Chapter 42 STEPHANO #2
"She was married to him for politics. You know how our world works." Gustave’s eyes drift to the ceiling, unfocused. "She ran the first chance she got. With Maurice."
"Maurice?" I echo, faintly remembering having heard that name before.
"Your uncle. You never met, or if you did, you wouldn't remember it."
He's wrong; now an image of a man pops up in my mind.
Tall, lean. Full of fun and jokes. What I don't remember is what happened to him.
One day, he simply never came back. "He was your mother's favorite brother.
She loved him almost as much as you." Gustave shakes his head, confusing me for a moment until I realize there is some actual fondness there. For Mamma.
"Marisol didn’t know she was pregnant when she left," he continues.
"Found out later." He coughs, blood bubbling at the corner of his lips. I don’t move to help him.
"Your mother knew. Maurice came to her. Asking for her help.
Fucking Marisol got him in a shithole of trouble and wouldn't consider taking care of the problem properly.
Fucking Catholics." He curses. I understand—Marisol refused to have an abortion.
"He knew what Viktor would do if he found out. What he’d do to Marisol. To the child. To him. So he begged your mother to pretend to be pregnant and to claim the child as hers when the time was right."
He glares at Nico. The child.
"She fucking lied to me. For a fucking year." The anger he must have felt for my mother is palpable. "She pretended she was pregnant just like Maurice asked her to, while he and his whore hid out in the suburbs."
A picture is forming. I must have been around six, and I remember vividly how excited my father was that my mom was pregnant again. At six, I didn't know that they had been trying for years, but it was always only me until Nico.
"When she was nine months pregnant, your mom insisted on going to our house outside Beacon.
I had no clue that this was where Marisol and Maurice were hiding.
I didn't even know who Marisol was." Sweat beads down his forehead, and he wipes it against his shoulder.
"I got a call one morning, congrats, you have another son.
" Even the bitterness over what he found out later can't fully disguise the elation he must have felt at that moment.
"I rushed to the estate. Your mother was in bed, beautiful and radiant as ever, holding," he pauses, swallows, "Nico.
" A shudder moves through him. "Doc Baresi, Brown's predecessor, was there too. All happy and smiles, fucking liar."
His gaze returns to me, "For a while all was good. You were happy having a younger brother, your mother bloomed, the only drawback was that… " he exhales loudly, like a man who should have read the signs, "her milk wouldn't come in."
He breaks off, probably caught in memory, and I give him time to catch himself, while Nico starts pacing like a caged animal. I keep an eye on the gun he's still holding. Finger at the side of the trigger, not on it. Good, he at least had more training while he was gone.
When Nico stops and opens his mouth as if to say something, Gustave continues, "It was a good time.
Nice. But then we received word that Christine's brother, Maurice, had been killed.
By the Russians. He and his lover, Marisol.
" He snorts derisively. "I remember thinking, stupid ass, he's finally done it.
You know, your uncle was always in trouble with husbands, brothers, and fathers.
It was only a matter of time before he got caught with his pants down in the wrong place. "
He groans, moves his foot slightly, and groans again.
"There was nothing the Rossi family could do.
I mean, they tried, but the Russian Pakhan killed a man who had run off with his wife.
" He shrugs and winces. "Every choice leaves a body.
This one just happened to be your mother's little brother.
I knew a shitstorm was about to land, I just didn't know how much. "
I guess he probably didn't. "Your mom changed after that. I thought it was grief. Grief was part of it. But she became extremely anxious. A month later, she finally broke down and confessed. She confessed that Nico was Voronin's son. She had bribed the doc into forging the birth certificate…"
He trails off again, caught up in his own memories, and I almost feel sorry for him. Had he not tried to kill Nico and me, I would. He is my father after all. And up until a few weeks ago, I thought we had a decent relationship. But now I start to understand mom's depression, her anxiety.
"She didn't know if Viktor would come after us, after Nico, and it killed her." He looks at Nico with contempt. "She loved you like you were her real son."
That must have cost him to say, but I'm willing to bet it means a lot to Nico. To at least know that the woman he’d thought his mother had loved him.
"The fear was slowly killing Christine, and… yeah, I was a bit rattled too. The Russians aren't a joke, but Viktor was… a special kind of crazy sadist. His ambition was to become a Czar, did you know that?"
I didn't, but I don't give a shit either. The man is six feet under.
"So I paid for intel," he continues. "I found out that after Maurice was killed, which I heard took a while, Marisol told Viktor that he had a son, Alexei, but he'd never find him.
No matter what they did to her, she took that secret to the grave.
" He looks impressed. "I was assured that was the truth, and after nobody came knocking, I started believing it.
And when Viktor was killed, I relaxed, but your mother never did.
" He glares from me to Nico, making sure he understands that he blames him.
I can tell Gustave wants to fall quiet, wants to fall back into his memories, but I won't let him. "So the Valverdes never knew Marisol had a kid?"
He shrugs, "They probably heard the same rumors I did about Marisol taunting Viktor with a son he'd never find."
I let that sink in, but not for long, "So why now? Why did you send Nico to the Valverdes three years ago, when nobody even suspected who he was?"
He closes his eyes and shrinks back into the chair; his face is paler now, probably from the blood loss.
The wound in his foot isn't oozing any longer, but drops of blood are still seeping out.
Not knowing how much longer this confession will take, I unbuckle my belt and cinch it around his calf.
He hisses in pain, but contains it. A true mafia man.
I can't help but admire that and feel some kind of pride; he's still my father.
"Because the fucking bitch decided then was a good time to blackmail me into backing Edoardo."
A dark foreboding fills me. "Donna Margarita?"
"Who else had the balls to blackmail a capo?" Gustave counters.
"So you decided rather than give in to her demands, you'd have me killed?" Nico exclaims.
Gustave looks him straight in the eye. "It was a perfect plan. If Margarita had said one word after, it would have exposed her. You would have been dead. The Venezuelans the bad guys."
Bang. The shot is loud, but not final. Gustave cries out in pain as his other foot is shattered.
"Fuck, Nico." I hold my hand out. Gustave doesn’t have that much more blood to lose. "Give me your belt."
It's becoming more difficult to stay away from the lake of blood around Gustave's feet, but I manage to put another tourniquet on him.
"For all that sacrifice," I say, voice steady, "for everything Christine endured—everything you claim you lost—this is what you made of it."
He watches me, searching. Maybe for understanding. Maybe for absolution. He finds neither.
"So how did Silvestre find out?" Gustave asks, hissing through his teeth in pain, searching for a distraction from the pain.
For a moment, Nico looks like he's not going to tell him, but then he relents, probably figuring it doesn't matter if Gustave finds out or not; he's going to die, we all know it. And he'd tell me eventually anyway.
"We were having dinner when a surprise guest appeared.
Donna Margarita. Silvestre wasn't expecting her, but he seemed genuinely happy to see her.
I'd seen her before, of course, and we greeted each other.
Suddenly, she pulled back and stared at me, then at Silvestre.
Oh, I never realized the resemblance before, she cooed.
Aurelio played right into her hand. I have no idea if they were in on it together or not, but I doubt it.
Anyway, Aurelio pointed out that I had the same dimple as Marisol.
I didn't know who he was talking about at the time. "
I can almost see Donna Margarita. Her conniving ways.
She must have known for a long time who Nico was, sitting on the secret like she had been sitting on so many others.
The old bat was a master of deception; I'm only now finding out how masterful.
Silvestre would have been enraged to find out Margarita had known all along, so she found a way to expose Nico without giving herself away.
"That was all it took. Silvestre was curious and asked about my birthdate, which coincided with the time Marisol was married and ran off. So he ordered a DNA test. The rest," Nico spreads his arms, gun pointing at Gustave, "is history."
It's not quite that easy. I still have questions, some mundane, but maybe that's what we need right now. An answer to a mundane question.
"What about the hair?" I ask. Nico was always dark-haired, as long as I can remember, but now blond hair is growing out. "You dyed it," I say quietly. "All these years." Confusion hits me. I can see how a father can color a young boy’s hair, but a teenager? "But how?"
Nico laughs bitterly. "Remember my scalp condition?"
I do, faintly. There was a lot of flaking and itching there for a while, and it still happened on occasion when Nico didn't have his special shampoo.