Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Gemma
The water glass shakes in Cesare's hand, so I keep my fingers under the base until he finishes. His lips are dry and cracked. When he swallows, the sound comes out rough. The oxygen machine ticks in the corner. The whole room smells of rubbing alcohol.
I set the glass on the nightstand and sit back down. My hands go flat in my lap.
"You have to understand how it was," Cesare says. "In our families, we don't marry the ones we want. We marry the ones we need. Alliances. Territory. A daughter given to close a debt, a son given to open a door. You already know this, I think."
He looks at me when he says it. His eyes are wet and pale, and they don't move off my face.
I know exactly what he means.
"Go on," I say.
"My first wife came from the Barone family.
Marta. I met her twice before the wedding.
Once at her father's table, once at the church rehearsal.
She was a good woman. I gave her respect, children and a house with a garden she loved.
I never gave her more than that, because I didn't have more. I'd already given it away."
"To Ashley."
"To Ashley." He says the name the way you'd hold water in cupped hands.
"She worked at a bakery on Brady Street.
I went in for bread and came out with nothing, because I forgot why I'd walked in.
She laughed at me through the window. I went back every morning for a month before she'd let me walk her home. "
Vico stands by the door with his arms crossed. He hasn't moved since I sat down. His jaw works, but he stays quiet.
"I was twenty-four. Not married yet, but promised.
The Barone contract was already signed, and my father had built half his position on it.
" Cesare's chest lifts with effort, then drops.
"I told myself I'd have both. The marriage for the family, Ashley for me.
Men in my world tell themselves this. Some of them even manage it. "
"You didn't."
"My father found out after three years of the marriage.
He didn't shout. He never shouted." His fingers pick at the edge of the blanket.
The knuckles are swollen, the skin thin and spotted.
"He called me into his office and told me the girl from the bakery was a problem, and problems get handled.
I told him I'd handle it. I lied. I kept seeing her. "
The machine ticks. Somewhere below us, a door closes, and I hear men's voices through the floor, too low to make out.
"Then Ashley disappeared," Cesare says. "No note.
Her landlady said she'd paid out the month and gone.
I looked for her. Quietly, because I was a married man by then, but I looked.
Six months, seven. Nothing." He stops. His breath drags through the tube under his nose.
"I didn't know she was carrying you. I swear on everything I have left, I didn't know. She never told me. She just went."
My throat goes tight. I don't say anything, because there's nothing in me that knows what to say to that.
"Then one day in October she's standing across the street from my house.
Thin. Wrong in the face, the way people look when they haven't slept in weeks.
I crossed the street and she backed away from me like I was a stranger.
" His voice cracks on the last word, and he takes a moment to get it back.
"She said one thing to me. She said, 'Ask your father what he did.
' Then she got on a bus. The next morning they pulled her out of the river. "
The room holds still. Even the machine seems quieter.
"I asked him," Cesare says. "My father sat behind his desk and told me plainly, the way you'd report a shipment.
While I was looking for her, he found her first. He told her to leave me alone or he'd bury her.
She didn't answer fast enough for him." He closes his eyes.
"So he had her parents killed. Both of them.
A statement, he called it. Proof he wasn't bluffing.
He told her if she came near me again, she was next.
She had you by then, hidden away somewhere, and she must have thought—" His hand rises off the blanket an inch and falls back.
"She must have thought the only way to keep his eyes off you was to stop existing. "
"Cristo." Vico pushes off the wall. "You're telling me Nonno did that?" He drags a hand down his face. "The past two years you let me think she drowned crazy. You let the whole family think it. Fuck. Fuck."
"Vico." Cesare doesn't open his eyes.
"No. I stood at that man's funeral. I carried his fucking casket." Vico's voice climbs, then drops hard, like he remembers where he is. He turns to the window and grips the frame with both hands, and his shoulders don't move at all.
Cesare opens his eyes and finds me again.
"She left you at St. Agnes three months before the river," he says. "I know that now. I didn't know it for twenty-eight years. Years, Gemma, and you were forty minutes up the road."
My hands are still flat in my lap.
"So your father killed my grandparents," I say. My voice comes out level. It always does. "And your world killed my mother. And now you want to know me before you die."
"Yes."
"Why should I let you?"
Cesare doesn't answer my question right away. His hand crawls across the blanket toward mine and stops short, an inch of white cotton between us, and he leaves it there.
"You shouldn't," he says. "You have no reason to.
I'm not asking you to forgive anything. I'm asking you to hear me out.
Then you can walk out that door and never come back, and no one in this house will stop you or follow you.
But I needed to say it to your face before I die.
Call it a last wish from a man who doesn't deserve one. "
The oxygen tube hisses under his nose. I watch his hand on the blanket instead of his eyes, because his eyes keep filling and I can't look at that.
"I loved your mother," he says. "I want you to hear that with no decoration on it.
Almost thirty years and I can still tell you the color of the ribbon in her hair the first morning.
Green. She wore green because she said it made the flour look intentional.
" A thin sound leaves him. It could be a laugh.
"Then two years ago a man walks into my city and tells me Ashley had a daughter.
My daughter. He stood in my study with his hands in his pockets like he was selling me a car. "
"Dominik," I say.
"He said his mother worked at St. Agnes.
He said he'd married you to bring me a gift.
" Cesare's fingers close on the blanket, and the swollen knuckles go pale.
"He said your name and Ashley’s name in the same sentence, in that reasonable voice, and I was that man again standing on a street watching her back away from me.
I shot him. In the leg, because Vico grabbed my arm, or it would've been his head.
Then I had him thrown out of Milwaukee."
Behind me, Vico shifts against the wall. I hear his shoes on the floor and I keep my back straight.
"After that, finding you wasn't hard," Cesare says.
"The prick is mostly stupid. He'd already said too much in my study.
Names, dates, the orphanage, the country where you grew up.
He handed me the whole map trying to make himself valuable.
Within a month I knew where you worked, where you slept, what your girl looked like.
" He stops when he sees my face. "I never touched you.
I only watched. My entire family knows you exist, and every one of them was told the same thing. She's blood. Nobody breathes on her."
"Almost all," Vico says from the door. His voice comes out flat. "Natalia doesn't know."
Cesare's jaw tightens under the loose skin.
"Will you keep twisting the knife," he says, "or will you let a dying man finish a sentence?"
"You want to talk about wounds." Vico steps away from the wall, and the calm peels off him fast. "I sat here tonight and listened to you tell her how your father ruined your life.
How he butchered two people and drove a woman into the river because a marriage contract mattered more than what you wanted.
You know exactly what that did to you. You've known for years.
" His arm swings toward the window, toward the dark outside it.
"And then you signed Natalia over to Amato like she was a truck.
You did the same thing, Papà. The same fucking thing.
She ran, we don't even know if she's alive, and you lie in that bed crying about Ashley. "
"Vico."
"No." The word comes out at full volume. "You don't get to make her your redemption while your other daughter is out there hiding from you."
He slams the door on his way out. The frame rattles, and then the house swallows the sound, and it's just the tick of the machine and an old man's rough breathing.
Cesare looks at the door for a long time.
"He's right," he says. "That's the worst part of getting old.
Everyone who's right is younger than you.
" He turns his head back to me on the pillow, and the effort of it shows in his neck.
"After Ashley died, I became cruel. Maybe I always was, and she was the only thing holding it down.
But after the river, I did things, Gemma.
Not the business. Worse than the business.
I won't list them for you, because you'd leave faster, and I want my ten minutes. "
"Okay," I say.
"I'm not asking you to love me. I'm not asking you to visit, or bring the child, or take the name.
" His hand slides that last inch and rests on mine.
"I'm telling you that you have a family to run to.
If it ever goes wrong for you, you come to this house.
When I'm gone, the order stands. They'll take care of you and your daughter for the rest of their lives, and they won't ask what you did or who you're running from.
That's all I have to give you. It's late and it's not enough, but it's real. "
I look at his hand on mine.
I slide my hand out from under his and stand up.
"I'm going to leave now," I say.
Vico is waiting at the top of the stairs.
He stands with one shoulder against the wall, hands loose at his sides. He straightens when he sees me.
"You're leaving," he says.
"Yes."
"Where do you want to go? I'll put a driver on it. He'll take you anywhere, wait as long as you need."
"I need to pick up my daughter," I say. "She's at the Sartori compound, in Lake Forest. After that, I'm going to my parents'. Wisconsin."
He nods like the distance is nothing. Maybe to him it is. Then he studies me, and I make myself hold still under it, because I'm done shrinking in front of these men. I did enough of that for one marriage.
"The marriage," he says. "With the Sartori. Was it fake?"
A week ago I would have lied on instinct, given him the rehearsed answer, smiled the way Antonella coached me to smile. I don't have the energy for the performance anymore, and I don't think he'd believe it anyway.
"I love Luca," I say.
It's true, and saying it out loud makes my chest ache, because loving him doesn't undo what he did. I look at Vico and keep going before he can put my words in whatever box he wants.
"But you already know what secrets do to a relationship.
You watched it happen in that room. Your father kept one secret and it killed my mother, and it took my whole life and bent it into this shape.
Luca kept his, too." I have to stop and swallow.
"So it doesn't really matter what I feel, does it? The secret got there first."
Vico doesn't answer right away. His jaw works once, his eyes go to the door of his father's room and come back.
"No," he says. "It doesn't."
He reaches into his jacket and what comes out is a business card, plain white, heavy stock. He holds it out and I take it. There's a name on it and a phone number written underneath in blue ink, the handwriting small and careful.
"That's my personal line," he says. "If you need anything, you call that number. Day or night. It doesn't matter what happens with the Sartori, or with him." He tips his head toward the bedroom. "That number works either way."
"Okay," I say, because I don't know what else to say to that. The card is stiff between my fingers and I slide it into my coat pocket.
"The driver's out front," Vico says. "Black car, left of the fountain. He'll take you to Lake Forest and wait, then drive you north. However long it takes."
"Thank you."
He starts past me down the stairs, and I think that's it, we're done, and then he stops one step below me.
This close I can see the lines at the corners of his eyes, and for one second he doesn't look dangerous at all.
He looks like a man who's been carrying his family's weight so long he's forgotten he's doing it.
"Goodbye, sis," he says.