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“Of course.”
“What else do you need to do today? One of the staff will bring suitcases so you can pack for the trip.”
What trip? I screwed my eyes shut, trying desperately to remember.
“We’re going to LA,” Nico prompted.
“Right.”
“It’s not too late to back out.”
Give up a weekend in California with Nico? No way.
“Matty and I are coming.” He always wailed when his ears popped on the plane, but I had a feeling that Nico would be a lot more understanding about his distress than Cesare had been. “Darla messaged to say that she’s finished Matty’s snail, and the C from the cross-stitch alphabet is in too.”
“We can pick those up this afternoon.”
* * *
“Everything okay?” Nico asked.
I eyed up the sleek white jet sitting on the tarmac. A porter had taken our bags to load, and I just had Matty to carry. Cricket was back at the Peninsula, being spoiled by Leona the yoga teacher, who’d agreed to dogsit over the weekend. Cricket adored her.
“When I was a teenager living in Virginia, I used to dream about flying on a private jet. I thought it would be a sign I’d made it, you know? But Cesare used to fly private, and that kind of took the shine off things.”
“Did you travel with him often?”
“His family has a compound in the Bahamas.” Three villas on the beach, and since Vito wasn’t a fan of the cold, the whole clan used to head there every Christmas. “Our first trip was to Europe though, and I was terrified of being arrested at the airport. I was literally shaking. But you’re right—if you’re rich enough, nobody pays much attention to the paperwork.”
“Whereabouts in Europe?”
“Sicily. Cesare has family there, and since his great-grandma was about a hundred years old and couldn’t travel, he decided that was where we’d get married.”
He hadn’t asked me; he’d told me. I’d spent the whole journey hoping the plane would crash.
“We wondered where the ceremony took place. Emmy couldn’t find any record in the US.”
“I was six months pregnant, still puking my guts up every day, and Cesare’s great-grandma called me a dirty whore for having sex out of wedlock.”
“Did Cesare take his share of the blame?”
I snorted. “Of course not. But Great-Grandma Lucrezia choked on an olive at the reception, so I suppose there was an element of poetic justice. We had to stay an extra week for the funeral.”
“The more I hear about the Cavallaro family, the more they make mine seem almost normal.”
“In your research, did you come across Cesare’s cousin Aldo?”
“The name doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Probably because Cesare likes to pretend Aldo doesn’t exist. I mean, he’s so dumb that he managed to run over his own leg in a strip club parking lot. And two years ago, he decided to get some of those indoor fireworks to celebrate the Fourth of July and set fire to his apartment. Except he couldn’t even get the date right, and it was the third of July.”
“I hate to say it, but I can understand where Cesare’s coming from.”
“Me too. And last summer, Aldo broke into a hospital and assaulted his ex-girlfriend’s new husband in the delivery room. Cesare wanted to leave him in jail, but Vito bailed him out.”
“Seems jealousy runs in the family.”
“It does. The Cavallaros are a genetic nightmare. I only hope Matty doesn’t grow up to be like his father.”
