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She makes an adorably frustrated sound and spins to face me again. "Stop with the games, Raffaele. You have work to do and so do I."
"I cleared my schedule for the rest of the afternoon."
"Well, I didn't."
I just look at her. Does she really think I didn't have the foresight to text Janine on her behalf?
Giulia makes a sound like steam coming from a tea kettle. "After everything else, you had the audacity to cancel my afternoon appointments?"
"I am efficient that way."
"Damn it, Raff!"
At least she's calling me Raff and not Raffaele.
"Come and sit down with me."
She storms over to one of the couches in the seating area that almost never gets used. I prefer to meet people from behind my desk.
Our made men are not my colleagues. I am the underboss. The only man with more power than me in Las Vegas is my father, the don. The only time I use the couches by the window is on the rare occasions my father or his consiglieres come to my office.
Even Giulia's brother, Miceli, sits in a chair facing my desk when he comes to Vegas to discuss business. And like me, he is underboss. Their older brother, Severu, has been don since Enzo's death.
As much as I would prefer to sit beside her, I don't. She didn't react well to me putting her on my lap earlier. Though I did so because I thought she needed comfort. Her telling me she didn't want me touching her makes it very clear that if she wants comfort, it is not from me.
I don't like it. However, for now, I will respect her wishes.
Her impromptu striptease still confuses me, but I now get it was motivated entirely by rage. At me.
We sit in silence for a tense minute before she says, "You're the one that won't let me leave until we talk. So, talk." She waves her hand at me in a come-on gesture.
"You knew we expected you to have more children."
"We," she derides. "Is that we, you and your father? Or we, you and your parents?" She shakes her head. "Only I have a hard time believing your mother cares one way or the other whether we have another child. She sees Neri less than my mom does."
I cannot deny the truth. Aria lives in New York, but she visits several times a year and my wife goes back to New York at least once a quarter.
"My mother has yet to reconcile herself to being a grandmother."
"Neri is three years old. Do you think that is ever going to happen?"
"No." Why sugarcoat it? Viola isn't maternal. Becoming a grandparent did not change that.
My son calls her Bea just like me and my brother.
Aria De Luca is Neri's only realnonna.
"So, the Mancini family expects me to pop out babies like a brood mare."
"Don't pretend you didn't know that having children in the plural was part of the bargain." Hell, our fathers had negotiated the point when Giulia and I were promised. I had been seventeen, but Giulia had still been a child of twelve. "Even your sainted father agreed that you would bear a minimum of two children."
"He's not sainted."
"I was certain you thought he was." She has compared our fathers too many times to count during our marriage.
Mine never wins in the comparison. Of course, he is alive and able to interfere in our lives…in her life. De facto, Patrizio Mancini will never be able to compete with the dead don who by all accounts was both a good donandfather.
Patrizio is a good don.
