THIRTY-FIVE
Nastasya
“ I like this color on you.” Brigida holds a sheer blouse before me, leaning back to get a better perspective. “Maybe we could find something more fitted, though. You have great curves, Nastasya. Use them.”
Always with the hidden agendas. It couldn’t just be a nice fucking blouse; it has to be a weapon in my arsenal. “I have plenty of blouses. Perhaps something more casual.”
The woman has sidestepped my every attempt at redirecting our conversation to the enormous bait she hooked in the car: my mother. I dig my fingernails into my palms and school my features when she turns to frown at me.
“Mafiosa women aren’t casual, my darling.” Brigida racks the unwanted item and riffles through the remainder with unnecessary vigor. “You must be presentable at all times. You never know when a friend will introduce a new associate. When you’ll be called into the public eye at short notice.”
“You make me sound like a politician’s wife.”
“Are you not in a way?” Benito’s mother hitches an eyebrow. “Benito is the face of our family when in public, representing our beliefs and values. The man who works in the family’s best interest. He manipulates hearts and minds as much as you will, just…” She hesitates, fingers caressing a silk sleeve. “Not as amicably.”
“Good cop, bad cop, right?”
Her gaze hardens on me. “Don’t ever use such jokes. It’ll get you in trouble around the wrong people.”
How could I forget? Omertà—the golden rule of never snitching on your family or friends. The only difference is that my family can understand a joke. It seems Benito’s takes everything as thinly veiled truth.
I slide a tailored jacket from the sparse racking and hold it up. “What sort of business will I be expected to help with?” I ask carefully, not daring to look away from the apparent suede in my hands. “If Benito will never head the organization, what will he be involved with once married?”
“The same as he is now.” Brigida takes the jacket from my hands and holds it against me. “I like this. It lifts the highlights in your hair.”
“And what is his role now?” He kills, sure. He does bad things, but why? What is his job description? His responsibility for the family.
“I think you know what that is.” Brigida compares the jacket with the silk blouse she’s just fondled.
“You send him out to take lives as and when required.” I shrug. “Okay. But what is he called? Surely, he carries more status than a regular soldier? He can’t be a capo —he has no men underneath him. At least none that I know of.”
Brigida sighs, eyeballing the sales clerk who maintains a safe and respectable distance at the far end of the store. “I suppose you’re right. It is complicated.” She shifts both garments to her left hand and sidesteps to a row of belts. “He has no official title, per se. He’s our son and receives all the benefits that affords.” She pauses, unhitching a wide brown piece with a double buckle. “He just chooses to live the life of a soldier.”
He chooses to? “Why?”
“Because it was easier than holding the hate inside.”
“Hate for what?” I whisper, accepting the trio of garments from her without considering what I do.
“What do you think?” She lifts an eyebrow. “Losing his tongue.” Her gaze slips the length of me. “And you.” I don’t get a chance to respond before she instructs, “Try those on together for me. I think that’ll be enough for today.”
I slip into the strategically lit change room and hang the items, avoiding my reflection as best I can. I hate feeling responsible for what happened to Benito after we split. I hate that I feel if I’d stayed with him just ten more minutes that night, things would have been different.
If I’d let Caroline convince me to have another drink before heading home, maybe those men would have missed their chance.
If I’d accepted my mother’s invitation to join her for lunch, it could have delayed and saved her, too.
Fuck my life. I can’t continue to wish for things I have zero control over. Let alone no assurance of a different outcome. The men were paid to kill me. Whether Caroline and I left an hour earlier or twenty minutes later, they would have lain in wait anyway. Whether my mother took me with her that day or not, her car would still have crashed, and maybe it would have been both of us buried in the mausoleum and not just her.
Whether Benito spent ten more minutes with me or an hour, we saw his uncle there that night, and the result would have been the same.
I can’t keep carrying the weight of penance on my shoulders for crimes I didn’t commit.
I can’t protect everyone I love. And that’s what fucking guts me the deepest.
I can’t. Fucking. Protect everyone.
“Shit.” I shove the side of my finger beneath my eye and stare up at the ceiling while I draw slow, deep breaths. Get it together, Stas. I’m fucking trembling on the precipice of a fucking breakdown that I do not have time to have. Bury it a little longer. Strong doesn’t mean infallible. I can feel, hurt, and grieve while still being a goddamn force to be reckoned with.
I’m strong and resilient. Proud of myself. You are enough as you are. Fuck the people who try to tell me otherwise. I don’t need to change. I don’t need training to become the perfect mafia wife. I need to be goddamn respected.
How the hell will I run my house if nobody trusts me to make a darn decision for myself? Sure, I get it. Having Benito at my side presents a stronger front.
But Kuznetsov is my name. Not his. It’s my goddamn house, and I will be the one in charge.
“How does it look?” Brigida calls from the lavish sitting area between the changing rooms.
“Just a minute.” I hastily change into the bright blood-red silk blouse and pair the off-white jacket over the top. Fuck her for being right—it brings out the cool highlights in my hair and the red spells business. I secure the belt around the combo, accentuating my waist and widening my shoulder profile.
“What do you think?” I ask, stepping out for her perusal.
In all truth, I don’t give a fuck what she thinks.
“Perfect.” She places a palm on her breastbone.
“I thought so, too.” Exactly what a woman in charge of her destiny would wear.
She holds my gaze, the corners of her eyes slightly squinting when I fail to return to the changing room. “Do you need something else?”
“When are we going to talk about her?”
Brigida sighs, dropping her chin as she turns for the velvet-upholstered chair.
“Shopping is fun and all,” I sass, “but you teased about my mother on the way here and then conveniently forgot about it the moment you stepped out of the car. I want to know what you think I don’t.”
Benito’s mother raises one hand, shooing the lingering assistant out of earshot. The timid woman performs a janky half-bow and flees from our presence, the click of the shop door soon following.
“Where is she going?” I ask, nodding toward the sound.
“Not far. She’ll likely wait out front.”
“You do this often, huh?”
“Women’s affairs are discussed in less formal spaces than our male counterparts.” She fixes a small smile. “What better place than somewhere the men have no interest in sharing?”
I draw a staggered breath and then reach down to uncinch the belt. “You’ve got as long as it takes me to get out of this clothing to cut to the chase.” I return to the changing room, leaving the door open to hear her better.
“What did your father tell you of your mother’s death?”
I pause, hand mid-air with the belt halfway to the hook on the wall. “What we all know.” I hitch the leather strap and remove the jacket and blouse. “It was a car accident. Ruled a suicide, but our family’s suspicion is it was intentional. They say she died almost instantly.” I swallow hard, fixating on returning the jacket to its hanger.
“Did he say why he suspected foul play?”
“No.” I take stock of my reflection, bare save for my jeans and decorative bra. “I was young. I guess he wanted to protect me from unnecessary worry.” My hand drifts to the puffiness around my mid-section. “I didn’t find that out until years later. I struggled with the notion she’d done that to herself for so long. It never felt right.”
“You were, what? Fifteen? Sixteen when it happened?”
“Fifteen.”
“You weren’t that young at all.” Brigida sighs. “And I suppose he’s spoken nothing of it since.”
“What occasion would he have to?” I tug my sweater over my head and turn away from the duplicate of me on the wall. “It’s not as though we commemorate her death by sitting around and reliving the circumstances each year.”
A beat passes before she responds flatly, “No. I suppose not.”
“What is it I don’t know then?” I leave the items hanging on the hooks and step out the door. The saleswoman can collect them to package herself if Brigida desires to spend the money.
Benito’s mother gestures to the chair that matches hers, a few feet from where she resides.
I ease onto the ridiculously cushy seat and set my hands in my lap.
“I suspect your father knew full well what made your mother a target.”
“Really.” I school my features. “What makes you so confident of that?”
“Because I knew why.”
Heat races to sear every inch of my exposed flesh. How many fucking betrayals remain unavenged in this goddamn world of ours? How many deaths get swept under the carpet, and why? What the fuck does she know that could justify the lack of closure for my mother’s death. “How? Why keep such a secret?”
She lifts a hand as though to slow me down. “We were good friends, your mother and I. Which was unusual given who our husbands are… were. She lifted my days with her joy, beautiful Irina.”
“Alessio said she was crazy.” I hitch an eyebrow. “If you loved her so much, who gave him that impression?”
“I’d say the same person I feel knows the most about how your mother died.” Her face hardens—gaze far away as she stares at the wall to her left.
“Such as?” I flex my hands atop my knees, trying to rub the clamminess away subtly.
“Such as Ignazio.”
I launch from the chair, unsure where the fuck I intend to go, only that I need to move to save from completely losing my shit. That fucker. He’s got a goddamn finger in every pie. Every grave-dirt soiled, rotten pie. Fuck. “Why do you say that?” I find myself at the fucking clothes again, fussing with the pleat of the jacket’s sleeve where it hangs.
“She confided in me, Nastasya, and I did nothing.” Her heavy sigh breaks the tension. “Second to the feeling that I’ve let my son down, it’s my greatest regret. I failed her, Nastasya, and I’m so, so sorry for that.”
“You were one of many who failed her,” I whisper, rolling my jaw to fight the tears. “I wouldn’t expect you to carry all the guilt.”
“Perhaps, but I look at you, and I’m reminded of her in so many ways.” She pauses, drawing a deep breath.
I dare glance at Brigida, my heart torn when she ducks her head to dab at her evident grief. She loved my mother, and I never knew. I mean, I understood they were acquaintances. Two women bonded by their roles. Yet what I witness as Benito’s mother opens her small bag to produce a tissue is a woman devastated by her perceived role in my mother’s death. A woman who feels .
And it fucking hits me. She shows more emotion than my goddamn father ever has.
She cares.
Brigida blots beneath her eyes, smiling awkwardly. “I’m sorry. I’m so embarrassed.”
Why? “Because you think you’re weak by crying?”
She nods.
“Do you think Gennaro is weak for crying over Benito?”
“No.” She snaps the answer, brow diving.
“Then why do you think that way about yourself?”
Brigida regards me as I resume my seat across from her, searching my face before saying, “I suppose because you’re displaying such strength. Seeming so… unaffected.”
I smirk. “Is that what you think?” My stomach churns, my throat closing in. “I’m affected here.” I place a hand on my stomach. “Here.” Hold my hands out so she can see how they shake. “And here.” Set one to my temple. “This,” I say, gesturing to my face, “is what I’ve become to appease my father’s remorse.”
She frowns.
“He loathes when I show my grief,” I explain. “Hates that I take the so-called attention from him. That I dare assume I could feel half as badly as he does, having lost the love of his life.” I chuckle darkly, glancing down at where I rest my hands in my lap. “I learned to hold it all inside so I didn’t upset him.”
“I’m sorry.” I startle when Brigida’s hand lands atop mine. “That’s not fair of him to do that.”
“We all learn to be resilient in different ways, right?”
She blanches, leaning away as I use her words against her.
“What did she tell you?” I redirect back to the topic, fidgeting my hands before me.
Brigida fills her lugs, steeling her resolve. “Irina told me she felt as though she were being followed. That everywhere she went, there was this creeping feeling,” Brigida shudders, face twisted with disgust. “As though she was being watched.”
“Was she?”
She regards me a moment, frowning. “What do you know of her accident? The finer details of what happened to her car that day.”
Papa has never said how or why. Just that it was. “Nothing.”
“Nobody has ever told you there were two other cars involved?”
The room swims. I blink lazily, willing my head to stay on my fucking shoulders. “Pardon?”
“There were two other cars,” Brigida repeats. “They steered her off the road and forced her into that fatal pole.”
“How do you know this?” I lick my lips and look around for water. Something to wash away the blades in my throat, making my words hoarse.
Brigida rises from her seat and crosses to a staff door at the rear corner. She ducks inside, returning a short time after with a crystal decanter and two glasses. “Somebody got to the witnesses before the police arrived. The few people around had nothing to say when the detectives asked questions in the following days.” She sets the glasses on the table between us and half-fills each. “But the police department still ran the standard reports. Reports that our family obtained for your father. Reports that detailed the tire marks on the road and what they meant. The damage to your mother’s car. The paint residue and the evidence that your mother braked. Hard.” She passes me a drink as though she didn’t just outline the specifics of my mother’s suspicious death. “Of course, the media reports, small as they were back then, showed a simple photo of her car against the pole. Alone. But that’s not how it happened.” Brigida sits, pausing to sip at the cool water. “The suspicion was proved right three years later when one of the witnesses finally spoke. Bar room talk that took time filtering along the grapevine until it reached our ears.”
“Why would nobody bring this up?” I ask. “What happened to me was almost identical. Why the fuck would nobody be suspicious about that?”
“People are,” she states simply, swirling her water.
“Who?”
“The people who care about you the most.” She holds my gaze, daring me to fill in the blanks. The same people who hold their silence.
I murmur the question that burns in my throat. “What makes you think it was Ignazio responsible for my mother’s death?”
She stays quiet for a while, seemingly choosing her words carefully. “A gut feeling.”
I scoff, staring at the water in my hand. “I’m sorry. But you’ll have to give me more than that.”
She smiles softly, staring at the clothes in the changing room. “When you’ve known someone as long as I’ve known Ignazio, you learn things about them, Nastasya. You begin to recognize the tiny habits they have. Patterns to their behavior.” Brigida sets the glass down and then reaches into her bag, speaking as she searches. “I’ve known that man long enough to know how he acts when he feels smug. Virtuous. As though he’s won,” she sneers, producing an e-cigarette. “Do you mind?”
I shake my head. “Go ahead.” We all have our vices that help us get through.
“Thank you.” She inhales, pausing before blowing the vapor beside her. “I’ve never been able to prove it was him.” Brigida scowls. “All these years, Ignazio has remained elusive. Conducting his business in private. Refusing to let even my husband sit in on most of it.”
The sweet smell of cannabis swirls between us.
“And yet, Gennaro trusts him.” I don’t mean for the statement to sound so accusatory.
Brigida narrows her gaze and smiles. “No. He doesn’t.”
“So talk to that witness. Get them to recount what they saw.”
“We can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re dead.” She puffs again and then tucks the vape away. “All we have left is the police report, and nothing in that links anyone to her death.”
My heart threatens to throb straight out of my damn ribcage. I can’t… I shouldn’t. I don’t want to connect the dots. I’m not ready to reveal the whole picture yet. Damn. Folding forward, I drop my head into my hands and count my breaths.
I sort of always knew, but at the same time, I didn’t.
My mother was kind. She was kind, and she was loyal. She was everything good in our house, and deep down, I suppose I refused to believe that anyone could hate her strongly enough to kill her. But if what Brigida says is true, nobody hated her ; they hated what she represented.
Atonement.
“If you know he’s such a bad guy,” I murmur toward the floor, “then why let him continue to be a part of the Family? Why let Ignazio continue to be a liability?”
“A gut feeling can tell you a lot,” she muses. “But the consequences of being wrong are severe in our world. You know that,” Brigida chastises. “I know that. You can’t accuse people of things with no irrefutable evidence, Nastasya. Not when it may mean their death.”
“You sound like Benito.”
“Good,” she snaps. “I should. Because it’s the truth of the matter.” Brigida sighs, collapsing against the chair and losing her air of superiority. “I’ve seen what happens when words are let loose without properly considering the consequences. When things are said in the heat of the moment, the resulting actions can potentially change the lives of many.” She pauses, picking at invisible lint on the chair. “It can take generations to undo that damage.”
“How many chances, though?” I lean forward. “How many flags must he raise before somebody—I suppose Gennaro, now—looks at the patterns, the similarities, and fucking does something about it? He was passed over for don because he’s not reliable enough, for fuck’s sake.”
I want to scream at her, to spit out the words fighting to be free, “He stole your son’s tongue!” to see if it’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back. To know if it’s enough.
But I don’t. Because that’s Benito’s story to tell. His atonement to deliver.
“I don’t know,” Brigida mutters. “I’ve asked myself the same many a time.”
“So why tell me this?” Why put the same festering hate in my heart for the man if I can’t do anything about it?
“Because you deserve to know before the ink wets your marriage certificate. You deserve the opportunity to walk away from this family knowing what we are.”
“You know I’d never be allowed to do that.”
She smiles weakly, sadly proud of me for understanding the seriousness of adopting her name.
So, why tell me? If she’s just debunked her bullshit line about being given the truth before it’s too late, then why tell me? And why do it now? Before I change my name. Before I’m trapped in their family.
“I want to teach you the art of manipulation via psychological means.” Her words echo in my mind. She just schooled me on the fucking art—firsthand.
Brigida’s coy glance to the side confirms my suspicion. “You want me to be the one to deliver his justice,” I hiss. I’m not a part of the family. Not yet. Not bound by the same code. “Why would I do that when it could start a war? When it would surely destroy a chance at happiness for your son? Haven’t we suffered enough, Benito and I?”
She lifts her gaze, dropping it briefly to my fidgeting hands.
Oh, fuck no. “You think I’m worth that sacrifice, don’t you? You’d trade your son’s happiness for a stab at revenge.”
“You said it yourself. How many red flags must he raise before someone does something about it?”
I huff a disgusted laugh. “You’re pathetic. You know that? Your traditions, your rules. They make you weak against your greatest enemies—those within.”
“Don’t you want justice for your mother?” Her shrewd gaze sears at my flesh.
“Of course I fucking do.” I shake my head. “But I’ll get that when I sit at the head of my family’s table.”
“You honestly think you’ll be able to bend centuries of tradition to get there, don’t you?” Her smile mocks me.
I rise from the seat. “I don’t think I will. I know I will.”