Chapter 38
VIOLET
Patrick has decided he needs to build a castle with cereal boxes. And he’s enlisted Gianni’s help.
Patrick is seated crossed-legged on the kitchen floor, a stack of empty cereal boxes next to him, a roll of tape to his right.
“It needs a moat,” he says with a certain nod. “For protection.”
"From what?" Gianni asks. He's sitting on the floor across from Patrick—the head of the Camorra, in a white T-shirt and gray sweatpants, legs folded, an empty Kashi box in his hand. It’s absurd and amazing all at once.
"From the bad guys,” he says. “You never know when the bad guys are going to try to get in.”
Something hits me in that moment, how heavily the ideas of safety and protection fit into Patrick’s play. It had occurred to me before, how he’d come up with Dragon right after we’d fled Chicago, how he’d created him as the ultimate protector.
"What if we reinforce the walls?" Gianni holds up the Cheerios box. "Thicker material. Better foundation. Then the bad guys can't get in."
Patrick considers this with total seriousness. “Yeah. But we still need a moat.”
Gianni nods as if it’s the most sensible thing he’s ever heard. "What goes in the moat?"
"Water."
That gets my attention. “No water on the kitchen floor, bug. You want real water, you can take a bath.”
"Fiiine. Pretend water," Patrick amends. "Blue paper."
"Blue paper I can do," Gianni says.
He gets up, walks to the study, and comes back with a sheet of heavy blue cardstock. He tears it into strips with total tactical focus. Patrick watches, transfixed, and when Gianni lays the blue strips around the base of the castle, my son claps his hands once and says, "Yes!”
Then he does something that stops my heart. He climbs into Gianni's lap.
Just a small body in dinosaur pajamas climbing into the crossed legs of a man he's known for a handful of weeks and settling there like it's the most natural thing in the world. He leans back against Gianni's chest, picks up Dragon, and places him on top of the castle.
"There," Patrick says. "Now he's safe."
Gianni doesn't move. His hands hover at his sides for a moment, and I can tell he’s not really sure how to respond to this sudden display of affection. Then his arms settle around Patrick, loosely and carefully, like he’s holding something precious—which he is.
I look away, the feeling growing inside me almost too much to take. It’s happiness and somehow more than that, a feeling that brings me closer to tears with each passing moment.
I can't explain it. I can barely think it without my throat tightening. So I just let the moment be until Gianni’s phone rings, pulling me back into reality.
Gianni narrows his eyes slightly, as if he can sense something’s wrong, that the call isn’t going to be about anything good.
“Hold on, buddy. I need to get this,” he says, gently shifting Patrick off his lap.
He stands and takes his phone off the kitchen island. I watch his face as he answers. The warmth drains, replaced by a hard expression.
"When?" he says. A pause. "How bad?" Another pause, longer. His jaw tightens. "We're on our way."
He hangs up. Looks at me.
"Theresa's in the hospital."
Nina takes Patrick for bath time, and he goes willingly, chattering about the moat, Dragon tucked under his arm.
Then we're in the Lexus heading downtown ten minutes later.
Gianni drives and I sit in the passenger seat trying to process the tonal whiplash of going from cereal box castles to emergency room in the span of a phone call.
"Who called?"
"Spackman. He picked it up on the police scanner. She was found in the parking garage of Marino's building beaten badly. Two broken ribs, facial contusions, possible concussion."
"Marino did this?"
"That's what we're going to find out."
He parks in the hospital garage, and we take the elevator to the third floor. The hallway is fluorescent and too bright, the way hospitals always are. A nurse directs us to room 312, and Gianni pushes the door open when we arrive.
Theresa is lying in bed, and for a moment I don't recognize her.
The immaculate Senior VP I've known is gone.
In her place is woman who is smaller, swollen, her face covered in purple and yellow bruises, her left eye nearly swollen shut and her lower lip split and crusted with dried blood.
Her right arm is in a sling, and through the thin hospital gown, I can see the tape around her ribs.
She looks up when we walk in, the expression on her face raw and unfiltered and vulnerable.
I've worn that expression. In a kitchen in Chicago, on a bathroom floor, in the emergency room where a nurse asked me what happened and I said I fell down the stairs because Lance was sitting in the waiting room and I could practically feel his eyes through the wall.
"Gianni." Her voice is hoarse, cracked. She starts crying before she finishes his name. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
He pulls a chair to her bedside and sits. His expression is controlled, but I can see the tension running through his shoulders, the coiled anger of a man looking at damage inflicted by his enemy.
"Tell me what happened," he says quietly.
Theresa forms her mouth into a hard line, and whatever she’s going to say next won’t be easy for her.
“When I went to work for him, I thought it was a real position. COO sure as hell sounds real, right? Buttered me up, told me my talents were wasted at Russo Industries.” A pause, then a sigh.
“It was all a lie. He didn’t want my expertise, or even care about it.
He wanted information. Specifically, information about the company. ”
“What kind of information?” Gianni asks.
“Whatever he could get, but he was especially interested in your schedules, upcoming business plans.”
"And you gave it to him," Gianni says. There’s nothing angry or accusatory about his tone, just stating a fact.
"Some of it. At first. I was angry, Gianni. I was hurt. I wanted—" She stops and blinks, tears trickling down her bruised cheeks. She was jealous.
Gianni hands her a box of tissues, and she quickly wipes her eyes.
"At first, I told myself it was just business. Of course he’d want to know details about the company, who you were meeting with.
Then he started asking questions about other things.
Your personal security. Violet's routine. Patrick's school."
My blood goes cold.
"I told him no," Theresa says. "I told him I wouldn't. I'd given him business intelligence, but I wasn't going to help him hurt people. I wasn't going to help him hurt a child." She chokes on a sob. "And that's when he—when his men—"
She can't finish. She doesn't need to.
I look at her lying in that bed and something shifts inside me. I don’t forgive her, not yet. But I realize we’re kindred spirits in a way, both of us intimately acquainted with exactly how it feels to be used and hurt by a powerful man and cast aside when they’re done.
Gianni leans forward. "I need to know what you did give him. Specifically."
"Meeting schedules. The names of your attorneys. Some financial structures—the legitimate ones, not the—" She glances at me. "Not the other ones. And your home address. The Tribeca building." She closes her one good eye again. "I'm sorry. I know it doesn't mean anything now."
"It means something," Gianni says. "It means Marino knows where we live. I put a hell of a lot of effort into keeping my address off the books."
The room is quiet except for the beeping of the monitor.
"I didn't know about the custody filing," she whispers. "I didn't know about the bakery, or the men who attacked you at the gala. I didn't know he was working with Lance until—" She looks at me directly. "I didn't know he wanted to hurt you. I swear. I didn't know."
I believe her.
Gianni stands, buttons his jacket, and squares his shoulders. The armor is back on.
"Get some rest," he tells Theresa. "I'll have Spackman post someone outside your door tonight."
"Gianni—"
"Rest."
We walk out into the empty hallway.
"Do you believe her?" I ask.
He's quiet for a moment, and his jaw works as he does the calculations. "I believe she was beaten," he says. "And I believe she's scared."
"That's not what I asked."
He looks at me. Something moves behind his eyes. It’s not doubt or anger, but I’m not sure what it is.
"Let's go home," he says. "Patrick's waiting."
He takes my hand and we walk to the elevator. Neither of us says what I suspect we're both thinking—Theresa's tears were real, and her bruises were real, and everything she said might have been exactly what we needed to hear at exactly the right time.