Chapter 66
Thirty-Nine Days Before Roxanne Disappeared
They all took their seats for the meal, every insert added to the tables, thirty-four bodies in the ballroom, which was on the top floor of her father’s house.
Roxanne had eaten Christmas dinner in this room her entire life, and it had never changed, for as far back as she could remember.
Same brown terrazzo floor. Same long white curtains over the windows.
Same wooden tables. Same overhead fluorescent lights.
The two men by the door were strangers, but had the same look of every one of her father’s security detail, down to the blank expressions on their faces and the guns on their hips.
To her left was Eric, to her right was her cousin Michael, and Tori, her sister, was across the table, her new husband next to her.
He had the alarmed look of a new addition, but that would fade over time.
Take Eric. His first family meal, he’d been on the offensive the entire time.
Today, her uncle Tony had tossed a football with him, even gave him a hug.
“What’re ya, not drinking?” Michael poked her with his elbow and gestured to her tea.
“No, I am,” Roxanne said quickly. “Assuming that a bottle ever makes it this far down the table.”
Michael laughed loudly, someone belched from farther down the row, her mother gave a sharp reprimand, and the attention was off Roxanne, at least for the moment. Under the table, Eric’s hand closed on her knee in a warning.
She didn’t need it. They had discussed, ad nauseum, keeping her pregnancy hidden for as long as possible.
At three months in, her ass had already started to balloon, and the comments from her family had been brutal.
No one had yet made the connection, but there were still hours left in the meal.
From the far end of the table, her favorite cousin waggled her fingers at her in a hello.
She smiled in greeting, but the nurse’s eyes sharpened, sensing that something was wrong. She tilted her head toward the kitchen, suggesting a sidebar, but Roxanne shook her head minutely. Not here.
The prayer came just before the turkey was served, and as always, the first mention was of Joey. Roxanne inhaled deeply and thought of her brother.
“I’ll always protect you, you know that, right?” The little boy had looked up at her with a fierce look on his eleven-year-old face, his hands balled into fists, as if he was ready to leave the hardware store right then and kick someone’s ass.
He had still been relatively innocent then. That was before he’d started working at the distribution center. Before their dad had given him his first gun. Before he’d had his sixteenth birthday at the strip club. Before he’d killed his first man.
“Keep him in heaven with your angels until the time that we join him, Heavenly Father . . .”
Roxanne wasn’t sure that Joey was in heaven. Her brother had killed at least a dozen men, and those were just the ones she knew about. There was only one way to rise to the top of a family, and that was by earning the respect and the reputation through blood.
Joey had been the future of the family, the son, the only proper heir in the hierarchy, until that night in October when he wasn’t.
His body was dismembered and mailed in eight different packages to different family members as a message.
She had gotten hers at the hotel where she and Eric were honeymooning.
It had been wrapped in expensive ivory paper, with a white satin bow, and was on the dresser of the suite’s bedroom.
As the waters of Saint Lucia sparkled out the window, Roxanne opened the package and stared at Joey’s right hand.
The message was clear, and one she had felt her entire life. They—the forces who opposed her family—could get her anytime. There was no safe place, no weekend retreat, no moment of relaxation or celebration that was without risk.
When Joey had died, it was a sudden weight of pressure on her and Tori. Not the pressure of grief, but that of expectation. Her father was in his late sixties, her uncles and cousins doing their part to carry the business, but a new son was needed. A new future heir to the Accardi throne.
“I have an announcement.” Tori spoke as soon as the prayer ended, and everyone paused, their silverware in midair, their attention snapping to Roxanne’s younger sister.
Roxanne’s stomach clenched because there were few good announcements to be made. Tori’s decision to marry Richard had been the latest bad announcement, one that their father had taken hard, almost as hard as Roxanne’s decision to marry Eric.
Eric’s job, his money—it was all an issue with her family. Not because it was there, but because it hadn’t been earned through the family, and therefore was assumed to have been earned in disdain of the family.
Eric didn’t understand that. He didn’t understand how their lifestyle was a threat or an insult to her relatives, and she didn’t have the energy or the inclination to continue to try to explain something that didn’t make sense.
There was no rational justification for why her family hated him, except that he was different from them, and he had made her both different and independent of them, and that was unacceptable.
To add insult to injury, there were alliances that could have been formed with a marriage, and both Tori and Roxanne had failed in that strategic positioning.
“I’m pregnant,” Tori said, and Roxanne inhaled sharply, her hand involuntary pressing on her own stomach in a defensive move of the baby that was growing there. Hopefully not a boy. God, she prayed that it wasn’t a boy.
There was a pause, a moment where the announcement sank in, and then a round of spontaneous cheers. A baby was always a celebration, and Roxanne forced a smile with her applause.
“Fantastic.” Her father beamed, lifting his glass in a toast as he half rose from his seat. “Let us drink to a boy. We are in dire need of a future head of the Accardi family.”
Everyone cheered, and Roxanne lifted her glass and joined in on the toast. Her eyes met Tori’s, and she could see the desperation hidden behind the tight smile on her face.
“Tori, you’ve been to Salvatore?” Her father retook his seat and everyone quieted. “All is healthy?”
“I’ll go this week. I didn’t want it to ruin the surprise.
” And it would have. Salvatore was their family doctor, one who was paid handsomely to handle injuries at all hours of the day and without asking questions.
If an Accardi daughter came to him with a pregnancy, he would have tripped on the way to the phone to call their father.
“Do that tomorrow. And of course, you’ll move into the house,” her father instructed. “As soon as you confirm his gender.” He set down his glass and picked up a steak knife. “Your mother will help you with it, but we need to keep it safe and make sure it’s raised right.”
Tori’s husband’s mouth opened as if he might argue, then closed, like a fish gaping for air. “It might not be a boy,” he said meekly. “We don’t know yet.”
“Oh, I can feel that it is,” her father crowed. “I was just telling Patrizia yesterday, wasn’t I?” He twisted in his chair to face his wife.
“He did,” she said smugly. “He said, right as we were going to bed, that we would have a grandson born this year. Tori and Roxy, I texted you both when it happened.”
Yes, Roxanne had gotten the text. She had vomited after reading it, and it was anyone’s guess if it was pregnancy nausea or a reaction to her mother’s words, but it had felt like the woman was spying on them, like she knew of the secret they were keeping, and Roxanne had had Eric check the house for cameras and bugs, just in case.
“It might not be a boy,” Tori cautioned, repeating Richard’s statement, but her father wasn’t listening.
Roxanne glanced at Eric, and from the somber look on his face, she could tell that maybe it was finally starting to sink in, what they were up against.
Her husband thought they could raise this baby on their own, insulate it from her father. But in this family, a boy was an asset, one that would be owned and controlled and groomed until the day he was put into service.
A son would never be theirs. He would always be her father’s.