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Anger, bright and hot, fills me. “Of course, Elio. It has to be one of my brothers. It has to be a De Luca. Obviously, it can’t be anyone who wants to fuck with your business,” I hiss.
He blinks at me.
I know, I never cuss. It’s just not part of who I am. I used to tease my brothers because they didn’t have any more creative way to express their feelings than spitting out a curse word.
Now, for the first time, I really do kind of understand why.
“You’re being a fucking idiot, Elio. I didn’t sell out my child. Neither did any of my brothers. Neither did anyone who works for us. You think we have enough people in general who would turn on us? You think we’re valuable enough for this to happen?”
“If they knew Luna was mine…”
“Let me tell you this, and I’m not going to repeat myself,” I say clearly and calmly, fighting the shaking sound of my own voice.
“Luna has lived the past five years without you knowing that she was your child. You, with your spies, and your sister who is, for all intents and purposes, quite good at her job.
“We don’t have spies, Elio. We don’t have an army of soldiers and lieutenants who are spread across the world. We have the five of us, the twenty-ish family members who live with us, and an additional ten employees. And not one of us, for the last five years, leaked a hint of Luna’s existence.”
Elio bristles. “I wasn’t looking for a child.”
“Doesn’t matter. A secret this big that could ruin one of the most powerful men in the game? Someone, if they were going to rat, would have fucking ratted. This isn’t on me, and it’s not my family. I don’t know what happened, and I don’t know who found out about Luna, but don’t you dare say that it was us,” I finish.
Staring at me, Elio is silent.
Good.
“Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to let Luna finish her castle. We’re going to go back to your ridiculously large Italian villa. Luna is going to eat butter noodles like she has for the last three weeks, and we’re going to all go to bed. Then, you’re going to fucking apologize to me, and we’re going to figure out what the hell is going on.”
It’s a lot. I know that I’m pushing Elio’s boundaries here. I can practically see him writhing under my demands, ready to fight me or protest.
To my surprise, he lets out another one of those deep breaths.
Elio looks at Luna, who is remarkably oblivious still, then back at me.
“As you wish, Caterina.”
16
ELIO
The rideback to the villa is silent.
Luna falls asleep, which I suppose is some kind of a blessing. Given the amount of times she has fallen asleep on any kind of transportation, I guess that it’s kind of a pattern for her.
Not for the first time, I wonder what other quirks Luna has.
I know some of them now. I know she likes to build things, that she’s somehow very interested in architecture. She knows the words ‘retaining wall,’ which I don’t think the average five-year-old knows, and after Caterina told me what she required of me earlier, we listened to Luna prattle about the replica she had built of my house for about ten minutes before Caterina masterfully scooped her up and deposited her into the car.
And now, she’s sleeping.
Presumably dreams of retaining walls.
Caterina doesn’t speak to me the whole time she unloads Luna from the car. She doesn’t say anything as we move into the house, as she hands off the different bags and boxes toFrancesca. I go to unbuckle Luna from her car seat, but Caterina is at my side in a flash, pushing me aside.
I take the hint.
Instead of waiting around so that I can continue to be rebuffed by my wife and the mother of my child, I retreat to my office. I check my phone but there’s no news from Nico or Gia yet. Gia doesn’t surprise me:
I don’t know where she disappears to when she disappears, but I do know that whenever she resurfaces, she’s likely to know details that are impossible to know.
