Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Luca
The gate rolls back, and I count the men before the car stops moving.
Two on the wall. One in the guard box with a rifle he holds like he's been awake too long.
Three more spread across the front of the house, hands loose, coats open in the cold so we can see what they're carrying.
The Orsinis want us to see. Fine. We brought our own show.
Bruno gets out first. Men who do know him understand he's already decided where everyone in the yard would fall if it came to that.
Lorenzo steps out behind him and buttons his jacket, calm as a man arriving for lunch.
Our four come out of the second car and fan wide without being told.
Five more sit in vehicles outside the gate.
The house is old brick. Somewhere inside it, Cesare Orsini is dying.
There's a wife named Serena who's twenty-seven, younger than his sons.
I know that because I've spent four days learning this family.
Seven children by the first wife, who's been dead nine years.
Two daughters. Five sons. And an eighth child none of them grew up with, who's at home right now teaching her daughter to make pancakes.
The front door opens and Nero Orsini comes down the steps alone. That's a statement too. He's the oldest, built heavy through the chest. The next don, once the old man finishes dying. He crosses the gravel and I watch his hands the whole way. Empty. Open. He offers one to Bruno.
"Don Sartori. Welcome to my father's house."
"Nero." Bruno takes the hand and holds it a beat past polite. "You've got a lot of guns out for a friendly visit."
"So do you." Nero's mouth moves, not quite a smile. He turns and takes in Lorenzo, then me. His eyes stay on me longer, and I let him look. He's seen the wedding photos. He knows exactly which piece I am on this board.
"Farro," he says. "The husband. My father talks about your wife more than he talks about his doctors. You should know that going in."
Lorenzo steps forward before I can answer, smooth, filling the gap. "Then let's not keep him waiting."
Nero nods and leads us up the steps. Our four come with us, two ahead, two behind, and nobody at the door asks for weapons. That's the arrangement Bruno negotiated over the phone yesterday.
The hallway runs long and dark, family photographs in silver frames the whole length of it. I look at them as we pass. Weddings, christenings, the dead first wife in pearls, five boys in a row on a boat.
A woman waits at the end of the hall. Dark hair, careful dress, younger than she should be for this house. Serena. She holds a glass of water on a small tray like staff, except for the diamond on her hand. Her eyes move across all of us fast.
"My father's wife," Nero says, and keeps walking past her.
The room he brings us to is a study with the curtains half drawn. Two Orsini soldiers stand at the far wall. A fire's going. Cesare sits in a leather chair.
"Don Sartori." Cesare's voice is thinner than it was at the wedding. "Sit. All of you. Nero, the door."
Nero closes it. Our men stay outside it. Theirs stay inside. Even now, everyone's keeping score.
Bruno sits across from the old man, and Lorenzo takes the chair beside him. I stay standing near the window, where I can see the drive, the door, and every hand in the room. Cesare's eyes find me anyway and hold on.
"You," he says. "Before we talk docks and money and all the shit my son cares about, you're going to tell me about her. What she eats. What makes her laugh."
The fire pops. Bruno doesn't move and neither does Lorenzo, because this is mine to answer and everyone in the room knows it.
"With respect," I say, "you don't get her from a report. That's not how this works."
Cesare leans forward, and for one second the sickness burns off him and I can see the man who ran this city for forty years.
"Then you'd better tell me how it works, son. Because I have months. And before I'm in the ground, I'm going to sit in a room with my daughter."
Gemma
"Gem. Say that again, because I don't think I heard you right."
I switch the phone to my other ear and check the hallway. Nina's door is open a crack, and I can hear her narrating a conversation between the bear and one of Lily's borrowed dolls. Good. She's busy.
"I said I can't really talk about it over the phone," I say. "I'm okay. Nina's okay. That part is true. The rest I have to tell you in person."
Mariela goes quiet on the other end.
"Okay," she says.
I sit down on the arm of the couch and let out a breath.
"I need something from you," I say. "If you're up for it."
"Sure."
"There's a shoebox in my closet. Top shelf, left side, under the winter hats. It has papers in it. Birth certificates, passports. All of it. Can you get it and bring it to me?"
"I still have your spare keys. Sí. Okay?"
I press my thumb into the burn scar on my wrist. "Mariela, listen. When you go in, if anything looks wrong don't go inside. Just leave. Call me from the street."
The silence that comes back is longer than the first one.
"Gem," she says finally. Her voice is lower. "What does 'looks wrong' mean?"
"It probably means nothing. I'm being careful, that's all." Which is not a lie, technically, since I don't know anything for certain. My stomach folds over on itself. "If it feels too much, forget the box. I mean it. The box isn't worth anything happening to you."
She exhales, and I hear the kitchen radio behind her, a ballad. "You eat? You sound thin."
"You can't hear thin."
"I can hear thin."
A laugh gets out of me before I can stop it, short and stupid, and it loosens my chest by half an inch. "I'm eating. Someone keeps making me."
I regret the sentence the second it lands, because now there's a someone, and Mariela is Mariela.
But she lets that one go by too. She's collecting them.
I know exactly what's happening. There will be a reckoning over a table with food on it, she'll get every answer she's owed, and honestly that's fair.
"So we meet," she says. "You tell me everything, I feed you, we cry, whatever. Where?"
"A restaurant. Somewhere we can sit and eat and actually talk." I think about the neighborhood and rule it out. "Not Pilsen. Somewhere else. I'll text you a place, is that okay?"
"Not Pilsen," she repeats, flat, and I know she's adding it to the pile of things I'll be explaining. "Fine."
"What about the kids? I can't exactly—"
"I will come alone. Diego and Camila are at my mother's for a few days. My sister's there, she's watching over everybody, the kids, my mother, all of it." Her voice thins out at the end.
"How is she? Your mom."
She makes a sound that isn't a laugh. "Bring Nina. I miss her face. Camila keeps asking."
"I'm not bringing her." I keep my voice level so it doesn't carry down the hall.
"I don't want her sitting there while I tell you this.
She's heard enough lately. I'll manage it, I have—" I stop before the word childcare turns into an explanation about a compound in Lake Forest and a girl named Lily. "I'll manage it."
"Okay," Mariela says again. "You text me the place. I will bring the box. And Gem?"
"Yeah?"
"Whatever it is, we fix it."
My eyes sting.
"Thursday," I say. "Thanks. Sorry. Thank you."
"Stop with the sorry."
I type the text three times before I send it.
The first version is too long. The second one sounds like I'm asking permission, and I delete that one fast, because I'm not asking permission.
The third version is the one I settle on: I need to meet Mariela.
She's bringing papers from my apartment that I asked for.
Birth certificates, Nina's records. Can Nina stay with Lily while I'm gone?
I hit send and set the phone face-down on the counter.
Down the hall, Nina is still running the bear through some argument with the doll. The bear sounds suspiciously like Camila, which tells me exactly who Nina misses.
The phone buzzes at three minutes.
Liam is on his way. Nina goes to the compound with him first, then he takes you to Mariela. Text me the restaurant.
I don't know whether to be grateful or annoyed, so I stand at the counter being both.
I set the phone down and press my palms against the cold stone.
It's either walking with Liam or not walking at all.
Those are the options now. I understand the reasons but I hate it anyway.
Eighteen months of getting myself and Nina everywhere on buses and my own two feet, and now I can't cross the street without an escort in a suit.
The Orsini thing sits wrong, too, and it keeps sitting wrong no matter how many times I turn it over.
Luca explained it at the restaurant, the alliance, the marriage making me Sartori, the year of appearances.
I followed the logic then. But logic is one thing and the coffee shop is another.
Why does a family in Milwaukee need proof that a Sartori soldier loves his wife? What do they get out of it.
"Nina." I go down the hall and lean into her doorway. She's cross-legged on the floor, the bear tucked under one arm. "Guess what."
She looks up. "What?"
"You get to see Lily today."
Her whole body changes. She's on her feet before I finish the sentence, arms out, doll dropped where it falls. "Lily's house? With the ladybug fridge?"
"The ladybug fridge," I say. "Go pick which shoes. And bring the bear, he's invited."
She's already digging through the closet.
Nina holds up two shoes that don't match. "These."
"Bold choice. One more try, sweetheart."