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“My brother enjoys your company,” Sandro says after clipping my cigar for me and lighting it.
I say nothing. What is there to say? I know this is a business meeting. He’ll get to business soon enough.
“Come and have a look at the view,” Sandro says neutrally. He leads me around the pool to a platform that juts out over the city. I lean on the railing and look down. Vertigo hits and I pull back.
“It’s high,” Sandro comments. “Up here, I like to think I can clear my head of all the noise.”
“Does it work?”
His lips do that twist that I’ve come to understand is a smile. “Some days.” He leans on the railing, looking down, and I mirror his position although my head spins. “My brother,” he says slowly, “can become a little obsessive at times.”
“Obsessive?”
“He has his own way of looking at the world.” He glances over to me. I’m on his scarred side, and I think that was on purpose. I don’t say anything, and Sandro goes on. “He’s had a difficult life.”
“He’s not the only one.” I’m not in the mood. I don’t want to talk about Julian, not to his brother. I’m still trying to figure out myself what’s going on.
But Sandro persists. “He has a way of being…single-minded.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“He’s capable of being very destructive.”
I start to get annoyed. “I’ve noticed that, too.”
“But he is still my brother. You understand?”
“Understand what? What are you getting at?”
He turns fully to face me. “If you hurt Julian, I will take you here, to this place, and I will throw you over the railing here. You’d have two or three seconds to make your peace with God. Is that clear enough?”
I stare at him. Is he serious?
He doesn’t give me time to answer. He turns back to the city and says, “In a strange way, I think you would have been a good match for him. But of course, that cannot happen. You are a Bernardi, after all.”
“I can’t help your brother’s obsessions,” I say at last. I want to tell this guy to go fuck himself, but it’s not as though anything he said is untrue.
“All I want is for you to let him down easy. I don’t think Julian has ever experienced heartache. His obsessions either fade, or break off when reality becomes too much for him. And I have enough trouble keeping him in line as it is.”
“You think I’m going to—what—break your brother’s heart?”
Sandro just gives a half-shrug. “It’s unfortunate. I really didn’t believe he was capable of it, but he does seem to have developed some genuine feeling for you. What that feeling is, I can’t say, but it does appear more deeply rooted than his usual fixations. But I know the things he has done for the objects of his obsession in the past. I dread to think what he might do for the object of true affection.”
The thought of ending everything with Julian doesn’t sit well with me. But what Sandro says is not unreasonable. It’s something I said to Julian myself the other day.
We can’t—won’t—work. For too many reasons.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I tell Sandro, and I step away. I turn back once to look at him. “I thought you called me out here to talk business.”
“This is business,” he says, and then gives a grim smile. “It just happens to be personal as well.”
* * *
We get to the business part inside. We sit around on couches, Julian’s warm thigh pressed up against mine as I drink the coffee I’ve been given. Miller and Teddy disappear from the room and the atmosphere changes. It’s a familiar feeling.
Time for real talk.
“How will you do it?” Sandro asks me, and I know what he’s talking about. How will I persuade my father that Roxy is really dead, that Gino is grief-stricken, that it’s time to hand over whatever information he has to Julian.
