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“Sweetheart. I didn’t want to make you sad. If you don’t want to tell me—”
“He died of AIDS.” The glow in her eyes grew even more fierce. “He was a good man, Dante. A wonderful brother.”
“I’m sure he was,” Dante said gently.
“Our father despised him.” She gave a bitter laugh. “But then, he despised me, too. My brother, because he was gay. Me, because I killed my mother.”
“Gaby. Honey—”
The waiter arrived with their lunch. They fell silent until he’d left. Neither of them reached for a fork. At last Gabriella picked up her story.
“She died in childbirth, and our father said it was my fault.” Dante clasped her hand; she gave his a tight squeeze. “I know how wrong that is now, but when I was a little girl, I believed it. Anyway, just about the time you and I—about the time we stopped seeing each other—”
“The time you found out you were carrying my baby,” Dante said gruffly.
Another nod of her head. “Sim. My father wrote to me, a very conciliatory letter asking me to return home. He was getting old, he said, it was time to mend our relationship, he said…” She swallowed dryly. “So, considering that…that I wanted to leave New York, I went home. But he had lied to me. He was dying. He had no money—my father was a very heavy gambler. He needed someone to take care of him.” She shrugged. “So I did.”
“Ah, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. You needed someone to take care of you and instead—”
“I did not mind. There are things one must do in life.” She lifted her head and smiled, though now there were tears in her eyes. “And a good thing came of it. I told my father I would only stay with him if he permitted my brother to move back in. Arturo was ill by then.” She swallowed hard. “So Arturo and I were together again. It was wonderful. We talked and laughed and shared memories—and then my father died.” Her voice broke. “And before very long, so did Arturo. And while I was still mourning him, Andre Ferrantes came to the door to tell me the bank was going to foreclose on Viera y Filho—my father had named the ranch at my brother’s birth, you see, long before he could have known Arturo would be gay. And Ferrantes said—He said—”
Dante stood, pulled back her chair and kissed her. Then he drew her to her feet, dropped some bills on the table and led her from the terrace toward the door.
“How romantic,” he heard a woman say.
And he thought, Wrong.
This, whatever was happening between them, was far more complicated than romance. It was…it was—
He clasped Gabriella’s hand and hurried her from the park.
At home again, they checked on the baby.
He was sound asleep, his backside in the air.
Mrs. Janiseck left. So did Stacia. Dante took Gabriella out on the terrace. They sat close together on a love seat, his arm curved around her in the warm sun, surrounded by Izzy’s flowers.
He told her all about his life. Things he’d never told anyone. His confused feelings for Cesare.
His love for his brothers. For his sisters. He told her how lost he’d been at eighteen, how filled with rage because he had a father whose idea of famiglia had little to do with the family sitting around a dinner table and everything to do with some alien family whose existence periodically brought reporters and photographers and cops to the door.
He told her how directionless he’d been, how his brothers had said enlisting in one of the armed services would give his life structure—and how he’d known, instinctively, he needed the opportunity to find that structure in a different way.
He picked up her hand, kissed her fingertips and explained that he’d found it in Alaska, risking his not-so-precious neck in the oil fields, hiking alone whenever he could in the wilderness, camping out and watching the northern lights, listening to the mournful howl of the wolves until, at last, he’d seen his anger at life for the pettiness it was.
“So I flew home,” he said. “To New York. And my brothers were starting to feel as directionless as I’d felt, now that Nick was out of the Marines, Rafe out of the Army and Falco was out of whatever in hell they had him doing in Special Forces.”
And, he said, they spent hours talking. Planning. Ultimately pooled their savings and their areas of expertise in finance, where they all had done well in school and, in Falco’s case, at the poker tables.
“Orsini Investments took off,” he said. It still was doing well—an understatement, really, making their investors happy despite the slowed economy.
And finally he told her why he’d gone to Brazil, Cesare’s bizarre request—and then the truth that he’d kept from facing.
