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6
The day after my playdate with Hugo, I woke up alone in my bed and instantly felt cold. I remembered the energy of his body next to mine, and the loss was palpable. A few days had passed, and I still hadn’t had the chance to make my way back to his arms. He didn’t run away, but we never got a moment alone. My mother came to town and spent a couple of nights here; she had entertained some friends, and we had brunch with my cousin, Lola, Vincenzo’s wife, Patty, Bianca and some other friends. The day mom left to go back to Great Neck, Ignazio came by the house, keeping Hugo in Gino’s office for hours, and I fell asleep before getting a chance to talk to him.
Now that Friday had rolled around, I was ready to force Hugo to sit down with me for a few minutes. He came and picked me up from school, but to my surprise, we didn’t take the usual route to my house. Instead, he crossed the East River to Sunny Side on Skillman Ave. The city scenery started to change from glamorous and dominant Manhattan buildings into welcoming neighborhoods with red brick buildings that had that trademark suburban flair.
“Aren’t we going home?”
“No.”
Sometimes I wondered if he offered those shallow answers on purpose, to see people getting annoyed.
“But?”
“Your brother’s house in the Hamptons.”
“Why?”
He sighed but didn’t peel his eyes away from the road.
“This weekend is Freddy’s daughter’s first birthday. Remember when you made me take you shopping for it?”
Freddy Fiera was a very good family friend and a lieutenant of my brother’s. A few years ago, he married Caroline, my mother’s niece, and Gino was the godfather of their daughter, Giana, who was born last year.
“Her birthday isn’t ‘till Sunday.”
“Your family already started to gather. Since Gino is a no show, and your mother only comes on Sunday with her sister, she asked for you to be present.”
And she didn’t think to mention something about it when she was in the city?
“Hugo, I need to go by the house and get ready. I don’t have anything at the beach house.”
“Your mother made an appointment for you at a boutique clothing store for this afternoon at six.” Probably Hudson & Lawrence, we used to shop there all the time. “She was sure you’d find everything you needed there, and everything else was packed by the maid. If you need something, I’ll take you shopping.”
“And the gift?” I got the cutest dress for Giana. It was a pink floral ruffle dress from the Elie Saab kids collection, and I had to order it from London.
“In the trunk.”
I was bothered no one talked to me about this premature getaway, but I was truly and utterly fucking pissed that Hugo would use it as an excuse to avoid me again.
“Are you staying or going back to New York?”
Of course, he was on the guest list, but I rarely saw Hugo go to family parties, barbeques, or gatherings unless his presence was necessary.
“I can’t leave you alone, Cat. If you want to stay with Vincenzo, I could go back.”
“No, I want to stay at our house.”
He didn’t say anything else, but I saw his jaw clenching.
We spent the rest of the drive in silence, and my eyes grew heavy. Even though I tried to fight it, I snoozed, waking up only after we passed the Shinnecock Canal, going into East Hampton. I loved it here, even if it wasn’t as much fun in the winter, but the city was beautiful, and our beach house was one of my favorite places. I spent a lot of happy summers chasing waves and dancing with the water. Even if it was in a busy town – the pearl of luxury summer vacations – the beach house was on a quiet street and had a generous strap of remote private beach, and I knew for a fact Hugo liked it here too.
The first time Hugo was locked up, he was only in his early twenties. The cops picked him up after an altercation at a club. I didn’t remember what the charges were, but he only stayed five months behind bars, so it must have been something minor. I was a kid back then, seven or eight, but I remembered that the Hugo that left the house and the Hugo that came back after the arrest were two different people. The reckless guy that spent his time running through town with my brother and Roman had turned into a dark man. I didn’t know if it changed him, or just unleashed a savageness that was always chained up in Hugo, but that was when they started to call him the Monster. Our house in Hampton was the first place he went when he got out. Every time he ended up in prison, he would come here for a few days after getting out, spending time alone to gather himself.
He pulled up in the flagstone driveway that crossed the lawn in front of the house. In the summer, there was lavender growing on both sides of the path, and the grass was always so green under the sun. The yard was surrounded by a cement wall masked with short cypress trees because even though the house was a jewel of modern American architecture, looking exactly like a luxury summer retreat one would think to find in the fashionable Hamptons, the Italian extraction had to show up somewhere. Gino was not so connected to the la madrepatria – the motherland – as my grandfather would have liked him to be, but he always loved the Tuscan tableau, and this was his way of bringing Italy to the US East Coast. Cesar Pelli wrote that ‘as one moves toward the future, the strongest and clearest way to do it is if you know you have a good sense of your past. You cannot have a very tall tree without deep roots.’ As the Brookfield Place Pelli built on West Street, at the edge of the Big Apple, the Nucci family had roots that went deep into the ground. We were not only a family; we were tradition and power, responsibility and boiling Italian blood.
The tradition was my cross to carry, as it was for my brother and everyone in the famiglia. As a princess of the underworld, there was much responsibility in my future. My life was mapped out to be coated in luxury and leisure, but still, I found myself attracted to the dangerous edge. That was the reason I wanted to live for myself before getting swallowed by the dolce vita, and there wasn’t anything as seductive as the man who was standing next to me. The king of the demons and lord of the darkness. His faith should be to shield me from the ugly, but I felt more and more seduced by his macabre with every minute that passed. The childish crush I’d had somehow turned into a wildfire that was threatening to consume me.
“Catherinelle.”
