Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Luca
She is naked and curled up in my arms asleep when I wake up. I press my lips to her hair and I breathe her in.
I say it quietly to the dark room, to her sleeping face, to whatever version of myself has been making catastrophically poor decisions. "I'm not letting you go this time."
I lie there for a while and then I dress quietly and I go to find Renzo. He is in the study with his laptop open and a coffee going cold beside him and he looks up when I come in.
"Vorresti sederti per questo," he says. You might want to sit for this one.
I sit.
He hands me the tablet.
"Hartley the senator started making noise about an hour ago," he says, watching me scroll.
"His son is in the ICU with two broken legs and the man is not handling it quietly.
He has gone to the press. The story he is pushing is that Nathalie and her father conspired to have James attacked and hospitalized as a way of dissolving the engagement without losing face.
The media is pushing back suspecting that Hartley Jr. was having an affair and Keller had him punished this way. "
I look at the articles. It hit three major outlets already. The photographs of James and Alana on the pavement are everywhere, which I had anticipated, but the framing around this has been redirected with impressive speed.
Hartley Sr. has not been idle either. He is making hints about a political family attacking his. His son gets publicly humiliated and hospitalized and he needs a villain It also removes any scrutiny from what James was actually involved in.
I keep scrolling.
"There's more," Renzo says. "I guess the cousin gave Keller a description, he knows you are involved in this. He is fighting back."
I look at him.
"Keller has been making calls since this morning." He leans forward. "He's reaching out to le cosche," he says, using the old Sicilian word for the mafia families, "quelli che aspettano."
The ones who are waiting.
"You know the ones. He is hitting up families with political ambitions who have been sitting on the fence about their allegiance, the ones who would benefit from having a man like Keller owe them a favor.
" He folds his hands on the desk. "He is building a case against you using last night as the foundation.
His argument, from what our contacts can piece together, is that you overstepped.
That you interfered violently in the affairs of an American family on their own soil. "
I set the tablet down.
"Ascoltami," he says. Listen to me. "Most of la famiglia allargata, won't buy that.
You have built real loyalty over a long time and people know what you are and what you represent.
But Keller has political currency and he knows exactly which of the le cosche want that currency more than they want to stay in your good books.
" He pauses. "Four, maybe five significant ones.
He will go to them and he will make his case and some of them will listen. "
"Una guerra fredda," I say quietly. It'll be a cold war.
"Esatto," Renzo says and he adds, "And we would win it, I want to be clear about that. Coming out the other side would solidify your position as Don more permanently than anything else could."
He looks at me steadily. "But it would cost us.
Time, resources, energy, and it would test relationships that have taken years to build.
Also, we cleaned the hotel footage from yesterday both inside and outside.
The hotel owner isn't happy with the drama but I offered him some contacts and he is more than happy to shut his establishment down and say nothing to anyone as long as he doesn't have to speak with the police.
I have the feeling that neither Hartley nor Keller would want the cops involved. "
They wouldn't, it was a public opinion game.
I look at the window.
I caused this. Not with any intention toward her, I put him on a road and the consequences of that decision are spreading outward.
"I'm going to clean this up," I say.
"Lo so." I know. He pauses. "C'è ancora una cosa che voglio dire."
There is one more thing I want to say.
I look at him.
"La ami?" he asks. Do you love her?
The study is quiet.
I look at the desk, at the space where the crystal sat before I moved it back to my pocket this morning. I wonder about what love is supposed to feel like and whether what I feel constitutes it.
I answer honestly, "I don't know. I have never been in love so I don't have anything to measure it against."
Renzo waits.
"I thought I was in love with her," I say.
"The woman from the car. Two years ago. I spent two years trying to find her, thinking about her, building a whole search around a woman I had seen for less than an hour while I was barely conscious.
" I pause. "And then Nathalie walked into my meeting room and the woman from the car moved to the back of my mind for the first time and I didn't even notice it happening until it had already happened.
" I look at Renzo. "I don't know what to call that. "
"I know what to call it," Renzo says.
I say nothing.
"What if you found her?" he asks. "The woman from the car. What if she appeared tomorrow, exactly as you imagined her? Would you choose her or Nathalie?"
I open my mouth and I close it again.
I had not let myself consider this. I had kept the two things in separate rooms in my mind, the woman from the garage who had saved my life and Nathalie who ignited my heart. I had not asked myself what would happen if both rooms opened onto the same corridor at the same time.
The woman from the garage had lived with me for two years as a feeling more than a person. She felt like the warmth and capability that I had attached significance to because it had arrived at the moment I needed it most.
Nathalie is not a feeling.
"I can protect her," I tell Renzo. "Whatever Keller does, whatever this costs us, I can protect her from it."
Renzo nods slowly. "I don't doubt that." He pauses.
"But you need to think about what you're asking her to lose.
Her father. Her family. Her social standing, such as it is.
Her name as she knows it." He looks at me with the directness he reserves for the things that matter.
"She has already lost so much, Luca. If you're not going to choose her, you need to let her know that now. Before she loses anything else."
He pauses.
Then he says, quietly, "And I think you should tell her about her mother. You owe her that. Whatever else is true, you owe her that."
"Tell me what about my mother?"
We both turn.
She is standing in the doorway in my shirt and a pair of trousers that are several sizes too large, the waistband folded over twice to stay up, the fabric swamping her completely.
Her hair is loose and disordered and there are marks on her neck and her eyes are wide, very awake, and fixed on my face.
She heard.
Renzo recovers first. He stands and looks at me and I can see him deciding, and then he says, "I don't think you should hide it anymore." He moves toward the door and Nathalie steps aside to let him pass and then she puts her hand on his arm.
"Don't go," she says. "I want you here."
Renzo looks at her hand on his arm and then at me and he sits back down.
Nathalie turns to me.
"What do you know about my mother's death?" she asks.
Her voice is very steady. I think about the wrong thing to say and I think about all the versions of this conversation I could have and then I say, "It's late. Go to bed. We can talk tomorrow when you've rested and—"
"Don't do that." Her voice is still quiet but the calmness has a threat to it. "I want to hear it." She takes one step into the room. "If you have ever felt anything genuine toward me, anything at all, then tell me what you're hiding."
Whatever I say next, I am going to lose her.
And I know, in the same moment, with the same absolute clarity, that she is my choice. That she has been my choice for longer than I have been willing to say. And that it doesn't matter because after I say what I have to say she will never be mine to choose.
I sit down.
"Your mother's accident," I say. "It was staged."
She doesn't move. "What?"
"Your father wanted headlines. He wanted sympathy from the public to advance his political career.
" I keep my voice calm because one of us needs to be calm and it is not going to be her.
"He arranged an accident. A collision that looked serious enough to generate coverage.
He knew it was coming so he knew when to get out of the car.
" I pause. "Your mother didn't know. She wasn't part of the arrangement. She had no reason to jump."
She is very still.
"How do you know this?" she asks, and her voice has dropped to something I have to lean forward to hear.
I stand up and I go to her and I take her face in my hands and I look at her eyes and I plead, "Go to bed. Tomorrow I will tell you everything and—"
"Please." The word comes out so softly it barely makes a sound. "Please just tell me the truth."
I feel something in my chest that I don't have a word for.
I look at her face in my hands and I say, "My father worked with your father to stage the accident."
And I watch the light go out of her eyes.