15. Francesca #2
“Do you have to decide now?” he asked. “You can always change it later, right?”
“Yeah, I guess I could.”
“Then worry about it later.”
“If we have kids, I should probably change my last name.”
He shrugged. “They could take your last name instead of mine.”
Now that was as nontraditional as it could get.
“You’re the one who’s going to grow them and give birth to them. Shouldn’t it be whatever name you want?”
I thought I might have just fallen even more in love with him.
“In any case, that’s tomorrow’s problem.” He grabbed his wineglass and took a drink. “Not today’s.”
After he’d shared his true name with me, we hadn’t really talked about it. We’d had too much going on at the time. “Do you think you feel that way because you don’t feel connected to your given name?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t think that has anything to do with it.” He looked at me head on across the table, his elbows moving to the surface now that his plate was wiped clean. Focused and intense, he just stared at me.
“Do you prefer Wolfe or Cesare?” It was hard to imagine calling him anything but Wolfe since that was the name I associated with him. But at the same time, he looked like a Cesare. I felt like I’d uncovered a new layer to him.
“No one has called me Cesare since I was eight,” he said. “Let’s stick with Wolfe.” He spoke freely about it with me, so it didn’t seem to be a sign of contention.
“Where did Wolfe come from?”
“Don Russo, actually,” he said. “I was young, but I was hanging around with Cosa Nostra at the time, and some assholes broke in. Cosa Nostra thought they got them all, but I found them hiding in a utility closet in one of the laundry rooms. They’d planned to sneak out when our guard was down and slit our throats.
He started to call me Wolfe after that, because I hunt like a wolf.
Never give up on the kill. And the older I got, the more fitting that name became.
So I don’t identify with Cesare really at all.
The only person who ever called me that was my mom. ”
Any time he mentioned his mom, it always made me sad.
He was this strong and powerful man, but once upon a time, he’d been a little boy who loved his mom.
It made me sad that he hadn’t gotten to have that relationship longer.
That for most of his life, he didn’t have a family.
I was lucky I’d had my father as long as I did. “I wish I could have met her.”
He gave a shrug. “I was so young when she died, I couldn’t even tell you if you two would get along.”
“What do you remember about her?”
“Chaos, unpredictability, money always being scarce…but I never felt like a burden. I always felt her love. It was unconditional and never weakened based on our circumstances. It’s something that makes me feel better about being a father.
At the end of the day, all that matters is that the kid feels loved.
Everything else can go to complete shit, and it’ll be just fine. ”
I nodded. “That’s a good way to think about it.”
He grabbed his glass and took a drink.
“Have you ever tried to reach out to other relatives?”
“What other relatives?” he asked.
“Italian families are always big. There’ve got to be uncles and aunts and cousins out there.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t know them. Why should I know them now?”
“Everyone wants a place where they belong,” I said.
“Well, I’ve always been a lone wolf,” he said. “Until I found the first member of my pack.” He set his glass down and gave me that serious stare, claiming me with just a look.
The name Barsetti felt familiar to me the second I’d read it, but I couldn’t figure out where I recognized it from.
But watching him drink the white wine in his glass helped me figure it out.
“There’s a family in Tuscany with a pretty well-known winery called Barsetti Vineyards.
I wonder if there’s any relation there.”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me if there is.”
“You could learn more about your mother since you didn’t get that opportunity to do so yourself.”
He shrugged.
“Do you have any pictures of her?”
He shook his head.
“You might be able to find some—”
“Baby.” He leaned slightly forward over the table and looked me dead in the eye.
“I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I don’t need to connect with strangers to feel a sense of family.
I don’t need to chase the memories of a ghost to know where I belong.
You’re my family now, Francesca. My wife.
My business partner. My boss. The mother of my future children.
I don’t need anything else when I have you. ”
Cristo, he made me melt into a puddle of tenderness. “Wolfe…”
He continued to stare at me with that look he never gave anyone else, like he could really see me, all of me, front to back.
Everything else became a blur to him, when I was all that mattered.
“I know how important your family is to you, but when your dad said his piece to you about me, you never turned your back on me. You didn’t even hesitate.
He said he would never approve of me, accused me of being a rat, so much more…
and your commitment never faltered. That kind of loyalty doesn’t come easily in life.
It means the world to me that you always stood by me, when anyone else would have walked away. ”
I didn’t have a doubt because he was the love of my life. He felt like family even when he was a stranger. He felt like home even when mine had been destroyed by gunfire and violence.
“You’re the only woman I could ever love, and that’s how I know God made you for me. You’re my ride-or-die. Toughest bitch I’ve ever met. Fearless and strong and passionate, and not to mention, fucking fiiiinnnneee as hell.”
He’d already made me cry earlier, and somehow he’d topped the most special moment of my life.
“I’m not angry at Don Russo anymore. If he hadn’t dismissed me, I wouldn’t have ended up here, and I wouldn’t have met my wife.
It was meant to happen. I’m not the kind of guy to believe in bullshit fairy tales and nonsense like that, but I was meant to find you, Francesca Mancini.
You’re the only family I was meant to find. ”