Chapter 27
Dario could never mistake his father's handwriting for anyone else's. It was slanted, impatient, always rushing to catch up with whatever Niccolò's brain was doing ahead of it.
Dario knew it from birthday cards, notes left on kitchen tables, the margin comments in the books along the library walls that were the penciled observations of a man having a private argument with long-dead authors.
The early journal entries were practical. Meeting notes, dates, a record of conversations with Serapis written in a compressed shorthand, like he didn't trust his own memory.
The language became more careful when Serapis's name appeared, coded in a way that wouldn't have been obvious to anyone who hadn't known his father: Zio, occasionally, or simply L.
The entries about Agrippa were rarer, more guarded.
A name never written in full. A problem referred to only as il dormiglione. The Sleeper.
Dario filed it all away with the careful, distant attention he used for operational briefs, the part of his brain that could absorb information without attaching to it yet. He needed to stay focused and not drown in the longing for his father.
Niccolò's entries changed as the dates moved forward. The coded professional notes and the shorthand fell apart, and the sentences grew longer and more unguarded.
He read an entry about Rodrigo first:
He carries so much and says nothing. He has always been this way.
I am proud of him every day, and I am worried about him every day, and I haven't yet found a way to tell him either thing that he actually needs to hear.
I hope he finds something worth protecting that isn't the family.
He is better at loving than he knows. He has just never been told he was allowed to.
Dario closed his eyes for a moment and tried harder not to feel like he was invading Niccolò's privacy. He opened them and kept reading.
Leo frightens me sometimes. Not because he's dangerous—though he is—but because he burns so hot, and there is nowhere for it to go.
He will either find someone who understands what to do with all that fire, or he will consume himself from the inside out.
I pray for the former. I would leave him a note, but he would analyze it to death and miss the point.
Dario heard Frederica moving behind him, the soft sound of a book being replaced on a shelf. He dreaded what he would find next and forced himself to the next page.
Dario has my soft heart. He doesn't know it yet.
He thinks being soft is a weakness. He has learned, I think, to make the softness invisible so no one can use it against him.
I wish I had taught him differently, that I could make Gabby understand that she doesn't have to push them so hard.
I know she just wants them to be able to keep themselves safe.
Someday, Dario will understand that his soft side is the hardest kind of strength to have.
Dario stopped reading. He sat with his father's words for a long time. From somewhere outside came the thin sound of a gull and the lap of the canal waves, and Frederica replacing another book.
His father had sat at this desk, in this room, and thought: Dario has my soft heart.
He had written it down, which meant he had needed to. The same way Dario sometimes needed to handwrite things down to make them real, to hold the shape of them outside of himself, where they wouldn't get lost. Niccolò had needed to keep this one.
He pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose and held them there until the pressure behind his eyes subsided, and he turned the page.
The entries became shorter after that. More dates.
More coded references to Serapis and the preparations.
A series of notes from a trip he recognized as the Venice week they had taken for Rodrigo's twenty-first birthday, the last time the four of them had been together in this house while it was still theirs.
Dario read slowly. R. in good spirits. Leo took apart the lock on the wine cabinet within thirty minutes of arriving. D. found it before he did, but I didn't have the heart to tell him.
Dario laughed, short and involuntary.
Meeting with L. tomorrow while the boys sleep in. The object needs a new keeper. L thinks it's better left with me, but it's not something I could keep in my pocket without worrying about losing it. Someone who doesn't know what it is can carry it without fear.
Dario's eyes stopped moving.
Giving D. something to keep safe. He won't understand what I mean by it, but he will keep it. He keeps everything. He just pretends not to because he doesn't want Gabby to know he is sentimental.
Dario stared at the sentence until the words stopped moving. Giving D. something to keep safe.
"Frederica," he called. Her footsteps crossed the room, and she crouched beside him. She read the open page and raised an eyebrow.
"Rodrigo's twenty-first birthday," he said, rubbing at the bridge of his nose again.
"We came to Venice. All four of us, no staff, no security.
My mother thought it was irresponsible. My father said Rodrigo needed a trip where he wasn't in charge of anything.
I woke up in the middle of the night and heard my father's voice in the next room.
Low, like he was on a call. I went back to sleep. "
He had told his brothers a version of this in Rhodes, after Serapis had turned up. That damn middle-of-the-night conversation he had half-heard and never mentioned after Niccolò died because it hadn't seemed to matter. It was just a memory of a dead man's voice.
He was remembering it better now. "Earlier that day, he had taken me out alone.
Just the two of us, while Rodrigo and Leo slept through their hangovers.
We walked to the Rialto Market. He bought me a coffee and a pastry, and he said—" Dario stopped and tried to remember the exact words.
"He said every man needed a patron saint.
He had been thinking about which one suited me best and said that he'd made his decision. "
Dario turned his head to look at her, her face calm and so damn beautiful.
"He gave me a small statue. San Expedito.
" Dario ran his thumb along the edge of the journal's cover.
"He was a Roman soldier in full armor, one foot up on a crow.
The crow represents procrastination—tomorrow, putting things off, letting fear make you wait.
San Expedito stomps it flat. Niccolò said I needed a saint who understood urgency and didn't tolerate excuses.
Also, one that would turn up fast when I was in trouble, because I got into it a lot. "
Frederica's mouth twitched in a grin. "Obviously."
"I've prayed to that saint ever since," Dario admitted, setting the journal down carefully on the study floor.
"Every time I was in trouble and needed something to go well, I'd say something to San Expedito, and everything would work out.
I thought I was imagining it, but it still works when I get into the shit.
I kept at it not because I am particularly religious, but because it was a part of something from Niccolò. "
"Do you know where it is now?" Frederica asked.
"Yeah…I think I do. Come on." Dario stood up and helped her up off the floor.
His old bedroom was at the top of the narrow staircase, the last door before the landing turned. Frederica snickered at the sign that read 'Dario's Room Keep Out assholes, or I will piss in your drinks.'
"You try having two brothers," he said by way of an explanation.
Dario pushed it open and stopped in the doorway for a second before he went in.
Most of the rooms in the Tuscan villa had been reorganized and stripped after Niccolò died. Their bedrooms in Venice had been shut up and preserved, like the house itself.
Dario stared around, feeling like he was fifteen again.
The bookshelf was against the far wall, under a window that looked out over the narrow strip of the courtyard below.
It was still stacked with the books he had read when he was young: paperback thrillers, piles of comics, and a few histories he had stolen from his father's library and never returned.
The top shelf held more random crap: a pair of old football boots hooked over the shelf edge, a broken compass, a cracked phone case from a model so old it no longer existed.
He crossed the room and stood in front of it, searching through his knick-knacks.
"You are kind of a hoarder, huh?" Frederica teased.
"You are welcome to show me your childhood bedroom next time when I'm on Rhodes," he replied, making her laugh.
"No one needs to see that. Despina is the hoarder and won't let me throw anything out, not me."
"Ah, huh, whatever you need to tell yourself, Spartana. Don't worry, I won't tease you about your Barbie doll collection."
Frederica flipped him off but admitted after a beat. "Knights. Not Barbies."
"Knights?"
"I have a lot of little figures of knights. Ones with horses. Ballista. Castles. I was never into dolls," Frederica admitted.
Dario grinned. "Can I ask why?"
"I grew up on Rhodes! It is the home of the Knights of Saint John. The Hospitallers. The Grand Master's castle is there, as is the original hospital, but it's now a museum. I grew up with knights all around me, so it was bound to happen," Frederica replied.
"And the knight statue in the garden is yours?" he asked, remembering the figure with the fresh flower tucked into it.
"Yeah, it is. He's my guy," Frederica said with a wide smile. "I love that damn statue. I wanted to be a knight when I grew up."
Something clicked into Dario's mind. "Is that why you take jobs for people in need for only fifty euros?"
"I take those because it's the decent thing to do, but I suppose the knights were a good influence on me." Frederica looked a little bashful. "I still have my knights collection. I don't have it in me to throw them out."
Dario gestured at the detritus around them. "This is clearly a safe space to admit that."