Chapter 18
Mina
Ipace the length of Leon’s hospital room. Ten steps from the window to the door. Ten steps back. The empty spaces that once held Leon’s and Cristiano’s beds mock me. Both of them are gone, somewhere else in this building, and cut open on operating tables.
My mother sits in the armchair by the window, rosary beads clicking softly between her fingers. She’s tried to get me to sit three times. Tried to get me to eat twice. I can’t do either.
It’s been two hours. They’ve barely begun the surgeries, and I’m a nervous wreck.
I keep picturing Leon’s small hand reaching for mine until the double doors swung shut between us. Cristiano turning to keep his eyes on me until the last possible second.
Every time footsteps pass in the corridor, my heart stops. When they continue past our door, I feel like I’m going to shatter into a thousand pieces.
There’s a gnawing, guilty feeling in my belly telling me my son’s illness is punishment.
If I’d made other choices, none of this would have happened.
If I’d called Cristiano in Italy the moment I found out I was pregnant.
If I’d married a normal, supportive man like Danny years ago.
If I’d given Leon the love of two parents instead of doggedly insisting I could do all of this myself.
If I hadn’t been so selfish.
Because Leon could be dying right now, and Cristiano too, and that has to be someone’s fault. There’s always someone who could have done something, and that person should have been me.
Stop it, I tell myself. This isn’t helping. This isn’t rational.
But the guilt is coiled inside me, feeding on every minute that passes without news.
I don’t deserve to be out here, safe and whole, while they’re in there.
I should be the one under the knife. If something goes wrong, if either of them doesn’t wake up, it will be because of choices I made and lies I told.
I press my hands to my face and try to breathe.
“Mina.” My mother’s voice is gentle. “Come sit down. You’re going to make yourself ill.”
“I can’t.”
“Just for a moment—”
“I can’t, Mom.”
She falls silent. The rosary beads keep clicking.
A nurse appears with an update after three hours. Both surgeries are proceeding normally. No complications. These things simply take time.
I thank her. My voice sounds distant, like it belongs to someone else.
Sometime later, the door opens again, and I spin around, expecting another nurse.
Instead, I see a young woman with dark jeans, a cream cashmere sweater, and her caramel blonde hair pulled back from her face.
But what I notice first are her eyes. Montoni amber eyes.
“Adora?” I ask in a choked voice. Cristiano’s sister, whom I haven’t laid eyes on in years.
Not since before Cristiano and I slept together, and he swore to murder his father.
She was just fifteen then, a pretty, slender girl who was polite to me, but no more than that.
She looks even prettier than I remember, but she’s tense.
“Mina.” She crosses the room and pulls me into a hug before I can react.
I stiffen, but something about the warmth of her arms makes me sag against her, and she holds me up.
“I only found out that Cristiano was going into surgery late last night,” she says into my hair. “Your mother called me. Apparently, my brother has a son and didn’t think to tell me.”
I should have thought of his family and reminded him to call the people who love him. If something happens to him on the operating table, Adora won’t get the chance to say goodbye.
“I’m so sorry. He’s been…focused.”
“Typical Cristiano. One thing on his mind, and the rest of the world ceases to exist.” There’s no judgment in her voice. Just weary affection for a brother she knows too well. She pulls back, her hands on my shoulders, studying my face. “How are you holding up?”
Old admonishments from Mom about not causing problems in Mr. Montoni’s mansion tumble through my mind. Don’t shout. Don’t run through the corridors. Don’t shriek with laughter. This is their house, not ours.
Even now, with my son dying and Cristiano cut open to save him, some small part of me wants to perform humility for Adora Montoni. Prove that I’m handling this gracefully in the pristine hospital room that her brother is paying for.
I force the words past my lips, but they’re cracked and broken. “I’m okay.”
“You look like you’re about to shatter.” She guides me toward the chair beside my mother. “Sit. Just for a few minutes.”
I don’t have the strength to argue. I sink into the chair next to Mom, and Adora takes the windowsill.
“So, I have a nephew?” she asks, a smile lighting her face. “I’d love to hear about him.”
My first instinct is to deflect and give a polite, minimal answer and retreat back into my shell. He’s four, he likes dinosaurs. But Adora is looking at me with such genuine warmth, and talking about Leon might be the only thing that keeps me from losing my mind.
Shakily, as I speak about my most cherished person in the world, my heart rate slows and some of the coiled tension unravels in my belly. Adora listens to every word I say, and in those amber eyes I know so well, I see a growing desire to meet the little boy.
“He has his father’s eyes,” I tell her. “Your eyes.”
The biggest smile yet splits Adora’s face. “He does? Of course he does. Every man of Montoni blood has those eyes, and many of the women as well,” she says, gesturing at her face.
Then she does something entirely unexpected.
“I can’t tell you how happy I am that you and Leon are part of the family,” Adora says, taking my hand and squeezing it tightly. She leans forward so she can beam at Mom as well. “And you, Mrs. Santoro. Family is so, so important.”
As Adora grips my hand, her eyes suddenly shimmer with tears.
I remember the rumors that Mom, Rosa, and I have discussed around the kitchen table.
That Adora Montoni and her mafia don husband poisoned Mr. Montoni at their own wedding, as revenge for the slaughter of almost the entire Vici family.
It’s difficult to imagine a sweet young woman like Adora committing murder, but maybe she had no choice.
I know better than most what Mr. Montoni was like to his own children.
When I discussed Mr. Montoni’s death with my mother and sister, it felt like we were gossiping about characters from a television show. Now the hand that stirred cyanide into her father’s champagne is gripping mine.
I should be horrified. Instead, I find myself gripping back.
Four hours after the surgeries began, we receive another update from a nurse.
Still proceeding normally. Cristiano’s surgery is nearly complete.
Leon’s will take several more hours. Recipient surgeries are always longer, the nurse explains.
His failing liver has to be removed before he can accept the lobe of Cristiano’s healthy liver.
My heart races as I imagine what my son is going through at this moment.
Mom’s hand finds mine on one side. Adora’s settles gently on my shoulder from the other.
Neither of them says anything. I’ve spent so long being the only one.
The only parent lying awake at three in the morning, wondering if I’m doing any of this right.
Now there are hands holding me steady, and I don’t know what I’d do without them.
We sit in silence for a while. The afternoon light shifts through the window, painting shadows across the floor. Mom’s rosary beads click softly. Adora’s thumb traces absent circles on my shoulder.
“I keep thinking about when we were children,” Adora says after a while. “You and me and Cristiano. He loved you so much.”
I look up at her, surprised. Adora and I barely spoke in those years. She was a toddler when I came to live at the mansion, and as we grew up, she preferred to stay by her mom’s side or in her bedroom. I didn’t think she knew about anything that went on between me and Cristiano.
“You probably don’t remember this,” Adora continues, her gaze distant. “Maybe you don’t even know this. You were maybe thirteen. Cristiano was fourteen. It was the year before you started high school, and I overheard him talking to Dad in the study.”
“About what?”
“You.” A faint smile crosses her face. “He wanted Dad to pay for you to attend St. Agatha’s. He’d worked out the whole argument. The quality of education, the opportunities it would give you, how it would reflect well on the family to support the children of loyal staff.”
St. Agatha’s. The private school that Adora attended. The sister school to Cristiano’s, where all the wealthy girls of Malus were educated. I’d never dreamed of attending.
I picture Cristiano at fourteen, long-limbed and gangly but already well-built, standing doggedly in front of the father he hated and had every reason to fear, and asking for something for me.
Then Mr. Montoni growing angry with his son.
Laughing at him. Maybe even hurting him for being so presumptuous.
My chest aches. I never knew. Cristiano never told me.
He wanted me to have an education at the same school his friends’ sisters went. The same place his sister would attend. Why? I was just the housekeeper’s daughter.
I think about how he came to the school gates every day to walk me home, even though it meant going out of his way and catching a bus. Maybe in his eyes, I was his equal.
“I’m not telling you this to excuse him,” Adora says. “What he did to you later—I don’t know everything that happened, and you don’t have to tell me. I’m not saying any of that was acceptable.”
“Then why are you telling me this?”
She’s quiet for a moment. “We haven’t been close in years, but I know my brother. He can be cold and controlling, but not everything he does is about control, and he’s not selfish.”
I remember a conversation Cristiano and I had at my apartment after he returned to Malus. I told him that I did my best for Leon, but it wasn’t much. I was tied up in knots seeing him again, and I was both embarrassed and defiant about the humble life I was providing for my son.