42. Gio
GIO
Vivi is calm in a crisis. She doesn’t panic, doesn’t run or try to hide. I learned that the night after our wedding, and many times since.
Viviana Marchetti has nerves of steel. Right now she needs them. We both do.
Rage isn’t a useful emotion right now. Betrayal isn’t either.
Control. Power. That’s how we’re going to survive this.
And, in this moment, the best way to maintain control is to let go of the lies. The secrets, the omissions.
I was going to let you die so Aurora can live.
That isn’t how I rehearsed it in my head. Way too cruel. Heartless. But Vivi needs to know. Needs to hear it from me, no one else.
Eyes locked on hers, I move quickly, my weapon trained on Ginevra Pazzi as I haul Vivi to me and position my body between her and the other woman.
I press a fervent kiss to Vivi’s forehead, my chest contracting painfully when I feel how clammy she is.
“That’s what I was going to do. Past tense, bella.
Before I understood, before I knew what really happened. ”
I keep my voice low, calm, drawing her attention back to me and away from the woman pointing a fucking gun at her head. “But I was wrong. So fucking wrong. And I’m sorry. So incredibly sorry. I’ll die before I let anything happen to you. You’re safe with me. I promise.”
She stares at me, and I know I’ve run out of time. The rest of this conversation is going to have to wait. Confessing how I really feel is going to have to wait.
“As touching as this is, Giovanni,” Signora Pazzi interrupts. “I didn’t come all the way here to eavesdrop on some sappy emotional moment between you and your wife.”
“Clearly,” I growl. “Why are you here?”
I want to hear her say it. Want to know how much she knows.
“There’s been a development in the arrangement between our families. I wanted to deliver the news myself.”
“Without your husband?”
“Didn’t your man Vampa tell you? I contacted him first thing this morning. I’m afraid Signor Pazzi can no longer meet your terms.”
Rage knifes through my ribs, but I keep my trigger finger steady. I grab my phone with my free hand, swallowing a litany of curses when I see the messages and missed calls from Vampa, none of which could reach me when I was below ground.
Pazzi development
Signora Pazzi en route to island
Time is up
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!
It takes effort, but I keep my voice even. “As you’re aware, Ginevra, the terms have been established for some time. What issue can your husband possibly have with them now?”
“I didn’t say he had issues with the terms, Giovanni. I said he couldn’t meet them. For a very simple reason.” Her shrug is nonchalant. “He’s dead.”
“Oh, mamma. Is he really?”
Vivi, Ginevra, and I turn in unison to find Francesca standing on the stairs. She’s groggy, eyes still puffy from sleep.
“Sì, Chesca,” Mrs Pazzi confirms. “It needed to be done.”
“Sì, mamma. I know. It did.” Francesca takes the news of her father’s death in stride. She walks across the hall to give her mother a light kiss on the cheek, casting a bleary look at Tino as she passes his body on the floor. “Gio, who is the man bleeding on our marble?”
Vivi stiffens at Francesca’s use of the word our. Christ, these two are never going to get along.
“We’ll get to him in a minute. First—” I level Signora Pazzi with my coldest look. “Unless you’re planning on killing me too, put your gun away, Ginevra.”
After the barest hesitation, she stows it beneath her Gucci blazer.
“Apologies, Giovanni, but when I landed, the island was empty. None of the guards were in place. I assumed something had happened. Walking in armed was the natural reaction. Especially,” she nods at Tino, “when I saw him on the floor. What if I’d been walking into an ambush? ”
I don’t know that she hasn’t.
I don’t know who has betrayed me. Who helped Valori escape. Who drugged my family, friends, staff.
There is at least one traitor on the island, and I need to find them as soon as possible. To do that, I need Ginevra Pazzi and Tino off the island, and the Pazzis out of our lives for good.
“Well, you’re here now. And since your husband is dead, I need to ask: will you continue to abide by the terms he and I agreed to?”
The older woman studies me for a solid minute before nodding sharply. “Yes. Agreed.”
“Va bene.” Thank fucking God. “You’ve agreed to honor the terms your husband and I established, and I’m ready to deliver. Let’s get this fucking thing over with, shall we?”
Vivi, who has been quietly studying Francesca and her mother, shifts her attention to me. She’s on edge, visibly unsettled. “What are you doing, Gio? What is this arrangement you keep talking about? Who is this woman?”
“Our perfect night is over, bella. I’m going to tell you everything.”
VIVI
Father Luigi staggers in before Gio says another word.
Signora Pazzi tenses, hand instinctively reaching for her weapon, but Francesca motions her to stand down. The two women have an unspoken conversation, and I feel reality slip further away.
Is the woman who just walked in here and pointed a gun at my head really Francesca’s mom?
I can’t ask Gio. He’s deep in an intense exchange with Father Luigi.
The priest is studying Tino, whose face has gotten even more swollen.
One eye has completely vanished behind puffed-up, purple skin.
The two men seem to agree on something, the Father dropping down to Tino’s side.
He presses his fingers to the injured man’s neck.
Gio has taken my hand, his fingers tightening around mine until the other man nods. He’s found a pulse.
“Meno male.” From inside his pocket, Gio’s phone vibrates with an incoming message. I can’t see what it says or who it’s from, but he releases a ragged sigh when he reads it. “Thank fuck. Finally something is going right.”
With that cryptic comment, he starts leading the other two women and me into a nearby room.
I don’t follow.
I’ve been going and following, being led or chased since the moment I said I do at the front of that church. No more. I resist Gio’s grip, refusing to move. “No. Here. Whatever you have to say, we’re doing it here. No more disruptions, no more delays.”
“Bella…”
“Enough, Gio!” I yank my hand free. “You promised. Now, just fucking talk.”
Ginevra Pazzi. Francesca. Father Luigi. They go still. After a moment, it’s easy to forget they’re in the room. I fold my arms across my chest, wait.
Gio looks like he’s going to protest. Then, he drags a hand through his hair and begins. “The reason you’re here, Vivi, the reason I brought you to the island in the first place, is because I made a deal with the devil. Signor Gennaro Pazzi.”
I feel Signora Pazzi and Francesca shift. I ignore them. “What sort of deal?”
“The kind people like us do best. Retribution. Revenge. An eye for an eye, a life for a life.”
A chill creeps down my spine. “My life…”
“For Aurora’s.”
Nearby, Francesca gasps. A sound of genuine horror. She didn’t know. The older woman comforts her daughter, but isn’t surprised. She did.
I do everything possible not to react. “Explain.”
“It all started with my sister. Giulia.”
“The sister who died?”
“Yes.” Gio’s nod is sharp. “My younger sister, Giulia, was married to Matteo Pazzi roughly six years ago. She didn’t love him.
He didn’t love her. They didn’t even like each other.
But they got married because it’s what our father and his decided.
A marriage to end a family rivalry going back generations. ”
Apprehension coils in my gut. An ill omen. “Did it work? Did their relationship improve?”
“No.” Gio plants his hands on his hips, like he needs a way to stay anchored against the emotions storming through him. The ones he’s so careful to hide. The ones I can see anyway. “They were at each other’s throats from day one. And they stayed that way until the day he killed her.”
I’m the only one who reacts to that statement. I muffle a cry, horrified. Everyone else is quiet. They already knew. “How?”
“He beat her until her body gave out. Left her to bleed to death. Alone.”
Gio’s voice breaks. So does my heart. I cross to him, wrap my arms around his body, press my face to his chest.
He doesn’t move. “I wasn’t there to protect her, Vivi. Do you know why?”
I bite my tongue, holding him even harder.
“Because I didn’t want to believe he’d been beating her.
It had been going on for a few years, but Giulia was so proud, and so protective of Aurora.
She didn’t want anyone to know, didn’t want anyone to get involved in case Matteo attacked their daughter in retribution.
So she hid the bruises from me. Told me I was seeing things. Swore to me she was fine.”
Gio grips my shoulders, forcing me to look up at his face.
“I loved my sister. I trusted her. I trusted my father, too. I didn’t want to believe he married her off to a violent monster.
I saw the bruises she tried to cover with makeup.
I asked her about it, begged her to tell me what was going on.
She told me she was fine, that it was nothing.
Begged me to believe her. And I wanted to so badly that I ignored the evidence right in front of my fucking face.
I made a horrible mistake, Vivi, and my sister paid the price. ”
I can feel the tears streaming down my face. I let them flow. Don’t dare brush them away. Don’t dare let go of my husband. “You can’t blame yourself.”
His eyes narrow. “I can. I do. And when I found out what happened, I swore two things. That I’d never again doubt the evidence I see with my own two eyes. And that I’d never allow the Pazzis to hurt another person I love ever again.”
Gio groans, his expression a rictus of pain.
“What? What is it?”
“Fuck! Don’t you see, Vivi!?” He yanks his hands through his hair again, this time pulling the strands to the point of pain. “I’ve failed, again. I’ve broken my own vows. Both of them.”
“How?”
“This!” He stretches his arms wide, his eyes even wider. “This whole fucking thing. I brought you here because I made a deal with Signor Pazzi. His son died a few days after Giulia. Matteo was killed in an explosion. A car bomb.”
A horrible sensation starts to unfurl in my stomach, but I don’t have time to examine it. Gio keeps talking, the words coming faster and faster. “Both he and Giulia were dead. Legally, I got custody of my niece.”
“Aurora.”
“Yes. But Pazzi couldn’t stand the idea of someone else having his granddaughter.
And I couldn’t subject her to that family’s cruelty for another second.
Matteo was a carbon copy of his father. I couldn’t let her live with her grandfather, a man who was notoriously cruel and violent.
So when the kidnap attempts started, I had to do everything in my power to keep her safe. ”
“Kidnap attempts?” I drag my eyes from Gio to Francesca, and then to her mother. Aurora’s grandmother. “Your husband was trying to kidnap your granddaughter?”
“Sì.” It’s equal parts pain and defeat. “Giovanni has described my husband perfectly. He ruled with violence and was governed entirely by vengeance. Giovanni was right to protect Aurora. And Francesca. For that, I’ll always be grateful.”
I turn back to Gio. I already know I’m going to hate whatever he says next. “What did you offer Pazzi? What was the trade, exactly?”
“He vowed to relinquish all claim to Aurora if I delivered the one thing he wanted most: the person responsible for killing his only son.” Gio’s eyes have lost all their light. “The person who blew up Matteo’s car in the village of Sant’Angelo two years ago.”
White noise fills my ears. The sky rushes toward my head, my knees buckle. Gio grips my upper arms, stops me from hitting the ground. “Oh my God…” My tongue feels too large for my mouth, syllables impossible to shape. “You’re talking about me, aren’t you? You’re talking about me.”
The next moments are a blur.
Gio hauls me into a crushing hug, his face pressed against my hair as he whispers things I can’t begin to hear.
Eventually, voices break through the buzzing in my head.
Francesca is talking, Ginevra too.
Vampa has returned.
I push away from Gio’s chest long enough to catch sight of them huddled over Tino, Father Luigi still monitoring his injuries.
They all fall back into silence as Gio’s next statement echoes across the marble. “I thought it was you.”
I don’t want to look at him, but I can’t tear my eyes off his face.
“I was there that morning,” he explains.
“Matteo had called me early, wanted to meet. It wasn’t until later that I found out he’d already killed my sister.
She’d been dead since the night before. I think he was planning to make up some insane story, some way to save his own neck.
I was waiting for him in Sant’Angelo that morning.
I saw you. I saw you drop the bag, the bomb.
I knew who killed Matteo and Pazzi didn’t.
So I used that knowledge to make a deal. To save my niece’s life. Except?—”
“I didn’t know.” I cut him off, horrified. “I didn’t know what was in the bag. I didn’t know it was a bomb! Oh, God.” I choke. “I didn’t know anyone died!”
Gio brackets my face in his palms, curling his body around me as I cling to his arms. I feel like I’m falling to pieces.
“I know, bella,” he assures me. “It wasn’t you. I know that now. You weren’t trying to kill Matteo. Tino was. He’s the one responsible, not you. I was wrong, mia amata. So fucking wrong.”
We’re so close together, our shallow breaths mingling, the salt of my tears drying on the pads of his fingers. The lies and secrets of the past two years are twisting around us, pulling so tight I’m worried we’re going to break.
“That’s why you married me, isn’t it? You needed to get me to Italy. Needed to hand me over to the Pazzis. To protect Aurora. That’s what you meant. A life for a life. Mine for hers.”
“Oh, fuck. Vivi.” The groan is ripped from his chest, pure anguish. “It’s exactly why I took you from that church. I saw you do it, don’t you see? Watched it happen with my own two eyes. You were impossible to reach inside the convent, so I took you the first opportunity I could.”
“At the wedding.”
“At the wedding,” he echoes. “I took you from Valori and, God help me, bella, I was going to give you to that bastard Pazzi. I was doing everything I could to protect Aurora, and I ended up breaking both of my vows in the process.”
His eyes bore into me, trying to make me understand.
“I was so determined to believe what I saw that morning, I never stopped to question it. Never considered I could be wrong. Never considered that you weren’t the one actually responsible for Matteo’s death.
And my fucking agreement with Signor Pazzi has led me to lie to someone I love.
Keep secrets from someone I love.” He traces his thumb across my lips. “Hurt the woman I love.”