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“So, why are you here when thatbambinoneeds you?”
I blinked. It was like we were having two different conversations. “What bambino—child,” I repeated.
“Alessandro.” She looked and sounded scandalized when I didn’t know who she meant.
“He…” Words failed me, and she whacked me on the arm again.“Sciocco.”
“I know I’m a fool,” I yelled, then took a breath. It wasn’t Nonna’s fault. “I know I was stupid to be fooled by a pretty face—”
She hit me again.
“Nonna,” I started.
She rolled her eyes. If she picked up her rolling pin, I was leaving. “Dario,” then she fell into a torrent of Italian. “I love you with all my heart, but you are blind. I wasn’t calling you foolish because you think Alessandro has betrayed you, well yes, that as well, but I called you foolish because you don’t see that my grandson loves you with all his heart.”
I frowned, wondering if my Italian that I’d learned to speak even before English, was letting me down. “But—”
This time I dodged her hand.
“Nonna—”
“Dario, go find him. He needs you. He loves you. I know this.” She pointed to her head, then her heart. “There is another reason, Dario. Go find him and bring him home.”
My brain recycled to the message or whatever it was that had been deleted on Alessandro’s phone. Nonna’s instincts were usually spot on, but it was clear she’d loved Alessandro from the start. This could quite easily be because she wanted to believe hewouldn’t betray us. I scrubbed my head. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gotten any sleep.
“There’s nothing I can do while we wait to find out who owns that boat. Gia is contacting who we know at the port and the marinas.”
Lucio and Alvize came into the kitchen. “Then bed.” She waved her hand at me and did the same to Lucio. “Bed. Alvize and I will guard the phones and the house.”
I glanced at Lucio and he nodded, which surprised me because that man seemed to exist on about two hours of sleep a day.
A moment later, I stood and stared at the hastily made bed in my room, knowing who’d been in it last. I should either strip the bed or sleep somewhere else, but I undressed and crawled under the sheets before I thought better of it. I rolled over to the side Alessandro had been on and bunched the pillow, bringing it to my face and inhaling.
Part of me, most of me, wanted to believe Nonna, but the rational part of me, the part that knew what I was born to do, still thought that Alessandro would die, and die by my hand.
“Boss.” My eyes flew open as Alvize walked into my room.
“What is it?”
“A messenger just delivered this.” He held out a large brown envelope addressed to Don Banetti. Lucio appeared a moment later. I went to rip it open, but Lucio took it off me and held it up to the window. I nearly rolled my eyes, but he handed it back.
“I already checked,” Alvize muttered. "And the messenger was paid cash."
It was a letter and…divorce papers. For a moment white noise filled my brain, but I focused on the letter, then crumpled it as white-hot fury shot through me. Divorce? How dare he.
“I’m not signing that,” I spat. It would be a war, and one I wasn’t ready to fight. Not yet anyway. I'd warned him.Sangue dentro, sangue fuori.Blood in, blood out.
“Boss?” Alvize said after reading the letter. “New Jersey is a no-fault divorce state after an agreed separation, but Signor Banetti says he fears for his life after admitting he had an affair. He doesn’t want any financial provisions.”
I frowned and glanced at Lucio. “None of this makes any sense at all.” An affair? Not fucking possible. Could it be that Alessandro was still blaming me for his mom’s death? Was this some sort of revenge? But then, who had the means to get him from the beach?
I grabbed my phone from the side table and called Gia. “Did you ever get the audio from the beach cleaned up? The one with Sofia?” There were too many unanswered questions for any of this.
“It’s finishing up actually, but I haven’t had a chance to check. Give me a moment to go into my office.” I waited. “I’m sending it now.”
My phone dinged and I opened the video. The words appeared as text under the video. Alessandro moved to the side and the words “night with Terry” appeared on the screen. I cursed and watched as Alessandro turned in disgust and stepped back toward the house. I saw Sofia’s lips move at the same time the text appeared under the recording.
“You have a brother.”
