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She takes a seat and shifts uncomfortably on the padding. “I see,” Willow says with an edge to her tone. “Well, let’s get down to business.”
At twenty-four, Willow wears a beautiful mask of strength. She agreed to meet me without her bodyguard or any of her men. I commend her for the show of confidence, but it is a foolish one. “I received a bit of mail a few days ago,” I start, taking a seat across from her.
A smile tugs at the corners of her lips. When the waiter enters, he pours her a glass of wine before bringing the decanter to my glass and filling it up. “Oh? What was in it?”
The innocence in her tone delights me. “I think you know, Ms. Parodi. Tell me,” I grab the glass and down a mouthful, “do you plan to go by Willow Carbone any time soon? Or will you keep your husband’s name to keep his family? I’m sure you’ve realized that you’ve incurred several of his debts. Had you considered disposing of them by disposing of your ties to him?”
She wraps her delicate fingers around the wine glass and brings it to her lips. Red stains the rim as she takes a sip. “My husband, God rest his soul, left me to care for the Parodi dynasty. It would be foolish to go back to my maiden name, however tempting the offer may be in light of what he’s left behind.”
By all accounts, she’s broke. A member of her husband’s regime is loyal to me and he reports that despite drugs being sold at the highest level in the family’s history, every dime is going to repay the debts Ricardo sustained. Men aren’t being paid and more money is going out than coming in. “Then tell me, do you plan to keep killing my men, or are you ready for a truce?”
Willow raises a finger in disagreement. “I’ve only disposed of my husband’s murderer, Alessandro. Don’t confuse the two.”
An admission of guilt. Delicious. “Shouldn’t you have thanked him? I heard his actions set you free.”
She responds by taking another sip of the wine. Her fingers tighten around the glass and she shakes just a touch. Willow takes several seconds to compose herself before speaking. “I have a duty to my family. Regardless of how I feel, something had to be done.”
I must admit that Willow is well-spoken. She chooses her words carefully to make sure that each one has the right impact. She is more intelligent than I remember. “Fair enough. Does that mean you’d like to call peace between our families?”
“With all due respect, Alessandro, I came here to find out exactly what it is that you and my husband have been fighting about for the last two years. I was not privy to that information, as I’m sure you know.” Once again her cheeks turn pink as she reminds me that just months ago she was a hapless little housewife with no stake in the family’s business.
The waiter returns and asks for our dinner orders. Willow looks around the table with a frown, searching for a menu. “May I?” I tip my head in deference to her. With no menu to choose from, she gives a shrug of her shoulders. “We’ll take the focaccia infused with olive oil and the marinated Kalamata olives to start. An order of the beef carpaccio with Parmigiano-Reggiano and horseradish. For our meal, I’ll have pappardelle with braised duck and she will have the veal Milanese with mushrooms and shallots.”
Willow leans back in her chair and I see all of her muscles relax. The tension in her face is gone, washed away by her surprise. “You know what I like,” she comments.
I mimic her body language and lean back in my own chair. “You’re a woman of exquisite tastes. When we redid the menu a few weeks ago, I made sure to include some of your favorites.”
Confusion riddles her features as she tries to understand what that means. I yearn for her to put it all together. I am desperate for her to see the whole picture. “I don’t understand,” Willow finally admits.
“A little over two years ago I came to your husband with an offer. In exchange for you, I would financially back his efforts to expand his business down the coast. He wanted to get into Florida and Louisiana, but he was having some trouble with the locals.” The people in the south didn’t take too kindly to his forceful manner. “I told him that I’d take care of that for him.”
Willow’s mouth opens and then closes again, words failing her. She digests this information with her glass of wine. “In exchange for me?” She finally asks.
I nod my head. “When I saw you all those years ago, it was to make a deal with your father. I wanted your hand in marriage and he promised you to me. But then you met Ricardo and married him instead. I might have been willing to put it all aside if it wasn’t for the rumors.”
The gossip mill knows no boundaries. When lips are plied with enough liquor, anyone will talk. “I heard what Ricardo did to you. I knew about the abuse and the cheating. I let it go for a while, but it ate at me. I’d drift off at night and my mother would come to me in my dreams. She said I was shameful to let you live like that. You were promised to me, you were intended to be mine. Regardless of your marriage, I should have saved you.”
Realization dawns on Willow like a city clock chiming noon. Each toll of the bell weighs heavier on her understanding.
“I went to Ricardo and told him that I would solve all of his problems down south in exchange for you. He might have done it, too, if I hadn’t threatened to kill him if he declined the offer. Frankly, my anger got the best of me. I wanted you out of his grasp and it caused me to lash out.” We came to blows that day, but only for a moment. When our guards realized what was happening, they broke it up. Ricardo had a bloody lip and my nose leaked like a faucet.
Willow’s hand tightens around the wine glass until it breaks. The dark red liquid spills on her dress as glass cuts into her skin. “He started a war to keep me his prisoner.”
I call for the waiter. When he returns, he sees the blood oozing from Willow’s newly formed cuts. He runs off in search of bandages as I get up from my seat and kneel in front of the woman I have loved since she was a girl. “And I started a war to free you.”
5
WILLOW
Ihaven’t drunk enough of the wine to blame it for my headache. Half the glass might be gone, but my vision is blurring because of something else entirely.
I barely remember Alessandro. In the back of my head is a foggy memory of the day he came to my home. I was tending to the garden for my mother on one of her bad days. While she laid up in her bedroom in pain, I painstakingly planted new bulbs and checked on the state of her fruits and vegetables. It was a labor of love to be bent over trying to determine if potatoes were ready for harvesting. At fifteen, everything felt like a labor of love.
My time in the garden was cut short by my father walking by with a friend. I remember looking up from my place in the dirt and meeting the sweetest, most beautiful brown eyes. He crouched down beside me and reached his hand out to shake mine, introducing himself with a smile. I told him I didn’t want to get him dirty, but he said that was nonsense because a little dirt never hurt anyone.
At dinner, he chatted with my father about business. I never quite understood what my dad did, nor did I know what this stranger did, but the flow of conversation between the two of them was light and easy. Laughter echoed off the walls and they seemed like the oldest of friends. I was allowed to try wine for the first time that night and thought it wasn’t very good, it was what my mother drank. My mother was everything I wanted to be when I grew up, so I decided that I would like wine. Later, of course, when I had to.
I didn’t see Alessandro again after that. Sometimes I thought about the curve of his smile and the kindness in his gaze. When I was digging in the gardens for my mother, I remembered the way he reached up to brush a swatch of dirt off my cheek. But my memories of Alessandro faded with time and when I stood before him at the entrance of Bella’s, he only looked vaguely familiar.
