by Seth Eden
I let out a sigh of relief. “I thought she’d gotten you, too.”
“I hate having her anywhere near us, but I need her close by. We can play her at her own game. The more comfortable she is, the more likely she is to slip.” He turned and looked at me. “I need a favor, and I’m sorry because I know you don’t want anything to do with this, but I need you to look into her. Research, history, whatever you can find out. If she’s a Binachi, there has to be a record of her somewhere.”
I didn’t hesitate. “I’m on it.”
He smiled. “Really?”
“Of course. I said I was in, didn’t I?”
“You did.” His smile grew. “Not that you would say anything, anyway, but keep it quiet from my brothers?”
“I’ll go work in our suite.”
I stood up and started off for the door. I opened it, but before I could get it open enough to walk through, it was slammed back shut. I turned around to ask Alessandro what the deal was, but it proved fatal. I flipped around right into a kiss. Alessandro’s lips pressed against mine, and the power to resist abandoned my body. I went slack, letting him press me up against the office door, and my legs started to shake when he moved from my lips to my neck. There was a piece of my brain telling me to escape, but it was on an island by itself in a sea of molten lava kicked up by Alessandro’s hands snaking up my shirt.
“S-Sandro…” I meant for the huff of his name to be a warning to stop, but it came out desperate and needing. His lips came back to mine, and my mind was already turning to haze. I was giving in and had absolutely no power to stop it.
A knock at the door brought us to a screeching halt. “Hey. Can I come in?” It was Gabriel. “Stacy and I are going to the grocery store, and I need to know what you want.”
“Just get food, idiot,” Alessandro barked back.
“Fine, geez.” Footsteps were audible down the hallway after that. Alessandro was clearly annoyed, but I was happy for the distraction to allow me to center myself.
I balanced my computer in one hand and used the other to pull my shirt back to its place. “I’ll tell you what I find out.” I grabbed the handle and twisted it, and Alessandro backed off, letting me slip from between him and out into the hallway. I took a step forward and then stopped and looked back at him. “I don’t like it when you’re not there when I wake up.”
Alessandro’s eyes widened a bit but then settled back into disappointment. “It won’t happen again.”
I didn’t linger any longer than that. Any second more, and I would have rushed back into Alessandro’s office and begged him to do whatever he wanted.
10
Willow
My heart was still pounding as I retreated back into our suite. It didn’t take much for my husband to wind me up, and worse than that was the fact that he knew it. I probably could have stood for a cold shower to help calm me down, but instead, I settled myself on the couch and opened my computer. The smell of Alessandro coiled around me and threatened to distract me from the task at hand, but I liked the scent and refused to run from it. If I couldn’t be with the man himself, at least I could exist inside of his space, at least for a bit longer.
I passed by a few work-related tabs and opened a Google search. It wasn’t the best course of action. I knew all too well from trying to keep track of Alessandro in our years apart during college, that Google could be as dangerous as it was powerful. If I was to believe everything the internet tried to tell me in those years, Alessandro would be an underground double-agent from Italy, serving as a Varasso to try and elicit secrets for his real family back home. Reporters could run away with the crumbs of details and tailor it to something that suited their narratives better, and when it came to people in the Varassos’s specific line of work, that was often what had to happen, as the true stories were often hard to find. Still, I typed in, “Denise Binachi,” and hoped for the best.
0 Results.
That was certainly strange. It was rare that Google had nothing to offer on a subject, no matter how obscure. It typically only returned no results in the case of misspelled words or phrases that were too long. I did a blank search for, “Binachi Daughter,” and got a few results, but nothing seemed to point to Denise. There were a few articles predicting that one of the boys, Dante or Dario, had a daughter, but none of them had anything of substance. It was all just grasping at straws. I took, “Daughter,” out of the search, just looking for Binachi, which turned up many more results, but an hour of sifting through them gave me nothing about Denise or any daughter of Donovan’s. I Googled Donovan Binachi, and the internet told me in droves what I already believed to be true—Donovan Binachi only had two children, both sons, Dario and Dante.
Just because it wasn’t on the internet didn’t mean it wasn’t true, but it was curious, to say the least. I Googled, “Angelo Varasso,” just to see what I got, and a Wikipedia page dedicated to the man listed his four boys and late wife. I didn’t expect the internet to know everything that ever was, but I was fairly confident that if Donovan truly had a daughter, even if he kept her uninvolved from his family’s business, there would be some presence of it.
I scrolled through a few of the articles and saw quite a few about both Angelo and another crime boss from Chicago, Anthony Carducci. Carducci was something of a pulled-pin that kicked off everything between the Varassos and the Binachis back when they kidnapped my sisters-in-law and me. Apparently, Angelo had been working on an alliance with Anthony Carducci before he was killed by Donovan Binachi and his sons. In an attempt to guard themselves against the Binachis, Luca attempted to finalize that alliance and sent Gabriel to meet with Anthony. When Gabriel was late to the meeting—instead, choosing to chase after Stacy—Alessandro set up a meeting to try and clean up the mess and failed. We later learned his version of cleaning included threatening Chicago’s godfather, and Carducci sided with the Binachis and helped them take Molly, Kelly, Stacy, and me hostage.
The link between the Carduccis and the Binachis was confusing as far as the articles were concerned. Different things seemed to be linking them together, but next to nothing spoke of them as being partners in crime or in an alliance. It was more like they were always just in the same place at the same time. It didn’t make sense.
A thought hit me, and I scrolled back up to the top of the search results. I typed, “Denise Carducci,” into the search box, and my heart leaped up into my throat. Hundreds of results turned back at the term. I clicked the first of the articles and started to read through it. It was about a case that had involved the Carduccis a handful of years ago. Some international smuggling rings had been upturned, and Anthony Carducci and his daughter Callista were right at the center of it. Passing over the article, I didn’t see any mention of Denise, so I opened the find function and typed in, “Denise.” It dragged me to a single mention of the name near the end of the article, stating it was the name of someone else mixed up in the ring among a host of other names, but it didn’t list her last name nor say her involvement.
I backed out and clicked into another article and found more of the same. The entire article was about the Carducci family, namely Anthony and Callista, and made a single mention of Denise, this time as an informant. Article after article had the same curious results. Denise would be mentioned in a loose way, and the last name was never used. Nothing called her Denise Binachi, and nothing called her Denise Carducci. She was, purely and simply, Denise. It started to make my skin crawl. Just who was the woman who had snaked her way into our family? How did she know so much about the Binachis and us? If it was truly her aim to see Dario dead, then why? Looking into her had created more questions than it had answered.
“Mrs. Varasso?” A voice called from the other side of the suite door.
I stood up and opened the door, revealing one of the house staff. “Hey.”
“Mr. Alessandro sent me to retrieve you. Your family is in the backyard.”
“Right.” I didn’t realize I’d been at the re
search for so long, but everything else would have to wait until later. “I’ll be right down. Thank you.”
I’d have to try and find some time when Alessandro was safely outside the earshot of his family to explain what I had found, or rather, what I hadn’t.
11
Alessandro
When my mind wasn’t consumed by Willow, it was consumed by the other girl in my life, my daughter, Alexis. The barbeque was getting into full swing. Marco and Gabriel were manning the grill, Luca and Molly were stocking a cooler with lots of both alcoholic and nonalcoholic drinks, and Stacy was putting together a fresh fruit salad. The sun was shining, and there was a nice, cool, comfortable breeze, and all I could think of was how nice it would be for Alexis and her cousins to be there. Alexis loved gardens just like her mother, and she would probably love the beautiful gardens at the Varasso estate. She’d never stepped foot inside the Varasso estate, though, and she never would. Once things were finished with the Binachis, the manor was going to be stripped, thoroughly cleaned, and torn down. Luca was the businessman of the four of us and still hadn’t decided what to do with the land, but he had been leaning toward just selling it the last time we spoke about it.
I missed my baby.
Being a dad was something I didn’t expect to love with every fiber of my being, but when I first held Alexis in my arms, she instantly became the most important thing in my life. She had her mother’s stunning blue eyes and had somehow managed to get the Varassos recessive freckle gene. Gabriel was the only one of the four of us that had them, but my dad had them, too. Those things aside, she looked much more like me than like Willow. It frightened me sometimes.
Being a Varasso was a curse, and when I thought of that curse snaking up and taking hold of my baby girl, it made me want to distance myself, get as far away as I could get from her, but I simply didn’t have that willpower. I loved Alexis more than myself, and wanting what’s best for her stopped at removing myself from the picture. I just had to make sure I was strong enough to protect her at all costs. It was why things needed to end with the Binachis, but it was also why I couldn’t afford to let some doctors medicate my edge away. If it was the only thing I had that would allow me to protect my family, then I needed it around. Willow didn’t seem to understand that, but I couldn’t blame her. No one would want to see the one they love live that way, but it was for her and Alexis’s own good.
As I watched my family flutter around, preparing for as relaxing an afternoon as we could afford right now, I made a plan to talk to Kelly about having a garden added to the new Varasso estate in Maine. Maybe Alexis and Willow wouldn’t get to enjoy this garden together, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t enjoy one at all.
My eyes drifted beyond the gardens and fountain to the eight-foot-tall topiaries that made up the hedge maze. I would not be requesting a hedge maze to be added. My father used to use the hedge maze to torment my brothers and me under the guise that he was developing our survival skills and making us stronger. Thanks to his tendency to snatch us out of our beds in the middle of the night, toss us into the maze’s heart, and force us to find our own way out, none of us slept well. It started for Gabriel when he was just six years old, but my dad thought he was the weakest of our brood. In a way, he was, but really, he was just the most human.
“Hey.”
I looked up from where I was sitting on the lawn, and Willow was standing over me. “Hi.”
She made herself comfortable next to me, having to sit particularly close to make sure she was totally on the blanket and not on the grass. I’d like to say I did it on purpose, but really, the universe just gave me small bits of good fortune every now and again, maybe because it knew it was downright cruel to me any other time.
Willow pulled her legs up to her chest and set her head on top. “I did some research.”
“Yeah? Anything good.”
As she turned her head to face me, the sun shone perfectly behind her head and cast a golden halo around her. Her eyes were sparkling, and she was wearing a pair of understated diamond earrings I’d bought her back when we were still dating in high school. She never wore too much makeup, too many bright colors, or any gaudy jewelry. I didn’t know if it was her habit forged from wanting to blend in or if she was aware of the fact that her beauty could stand on its own, but she always seemed so perfectly done to me. I would never love another woman for as long as I lived. She was the reason my heart continued to beat. When we parted ways for good, I wouldn’t seek anything else. She was what I wanted, and if I couldn’t have her, I wanted nothing at all.
“Well, the lack of information is interesting in itself,” Willow explained, either not noticing my blatant admiration or choosing to ignore it. “When I Googled Denise Binachi, nothing came up.”
I hunched my brow. “Nothing at all?”
“Nothing. Google told me it had zero results.”
“Weird.”
“Yeah. So I was Googling a couple of other people—your father, Donovan—and I noticed that there was a strong, strange link between the Binachis and the Carduccis.”
That thought struck me as odd, too. Until things went bad between Anthony and me, he’d been planning an alliance with my family. Luca never knew the seeds for that alliance, and could never find anything amongst my dad’s things about it.
“It made me curious, so I Googled Denise Carducci.”
“The cake is done!” As if beckoned by the sound of her name, Denise came walking out of the house with a cake in her hands. It was decorated with white buttercream on the outside and topped with strawberries and bananas. “Where should I put it?”
“Over here!” Stacy called out, and Denise walked over to set her cake down on the table next to Stacy’s fruit salad.
When Willow was confident Denise was back out of earshot, she looked back at me. “I’m not eating that cake.”
I chuckled. “You and me both. I’ll stick to beer.” Willow smiled at me, and my heart grew a little. “So, you Googled Denise Carducci.”
“Yeah, and I got a ton of results.”
My eyes widened. “Seriously? She’s actually a Carducci?”
Willow’s face screwed in frustrated confusion. “That’s the thing. There wasn’t really anything that confirmed that, either. It was just like in every article that had anything to do with the Carduccis, she always also had something to do with it, but the articles never said her last name, and she was usually only mentioned once, maybe twice. Weirder still, she was always, like, just this background character. An informant, or another name that came up, or other little random things like that.”
I looked over at the woman, who was laughing with Marco and Gabriel at the grill. “Who the hell is she?”
“I don’t know. I wanted to do a public records search, but I didn’t want to seem anti-social, so here I am.”
She dropped her head to my shoulder, and I didn’t waste an opportunity to kiss her forehead, an action she didn’t complain about. “You are anti-social, though. I don’t think anyone would have questioned it.”
“I feel bad.”
“About what?”
She sighed. “About not being closer to your family. I mean, look at Stacy.”
Stacy was engaged in a continuous conversation with Molly, one that eventually had them both laughing. She would touch Luca’s back or arm without concern, and I’d even noticed her swat Marco a time or two when he said something crude. She did seem to sift into the family much better than Willow did.
“Well, she didn’t run away from the life,” I explained. “She realized that being with Gabriel came with all of this, so she just embraced it.”
Willow lifted her head and looked at me. “Are you trying to make me mad?”
“No,” I shot back quickly. “I respect and understand your stance on everything. In fact, I would say that you took the smarter position, but it doesn’t change that it makes it easier for the guys to bond with her because they don’t have to be concerned abo
ut crossing a line.” I grabbed her hand. “Look, just like Stacy decided that being with Gabriel meant accepting the life, I decided that being with you meant leaving it behind. Marco did it, too, with Kelly. It’s a two-way street. Stacy just went that way. Same with Molly.”
I could see Willow calculating my words, trying to decide if they offended her or not. “Would it be easier for you?” she asked suddenly. “If I was more like Stacy.”
“Willow Francine Moretti, I love you exactly as you are,” I responded without hesitation. “It would be impossible for me to love someone different from this.”
Willow stared back at me, wide-eyed, and then smiled. “Thank you. I…”
I knew what she wanted to say, and we both knew it was better that she didn’t say it. Instead, she settled back next to me and returned her head to my shoulder. I would take it. As much or as little of herself as she wanted to hand over, I would take it without complaint.
The next thirty minutes or so were just peaceful silence. We watched the Varassos and Denise play different yard games, continue cooking, and enjoy each other’s presence. Neither Willow nor I felt the need to go over and join in, and no one came to demand it.