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No one told me if there was a penalty for not responding to a letter from an attorney, but at this point, they can’t find me. I have no home, no money to my name, and being put in jail now would be a kindness. At least then I’d know where my next meal was coming from.
Now, wait, I tell myself. Just because this is one of the guys from last night, it means nothing. He doesn’t know who I am. I don’t know who he is. There’s only one guy I absolutely, positively, cannot see today, and I don’t see him anywhere.
I scan the room. I scan the next room.
“You okay?” Marialena asks with concern.
I nod. “Didn’t sleep well last night,” I say, which isn’t a lie. Cars might be good places to sleep in an emergency or maybe for a nap, but no one ever got a solid eight hours in the back seat of a car. “Feel a little off. Sorry.”
She smiles and reaches for a black bag sitting by her seat on the floor. Ah. Chanel. Of course.
She unzips it and takes out a little flask. Holds it out to me. “Sip.”
“What?”
“Sip,” she says more insistently. “Listen, if you’re here for the reading of the will we’re probably family anyway. Drink it.”
“I’m good.”
She blows out a breath, then rolls her eyes. “Look, babe. When we get in there? My father’s going to have to give these speeches.” She gives me a pointed look. “Maybe even in Italian and English,” she says, as if to emphasize her point. “Do you have any idea what that’s like?”
I grimace.
“Exactly. Just take a swig. It’s good stuff, from Tuscany. And unlike the American stuff, won’t put hair on your chest.” She gives me a wink.
I look over the shoulder of the guy I recognized last night, only to meet another pair of steely blue-gray eyes. Not my avenging angel’s, but he’s definitely family.
Oh my God.
What have I walked into?
I take her flask and tip my head back.
Chapter Four
“I defy you, stars.” Romeo and Juliet
Romeo
I sit to my father’s right, a strategic position that allows me a full view of every single person who enters this room. Tavi announced my grandfather’s wishes, and I can only imagine the grumblings and rumblings outside this hall right now.
Only immediate family and those expressly invited to attend.
That means that none of the extended family that visited from out of state’s allowed to be present at the hearing. I can imagine the fits and the attitudes and all the Italian curse words spewed by my aunts and uncles, cousins and great-aunts, and all the other relatives that came all the way here to hear how Giorgio Montavio will divide his assets.
Nonna, on the other hand, has walked about the house with platters of food she’s made herself, encouraging everyone the same way any Italian grandmother would. “Mangia, mangia!” She doesn’t care about the will. Her inheritance is set in stone. Like many married couples within our family, there was no love lost between her and her husband. She’s more concerned that her meatballs and pasta fill our bellies than anything else.
But she’s the only one that doesn’t care. Tavi almost got into a fight earlier this morning with one of our cousins, and Orlando decided it would be best to have all the cousins meet somewhere other than the Great Hall. That led to a party in the library, which my mother wasn’t aware of until someone almost wrecked a chandelier.
The Rossi family likes food, and the Montavio family likes to party. So when the Rossi family meets with the Montavio side of things… let’s just say both wine and tempers flow.
My father talks to me in Italian; his low murmur and choice to speak in Italian versus English is intentional, to prevent anyone from eavesdropping. “She needs to go,” he says in a harsh whisper. “I want her out of my goddamn house.” The “she” being my mother’s sister Francesca.
“It’s her father’s will,” I remind him tightly, not wanting to stir up old wounds.
“That she was written out of years ago when she married the fucking Irish,” my father mutters. True, but I suppose she can’t help but wonder if anything’s changed. She also likely came with her sons and daughters, hoping for a piece of the Montavio family pie.
When my grandfather married my mother to Narciso Rossi, he did so to forge an intentional alliance between both Tuscan families. The Montavio family got the shit end of the stick, or at least they’ll have you believe that they did.
We got the house. Off they went to Gloucester, against my father’s better judgment. Nonna came to live here when my grandfather was put into assisted living.
My father doesn’t like my mother’s side of the family, but it can’t be denied that my parents’ union forged the strongest alliance ever known to any Italian mafia family. Between my grandfather’s riches here in America and my father’s family owning real estate in the North End that rivaled anyone else’s, theirs was a match that perfected the art of the alliance.
