Chapter Seventeen
Cal
The guest house is cool and smells like old wood and paper, the way it always has. The double doors are open, and Nico is leaning against the frame, arms crossed, looking out at the yard.
I walk up beside him and turn to follow his view.
From here, through the kitchen window, I can see Max, sitting at the island between Sophia and my mother.
Holding the espresso she was forced to take, she’s laughing at something—her head tilts back slightly, just a little, and the afternoon light comes through the window and does something to her hair that I am going to think about later when I have time to think about things.
And she looks happy. Like she fits there. Like it’s just another morning having coffee with my mother and sisters. Like she does this daily. Like she could.
God, I only wish she could.
Sophia says something. Max laughs again.
“Who’s the little lady?”
Nico hasn’t looked at me, but I can hear the teasing in his tone. He’s watching the window too.
“No one.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see him turn his head slowly and look at me the way he’s looked at me since we were children whenever I’ve said something he finds genuinely stupid.
It’s a specific look I know without seeing it.
It involves his whole face. His dark hair is shorter than mine, and his eyes are mirrors of my own, just a bit darker.
“My big brother,” he says, and I turn to face his words that are accompanied by the point of his finger and a smirk, “who has not, to my knowledge, brought a living, breathing woman to this house in the entire twenty-nine years of my own life, shows up unannounced with one, and expects me to believe she is no one.”
“Nico.”
“Rudi.” Nico raises his voice without looking away from me. “Gio. Give us a minute.”
Chairs scrape inside the guest house behind us. Footsteps. The door at the far end closes.
Nico turns back to the window and I follow his gaze. Max has said something to my mother. My mother is laughing now, too, touching Max’s arm. Something inside of me is trying to find reasons we can stay, some way to bottle the happiness on her face in this moment and keep it for her.
“No one,” Nico repeats, with significant feeling behind the words.
I look at the window. I look at him.
“No one outside this family knows who she is. No one finds out who she is. She’s not connected to any of this, she doesn’t know what any of this actually is yet, and I need it to stay that way. You know no one attached to this family is safe.”
“And yet you brought her. Here, specifically.”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
He raises his eyebrows in question.
“For fuck’s sake—she wouldn’t stay in the car.”
Pure delight crosses Nico’s face as he repeats my words back to me, “She wouldn’t stay in the car.”
“Don’t.”
“She told you no.”
“Nico—”
“She told Calogero Renzetti, head of the Renzetti family, to take your car and shove it up your—”
“She doesn’t know how to listen.”
Nico grins. It’s the grin that has been making my life complicated since he was seven years old. “A trait shared by all beautiful, perfect women, I fear. I love her already. So, who is she?”
I look at the window again. Through the glass, Max has turned on her stool and is looking at something Maggie is showing her—a photo, maybe, or something on her phone—and her expression is open and warm and completely unguarded.
I give him the short version. College. Two years. Her relationship. My leaving. Going back to Ellison. Her being gone. Staying anyway. Going to Abbott. Coming here. All of it.
Nico is quiet for approximately four seconds, which is a record for him.
“So let me make sure I understand this correctly.” He holds up one finger.
“You met this woman six or ten or whatever fucking stupid amount of years ago.” Second finger.
“She was with some other cazzo1 the entire time you knew her.” Third finger.
“You pined after her like a lovesick little puppy.” Fourth finger.
“You left, you went back, she was gone, you stayed anyway like a complete coglione2.” Five fingers.
“And now she is sitting in our mother’s kitchen drinking espresso like it’s Saturday brunch.
” He drops his hand. “And you’re telling me she’s no one. ”
“I’m telling you no one needs to know who she is.”
“Right.” He nods slowly. “Right, right, right. Okay. I understand completely.” He looks at the window.
Looks back at me. His expression shifts into something that in another man might be called sincere and he stands tall, extending a hand out for me to shake.
“I support this completely and I think you should marry her immediately. I say that with zero irony.”
“Nico—”
“I’m being serious. Today, even. I know a guy.” He waves a hand. “But first.” The humor drains from his face completely and I brace. “We have a problem.”
I exhale. “What happened.”
“The Volkovs.” He turns fully toward me now, his voice dropping as he refers to the Russian crime family that shares the city.
“They’ve been moving on our northern territory for three weeks.
Small things at first, easy to miss. But last Tuesday they hit one of our distribution points and took out two of our guys.
” He pauses. “Nobody died. But it was close.”
“Why didn’t you call me when it happened?”
“I did call you. You didn’t want to hear it. It was just about dinner time… wonder what you were doing, or who.”
I look at him.
“You were very clearly on a date, right?” he asks like I’ll answer.
“You answered the phone like a man who was interrupted during something important and couldn’t talk for more than fifteen seconds.
I made a judgment call to handle the immediate situation and brief you properly when you came back.
But then you didn’t show up, you said you couldn’t leave.
So, I handled it…” His voice trails off.
“And?”
“And I need you back, Cal. Not in three weeks. Now. Actually, a month ago.” He glances toward the window one more time. “How much does she know?”
“Enough to get on the plane. Not enough to understand what that means yet. But she called me Tony Soprano, so she knows enough.”
Nico nods with a smile, but sobers. Something moves across his face that I don’t see often—something careful and almost gentle. “She going to be okay with it?”
Max has her elbows on the counter now, leaning forward, listening to something my mother is saying with her full attention. Her bandaged hand is wrapped around the coffee cup.
She said ‘I can be your light’ on a plane thirty thousand feet in the air to a man who had just implied he might be in organized crime, and she meant it. Then, she got off the plane anyway. She stayed even after acknowledging who I was.
“Yeah,” I decide, and hope with everything I’m right. “She’s going to be okay with it.”
Nico follows my gaze. He’s quiet for a moment, but I hear him swallow.
“She’s beautiful,” he says. Not like a comment, not like a normal Nico jab. Like an observation he’s making on my behalf.
“I know.”
“You’re going to have to take her back.”
“I know that too.”
“She can’t stay here while this Volkov thing is happening.” His words tumble faster and his tone gets concerningly tight for Nico. “I haven’t even let Maggie and Sophia out of the house for weeks. It’s not safe.”
“I know.” I turn away from the house and into the office. “Tell me everything. From the beginning.”
Nico tells me. I listen. I ask questions.
I give answers. My father’s consigliere3, Ferraro, shows up with three of our senior men, and we sit around the long table in the center of the guest house while the afternoon shifts outside and through the window I can occasionally see movement in the kitchen—my mother, my sisters, and a girl who wouldn’t stay in the car.
I wonder briefly if she changed her mind. If she wants to leave.
I want her to stay.
But not like this. Not with what’s coming. Not until it’s handled and the Volkovs are dealt with and there’s no reason for anyone to look at who’s connected to me. Not when someone could connect those dots and find her.
But someday…
Looking at her around the island with my family one more time, I commit the scene to memory.
Someday she could be a reason to come home.
1. cazzo — dick; prick
2. coglione — literally, testicle; casually, asshole, idiot
3. consigliere — an Italian term for an adviser or counselor