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“I hope you're not suggesting that I don't know what goes on inside my organization,Mamma.” Anna opens her mouth to speak, but then presses her lips together. I shoot her an impatient look, and she continues.
“You put her in your house and are showing her off, Vitto. You are dressing her and covering her with jewelry and forcing the women of thefamigliato serve her! A foreigner, Vitto!”
Using my childhood nickname as an attempt to get closer is a classic strategy of my mother. An unnecessary attempt to reinforce her authority as my parent. Unnecessary because I never forgot it, she just will never surpass mine as Don.
“I still don't understand how this is worth the time I'm wasting on this conversation. So, let's cut this short. Are you questioning your Don's decisions?”
“No, I'm questioning my son's common sense.”
“Doesmio padreknow you're here,Mamma?” Her face immediately loses color. “I really thought not.”
“Vitto, you're not being rational,” she accuses, and I laugh without humor.
“You can go now,Mamma. And this is the last thing I say to you as your son.” She understands the message and, reluctantly, collects the magazine she brought before leaving my office.
I let my body fall against the back of the chair and expel the air through my teeth, making it hiss. It's really not like I don't know that the buzz about the Brazilian woman's situation is growing within thefamiglia, nor is it like I care.
Gabriella's soft face fills my thoughts immediately. Two days have passed since Massimo's birthday, and I still can't forget Gabriella's expression as we twirled around the ballroom when I shouldn't have even seen her. That was one of my many lapses that night.
I planned to dance with Gabriella without ever taking my eyes off Coppeline, teasing him, because that's what mind games are made of. However, when the girl practically dissolved in my arms, it was impossible to keep my eyes anywhere but her.
Gabriella gave herself completely to my driving, and my brain immediately projected a million other scenes where I would like her to do this. Everything around us disappeared. And when the song ended, needing to look at a panting Gabriella, covered in a thin layer of sweat and looking almost drunk from surrender, wasn't exactly a facilitator for the state in which the desire for her put me. And there was still the necklace, my fucking mark on her neck. In every image my mind was able to create, she was wearing it, and only it, like the collar that it actually was.
I want her. Any state of denial I might have been in about this was abandoned when Gabriella looked up at me after the dance was over. Her soft skin under my touch, as we made the perfect display for Massimo, provoked all my desires at once and fired the need to possess her with huge doses of fuel.
I really don't remember ever wanting a woman so much. Not even as a teenager when my hormones were raging. I shake my head from side to side before opening a drawer in my desk andtaking out the magazines I asked Dario to bring me. All of them, published after Coppeline's birthday.
I open the first one and reread the article on the marked page.
“IsIl Dio della Siciliain love? Vittorio Cataneo was spotted again with the mysterious brunette last Friday night, at businessman Massimo Coppeline's birthday. The tycoon's new novel used a Zuhair Murad model valued at seventy thousand euros and that wasn't even the most expensive piece being sported by the showy company of Sicily's most powerful businessman. Around her neck was a small fortune, a necklace made of white gold, diamonds, rubies, and emeralds with what is the trademark of Santo Monte Winery, a red rose. Do we have a wedding in sight?”
I scratch my throat exactly like I did the first time I read this article. ‘Showy’. If there's one thing that can't be said about Gabriella, it's that the girl is a show-off. I wonder if the writers of this text are blind or if they just chose to paint Gabriella as a snob for the entertainment it would generate.
I put the magazine in the drawer seconds before the phone on my desk rings.
“Mr. Cataneo, Mr. Corleone is here,” the secretary announces as soon as I answer her call. Today must be the day for unscheduled visits.
“Send him in.” That's the only answer I can give. Less than a minute later, my door is being opened, and the family’s consigliere is walking through.
“Don Vittorio,” he greets.
“Sit down, Matteo. To what do I owe the honor of the unscheduled visit?”
“Coppeline wants to set up a meeting,” he says, sitting down, and a smile stretches across my face.
“Tell him I'm not available,” I announce because it's still too early to answer him. I don't just want Massimo furious; I want him desperate.
I want the old man so consumed with the need to get what he wants, that he will give me anything I ask for in return. There's nothing besides the oil company that I actually need, but maybe I can find some things I want. Matteo remains silent, but not for long.
“Thefamigliais restless.” He chooses his words very well, but that doesn’t change their meaning.
“I thought gossip was the work of the women in thefamiglia, Matteo, not yours.”
“My job is to observe, control, report and advise, Don. And that's what I'm doing.” I look at my advisor carefully. As much as I am, Matteo is a controlled man, even more so, I would say, because there is a coldness to his rationality that I don't possess.
“What do you think I'm doing, Matteo?”
“The best for thefamiglia, Don. I have no doubt.”
