Chapter 30
Dario smirked as Rodrigo came in carrying his own groceries. They were paper bags from the market at the end of the Rio della Fava, condensation on the outside where something cold was packed, and flour on the sleeve of his jacket where something had shifted in transit.
It was the kind of small thing Dario would have bet good money against seeing a few months ago, when his brother had run the Colleoni operation with severe anal-retentiveness and had never been permitted to just be a person.
Rodrigo set the bags on the counter and glanced about the kitchen.
Athena and Giana were already seated. Frederica was in Dario's robe with both hands around her coffee cup, Dario was at the stove, and Rodrigo's expression moved from surprise to a quiet kind of happiness.
That was also new, and Giana was the one responsible for the softening in ll Mostro's guard again until he acted almost human.
Kon set two more bags down beside the first and looked Frederica over.
"You seem fine," he said, moving to kiss the top of Athena's head.
"I told you I was fine," Frederica replied.
"I'll double-check later, just to be sure. Altun's orders. You know what she's like." He opened the refrigerator and began putting things away.
Rodrigo pulled out a chair at the kitchen island and looked at Dario. "You look like you didn't sleep."
"I slept eventually." Dario moved the pan off the heat and hid a grin at the memory of Frederica's mouth sucking the anxiety right out of him.
Over coffee, he told them about their search for the Thriae bee, which they found in San Expedito's statue, a present from Niccolò. Rodrigo's expression shut down as soon as Dario had mentioned the journal.
Giana put her hand over Rodrigo's on the counter without looking at him, and the blankness that had seeped into Rodrigo's expression vanished once more.
"Where is the journal now?" he asked, a hunger in his eyes that he couldn't hide.
"Upstairs. Come on, I'll get it for you." Dario said and turned to the others. "Help yourself to the eggs, but leave me some or there will be trouble."
"What kind of trouble?" Frederica asked, a glint in her eye. Dario pretended not to feel the flicker of desire that made his dick twitch.
"The kind that means I don't cook for you again, Spartana," he growled. She only laughed at him, which was all he needed.
The staircase was quiet, the thick velvet runner swallowing their footsteps as they went up.
Dario pushed open the door to his room and found the journal sitting on the nightstand. He picked it up and held it for a moment, the leather worn and soft.
"Papa hid this in his desk, and I don't think Gabriella ever found it." He turned the journal over. His father's handwriting on the inside cover was brown with age.
"If she had, she certainly wouldn't have left it there," Rodrigo replied, his shoulders starting to bunch up. Dario noticed but didn't point it out. They all had their mommy issues, especially now that they had learned she was responsible for Niccolò's death in more ways than one.
"He wrote entries about all of us," Dario warned him and passed it over. "There's a lot of stuff about what he was learning with Serapis, and comments about us boys and Gabriella. Make sure you are ready before you read it."
"You know I'll never be ready." Rodrigo looked at the journal in his hands and finally took it. He sat on the edge of the bed and slowly opened it.
Dario stayed by the window and looked out at the canal below, the morning light catching the green water, and a delivery boat making its slow way down the canal. It seemed so normal compared to their lives of ancient sorcerers and magical bees.
Rodrigo was holding the journal, and he looked as if he were keeping something below the surface by sheer force of will.
"She sent him to that meeting in Naples, knowing what it would cost him.
He says here he told her to tell Zio Lucius.
Gabriella promised she would. She promised him, Dario, and she never fucking did it.
" Rodrigo took a shuddering breath in and out, trying to keep himself steady.
"She calculated the risks and decided it was worth it. "
"Yes."
"She never told us."
"No."
"Zio… Serapis… He knew the whole time."
"He knew some of it. I think he's part of the reason we grew up with a father at all and had some normality for a little while.
" Dario paused, chewing it over. "The spell was both of their ideas, Rodrigo.
We have to accept that no matter how much it sucks.
Niccolò never would have left us if he didn't think Gabriella couldn't be trusted.
She was always so selfish, but you remember how she had times when she even resented anyone taking up Niccolò's time. "
"Even us. His own damn sons," Rodrigo grumbled. He set the journal on the bed beside him before getting up and walking to the window to stand beside Dario.
"I'm so angry at her," he said quietly. It didn't sound like anger.
It sounded like the aftermath of it, the part that stayed when you had carried it long enough that the heat was gone and only the weight was left.
"She used everyone around her to try to get her own way. Including him. Especially him."
Dario sighed. "I know."
"Serapis should have told us."
"He should have. He knows that." Dario looked sideways at his brother. "He's been paying for it for years."
Rodrigo was quiet for a moment. "And how are you? You have been carrying that statue around since you were nineteen. You had no idea what was inside it?"
"Nope. That's not my fault. I wasn't meant to know."
"I didn't say it was your fault, frattelino. I asked how you are."
"I don't know," Dario said honestly. "Somewhere between gutted and grateful. I didn't know I was missing this private piece of him, and now I have it, and I don't know what to do with it yet."
Rodrigo looked at him for a long moment before his brother's arms were around him, hugging him tight. Dario stood frozen for one surprised second before he put his arms around his brother and held on.
Physical affection hadn't been a language their mother spoke.
It had been rationed out for performance—a hand on a shoulder in public, a kiss on the cheek for the room—and it had never been for the private moments that might actually have mattered.
It was still a language they were all trying to learn.
"You carried this alone," Rodrigo said softly.
"Everything in that journal. Everything you felt about it, and everything you kept to yourself about what you overheard that night, because you didn't know how to put it into words without being misunderstood.
That ends now. We're family, which means you don't have to hide who you are from us.
Not from me, and not from Leo. Never again. "
Dario looked at his brother's face and didn't say anything for a moment. The emotion building in his chest was taking up too much room for words.
"Fuck Gabriella and everything she put us through," Rodrigo said with absolute conviction. "We do what makes us happy now. Even if that is having sex with the deadliest assassin in the world."
Dario made a sound that was not his finest moment. "Don't start."
"I knew she liked you since Leo's wedding because of the seat she saved for you, but she really likes you if she let you stay with her parents. That wasn't a casual gesture, Dario."
Dario shifted his weight on the balls of his feet. "I know."
"So?" Rodrigo demanded. "What are you going to do about it? Or are you still fooling yourself into believing this is just a casual thing?"
Dario opened his mouth. Closed it. He thought about Frederica coming into his room last night, climbing onto his bed, picking the journal off the nightstand, and putting it on the floor because she could see he needed it out of his eyeline.
Nobody had ever done something that small for him that meant so much.
Nobody had ever read him that well and done something about it without making it into some kind of debt.
"You said that you didn't know how to keep Giana. I don't know how to keep Frederica," he said, trying to verbalize all the churning things he felt when it came to her. "She's not someone you keep, exactly. She doesn't sit still. She doesn't want to be managed or held down."
Rodrigo stared at him. "Do you want to?"
"Do I want to what?"
"Keep her."
Dario thought about Istanbul, and the bar, and the emptiness of going through a routine he had memorized so long ago he couldn't remember learning it.
He thought about a jail cell in Crete and arriving to find a look on her face that she immediately tried to suppress.
He thought about every round of every fight they had picked with each other and enjoyed, and the way she looked at him sometimes with all the passion burning inside of her, and decided to direct it at him with a force that shook him to his core.
"Yeah," Dario admitted softly. "For the first time in my life, I actually want to keep someone. I… I love her."
Something moved across Rodrigo's face that was a little surprised, but he hid it quickly and grinned.
"She's going to be difficult," he commented.
Dario put a hand over his face. "Oh, god, don't I know it."
"Genuinely dangerous. Stubborn to a degree that I find alarming. She'll fight you on everything that matters to her and a great many things that don't."
"I know," Dario said again.
"You love that about her."
He didn't answer because he didn't need to. Rodrigo's laugh was full of brotherly delight at his inner torment.
"It makes sense that you want her. You have never met trouble that you didn't walk toward," Rodrigo pointed out.
"What can I say? It's a gift." Dario glanced at the bedside table, where San Expedito stood, chipped base and all, the small writing on his flag reading HODIE.
"Good thing I've always had a saint to get me out of trouble again," he pointed out and laughed softly.
Rodrigo followed his gaze to the statue, and his smile softened. He picked the journal off the bed, tucked it carefully under his arm, and moved toward the door.
"Come downstairs. Kon is determined to check Frederica for magic, and she'll cooperate better if you're in the room."
"I doubt that, but I'm hungry, and I just know it's going to be a long ass day." Dario took one last look at his saint, prayed that they would find their way out of trouble soon, and followed his brother.