I lean forward, pinning Aldo with a hard look. “You really believe that?”
“What I believe doesn’t matter, not right now.”
I’m about to argue but Aldo preemptively waves away my protest. “Do you want to know the rest of the story or not?”
“Yes.”Fine.Rem massages the back of my neck and I lean closer to him, enjoying how our physical proximity makes Aldo twitchy.
“As I was saying—Maria and I were forbidden from having any sort of relationship. She got married and moved to another city. I took my position as the head of the Family and eventually moved to Chicago when we expanded west. I forced myself to stop thinking about her, to stop wondering about every facet of her life. If she was happy. If she missed me. If she had learned to love her husband.”
“Were you really able to do that, to force yourself to forget about her like that?” I ask.
That wistful smile returns. “No,” Aldo confirms. “I was horrible at it. But I was very good at lying to myself, telling myself it didn’t matter. She and I were forbidden. Our relationship was over.” He shifts in his chair, the first real sign of discomfort he’s given. “Until…it wasn’t.”
Aldo stands, goes to the bar, pours himself a drink. He downs the liquor with one toss of his head, his back tense as he gives himself a minute. “She didn’t keep her move to Chicago a secret. She wouldn’t have been able to even if she’d wanted to.”
He gives us a pointed look. “There’s little that happens in this town that I don’t know about. Her husband, while not officially part of the Family, was an ally of ours. A partner of sorts. Astronzo, but someone we wanted alive. Or so I thought. They moved here three years before you were born. And I stayed away as long as I could. I thought I was doing us both a favor, leaving the past in the past. Then I saw the photos.”
A fission of awareness goes through me, dread curling through my stomach. Rem strokes my neck. I find his other hand, lace our fingers together. “What photos?”
“Police photos.” Aldo scrubs his face, like he’s trying toerase the images from long ago. “Her husband had beaten her so badly their housekeeper had called 911 after he’d stormed out of the house. The hospital called the police. The chief of police called me. From that point on, everything changed.”
“You resumed your relationship, despite both being married?”
Aldo shrugs. “My wife and I had an arrangement. While we respected each other and became friends, we never loved each other. Not like that. I loved Maria, refused to let her suffer a moment longer with her shit of a husband. The arrogant fuck. I couldn’t kill him, but I could stop him from hurting her. At least, that’s what I thought. I moved Maria into one of my houses and for almost a year we were together. Happily, or so I thought.”
“What happened to change that? Why did she run away?” Question after question compounds in my head. “Why did you tell Rem she betrayed you? Why, after all this time, did you order him to track her down?”
“So many questions, Lena.” Aldo settles back in the armchair. “Are you always like this?”
“Unwilling to stay uninformed about my own life? Yeah, I’m always like this.”
Rem chokes back a laugh as Aldo just sighs. “The answer to your first two questions is, I don’t know. Or I didn’t, not at the time. I knew Maria was unhappy about some parts of our arrangement. We were both raised in strict Catholic families. That alone prevented us from getting divorces, let alone how much it would’ve fucked up Family alliances. And while I spent as much time with her as I could, we weren’t able to live together as we wanted. I was only partially hers, and she was only partially mine. That weighed on both of us. And, looking back on it, I think it made Maria feel less safe than I realized.”
“What do you mean?” Rem asks.
“Well, in the eyes of the law and the church, her husbandstill had claim to her. He couldn’t lay a finger on her in Chicago, but it was harder to protect Maria outside the city. Returning to Italy safely was almost impossible, so she was separated from her mother and sisters. The sense of isolation must’ve been overwhelming. On the other hand, if Maria dared step outside the little world we’d created, she was putting her life at risk. From her husband, from his family, even from my own enemies who would hurt her as a way of attacking me.”
Just hearing Aldo describe Maria’s situation makes the walls feel like they are closing in. Maybe because I’ve had my own taste of what she was going through. “She couldn’t live like that. Alone, cut off from everything and everyone she loved except you, and unable to have you the way she wanted. So, she decided to leave.”
Rem’s hand stiffens in mine, his large frame going still. I’m guessing he’s made the same correlation I have. I can picture Aldo and Maria having the same fight about safety and seclusion that Rem and I have had.
Aldo is watching us, his wickedly sharp eyes catching every nuance of our unspoken exchange. He’s addressing both me and Rem when he says, “At the time, I didn’t know why she left. I’m still not absolutely certain. I only have an educated guess based on what I’ve learned since. But what I do know is that I wish she’d come to me before running away. I wish she’d told me what she found so unbearable about our life that escaping it seemed like her only option. I wish she’d told me so we could’ve fixed it together.”
“When you ordered me to find Maria, did you already know she was dead?” There’s tension in Rem’s voice, an undercurrent of betrayal.
“I didn’t know but I suspected,” says Aldo. “Twenty-three years is a long time to stay hidden from me.”
“But you didn’t know she’d had a child?” says Rem.
“No,” Aldo answers. He leans toward us, his eyes trackingevery inch of my face. “I didn’t know Maria had given birth. I didn’tknowmuch at all. I only had suspicions. Ones based on a bruised ego and a broken heart. I knew she’d left me. I knew she hadn’t given me a reason, at least not one I was smart or mature enough at the time to understand. I believed she’d betrayed me, our relationship, our life together. I knew she’d vanished, and I was so angry. Angry and broken.”
Aldo releases the breath that he’s been holding, like confessing this has lifted a weight from his shoulders. “I didn’t suspect that Maria was pregnant. I like to think that if I had known, I would’ve understood her decision better. Not agreed with it, mind you. I would’ve fought tooth and nail to keep Maria, to keep our child—and yet knowing that’s how I would’ve reacted, I understand even better why Maria felt she needed to leave. I understand, but I don’t forgive.”
The vulnerability in Aldo’s expression vanishes, shields dropping over his eyes. “I loved your mother, Lena. I grieve her death. But I cannot forgive her for leaving me and taking you with her.”
I hold the older man’s gaze. “That’s one hell of a story, but how do you know I’m your daughter? You keep repeating it as if it’s fact, but how do youknow?”
“Simple,” he says. “Rumor, science, and a little gold necklace.”