Chapter 43
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Gemma
The gate guard waves us through, and Luca eases the car up the long drive while gravel pops under the tires.
The Orsini house opens up in front of us.
Luca parks and cuts the engine.
"Mama, is this the friends' house?" Nina asks from the back seat. She has, Strawberry, the doll in one arm and the bear in the other, because she couldn't choose.
"It is, baby. There's a big garden here. Maybe we can look at it after."
"Does the garden have garlic?"
"I don't know, sweetheart. We can ask."
She nods and goes back to arranging the bear's arms, and I face forward again. My hands are folded in my lap. I've been holding them like that since we left the highway, and my fingers have gone stiff from it.
Luca doesn't reach for the door. He turns in his seat and looks at me.
"You're pale," he says. "Tell me the truth. Are you alright?"
"I'm alright."
"Gemma."
"I am." I look at the house instead of him. "Vico said days. The doctors told him days, Luca. If I don't come now, there's no later. I already decided this."
He watches me a moment longer. His jaw works. He hates this place. He hasn't said so, but he checked his gun twice before we left the apartment, and that's Luca saying so.
"The second he upsets you, we're fucking gone," he whispers. "You touch my arm, we walk. I don't care if he's mid-sentence. I don't care if he's mid-goddamn-breath."
"Okay."
"I mean it."
"I know you mean it. You always mean it. That's one of maybe three things I can count on in the entire world, so yes. Okay."
The truth is I don't know what I am. Alright isn't the right word, but there isn't a right word at all.
I'm bringing my daughter to meet a dying stranger who happens to be my father, and I told her we're visiting friends, because there's no version of the truth she should carry.
I keep thinking about Ashley. A twenty-something girl from a bakery who loved the wrong man, and his father erased her whole family for it.
I can't fix any of it. Nobody can. But I can sit in a chair next to an old man for an hour and let him look at me. It costs me an afternoon, and it gives him the only thing he ever actually wanted. That math is simple. It's the rest of me that's complicated.
"Hey." Luca's voice pulls me back. "Where'd you go?"
"The bakery." He knows the story now. "I keep thinking she was younger than I am now."
He doesn't answer that with words. He puts his hand out, palm up on the console, and waits. I put my hand in his and his fingers close around it.
"Mama, can we go in?" Nina bounces the bear on her knee. "Strawberry wants to see the friends."
A laugh gets out of me.
"Yeah, baby. We can go in."
Vico opens the door before Luca can knock.
"You came," he says, and steps back to let us in. He's in a dark sweater instead of a suit, and it makes him look younger. "He's been asking since seven this morning if you were still coming."
"I said I would."
"People say a lot of things to a dying man." He looks down at Nina, who has gone quiet against my leg, both toys clutched to her chest. "Hey. You must be the boss of this operation."
Nina doesn't answer. She's reading him, and after a second her grip on the bear loosens.
Luca stays half a step behind me, close enough that I feel the heat of him through my coat. He hasn't taken his eyes off the hallway since the door opened.
Vico leads us through an arch into the living room, and I stop walking.
The room is full. Four men stand near the fireplace. A woman sits on the arm of a couch, and another woman stands by the window. Every one of them turns to look at me at the same time, and the conversation they were having dies in the air.
My stomach drops. Nobody told me there would be others here.
"Relax," Vico says, low, just to me. "Nobody bites. Well. Luciano bites, but only people who deserve it."
One of the men by the fireplace snorts.
Vico raises his voice and starts pointing. "Gemma, this is Nero. Massimo. Luciano. Christiano. My brothers. The one pretending she wasn't listening at the door is Olivia, our sister."
The men nod at me, one after another, like a row of doors closing. Nero's nod lasts the longest. Massimo has Vico's jaw. Luciano is the one who snorted. Christiano looks the youngest of the men and the only one who almost smiles.
Then Vico turns toward the window. "And this is Serena. Cesare's wife."
Serena looks at me over the rim of her glass. She's my age, maybe a year or two older. She's married to a man who could be her grandfather, and she watches me with a flat, careful face that gives me nothing.
"I'm Gemma," I say, to the whole room. "I'm happy to meet you."
It comes out steadier than I feel. My hands want to twist together, so I keep one on Nina's shoulder where it has a job.
The men nod again. Nobody moves to shake my hand, and I'm grateful, because I don't want to.
Olivia is the one who breaks the stillness. She crosses the room, and when she reaches us she drops straight down to her knees on the rug in front of Nina.
"Hi," she says. "What's your name?"
Nina looks up at me first. I nod.
"Nina," she says.
"Nina." Olivia says it back to her carefully, like she's checking she got it right. "I'm Olivia. I'm very happy to meet you. And your mommy too."
"This is Strawberry." Nina tilts the doll forward. "And this is Bear. He doesn't have another name."
"Bear is a strong name. It says exactly what he is."
Nina considers that and nods, satisfied.
These people are my family. All of them.
Nero and Massimo and Luciano and Christiano and Vico, and Olivia — they're my brothers and my sister.
Half, on paper. Whole, in blood. Nina is playing with her aunt right now and doesn't know it, and I stand in the middle of their living room like a delivery nobody ordered.
Every face turned toward me has pieces of my own face in it.
Nobody in this room knows I found out about the baby yesterday. Five weeks. The doctor said everything looks normal, and normal is a word I'm still learning to trust.
Luca's hand finds the small of my back. He leans down, his mouth near my ear.
"Breathe," he murmurs. "You're doing fine."
"Okay," I whisper back.
Vico watches the two of us for a beat, and whatever he sees, he keeps off his face. Then he tips his head toward the wide staircase behind him.
"He's awake," he says. "He wants to see you before he tires out. Just you first." His eyes flick to Nina, then back to me.
Luca
Vico's hand touches Gemma's shoulder at the doorway, and she glances back at me once before she follows him down the hall. The look lasts a second. She's telling me she's fine. I read it and stay where I am, because that's what she asked of me in the car. Let her walk into rooms on her own feet.
Across the rug, Olivia sits cross-legged on the floor, holding Bear while Nina explains the rules. Strawberry sleeps on the left. Bear guards.
"He doesn't sleep," Nina says. "He watches."
"Smart bear," Olivia says.
Nina expands an inch. Her legs stretch out on the rug.
"Sit down, Farro."
Nero. He's near the window. Massimo and Christiano hold the couch on the far side. Luciano leans against the bookshelf with his arms crossed, watching everything the way I would.
I sit in the armchair facing the window.
Nero crosses the rug. He takes the chair beside mine and turns it a few degrees toward me before he sits, close enough that this conversation belongs to the two of us and no one else.
"Gemma can have whatever she's owed from this family," he says. "The old man will see to it. If he doesn't, I will. Property, money, her mother's things. Whatever exists with her name on it, she gets. I want that understood."
He watches my face for the reaction he expects. Gratitude, maybe. Or greed.
I smirk.
"She won't need a fucking penny from you," I say. "Not while I breathe. Not after, either. Give her what's hers if she wants it. Don't dress it up as generosity."
The glass in his hand goes still. Behind him, Christiano stops talking mid-sentence.
"I appreciate a man who takes care of his family," Nero says. His voice drops, even and slow. "So I'll say this once. The next time you disrespect me in my own house, you'll regret it."
If I were another man, that voice would do its work. He's built it for that. The future don, practicing the weight before the crown lands. I've stood in rooms with men who ordered deaths between bites of dinner. I've been the thing they sent when the voice stopped working.
I look at him. I don't lean away and I don't lean in.
"Respect gets earned," I say. "Yours isn't yet. And no man alive has ever made me respect him with a fucking threat. Your father hasn't managed it. You won't either."
Nero sets his glass on the side table. He stands. I stay seated, which costs me nothing and tells him everything. He takes one step toward my chair with his shoulders squared.
Luciano peels off the bookshelf and puts himself between us. He plants himself there with his back half to me, facing his brother.
"You need to relax," Luciano says.
"Move," Nero says.
"He came here with his wife and a kid to sit with our dying father." Luciano doesn't raise his voice. "That's the day this is. Not the other thing."
They lock eyes. Massimo has shifted forward on the couch, elbows on his knees. Christiano watches me instead of them, and I note it. He's the one who'd come at me first if this turned.
Nina's voice cuts through the room.
"Bear says everyone has to use inside voices."
Olivia laughs, and covers it with her hand.
Nero's jaw works. He looks past his brother at me, and I hold it, and after a long breath he steps back. He picks up his glass, drinks from it for the first time, and walks to the window with his back to the room.
Luciano turns to me. He doesn't smile, but his eyes carry a dry acknowledgment, one professional to another.
"He'll come around," he says, low. "Or he won't. Either way, she's blood. That counts for more than you think in this house."
I don't answer.
Nina looks up from the rug and finds me across the room.