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I nod at him, then move to the side board. Nonna Francesca has one of the girls send out a plate of crepes, complete with a warming cover. I settle on the table at the opposite end of Sal.
I fix him with a stare.
He looks to the side. “I can leave,” Sal says quietly.
“Why?”
“It’s pretty obvious you don’t like me. And you don’t like… what Gia and I are to each other.”
“And what is that, precisely?” I fold my arms, continuing to pin him with a gaze that many have seen, but few have survived.
Sal looks even more uncomfortable, something that I did not think possible. “I’m not sure,” he admits quietly.
“And yet you share a room?”
“That was Gia’s idea,” he rushes to say. “The thing with the Irish… they’re really hell-bent on hurting you, Elio. I think they might be behind everything.”
I shake my head. “That cannot be. I just signed a deal with them before Caterina and I were married.”
“Well, whatever you signed, I don’t think they’re interested in adhering to it. At all.”
“Hmm,” I mutter.
There’s silence. Sal looks as though he would rather be anywhere than with me.
“I am not Gia’s keeper. I do not care what she does with her time, so long as she does her work and does not betray our family,” I say in a low voice.
Sal slides his gaze to mine.
“However. She is my sister. She is my twin, and she is the other half of my being. Should you be the cause of any pain for her, I will spend so much time torturing you, you will beg me for death.”
He gulps. “I think you’d have to beat Gia to it,” Sal adds.
That, more than anything, lets me know that whatever it is they have, he at least understands who Gia is. He’s entering into her world with a solid comprehension of the enigma that is Gia.
And he’s choosing to anyway.
I nod and lean back in my chair. “Her favorite are the crepes suzette. I had Nonna Francesca make them for her. She takes her coffee with enough sugar to cause a seizure and more cream than any decent Italian would ever put in it.”
Sal arches an eyebrow at me. “Thanks. I think,” he says.
“Gia never needs my permission. But it does not mean that I do not love her fiercely, and it does not mean that I will not avenge her accordingly.”
Sal nods and rises. He goes to the espresso machine and begins to prime it. “Caterina seems okay.”
“She is unharmed.”
“She didn’t tell Luna that you’re her father?”
I go stock still. “No. She did not.”
“And you’re fine with that?”
He’s not looking at me, but I know that this is his version of the same interrogation I just did. I chuckle slightly at that.
I do not have memories of Sal. He is younger than Marco and me, only a mere ten months older than Caterina.
However, I have no doubt that he is as ferocious of an advocate for his sister as I am for mine.
