Chapter 7 STEPHANO
The next morning…
The guest room looks like a quiet heist: matte shopping bags with well-known designer logos stand at attention on a bench, filled with a silk robe, soft T-shirts, cotton boy shorts, slippers, a hairbrush that won’t tear at curls, shampoo, face wash, lip balm, a decent phone charger that won’t fry the port, noise-canceling buds, a tablet and even a laptop.
The receipt from the private shopper could pay a nurse’s salary for a year.
Whatever. If Ana's going to play wife, she’ll have the trappings.
If the hospital cameras ever leak, no one will be able to say I half-assed my vows or didn't take care of my wife.
The thought of nurses makes me think of Violet, the woman Marcello is going to marry next weekend. Funny, she used to be an ICU nurse at St. Raphael's. If she and Marcello hadn't fallen in love after he got shot, she would likely be the one taking care of Ana right now.
Dre texted an hour ago to fill me in on his success in the churches. He's already tracked down two potential Cells and warned me that rumors are flying that I got married. He didn't have to say it, but we both know that if Don Edoardo gets wind of this, there will be hell to pay.
Edoardo doesn’t scare me. The storm he drags behind him does. I don’t need the Don’s ego sniffing around my house while I’m building a flank. I’m buckling the overnight bag when the sturdy door opens without a knock.
"Morning, Figlio." My father's voice is warm. It always is. He wears it like a suit.
I don’t turn right away. I make him come closer. "You’re early."
"I’m late." He stops beside the bench, and his fingers skate over a designer logo. "Because I had to hear through the grapevine that my son got married."
I meet his eyes. "Then the grapevine should send you a bill."
He laughs, but there is no humor in it. "You couldn’t tell your father yourself? After everything we’ve done to keep our house clean?"
I stop the zipper in the middle of closing it. For a second, I consider telling him the truth. Then a ledger flashes behind my eyes—green on black, numbers like teeth.
GUSTAVE.CONTI → AURELIO.VALVERDE
AMT: 250,000 USD
NOTE: SERV/ROMA–"SCOUR"
REF: NICHOLAS/G–GW-11
If he knew Nico was alive and had paid Valverde to keep him breathing, why the silence? Why leave me to mourn a corpse that never hit the ground?
On a calculated exhale, I let the bag’s zipper close. "It was fast," I say. "Private."
Gustave’s brows climb. "Fast is for girls who don’t know what they’re buying." He leans in, and the familiar scent of his cologne, starch from his shirt, and clean power hits me.
"You know how Edoardo reacts to capos marrying outside. What were you thinking—especially now?" He looks genuinely sorrowful.
"Why do you care what he thinks?" I ask, mild as poison. "You told me once a Don’s opinion is weather. It changes."
His jaw ticks, a small telltale sign that he's not as composed as he wants to appear. "I care because I’ve kept us alive by playing both sides of the sword. I drink his wine while you drink that of the sons and young capos. Whichever way this city falls, a Conti lands on his feet. That’s what a father buys for his house: insurance. "
"Insurance looks a lot like tribute on paper," the words are out before I can leash them.
His eyes sharpen. "What paper?"
I give him a smile I don’t feel and wave my hand. This isn't me. I don't make comments I don't mean. I don't talk with my temper. "Figure of speech."
He circles the room and comes close enough for me to see the years of worry and responsibility etched fine around his eyes.
"You listen to me, Stephano. You are not like those young runts—DeLuna playing cowboy, Orsi sharpening knives, Sartori measuring himself against God.
You're smarter. You’re supposed to sit at their table and bring me their tells, not join their little… rebellion."
"Too late," I say, because I’m done kneeling to men like my father who confuse rot with tradition.
He doesn’t flinch. Of course he doesn’t. "One day, when you’re older, you’ll see the wisdom in having chips on both sides of the table," he says softly. "You don’t pick a winner; you make sure the dealer owes you either way."
"Dealer’s been stacking the deck," I say. "Maybe it’s time we flip the table."
"Careful." He taps the bag with a knuckle. "Who is she?"
"My wife."
"Don’t be cute."
"Never am."
He studies me, looking for the seam where the lie breathes. "Does Edoardo know?"
"Not yet."
He exhales through his nose. "Then he’ll know before lunch. He always does." A beat. "I can smooth it. I’ll tell him it’s convenient. A business consolidation. A legal tie to—"
"You’ll tell him nothing," I say. The edge in my voice surprises even me. "You stay out of this."
Something old and iron crosses his face. "I kept this family standing when better men fell. You don’t get to tell me to stay out."
"You’re in my house," I remind him. "And you’re not the only one who keeps books."
It lands. I watch it. He tilts his head, curious and cool, the way he looks at a man who just showed a weapon he might not know how to use.
"What do you think you know?" he asks.
I zip the bag, slowly. "That you love your sons. That you love winning more."
He smiles then; it's sad and honest, which is worse than any threat. "Loving you is how I win."
"Is that what we’re calling it?"
"I call it what it is." He steps in, close enough for the past to press between us like a third man. "Don’t make me choose between you and what keeps this house safe."
"You've already chosen." I'm not sure if I mean the ledger, the years, or the way he taught me to count knives before friends.
A muscle jumps in his cheek. He backs up a step that isn’t a retreat. "Bring your wife to dinner," he says, tone smoothing. "Let me look at her. Let me see the math."
"When she’s out of the hospital."
He blinks. "Hospital."
"Bullet," I fill him in. He waits for more.
When I don't elaborate, he nods slowly. "Then bring me the man who fired it."
"I plan to."
He turns for the door, hand on the jamb, then looks back. "You think you’re done playing games, Figlio. You aren’t. You’re just playing bigger ones." His eyes soften, like he remembers the boy I was before the world got teeth. "Call me before you call anyone else. Even if you think you can’t."
He leaves. The house exhales.
I pick up the bag and feel the weight of cotton, silk, and the lie I told when I said fast and private. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. I walk down the hallways, not paying attention to the two men flanking me. I used to think I knew the shape of my father’s love.
Now I’m not sure who he loves more, his family or La Famiglia.
Outside, three SUVs sit idling. Two are already packed with guards; the one in the middle has its door open for me to step in. I throw the bag in the back and climb in, pulling the partition up. I'm not in the mood for conversation.
The elevator up to the ICU is packed and slow.
A woman is silently crying into an already abused tissue, and a man is trying to soothe her.
An orderly boards, pushing a man in a wheelchair, only to get off on the next floor, running over someone's toes.
The others, visitors and staff, eye me dubiously.
After Marcello's last visit in this hospital, I don't think they have much patience left for anybody who looks like trouble.
When we hit the ICU floor, I can't get out of the damn thing fast enough and nearly collide with a doctor.
"Sorry," he mumbles.
Ignoring him, I head straight for Ana’s room.
I don’t like hospitals. Never have. Never will.
My mother spent too many days in them—days filled with shrugs, misdiagnoses, and antidepressants—until they finally stopped pretending they knew what was wrong with her.
From one of the rooms, the stink of bad coffee hits me; combined with the odor of disinfectant in the air, it's enough to make me gag.
I move past the stationed guards, rip the sliding door open, and enter her room as if an apocalyptic nightmare was behind me.
She’s awake, propped up on the bed, and a tray sits across her lap.
In one hand, she holds a fork, in the other a phone, and she looks as if she's about to throw the fork at me like a knife. I raise my hands. "I come in peace."
"Ever heard of knocking?" She complains, lowering the fork.
The swelling over her eye is down; the bruise has gone from riot-purple to a mean yellow that looks almost deliberate on her. Startling jade-green eyes meet mine. I set the canvas bag on the bed. "Morning."
She looks from the bag to me. "What’s that?"
"Stuff."
She lifts the flap. Silk and cotton, the kind of soft that forgives stitches.
She thumbs through, wearing an unreadable expression until a red scrap of lace catches and pools over her fingers.
She holds up the thong between two knuckles, her eyebrows climbing nearly to her hairline. Her full lips are almost smiling.
I shrug. "Came in a multipack. This one must have opened."
"Hmm." She tilts her head. "Bold for a man who buys herbal tea." She holds out a pack of chamomile tea next. I probably should have paid closer attention to the things the shopper bought.
"Chamomile is a weapon," I defend the herbal concoction. "Ask any grandmother."
"Thank you," she replies, and it sounds like a question until she adds, "for the charger. The hospital ones try to set things on fire."
"Trying to keep my investments alive."
"Romantic," she deadpans, but the corner of her mouth gives her away. She drops the thong back in the bag with a whisper of lace and checks my face like she wants to see which part of me flinches.
I don’t. I pull the privacy door half-closed with two fingers and drag the chair up with my boot. "How’s the head?"
"Attached." She taps her temple with the fork. "They want to keep me a week."
"Of course they do," I say. "They’re doctors."