37
LENA
Aldo gestures at my neck. “Are you wearing it now? Can you show me?” The necklace.
I find the chain beneath my sweater and pull out the pendant so it’s visible.
Aldo’s eyes widen. “Could you—would you mind taking it off?” When I hesitate, he adds, “I won’t steal it from you, I promise.”
“No. You won’t.” Rem’s reassurance is what I need. Unclasping the chain, I carefully place the piece of jewelry in Aldo’s outstretched palm.
His fist tightens around it reflexively, the gold vanishing from sight. Then, without looking down, he strokes his thumb over the pendant again and again. “It was my great-grandmother’s,” he eventually says. “Passed down through my family for generations. I gave it to Maria when we first fell in love, before we were forced apart.” Aldo drops his chin, his eyes closing. “She was wearing it the night I found her beaten bloody in the hospital. She told me she’d worn it every day since I’d given it to her, that she’d wear it every day until she died.”
“She did,” Rem says. “After she passed away, the nuns at thehospital made sure Lena had it when they sent her to the orphanage. Maria refused to sell it when she ran away. My contact, the one who gave Maria her new identity, said it was the only thing she kept from her old life.”
“That, and my daughter,” Aldo says, gaze lifting to mine. “To answer one of your many, many questions, my dear—the necklace was how I found you. A woman named Mable Fisher had the clasp repaired not long ago. Lucky for me, I’d circulated pictures of it all around the region after Maria disappeared. I was sure she’d pawn it to fund her escape. The design is distinctive, very old. The quality of the craftsmanship remarkable. Enough to be memorable, at least to the jewelers who repaired it. The man who fixed the clasp mentioned the pendant to his father, a retired jeweler who’d kept the business in the family. It took the older man some time to figure out why the necklace struck a chord, but once he did, word eventually made its way back to me.”
“After all this time?” I ask.
“It’s amazing what the right type of motivation can do.”
“Threats and violence?”
Aldo shakes his head. “Money, Lena. People will remember a great number of things if you compensate them well.”
“Right.” Somewhere in the house a clock chimes. It’s getting late, and, like an animal suddenly waking from hibernation, my stomach lets out a monstrous growl. Both men startle and, if I wasn’t so exhausted, hungry, and mentally muddled, I’d laugh. Big bad mafia men scared by my little old stomach. “This day has been endless, really fucking shitty, and since you’re both to blame, you two owe me several things.”
“Fire away,piccola.”
“Food. Sleep. The promise I won’t be held prisoner here. And answers to the rest of my questions.”
Rem and Aldo exchange a look, then Rem pulls out his phone. He’s typing a message to someone as he says, “Doing itnow, absolutely, never, and my uncle is happy to tell you anything else you want to know.”
“Excellent.” I pluck my necklace out from Aldo’s hand, slipping it into my jean’s pocket. “So, say I believe you. The jeweler saw the necklace and told you about it. But how does that convince you I’m your daughter?”
Aldo relaxes into his chair, his hands laced on top of his knees. “DNA. After finding out who’d brought the necklace in for repair, I had my men do some recon. They were able to get hair samples from Signora Fisher’s house months before the fire. I was sorry to hear about that, by the way. Hers was a senseless death.”
I go cold. “Did you kill her?”
Aldo doesn’t blink. “No, absolutely not. But I have been looking into it.”
“Have you found anything?”
He shakes his head. “Not yet, but we will. If that’s what you want.”
“It is,” I answer. “I want the truth, whatever it might be. And, speaking of—the DNA test. What does it show?”
“That you and I are blood related, no room for doubt. That I am your biological father.”
The air leaves my lungs in a rush. We’ve been dancing around guesses and theories and suppositions, but Aldo has the proof. The DNA test that doesn’t lie. “You’ll show me the results?” I ask.
“I will.”
“And, obviously, we’ll do another one, with samples taken from both of us in each other’s presence and tested by a second lab, so we can be sure?”
“Yes, Lena. We will do it again. As many times as you need.”
Holy shit. I’m not sure I can wrap my head around the reality of this. That after twenty-two years of not knowingwhere I came from, I’m sitting three feet from my biological father, married to his adopted nephew, Rem….