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I smiled, which was ridiculous considering I’d just found out I was basically screwed, and I still had the blood of the Irish on my hands. But then, I probably always would. I remembered Caterina. Small woman, could cook like a dream, or she did before Elisabetta decided to employ a fancy gourmet chef and meals went from coating your ribs, to suddenly so dainty Gia and I would have to raid the fridge after dinner. “She’s not there now, though.” I didn’t remember seeing her for a good few years.
“That’s because she’s in the Long Acres nursing facility and has been for the past five and a half years. Early onset dementia. She’s only fifty-three.”
I shrugged. “What has that—”
“Because Rocco’s paying for it. The home is the equivalent of The Waldorf for patients like Caterina. And it’s expensive, really expensive.”
I gazed at Gianni. “Mio fratello, that makes no sense. There is no way Rocco would do that. Elisabetta would go crazy with the evidence of Rocco’s infidelity in their faces. She would have been fired as soon as they found out.”
Gianni grinned. “Exactly, but now tell me. Do you remember her son?”
“Her son?” I narrowed my eyes, looking at Lucio for some reason, but he just shrugged, and I did my best to think. “I have a vague memory of a kid helping Caterina in the kitchen a couple of times.” Then another memory teased at me. I’d walked into the kitchen, and some skinny thing had squeaked when he’d seen me and ran into the pantry. My aunt had followed me in and started giving Caterina orders. I knew my aunt would be furious at the boy being in the main house, so I’d never said a word.
Neither had Caterina, but she had risked Elisabetta’s displeasure and made all my favorite meals for a month.
“So why is Rocco paying for an ex-cook to be in an expensive nursing home? And what it has to do with the son?” It was a fair question. Loyalty was loyalty, whether you tortured your boss’s enemies for him or attempted to love a lost little boy by giving him his favorite food. I would have done it, but never Rocco.
Gianni smiled. “Because she’s the mother of his child. The kid—Alessandro Gallo—is Rocco’s son.”
For a moment, white noise filled my exhausted brain. “You have proof?”
“Apparently Elisabetta insisted on the DNA test herself, and it took some finding because they thought it had been destroyed, but they don’t know me,” Gianni preened. “I don’t know what’s going on, but Alessandro lives at Rocco’s. He’s not formally acknowledged, and judging from what I see online, he isn’t paid. Works in the kitchen. Left school at fourteen and he’s been there ever since. I only found out because I was searching Rocco’s finances and didn’t understand why he was paying a nursing home fee when he’s not exactly known for his generosity.”
“How old is the son?”
“Twenty.”
“But he doesn’t get paid?” How many twenty-year-olds would work for free?
“I’m assuming it might have something to do with where his mom is. They have no other relatives.” That was even more fucked up than the mess still swinging on the chains in front of me. “You’re not getting this,” Gianni said with a sigh.
“Look, I feel sorry—”
“Fucks sake, Dario,” my brother swore and the second he did, he jolted me out of my exhausted brain dump. The one where I was still processing my father’s best friend had murdered him, and I took a deep breath as icicles formed once more down my spine, stiffening it as benefited a Boss.
“There’s another kid,” I said out loud in understanding. The will didn’t stipulate a name, just the heir of Rocco Martino. “Send me whatever you have on him to my phone.” It sounded like he was being kept a virtual prisoner because of his mother’s medical condition. But anyone could pay medical bills, should they have the money to do so. I smiled to myself. Suddenly the day had possibilities. There was also the advantage of sticking it to the old guard. Gay marriage didn’t happen in my world.
“It might not be so easy,” Gianni cautioned. I scoffed. I could easily come to a business arrangement if I had to. I was an equal opportunity fucker, but I could play nice if that wasn’t his scene. “Because according to what my contact tells me, Rocco has bought his silence on who he is.”
“How?” I knew why. Or did I? Wouldn’t it have been expedient just to arrange his disappearance?
“Because,” Gianni said. “The minute you marry Sofia, Alessandro gets his freedom. He can walk away, and Rocco continues to pay his mamma’s fees.” He leaned forward. “He’s been a prisoner most of his life. What makes you think for one minute he wants another jailor?” Gianni’s smile was wicked. “But I suppose you have nine hours to persuade him otherwise and get a ring on his finger.”
I returned his smile and went to get cleaned up. Nobody ever said no to Dario Banetti. Why should this one be any different?
2
Alessandro
“No,” Sofia snapped as I’d been about to place the breakfast tray on the small table next to the fire. “I want it here.” She leaned forward expectantly and, of course, I sat the tray down and arranged her pillows so she could sit comfortably. I opened the small lap table and arranged it over her knees. Then I lowered the breakfast tray.
I knew from the flash in those ice-blue eyes she lifted to spear me with that she wasn’t happy. “What the fuck is this?”
I started counting in my head. Back from ten so I wouldn’t be tempted to take the knife from the tray and plunge it into her heart. That was always assuming she had one, of course. I’d seen very little evidence of it in the last six years since I was forced to live here. “Monsieur Benoit thought—”
Her scream was enough to wake the dead. Unfortunately, her reaction to the chives sprinkled as a garnish on her eggs was to be expected. I had tried a few minutes ago to suggest that Sofia might not like the variation, but the expensive chef—brought in especially for today—seemed confident he knew better.
Three hundred and sixty-four other days a year I helped whatever cook was the latest in a long line, but there were another twenty-three mouths to feed today with family staying, and not even Elisabetta could make time stand still so I could help in the kitchen and do the cleaning up afterwards, to say nothing of taking the breakfast trays out.
