28. Cassandra
28
CASSANDRA
H e’s not supposed to be here.
No. He can’t be here.
But I can’t move, can’t speak as Rocco’s gray eyes hold me in place.
Two days apart, yet it feels like a lifetime. I thought maybe my mind was exaggerating his beauty. I was delusional enough to believe that he would become a distant memory with enough time.
But my body’s reaction is instant and relentless. Every fiber of my being is called to him, begging me to approach, to brush his hair from his eyes, to wrap my arms around him. He’s like a beacon calling only to me.
Calling me home.
Giuliano approaches me with measured gentleness. “Do you feel alright, Miss Bellini?”
He wasn’t what I thought he would be. The ruthless ex-don that Rocco had painted for me doesn’t match the man before me.
His hard edges have been softened by time. He has graying temples, and he was more concerned with cultivating his plants than the schemes of the Guild. And when he spoke to me of how he had spared my mother…
I let Giuliano place a worried hand on my arm and guide me over to the couch, forcing me to look away from Rocco’s now terrified expression.
“What the hell is going on?”
I flinch at the bite in Rocco’s words, unable to look anywhere but my hands.
“Why don’t you take a seat, boy,” Giuliano instructs as he sits in the armchair next to me, close enough to give my shoulder a reassuring squeeze.
“Leave her out of this.”
Giuliano sighs. “This is a family matter, Rocco. Come join us, please.”
Rocco stalks closer but refuses to sit. “She never gave an oath. She is not family. Let her go. This is between you and me.”
Giuliano tilts his head in my direction, offering me a sad smile. “Ah. You really haven’t told him?”
“Please don’t,” I implore him, a lump already building in my throat.
“Tell me what?”
Finally, I allow myself to look up at him, at the stubble already growing across his chin, at the dark circles beneath his eyes, and at his bloodied knuckles. I note the way his body is shaking. Is it with anger or fear?
Giuliano leans closer to me. “It is your choice. But he is my son. I think he deserves to know.”
“Cas.” Rocco seems to choke on my name.
I take a long breath to steady myself, allowing my hand to drift down to my stomach.
“Rocco.”
Like a switch, Rocco’s shaking subsides to an eerie stillness.
“I’m pregnant.”
I can’t bear to look at the emotions that cross his face as he suddenly stumbles forward, half crashing into the couch before him.
Everything inside me screams for me to go to him, but Giuliano’s gentle hold on my shoulder keeps me grounded.
Slowly, Rocco lowers himself into the couch, his expression emotionless as he addresses me directly. “What have you done?”
His words feel like a knife, burying itself deep between my ribs.
I didn’t know how he would react. I couldn’t bear to imagine it. Even when Mia and I waited those excruciating minutes for the result of the fifth pregnancy test. Even when we counted back the weeks to be absolutely positive, it was his.
But this ? To respond as if somehow I was to blame? As if this was my fault?
My desire to leave Brooklyn suddenly reignites with a vengeance. I want to get away from the man who would so quickly turn on me. On us.
“Rocco, this is the mother of your child, my grandchild,” Giuliano’s voice is outraged on my behalf. “I taught you better than that.”
But Rocco ignores him. “You went to him? Instead of me?”
“She knew I could offer her something that you would be incapable of doing.”
“Shut the fuck up!” Rocco yells at his father. “Answer me, Cas.”
His rage ignites my own. It’s like a tinderbox, always ready to explode at this point.
“No one leaves the Guild, Rocco. You told me that!” I shout right back.
“You are not a part of the Guild,” Rocco growls.
“But my son will be its heir.”
The fire in his eyes resides just enough for me to see it—the longing, the hope, the joy he has restrained by pure willpower.
He wants this. He wants my son.
But I can’t live in a reality where that’s even a possibility.
“I must say, it felt as if I was having Déjà vu when you came here, Miss Bellini. You do resemble Giuseppina. It could have been seventeen years ago if I hadn’t been so gray.”
I find myself smiling a little at that.
Everyone always said that I look like my mom, although I never personally saw it. I’ve always idolized her for her beauty and her kindness. Up until these last few weeks, I didn’t think she was even capable of doing anything wrong.
I address Rocco directly, “I came to Giuliano to ask for permission to leave the Guild on behalf of my son. The way my mother once did for me.”
The silence that follows is almost unbearable.
Rocco seems to have retreated into himself entirely.
Giuliano, however, is more than comfortable filling the silence. “I was just telling Miss Bellini about that day. She doesn’t remember, but Giuseppina brought her along to that meeting. You were eight years old, but your mother carried you the whole time. You were fast asleep.”
Rocco slowly turns to look at his father.
“She’d packed already,” Giuliano continues. “She was dragging a suitcase behind her too. Deceptively strong, that woman. She would have fallen straight to her knees to beg for asylum if I hadn’t stopped her.”
“But Giuseppina had already made her oath to the Guild. I told her there was no way I could let her leave, but that wasn’t why she was there. She was there to beg on behalf of her daughter. After the Vitale massacre, she couldn’t bear to see young Miss Bellini grow up in this environment.”
Giuliano squeezes my shoulder again. “Of course, being a father myself, I completely understood her suffering.”
“You were no father to me,” Rocco growls.
“Silence.”
The word is chillingly sharp, and I find myself shying away from Giuliano’s touch.
“I offered her a deal out of the goodness of my own heart,” Giuliano offers me an apologetic smile. “I allowed her to choose between her husband and her child.”
This news had almost crushed me when I first heard it.
My mother had always brushed off any questions about my father, always claiming that he abandoned us.
But the picture of us she kept…the fact she never took another lover. —had she loved him? Had she cried for him as she took me away?
Either way, she hadn’t hesitated in her choice. Something that, until two days ago, I might have struggled to understand.
But now? Knowing my child is now growing inside of me, I know there is nothing I wouldn’t sacrifice to protect them. And if offered the same choice, I wouldn’t hesitate either.
“What did he offer you?” Rocco says quietly.
I say nothing.
“What did he fucking offer you?”
“Do not speak to her like that!” Giuliano roars.
Rocco stands, towering over him. “You have no authority anymore, old man. You have nothing to offer us.”
“My my, that temper. It’s no wonder she came here without telling you,” Giuliano tuts. “And for my grandchild? Rocco, I would offer the world.”
I can see it in Rocco’s face; that pent-up rage is going to explode at any second.
So I stand up. “He wants to be able to visit.”
Rocco blinks at me in confusion.
“He will let me go as long as he can visit and offer my son the choice to rejoin the Guild when he turns eighteen,” I clarify.
He turns back to his father. “So that’s your plan? You’re going to slowly turn my own son against me?”
“You think so little of me.”
“I think nothing of you.”
“My offer was more than reasonable, don’t you think? Considering the risks I would need to take to ensure that you never found them,” Giuliano nods at me. “I was just explaining this when you so rudely barged in.”
“I will not allow it,” Rocco’s intense gaze meets mine. “Cas, we’re leaving now.”
But I shake my head.
There’s no world where Rocco lets me leave. There’s no world where I can go anywhere with him, and I don’t completely lose all my resolve.
I shake my head because he isn’t only the father of my son, he’s the murderer of my father and the don of the Italian Mafia. There is no world where my child will grow up safely around him.
Even if, by some miracle, Rocco lets us go. I would live in constant fear that he would come back for us at some point. Or worse, his enemies would discover us and use us to destroy him.
He can’t know where we go, can’t have any hope of finding us.
“I can’t.”
Rocco searches my face desperately for another answer, but I don’t show him anything. This is the sacrifice I will never stop making.
“As much as it pains me to agree with my son,” Giuliano interrupts us. “On reflection, my offer could now be seen as ill-advised, given that Rocco is aware of our plans. Perhaps we could all take a seat and discuss this as adults?”
He gives both of us a pointed look, and slowly, we return to our seats.
“It seems we have the opportunity to discuss a solution that works for us all, to prioritize the protection of the Guild’s next heir.”
Rocco glowers. “Don’t listen to him, Cas. He has no intention of helping you.”
Giuliano merely rolls his eyes before addressing me.
“I may be many things, Miss Bellini, but I know how to learn from my mistakes. I now see I was unwise to separate your family. Your father’s longing clearly outweighed his rationale, considering he dragged you out of hiding against your knowledge.”
“You bastard.”
“I am not talking to you.”
“Let him finish, Rocco,” I snap.
Giuliano smirks a little.
“I’m prepared to make a different offer. Now that my son is here and is aware of the entirety of the situation,” Giuliano reaches to take my hand, “I will allow the three of you to leave forever if you can convince Rocco to relinquish the Guild to me.”
My heart stops beating.
My traitorous brain immediately fills my head with images of the three of us. A perfectly happy and normal family, somewhere far away from this city. Our child playing in the yard. The child has my dark hair and his father’s inquisitive gray eyes.
But it’s an illusion, a complete fantasy. The job always comes first.
“She doesn’t want me,” Rocco hisses.
“Then you can co-parent. Or whatever it is they do these days,” Giuliano counters. “I’m sure Miss Bellini can see the sense in keeping a father figure around.”
There’s no way Rocco would agree to something like that. Not with everything that is at stake. I smile bitterly at the very thought.
“You think too much of me. I would never be able to convince him.”
Giuliano’s Cheshire Cat smile stuns me. “On the contrary, I think you think too little of yourself. Isn’t that right, Rocco?”
We both turn to look at him. He’s running his hands together like a man teetering at the edge of his own doom. But that resolve in his eyes, the power it holds…
“I’ll do it.”
The lump in my throat threatens to choke me.
He would do it, too.
He would give up everything he had built, those five years of excruciating negotiations, to sit on the periphery of our child’s life, to watch from the sidelines at my beck and call, only being able to see him at weekends or on alternate weeks.
Never to cross the boundary without my permission, never to insert himself in our lives unless needed.
Never to speak to anyone from the Guild again. To turn his back on Teo and Donatella, and Martino. To let go of his income, his wealth, his cars.
He would give every aspect of his life to me and our son.
But who am I to ask that of him?
“I can’t accept.”
There’s a beat where all Rocco can do is stare at me in disbelief.
“Why not?”
“I…I love him. I can’t ask him to do this.”
Rocco’s eyes fill with unshed tears. The impact of my words has a visible effect on his entire being, tearing him apart before my very eyes.
What am I doing to him? To us?
“That’s a pity,” Giuliano purrs, closer to my ear than I was expecting. But Rocco’s expression is ruining me. I can’t look away.
“I was truly hoping you would make this easier for me.”
The next thing I know, Giuliano is holding a blade to my throat.