Page 80 of The Arrangement

Then, the door swung open. Viviana stood in nothing but a thigh length, wool sweater that hung over one bare shoulder. Her wet hair hung loosely over the other shoulder, while she kept her eyes lowered and chin tucked down.

“Look at me,” Anton pleaded.

“My Wikipedia page says I was one month premature.”

Confusion settled in him like a dead weight. “What?”

“My Wikipedia page. You have one, too. Except yours is a lot more involved than mine is. But that’s not the point…the point is that my page says I was born one month early. Apparently there’s hospital records to show proof of my mom going into early labor.”

Anton didn’t have a clue what to say, but if it got her talking and kept her that way, he didn’t care. “Okay.”

“I wasn’t premature, Anton. More than once my mother told me I was just as stubborn before I was born as I was after because I made her wait two extra weeks before I came, and even then, they had to induce her.”

“Uh…”

Viviana didn’t give him a chance to find words. “Roman has a Wikipedia page, too. Funny, our whole fucking lives are just recorded right here,” she said, waving her cell phone mockingly. “People who don’t know a thing about me can go on here and find out I’m thought to be the daughter of a deceased Cosa Nostra Don. Alleged Don, because you know, he never admitted it in court. They can learn my middle name is Christina. That I had an older brother who died in a car accident along with my mother, although it’s still under investigation.”

Her voice had turned sour, but she still wouldn’t look up. “And then they can click on my father’s name. Roman, I mean. His page, like yours, is quite extensive. It talked about his arrests for drugs, and for the weapons. It describes the circumstantial evidence to other crimes he was never charged for. And your page… The lists on the dealings you're thought to be handling, how you rose to your respective positions, and the years served.”

The final word had all but been spit from her mouth like poison.

Anton finally found his voice. “I’ve spent a few months in jail, but nothing serious. I’m careful with anything and everything I do.”

“Not my dad, though,” she said pointedly. “He wasn’t so careful. It’s no wonder my page says I was a month premature. Considering if I wasn’t, he would have still been in prison when I was conceived.”

The way the word broke coming out of her mouth had him rushing forward. It was soaked in pain and truth, wrapped in sorrow and hatred. More than anything, Anton just wanted to hold her. Viviana wouldn’t let him, taking a quick step back.

“Please don’t, Anton. I can’t … I need to breathe and I can’t do that when you touch me.”

Something lodged in his airways. Didn’t she know what she did for him?

“I need to, though. You make me breathe.”

Viviana ignored his grief-stricken confession. “How long?”

“I don’t—”

“How long did you know that my mom had fucked around with Nicoli?”

Anton blinked in disbelief at the harshness in her tone. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Really?” she bit out bitterly. “How was it, then? How was it, that Christina Carducci ended up pregnant with another man’s child when her husband was just one month off his release date from prison? How was it that to hide who my real father was, they arranged a marriage to put me in his path another way? They lied to me my whole life. Given what my mom did, it’s no wonder he had so many goomahs and—”

“That’s why he forgave her,” Anton interrupted softly.

Finally, Viviana’s head jerked up. Wide, red rimmed eyes stared brazenly open with pain and confusion reflecting back. “I don’t understand.”

“I only know what I was told,” he explained with a shrug. “And from what I understand, Roman put her through the ringer, too. They married young. He was running with women from one side of New York to the other. Your brother was just a newborn when he went back to prison, leaving her alone to raise him for those first two years. Their relationship was bad. One of those destructive things where you know it has to stop, but you can’t find the strength to do it because when it’s good, it’s so fucking good—”

“That’s not an excuse.”

“You’re right, it isn’t, but that’s not how they saw it. They believed what they’d been taught. Once you married, you were married for life. You accepted the spouse you chose. When I was able to ask Roman why, because any other boss would have put her six feet underground, baby, all he could say was that he loved her. She made a mistake—one he made several times over—and he couldn’t punish her any more for it.”

“She conceived another man’s child.”

“You, she conceived you,” Anton pointed out.

“That’s great. I’m the product of some ridiculous revenge my mother decided to enact by fucking Roman’s enemy. I bet she had the best time running around with Nicoli right up until she found out about me. That’s just great, Anton.”