Chapter 18 Giovanni #2
She doesn’t finish because Stella is rising to her feet, and Bianca circles the table to pull her into her arms. That they care about each other is obvious.
I haven’t spent much time in my sister’s company since she married into the D’Angelo family, but my younger memories of her don’t include public displays of affection.
With anyone. Perhaps she never met anyone who could persuade her to show her feelings before.
Unfortunately for Bianca, it will be her downfall.
“Gio?” She releases Stella’s petite frame but faces me with one arm wrapped around the shorter woman’s waist. Her smile fades. “What’s going on? Why is Stella here?”
“I wanted to see for myself the woman who could make my sister happy.”
It’s as close to the truth as I’m prepared to admit.
When I first figured out that Bianca was behind her own abduction as well as the Fish terrorizing Meggie and Amber, something inside me hardened.
I wanted her to feel the pain that I’d have felt if Meggie had been killed.
I wanted her to suffer for killing our parents.
I wanted revenge for Elisabetta’s death and the gaping hole it left in the hearts of her parents who lost a huge part of their world the day their only child died.
In short, in the raw flash of anger that followed the discovery, I felt that killing Stella was the only way.
But then I thought back to when I held Meggie in my arms, her naked body pressed up against mine, knees raised to her chest to contain the anguish of not knowing where Amber was, and I realized that murdering an innocent woman wouldn’t bring me peace.
It would make me as bad as my sister, and we are nothing alike.
Even now, she is watching me with blatant mistrust in her eyes, trying to preempt my next move and plan her counterattack. I don’t want to live with the guilt or the self-loathing or the resentment that my sister has harbored since she was old enough to understand how the family legacy works.
I want to be someone who Meggie can be proud of.
“And?” Bianca snaps me back to reality. “This is me you’re talking to Gio. I know you didn’t bring us here to give us your blessing.”
Stella watches me with wide gray eyes. She is beautiful in an ethereal way, someone who floats through life like dandelion seeds cast adrift on the breeze.
Emiliano Calderone convinced her to come to the island.
I don’t know how, but few can resist the old man’s warmth and generosity when he turns on the charm.
“That’s where you’re wrong.” I cross the room, help myself to a cold beer from the refrigerator, and turn around to face them. “You do have my blessing.”
Stella’s smile is tentative.
“But?” Bianca’s voice is brittle.
I flip the lid from the bottle of beer and take a long glug. “There’s a condition.”
“Ha!” Bianca scoffs. “Of course there is. People like you never do anything unless it benefits you in some way.”
“People like me?” The beer fizzes in the back of my throat. “Are you alluding to my mafia background? Or is this more personal, Bianca? Because we share the same blood. We were raised by the same parents with the same principles and morals. We were brought up to believe in the same family values.”
I don’t need to look at Stella to know that she has eased herself out of my sister’s embrace and is studying her profile intently. As I thought, she might have seen the best of Bianca, but I doubt that she has an inkling of how bad the worst of her can be.
“Shall we talk about your family values, Bianca?”
My sister’s face pales. She has clearly been living a lie for so long that she has convinced herself that the past would never catch up with her. Perhaps, in Bianca’s warped memory, the accident that killed our parents was simply that: an unfortunate accident.
“What’s the condition, Gio?”
Stella slips her hand into Bianca’s, forcing my sister to meet her gaze. “It’s okay, B. He can’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do.” Even her voice is pale as though the cadence has been pushed through a colander to remove all emotion.
I wonder what they speak about when they’re alone. Has Bianca given the woman she loves the censored version of mafia life, the technicolor crowd-pleaser version rather than the reality? Or has Stella seen the real Bianca and accepted her for what she is?
Either way, my sister is still waiting for me to enlighten her when, on cue, voices can be heard coming down the stairs to join us.
Bianca’s children, Sofia and Leo.
They stop just inside the threshold when they see their mom, their smiles wide.
“Mom!”
Sofia, the eldest twin by five minutes, bounds across the room all energy and buzz like a toy with new batteries.
At twelve years old, she is almost as tall as Bianca, with the same glossy auburn hair that glints like copper in the sunlight streaming through the open door.
She hugs her mom and ensconces herself between the two women, her movements purely innocent and unintentional.
When she faces me, I notice, for the first time, her striking resemblance to her father, despite the natural elegance inherited from her mom. Her features are softer, but the heavy brows and wide smile are unmistakably Mario’s.
“Uncle Gio. Are you staying too?”
I smile. “Not for long. I have business to attend to in New York.”
I’m met with indifference. They will have given up expecting me to stay for the summer a long while ago, no doubt encouraged by my sister’s obvious disappointment in my refusal to come home.
Leo hasn’t moved. He is uncannily like Bianca, tall for his age, slender, with slanted brown eyes, thick dark hair that flops forward to brush his brows, and chiseled jawline; he reminds me of Enzo when he was growing up. As our mom would’ve said: he’ll break hearts when he is older.
“Leo.” Bianca gestures with a wave of her perfectly manicured hand for her son to join them. “Come and give momma a hug, sweetie.”
Watching her, no one would ever guess she had no idea that her children were here. The last time she saw them, they were at the family home in New York, their nanny making sure that they got to school on time in the mornings, and that their homework assignments were completed on schedule.
Unlike his sister, Leo crosses the room as if he is entering the lion enclosure at the zoo. He folds himself into his mom’s hug, cheek turned away from her face to receive her kisses, arms by his side. He turns his back on Stella and addresses me. “Is my father coming too?”
From the downward tilt of his mouth and the flatness of the question, I’m guessing that yes isn’t the answer he’s looking for. Has he picked up on the friction between his parents? Or does he know about his mom’s relationship with Stella?
It crosses my mind that Mario might have made his son aware of his mom’s infidelities, whilst playing down his own part in having her abducted by the bratva mob. Trying to turn them against her and encouraging them to believe whatever lies he intended to spin around her disappearance.
“No, Leo. Your father had to stay in New York.”
“Is your business with our father, Uncle Gio?” Sofia asks.
I smile. “Some of it is.”
Bianca steps in, steering the conversation away from Mario. “When did you guys get here?”
“Yesterday.” Sofia answers for them both. “Uncle Gio fixed it for us to skip the last couple weeks of school. He said it was a surprise vacation. Uncle Enzo is coming too.”
“He is?” Bianca’s groomed eyebrow arches in my direction. “Well, it’s a lovely surprise.” She’s choosing her words carefully; she still hasn’t heard my condition. “Have you met Stella?”
“We flew in together.” Stella swaps bright-eyed smiles with the children like the three of them are in on a private joke that doesn’t include their mom. “They told me all about Sicily. I can’t wait to explore the island.”
“Stella said that she’ll swim out to the rock with us.”
Sofia means the large rock in the sea that my friends and I used to swim out to when we were kids. We’d climb to the top and lounge around like lizards with the beach in the distance; it always felt as if the rock belonged to us, and I’m glad that it has been passed on to my niece and nephew.
“Mom doesn’t swim to the rock.” Leo’s expression is serious. “She says it’s too far.”
“Maybe we can persuade her together, huh?” Stella nudges his ribs with her elbow, but all he does is hang his head.
He must sense the cloud that is hanging over this summer despite his sister’s joy at being granted an even longer vacation than usual.
“You have all summer to visit the rock,” I say, “but right now, your mom and I have something to discuss. How about you take Stella outside and show her how to find the juiciest olives?”
Sofia leaves her mom’s side and heads out to the terrace overlooking the extensive gardens. “I’m the best at finding them,” she says, as Leo follows. If my sister has taught them nothing else, they know when to respect the wishes of their elders.
When they are out of earshot, Stella and Sofia chatting easily about olives and the other fruit growing in our orchards, Bianca turns on me, dark eyes little more than slits. “You took my kids out of school without my permission. What the fuck, Gio.”
“Extenuating circumstances.” I shrug. “I was thinking of their safety, something that neither you nor their father seem to have considered in your game of tit-for-tat.”
“They were safe at home.” She keeps her voice low. “I would never have put my children in danger. You must know me better than that.”
“I thought I did.” Pause. “But now I’m not so sure.”
“So, what happens now? Are you going to tell me what condition you’ve attached to your blessing or are we going to play stupid games all summer?”
“This isn’t a game, Bianca. You had our parents killed. You would have killed me too if I’d been on the island at the same time. Then you tried to have Meggie killed.”
She seems to draw away from me as if hearing this for the first time. At least she doesn’t try to deny it. Any of it.
“Do you even want to know what happened to Meggie’s little sister?
” I wait for a reaction, but her eyes are hard and glittering.
“Meggie found her in the bunker underneath the cabin in Vermont last night. She’s five years old, Bianca.
You claim that you wouldn’t put your kids’ lives in danger, but what about Amber?
What did you think would happen to her? Or did you tell yourself that the Fish wouldn’t harm his own flesh and blood? ”
“I…” She shakes her head. “I didn’t think it would go that far.”
“So, you just wanted to scare Meggie into going back home to London.” It doesn’t matter what my sister says now, I will never believe her. She threatened Meggie’s life to get to me, for purely selfish reasons, and I can’t forgive her for that.
“I was scared, Gio. I saw the business falling into the hands of a British girl you picked up on a film set in LA, and I couldn’t sit back and let it happen.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about it anymore.”
“I don’t?”
The hope in her eyes is real, and part of me wonders again if she is so deluded she has no idea that her unforgivable actions will have consequences.
“I will give you and Stella my blessing, but you have to choose: Stella or your kids.”
“I… What?” She doubles over as if all the oxygen has been sucked from her lungs. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m deadly serious. You used the bratva to help you escape Mario, and his subsequent death would have opened the door for you to be with the woman you love.
” I breathe deeply. “I will make sure that your husband gets what he deserves. I will protect your kids like they are my own. They will always have a home here, Bianca, and so will you despite everything you’ve done to destroy this family.
Your choice. Your children or your lover. ”
She straightens herself to her full height, tilting her chin towards the ceiling. “You can’t do this, Giovanni. Killing Mario will start a war. The other families—”
“The other families will back me up. They know what Mario is. A coward who reneged on our parents’ agreement to keep the peace.”
“You can’t take my kids from me or stop me from being with Stella.”
“Your children are Sabatellis. They will grow up knowing all there is to know about their legacy, and I’m not stopping you from being with Stella. I’m giving you the freedom you’ve always wanted. The freedom to be yourself.”
“At a price,” she spits.
“Our parents paid a far higher price for your freedom.”
“You’re a cold-hearted bastardo, Giovanni.”
“I think you’ll find I’m being lenient with you, Bianca. If I were you, I would choose before I change my mind.”