Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
LUIGI
Although Ada had once been the don’s wife, she was still a woman. The knocks on the door were a tap at best, yet they reverberated within our four walls like a hammer pounding against the door. Next to me, my wife jumped every time her mother’s knuckles met the wood.
“Orietta, la mia figlia, per favore. I know you’re inside. Open the door.”
Even my cold, useless heart bled for my mother-in-law.
But unfortunately for her, it paled in comparison to what I felt for her daughter.
She would always be my priority. My piccolo porcospino.
She looked utterly lost, swallowed by the armchair in our living room.
With the way she fidgeted, with one hand tucked underneath her trembling thigh and the other cramped into a tight fist beneath my palm, she might as well have been in a dark cavern on her own.
“Are you going to open it?” Her tone was so broken it was nothing but a whisper with a lifetime of agony rippling within it.
I soothed her taut skin. I doubted whether she even felt it. She was cold to the touch. Her gaze a mixture of panic and a deep yearning.
Another knock. Another clench. “Do you want me to?”
Her chest heaved up and down three times before she could respond. The utter helplessness reflected on her face split me apart like an ax to my chest. Hope and fear fought within it. “Can’t you decide for me?”
I dropped to my haunches in front of her and stilled her trembling knees with my hands. “I can, if that’s what you want.”
She clutched my hands, wrapping her long, thin fingers around my thick ones in a death grip. Her nails dig into my skin, but she didn’t notice it.
The next knock made her keel over, burdened with physical pain. Inside, I ached with frustration, but outside, I was calm. Threading my hand through her hair, I sealed my forehead to hers. “Would you feel better if I let her in?”
She went quiet, searching for the answer within herself and coming up with none.
“How about if I don’t?”
A soft, painful gasp grated out of her before she dragged her gaze to mine.
Tears pooled freely down her cheeks. Cazzo.
This was so fucking hard. I wanted to take the easy way out.
Fling the door open and kick her mamma to the other side of town.
Don’s mother or not, she was the cause of all of my wife’s agony, and I wasn’t taking it.
But according to my wife’s therapist, I shouldn’t intervene.
A task that was easier said than done. I was so busy thinking through how to handle the situation myself that I missed her fucking answer to my question.
“What?”
Her eyes were a mirror to her soul when she answered in her cracked voice. “I don’t know what to do.”
I parked my fucking arrogance because I was so proud of her.
She was making progress. Her reaction seven months ago would have been to shut her out completely and pretend not to be bothered by it.
Or open the door and give in to a verbal shitshow of hurt her mamma.
This was the first time she wasn’t sure how to react .
Where she wasn’t going down the path of self-destruction first. Or walking all over the people she loved to hide her pain.
“It’s okay not to decide now.”
“Really?” Her tone was hopeful.
“Yes,” I assured her.
She was so relieved she collapsed onto my lap.
She was getting there. One day at a time.
When she’d first seen Ada from the window, she’d flipped off all the lights and run up to me.
Gone were the days when she found a way to hurt people.
This was a new phase, and she was getting there.
Doing it the way she wanted to. I was proud of her.
I tell her that over and over again. Each time my words penetrated her a little deeper, and she slid closer to me, her hands wrapped so tightly around my neck that she was close to strangling me, but fuck if I would change it for anything.
She was finally opening up, and I’d do anything she needed to get her to where she wanted to be.
Ada stopped calling out. The intervals between the knocking stretched until finally they ceased entirely.
Another day had gone by that Ada would walk away in disappointment.
She didn’t know it yet, but one day her eldest daughter would come back to her.
I was going to make sure of it, even if it was the last thing I did before I hit the dirt.
The house settled back to what it had been.
The silence finally registered with her.
In a flash, she sat up, and her gaze moved cautiously to the door.
A white envelope sat innocently in front of it.
Her eyes darted to mine. Building in panic again.
“Do you want me to get it?”
She nodded vigorously, and I dropped her gently back into the chair before I walked over to the door.
When I passed the window, Ada was standing across the narrow street.
When she saw me, her face fell in disappointment.
She’d hoped for a glimpse of her daughter.
Orietta didn’t know it, but I’d feed her mamma little bits of information to let her know how she was doing.
I couldn’t leave her completely in the dark.
She put her hands together, a gesture of pleading with her hands and her eyes.
I gave her a slight nod. She knew I wouldn’t push my wife into doing anything she didn’t want to do.
But if she wanted to reconcile, I’d be the one to hit the gas pedal on the car to get her to her home.
Soon she would get to see for herself how far her eldest daughter has come.
But it wouldn’t be today. With defeat on her shoulders, she climbed into her waiting vehicle, and they drove her away.
My wife’s eagle eyes burned the back of my neck.
I picked up the envelope and took it to her.
Even though I knew its contents, I kept a poker face.
This was going to be another hurdle for her.
Some months had more hurdles than others.
This month was going to have a shitload.
When I held it out for her, she slunk away from it, mistrust written all over her face.
“How about we open it together?”
“No.” She shook her head. “You open it.” I dropped to my knees and peeled it open with care because I knew she’d want to keep it in her box. The box of memories she thought I didn’t know about, hiding in the back of the closet, with letters from Daria and Lia she said she’d thrown away.
I took out the card and held it out to her. Her eyes misted, and she swallowed thickly. “Vitale’s getting married?” she choked out, part wonder and part shock.
I bit back my thoughts about it. I would die for my don.
Vitale Di Matteo commanded respect because he’d earned it.
He was a man of his word, unlike his father.
But the last few months had been hell with him.
There was no one on the team of men who wasn’t relieved that he’d finally gotten his woman.
Even if he’d had to defy tradition to wed her.
My wife slipped forward in her chair. “Ahana.” She tentatively ran her hand over the embossed gold names. It might as well have been in red for the amount of blood the don had spilled to get her. “She’s why he killed zio Endrigo?”
“Yes.”
Her lips tilted into a faint smile. “I like her already.”
I laughed. “I’m sure you do.”
“When is it?”
“The Sunday after the weekend.”
“That’s in nine days. He doesn’t want to wait,” she mused, almost to herself. “I can’t believe he invited me.”
I couldn’t help but scoff at her doubt. “Why wouldn’t he?”
Her smile dropped. “I can’t go.”
“You can if you want to,” I suggested. “Do you want to?”
She slipped back to the back of the chair and wrapped her hands around her legs. When she looked up with her head resting on her knees, doubts filled her face again. “Will you go if I don’t?”
“No.”
“Why not? He’s your don.”
I cupped her cheek in my palm. “You are my wife.”
She leaned her face against me, taking comfort in the words, but her eyes were burdened with grief. “You’ll miss the wedding.”
“There’ll be other weddings.”
She pulled at invisible threads on her dress. Lines formed on her forehead. A few heartbeats passed before she muttered so softly I almost missed it. “Not my brother’s, though.”
I knew her well enough to know she needed time.
She’d think about a million different scenarios and come to her own decision when she was ready.
Whatever it was, she might stick to it, or she might change it.
I was okay with that. As long as it made her happy.
She was busy taking out her agitation on her dress.
Twisting and turning it in all kinds of ways that would make an origami expert want to take lessons from her.
She was ready for a distraction. I knew her patterns like the back of my hand. Maybe even better. “Want a cup of tea?”
She nodded, her gaze distracted.
I dropped the card next to her on the table and walked to the kitchen.
When I set the kettle to boil and turned around, she had the card clutched in her hand.
Running her fingers through it with such yearning, like she held a diamond in her palm rather than a piece of cardboard.
My heart cracked yet again in her place.
My wife was a nervous wreck next to me. With her face glued to the window, she watched the scenery through unseeing eyes. I drove along a road that should have been familiar to her, yet I could brake and come to a halt, and she wouldn’t notice it.
“You look fucking gorgeous.”