Chapter 7 Lorenzo
Lorenzo
Every other Thursday, Cristian would come for dinner; everyone enjoyed those visits. In the kitchen, Amalia was making eggplant parmesan. She wouldn’t even do that for Elio. Isabella was seated at the kitchen counter, watching.
“You don’t want any help?” Isabella asked. “I can dredge the eggplant or something.”
“Leave Amalia alone.” Isabella turned to where I was seated at the kitchen table, eating my lunch. “She doesn’t need you underfoot.”
Isabella huffed, and I didn’t have to look at her directly to know that she’d rolled her eyes at me.
I could get up and deal with it, but Cristian was due any minute, and I had to make confession today.
“I was offering to help her,” she said because, of course, she couldn’t keep her goddamn thoughts to herself.
Before I could say anything, Amalia cut me off. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s an old Vitali family recipe; Lorenzo and Elio’s grandmother entrusted it to me. I’m not allowed to teach it to just anybody.”
Isabella’s shoulders slumped, but she nodded. “Sure, that makes sense,” she said, but there was a bitterness in her voice. She doesn’t like rejection, I mused, though I didn’t know why I cared to make note of it.
I took a bite of the club sandwich that Amalia had made me, relishing the crisp bacon and juicy tomato, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cristian’s golden blond hair bouncing past the window.
He was at the back door in moments and coming inside without knocking.
“Buon pomeriggio,” he greeted as he stepped inside.
Cristian was dressed in a pressed white shirt and black trousers: he had come straight from the seminary, then.
“Cristian!” Amalia’s voice was bright. “I’m making Nonna’s eggplant.”
My younger brother smiled, but then Isabella turned around, and it died on his lips. He glanced at me quickly, and then back to her. “Hello?”
Isabella held out a hand. “Isabella Rossi,” she said by way of introduction. “I’m—”
“Our new nurse,” I broke in. “She’s working off a debt.”
“My father’s debt,” she said, a challenge clear in her voice.
Goddamnit. I wanted to put her over my knee and spank the brat right out of her.
I knew her type well: a little uppity, had to have the final word, but with the right handling, she would melt under my touch.
My cock twitched beneath the zip of my jeans, and I was grateful for the table that I was sitting at.
Cristian hummed. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Isabella,” he said. “Lorenzo, let’s go to your office, yeah?”
“Sure.”
I put my plate in the dishwasher and followed after my baby brother. I walked behind him the whole way, taking in the stiffness of his shoulders, his silence. “Lock the door behind you,” he tossed back at me as we reached my office.
Fuck. I turned the lock with a soft click and faced my brother. “Give it to me,” I said.
Cristian’s jaw was tight. His eyes, identical to my own, pierced through me. “What in the fuck are you doing?”
I didn’t have an answer, not really. “Her father owes me north of a million dollars; she’s working it off for him.”
His face was flat. “You know that’s not what I meant.”
“That’s all it is,” I insisted.
“Bullshit.”
I chuckled, shaking my head. “Didn’t know that seminarians were allowed to use such language, Cris.”
“Fuck you, Enzo,” he spat back. “This is serious. You found Sienna’s doppelg?nger.”
Every part of me stiffened with rage. “You don’t get to say her name.”
Cristian crossed his arms over his chest. “No one can talk about her,” he said, “but you can bring her twin into the house.” He shook his head. “What are you doing, fratellone?”
I ground my teeth together. “I didn’t believe Damian when he told me that she looked so much like Sienna,” I said, biting out the words. “When I saw her—”
“You couldn’t leave her alone.”
He wasn’t wrong. There was no way I could have walked away from Isabella when she wore my wife’s face. “It’s only for a year. Then she goes back to her life.”
Cristian’s brow wrinkled. “There’s no way she’s going to work off more than a million dollars of debt in a year.”
“I made her a deal.” At my younger brother’s flat look, I added, “I agreed that she only had to give up a year of her life to me if she became my surrogate.”
Cristian stared at me, as if he was waiting for me to tell him that I was kidding. When I didn’t, his face twisted in his anger. “You’re sick.”
Maybe I was, but it didn’t change anything. The deal had been made. “You said it yourself: she could be Sienna’s twin.”
“But she’s not Sienna,” Cristian said. “You know that.”
“Of course she’s not,” I spat. “I’m not delusional. I want the minor families off my back about an heir, and she can give me a child that looks like Sienna. It will be very clinical.”
Liar. I was such a fucking liar, and Cristian looked at me like he knew it.
“Does she know about Sienna?”
I scoffed. “Why would she?”
“You need to tell her. You can’t let her go through with this without telling her the real reason.”
“The reason shouldn’t matter to her,” I insisted. “All she needs to know is that she’s free after a year.” Assuming she gives me what I want.
“This isn’t healthy,” Cristian said. “You’ve never dealt with Sienna’s death, and now you’ve got the uncanny valley version of her living in your fucking house.”
I snarled at the quip. “Of course I dealt with her death. I broke her murderer’s face with my bare hands.”
My brother didn’t look impressed. “Yeah,” he said instead, “and then you shut the door on anything that belonged to her and forbid anyone from saying her name.”
I looked away from him, clenching my hands.
“I don’t need to be reminded of my failure.
” No matter how many heads rolled while I searched for who paid my former vicecapo to murder my wife, I never got a name.
Just thinking about it made my gut smolder with an anger that could burn me alive from the inside out.
With an almighty, unhappy sigh, Cristian sank into one of the chairs by the window and motioned for me to sit by him.
It was where he liked to take my confession.
I had already shared enough, telling him about Isabella’s impending pregnancy, but I had been making confession for more than half of my life.
I wouldn’t stop now. My poor mother would roll over in her grave if I did.
I sat and made the sign of the cross. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” I murmured to myself.
“Wait,” Cristian said, and I looked at him. “I won’t hear your confession today until you agree to tell her.”
“Really?” You can take the boy out of the Cosa Nostra, I thought. “Isn’t extortion a sin?”
“Deciding not to hear your confession isn’t extortion,” he said. “We aren’t going to make a mockery of contrition. You’re not truly remorseful.”
We sat, glaring at one another; the tension became a near-touchable thing between us. “If you even think about telling her.”
Cristian raised an eyebrow in question. “Are you really threatening me, Enzo?” he asked. “Your confessor?”
“You aren’t my confessor if you won’t take my confession, pazzo.”
“Your brother, then,” he countered. “Do you think that I’m afraid of you, fratellone?”
Even Damian and Elio, as free as they were around me, knew when to stop pushing.
Only Cristian was brave enough, or stupid enough, to stare me down.
“Don’t make me threaten you,” I said. It was a command and a plea all at once.
Now that Sienna was gone, Cristian was my last hold on any shred of humanity that I had left.
Losing him would mean giving in to the monster lurking beneath the surface, and we both knew it.
Cristian pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m not going to say anything,” he said finally. When he looked at me again, his expression was unfriendly. “But only because I think it should come from you.”
“What about my confession?”
He shook his head. “Call Father David if you want,” he said. “I won’t give you absolution.”
More silence, more tension. “Are you staying for dinner?”
Another stretch of glaring, and then the corners of Cristian’s mouth curved upward into a grimace of a smile. “Amalia is making eggplant parm,” he said. “What do you think?”
I stood. “Good.” I motioned for him to get up. “Come spar with me before dinner. If you’re not going to play the role of the confessor today, the least you could do is let me kick your ass.”