalera’s face that pulls me in the deepest. Dominic is the spitting image of his father, if a much taller hulk of a man.
Something shifts in me. Relief . Deep, foundation-shaking relief. There’s no chance we’re related. Neither the same mother, nor the same father.
I slot the photo back into my journal as Portia opens hers with a sniff.
“This is dated six weeks before she went into labor.” Her eyes skim the lines.
I lean in to look closer, but she’s already flipped the page. She trembles with a few suppressed gasps, then goes over into big heaving sobs. Tears run and splatter down on the page as she grips the notebook.
“Portia—” I murmur, reaching for her hand. This woman is reliving trauma, and I so wish I could spare her.
“I can’t…I just can’t—” she cries out between sobs. “I can’t do this. I’ve never been able to do it. It’s like taking a blunt knife and carving into my heart. I knew she suffered, oh, God, how I knew it, but to see it like this—” She brings her hands together in prayer, closing the journal in the process as she brings it up to her face, already trapping her tears on some of the pages. “You know, after the twins, the doctor told her to never have more babies as it would kill her. And then, she was blessed with Benedict. I don’t know what Don Scalera was thinking, getting her pregnant again.” With a wild sniff, she looks at me, tears glazing her eyes. “I can’t read this.”
“So let me,” I say, feeling shredded by the power of her emotions. Already, I sense there’s a stronger connection between me and this family than I ever thought possible, but Portia lived this time with Bianca and her sons, now grown men. She witnessed Bianca’s abuse, her pregnancies, and her last days… God, I totally understand why she can’t do this. “Just let me. I don’t have the same connection to Bianca as you had.”
She nods, tears not stopping. “This is why you’re here. This is why God send you to us. To right this wrong that was made decades ago.” Her grip loosens on the moleskin, and I gently take it from her. “God works in mysterious ways.”
And sometimes, he doesn’t work at all. But I keep this thought to myself. As I open the book, Portia slumps back against the wall, looking completely exhausted. Who knows what battles she’s been fighting since learning of Gabriella’s existence.
I open the first page. It is just a blank journal, and Bianca wrote the date on the top of each page on which she made an entry. I take a quick glance over a few pages. Some days, the entries are a line or two; some days, there are pages. If this was six weeks before she went into labor, then she didn’t write much. She must have been exhausted and anxious, clearly not supposed to be pregnant at all, and waiting in dread to see if this birth would finally be one too much.
“Read aloud, will you?” Portia whispers at me from her side of the walk-in closet, where we’ve cut ourselves off from the rest of the world.
“Okay,” I whisper and turn back to the first page:
I can’t. I can’t anymore. My anxiety for my little girl, for my Gabi, is too much. I know they’ll save her because I’m done. I know I’m not surviving this one and I’ve signed the papers. I don’t even have the strength to push her into this world. Already this is so much worse than with Benedict, and I can’t bear looking at my sons, knowing I’m leaving them to fend for themselves.
I swallow. “Papers? What papers did she sign?”
“Like a living will,” Portia says. “I witnessed it. A legal document forcing the doctor to save the baby if it becomes a decision between saving her or the baby. She had the same in place with Benedict.”
A shudder passes through me, having never heard of such a thing before, but in this world, anything is possible. What was this poor woman going through? I jump to the next entry.
The last thing I ever wanted was to bring a girl into this world, to fulfill the final term and condition of the sick pact they made. If only I could have died with Benedict as was the plan, this would never have come to pass.
I glance up at Portia, and she’s stilled, taking in the words, putting them in a context I don’t have.
“Benedict. Do you actually think she fell pregnant with Benedict in the hope to—” I break off, unable to say the words.
“No, that was just wishful thinking. The Don didn’t stop with her. Ever. It was just a matter of time.”
I wipe at my cheek, the cruelty of Dominic’s dad being hammered into me from all sides today. “What do you think she means with final term and condition of the pact they made?”
“I don’t know. We’ll have to read the rest. I told you, to get the big picture here is going to take time.” She glances at her watch. “Can you scan through it? Find the salient parts.”
“Okay.” I skim over several pages during which Bianca only makes short entries, mostly about her sons. She skips many days and doesn’t write anything.
When I come to the last entry, I give it a quick glance before I read it for Portia. “This is the last one in this journal.” In a way, her final words to the world.
Giuliano came to me tonight. We haven’t spoken in days. I’m bedridden and he hates that. I’m too weak to fight him, and when he came in peace, I had to listen. We spoke about all the things that happened. Quietly. For the first time in years. It’s as if he knows this is the end.
I refuse for Gabi to go to Italy, but she will. She must. Giuliano will honor that pact but promised me that he will reward my loyalty to him. He’ll make sure she’ll only go when she is older, and that when she goes, she’ll be as safe as possible. For as long as he can keep her safe, forcing Emilio’s hand, he will do so.
It’s the least he could do, given that both his and Emilio’s sons are in this house, born from my womb. They’ve had each other in this chokehold for years, stags who fought each other, antlers caught in a deadlock from which they can’t escape. The least they can do is to care for the little girl they forced me to have. A son for a son. A daughter for a daughter. One for one.
Until death us all part. And then she’ll have six brothers to find her.
Finally I can rest in peace.
“Oh my God,” I whisper, reading the last paragraphs again and again.
Portia is crossing herself, eyes closed, lips murmuring in prayer.
“What does this mean?” I ask, not sure I even want to know. Do the Scalera brothers even know?
“The fucking Mafioso,” Portia grits through her teeth. “Always putting revenge first. No wonder people can’t move on. Retaliations, blood, and murder! Vendettas that spread over several generations. I’m so sick of it.”
“Portia,” I say, reaching for her arm to calm her, but inwardly wanting to shake her in urgency. She’s working the gold cross hanging from a thin chain by her neck to smithereens, stalling. “What does this mean?”
“Oh, I’ll tell you want it means! Emilio Randazzo killed Giuliano Scalera’s first family. His first wife and his first-born son. The woman he apparently loved. In revenge, Giuliano killed Emilio’s wife. When they made that pact for peace, Emilio must have promised to give him back a son, but in turn, Giuliano will give him a girl. One to replace Bianca, his little girl Emilio offered in marriage as truce. The original piccola ragazza, whom Giuliano agreed to marry and guarantee peace between the families.”
At those words, the final piece falls into place and my stomach twists. Bianca was Emilio Randazzo’s daughter ? The wedding photo?—
God help me, I’m going to be sick. This means he?—
“Emilio forced Bianca to marry Giuliano, so there would be a blood relation to keep the peace. As if we live in medieval times,” Portia says, wiping at her eyes. “But she was never anything to him. Least of all blood. He kidnapped her off the streets in Napoli as if nobody would notice. She was never his own child. Nothing but a street urchin, ready for the picking. Just like I was at sixteen. Only…she was so much younger.”
I sag into myself, fist to my stomach. Bianca was just another trafficked girl. The original. The prototype. And the last man who called me his little girl in that tone was Franco. All these men with their little girls and this sick ring that I was trying to crack and failed at.
Portia’s tears are flowing again now, and I close my eyes, trying to appear calm and not succumb to my own inner turmoil. I need to digest everything I’ve learned. And then I feel them, dripping down to my hand where I’m still clutching the journal tight, my tears now threatening to run the ink of this truth none of us are ready for.
‘Both his and Emilio’s sons are in this house, born from my womb.’
I have half-brothers here amongst the Scaleras.
Franco wasn’t lying.