7. Valentina
Chapter 7
Valentina
B y the time we get downstairs, it looks like most of the guests from the opening have been ushered out. There are a few traumatized-looking servers, paramedics, police officers…
And my papà’s legal team.
Lawyers descend on me like flies on a corpse, just before I’m led aside to answer preliminary questions from the police. I keep my story straight. Simple.
“He asked for the ring back,” I say woodenly. “Then he jumped.”
Whether it’s Papà’s dirty connections with the force, the veritable army of lawyers surrounding me and shutting down any questions they don’t like, or the fact that accepting a suicide is probably easier than opening up a murder investigation, I’m released from questioning before I expect to be. There’s the promise that I may be called upon to answer more questions again soon. And with that, I leave the building with Curse and Papà, their large, male bodies hemming me in tightly.
Anxiety lurches in my stomach when I move from the air-conditioned lobby to the sticky air outside. I expect to see Dario on the ground. Brains like gelo de melone , Papà said. Sicilian watermelon pudding.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to eat it again.
But his body isn’t here, and I realize it’s because this isn’t where Darragh threw him off. He must have landed beside the building, in the alley. I clench and release the fingers of my left hand, feeling out the sudden absence of the ring I’ve been wearing for more than six months.
The sun has finally begun to set, the gathering darkness in the air so heavy it’s like a visual representation of this city’s godawful summer humidity. My hair feels matted and damp against my neck. My face is bizarrely numb. I wipe at my cheeks. Makeup comes away on my fingertips, but no new tears.
Even the tears I had before were because of the choking. Not for Dario.
I don’t think too hard about what sort of person that might make me. Not right now.
“You take your Zizi,” Papà says to Curse. “I’ll take Valentina.”
I can’t remember the last time Papà drove me anywhere. A man like him has better things to do than ferry his daughter around. There’s an unspoken undercurrent in the command. That he has no plans to let me out of his sight anytime soon.
I think there’s a good chance he doesn’t believe my story.
Maybe he shouldn’t. Because I sure as hell know it isn’t true. And Vincenzo Titone hasn’t gotten to where he is today by swallowing bullshit like mine.
But the only other explanation he can see is that his daughter somehow killed the man he chose as her fiancé. And if that were true, he’d have a serious reckoning coming his way. The Fabbri family don’t have the same standing we do in the underbelly of this world. But they have more money than God, and Dario was a local politician.
Papà has to swallow my suicide story. No matter how bad it stinks.
He’s silent on the drive home, his thick, calloused fingers tense on the steering wheel. Unlike Elio and Curse, Papà isn’t an overly tall man, but that doesn’t really matter. He fills space like almost no one else can. Broad shoulders, wide neck, and a face that can make you feel like you’re trying to stare down a bull about to charge.
Sometimes it’s hard to breathe beside him.
I turn my gaze to look out the window instead, watching Toronto buildings and lights and people wash by in a hazy blur, like they’ve been painted on the window with watercolours.
We leave the denser areas of the city behind, turning onto our street. It’s quiet here. Lush with thick trees, foliage, and professionally maintained gardens that surround castle-like mansions. It’s hard to believe that this stretch of massive properties, with houses that look like they belong in the French countryside or on a Swiss mountain, is in the middle of the most populous city in the country.
Like many of the houses here, ours is gated.
But our gates are higher than most.
And inside the guard booth is a man loyal to my father and armed with a gun.
The gate opens at our arrival, the seamless swing of a heavy fortress door. We continue along a drive so long it’s almost an entire street unto itself. Twisting in my seat and peering through the rearview mirror, I can see Curse not far behind us, escorting Mamma home.
There’s a third vehicle that looks like it’s just parked as we finally come into the huge circular part of the driveway in front of our house. I’m not a car person, and I’ve basically given up on trying to keep track of all of our family’s fancy rides. So it’s not until the driver emerges that I know the vehicle is Elio’s.
My eldest cousin, sixteen years my senior, has height like Curse but breadth like Papà. He’s a walking wall of a man, all in black, including the black leather gloves he never goes without, even in the most unbearable heat of summer.
One of those dark, gloved hands is already at my door handle, pulling open the passenger side door.
“Such a gentleman,” I mutter as I unfasten my seatbelt and step out of the vehicle.
“Can’t say I’ve ever heard that one before,” Elio says in his characteristic low rumble.
“Can’t say you’ve ever held the door open for me before,” I say. “That wife of yours must be a good influence.”
I wonder where Deirdre is right now. Probably safe at home surrounded by about a dozen Cosa Nostra soldiers. Elio is our closest neighbour, his property abutting ours. But with the size of the properties and the thick trees out here, even our closest neighbour is all but invisible.
Papà makes an irritated sound as he gets out of the car, letting me know he’s heard my comment about Elio’s wife. Elio is still his heir, set to inherit everything from the money to the weapons to the men, but I don’t think he’ll ever truly forgive his eldest nephew, like the firstborn son he never had, for marrying outside his wishes.
“I heard what happened,” Elio says, shifting his gaze over my head to Papà. Apparently, our conversation is already over.
“Why are you looking at him?” I snap, irritation rising. “I’m the one who actually had to fucking watch it.”
“Watch what?” Elio says, returning his coal-black eyes to me.
“She claims he jumped.” Papà says it in such a way that makes it clear he doesn’t think it’s true.
“Well, I certainly didn’t throw him over the edge!”
“Who said anything about throwing?” Elio asks, cocking his head and eyeing me with new, appraising sharpness.
“Well… Pushing, then,” I mutter, flustered, my cheeks hot. “You honestly think I’m crazy enough, or even strong enough, to have pushed him off a fucking roof? There was a safety barrier!”
Not that it did Dario much good. Darragh sent him sailing over it as easily as a kid tossing a ball over a fence. Light as fucking air.
Elio shrugs. The movement’s a little bit lopsided. He’s got a lot of scarring on his neck and back from the fire that killed his mother and destroyed his and Curse’s childhood home in Taormina, not to mention the bullet wound he acquired back there the night he brought Deirdre home for the first time.
“I think you’re a Titone,” Elio replies simply. As if that answers that.
Papà swears in Italian, his anger threatening to boil over. Elio doesn’t look pissed, at least. Both he and Curse have always been more like brothers to me than cousins. And I know that Elio was none-too-pleased about welcoming Dario into the family fold.
A bizarre thought occurs to me then. That Elio could have been responsible for sending Dario to his death.
But that would mean he’d have to have hired or otherwise convinced Darragh to do it, which doesn’t make any sense. The last time those two men were around each other they were beating the shit out of each other. Darragh hated us before we took Deirdre and ruined his revenge plan against her father, Jack O’Malley. He absolutely despises us now.
Despises us enough to have saved me tonight?
I push all the confusion to the back of my brain. Elio is likely just enjoying the happy coincidence that he no longer has to deal with Dario as the closest thing he’ll ever get to a brother-in-law driving us crazy at family functions.
“Don’t know what the fuck you look so fucking pleased about,” Papà snaps at Elio. He points a finger at my throat. “She would have been a fucking Fabbri! Good family, not to mention the connection to city council.”
Elio shrugs again, that uneven rise and fall of his strong shoulders.
“Well, he’s dead now,” my cousin says. “So maybe we should go inside and figure out what the fuck we want to do.”