55. Alina
55
ALINA
W e’ve decided that while Tomas is gone, I’m going to remain in Gabriel d’Este’s house. A butler—of course, there’s a butler—shows me to a small living room where I can wait. The walls are covered from floor to ceiling with bookshelves. Normally, I’d be snooping—you can learn a lot about a person from their reading tastes—but I’m too stressed.
I pace back and forth, clutching my phone, looking at the screen every few seconds as if Tomas is going to stop in the middle of killing someone to text me. I’ve done one hundred and twenty-seven laps of the room when there’s a knock on the door.
My heart jumps into my throat. “Come in,” I call out. Is it Gabriel? Is it over? It can’t be; it’s only been twenty minutes since Tomas left with Andrei Sidorov and his two bodyguards. Is it bad news?
A woman enters the room. She’s of medium height and build, dressed in a red T-shirt and cream shorts, with chestnut-colored hair falling in lustrous waves around her shoulders. “Alina, hello,” she says with a warm smile, holding out her hand to me. “I’m Cecelia d’Este. Gabriel’s wife.”
“Good to meet you,” I reply, though I’m really not in the mood for pleasantries.
“No, it’s not, is it?” Her expression is knowing. “I’ve been in your shoes. The last thing you want to do is make small talk. But when the same thing happened to me, it helped that I wasn’t alone.” She kicks off her shoes and curls herself into a deep blue armchair. “Please feel free to pretend I’m not here.”
I think I already like her. “This is my battle,” I blurt out. “I should be fighting it. Instead, Tomas is putting his life in danger because of me. His life was perfectly peaceful until I came along.”
“Ah, but was it?” She tilts her head to one side. “I don’t know Tomas, but from my understanding, he left Valencia and stayed away from his family for a long time. And if you hadn’t entered his life, he might have never come home.”
“Oh God, his family.” I can’t believe I forgot all about them. “If they’re in danger…”
“No, Flurin is on it. Gabriel’s head of security. He’s got a team on them.” She gives me a reassuring smile. “He’s very competent. They will be okay.”
“Thank you.”
She waves away my gratitude. We lapse into silence. I resume wearing a tread in the carpet, and she flips through something on her phone. Five long minutes go by. “How will we know what happens?”
She looks up. “Gabriel and Andrei are in contact,” she says. “If something happens, he’ll know, and he’ll come find us.”
“Okay, good.” I resume my worrying. “This is all my fault,” I blurt out after another ten minutes go by. “If I’d never responded to my father’s letter, none of this would have happened.”
She puts her phone away. “Do you really believe that, Alina? Can I call you Alina, by the way?”
“You can, but I prefer Ali.”
She smiles. “Ali, my friends call me Cici. By now, you have to know that the moment Sabrina was killed, Vidone Laurenti focused on you.”
There’s something about the way she words the sentence that sets off an alarm bell. “You know something about him, don’t you?”
“I know more about Southern Italy than I ever wanted to,” she says wryly. “VDL is on my family’s radar. When did Laurenti tell you he discovered your existence?”
“A few weeks ago.” I clench my hands into fists. “It’s not true, is it?”
Her expression softens. “I’m sorry,” she says. “No, it’s not. Laurenti knew the moment you took the DNA test. He was furious when he found out.”
I can’t believe it. “I took that test two years ago. You’re saying he’s known about me for two years but never once reached out?”
“Your mother wasn’t supposed to get pregnant. After all, she was his mistress, not his wife. An illegitimate child clouds the line of succession.” She smiles. “Also, when she ran, she managed to steal a good bit of money from him.”
That explains the money in my mother’s bank account. One mystery solved. “My mother was his mistress?”
“You didn’t know?” Regret washes over her face. “I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t think she had much of a choice.” Something Tomas said at dinner with my father comes roaring back. “She was seventeen. He was thirty-one.” Bile fills my mouth. “That’s why she never talked about him. She just wanted to forget that part of her life.”
All those times I asked her about my father, was this what she was trying to forget? That she was groomed by a man much older than her, a violent man who would do whatever it took to possess her?
I’m going to be sick.
She would never discuss the past. She’s dead now, and I’ll never be able to prove it, but my heart knows. She wanted to forget.
And she had. Those memories never came back. If one good came out of her Alzheimer’s, it was this. The wretched disease that took my mother far too young helped Teresa Zuccaro forget the things she never wanted to remember.
Tears fill my eyes, and I wipe them away. “I’m sorry,” Cici says again, her expression distressed. “Ali, I’m so sorry. I should have kept my mouth shut. Please don’t?—”
“No, it’s okay.” Cici thinks I’m crying because my father ignored my existence for two years and only contacted me when he needed something from me. But that’s not really a surprise. No, my tears are reserved for my mother. The woman who was there for me every single day of my childhood. “I’m okay. I met with my father again this morning.” God, was that really only a couple of hours ago? It feels like forever. “I’m under no illusions about who he is.”
She gives me a careful, assessing look. “You also know he tried to abduct you from Venice?”
“We suspected.”
She hands me a USB key. “Here’s proof. Can you give this to Antonio when you get back to Venice? I’d email it, but I don’t want Valentina to intercept it first because the woman he sent?—”
“Gemma?”
“Her real name is Stefania Freitas. She’s an assassin. Extremely competent, never fails to finish a job.”
An assassin. I liked Gemma.
She takes a breath before she continues. “She’s also Joao Carvalho’s wife.”
Tomas’s friend Joao? The one who also works for the Venice Mafia? I’m about to open my mouth and ask when Cici’s phone rings, loud and shrill. I glance down at my own device and realize that it’s been an hour since Tomas left.
There’s news.