Dante laughed, the sound just as musical as his prior singing. “Ah, Elena, I’m beginning to enjoy your wit.”
“Don’t get used to it,” I cautioned dryly as I placed my bag on one of the stools at the island and rounded it to check out his anklet. “Ah, I see they set you up.”
He presented his left leg, lifting the fabric of the worn jeans molded to his thick thigh to show me the device. “Pinched the hell out of my leg hair, the bastardo, but he got it done in ten minutes. I was surprised.”
“It doesn’t take long,” I agreed. “If you could just show me the system, I’ll be on my way.”
“You should stay for the party,” Dante decided, wiping his flour-coated hands on a dish towel before he crossed his arms, the muscles bulging dangerously beneath his tight black tee. He leaned a hip against the island and considered me. “You could use the fun, I think.”
“You don’t know me well enough to know what I could use,” I countered idly as I moved to the monitoring system I noticed set up on a sleek desk in one corner of the kitchen. “And honestly, it’s the first day of your house arrest. The probation office is probably surveilling the building. There is no way they will let you host a party.”
The smile he flashed me was all handsome arrogance. “It’s already taken care of.”
“You paid someone off,” I surmised with pursed lips, channeling my lack of approval through my narrowed eyes.
It only seemed to amuse him further, the creases beside his dancing eyes deepening. “Sometimes, Elena, charm is enough.”
I rolled my eyes at him before turning my back once more to actually check out the system they’d installed. It was a standard setup. The probation office would have a man set to monitor Dante’s movements through the GPS device in the living room. If he strayed too far from the tracking beacon at the apartment, an alarm would alert the office and the police to his violation.
Violating the terms of his bond could mean as many as fifteen years in prison regardless of whether he was found guilty of his original crime.
“You are Italian, a Neapolitan, certainly you realize what day it is,” he said, watching me as I looked over the system. “September nineteenth, the day of Saint Gennaro.”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t celebrate the saint days.”
He frowned at my flippancy. “You judge those who do? All of Little Italy and the Italians who revere such things?”
“I didn’t say I judged them,” I argued, crossing my arms over my chest as I turned to face him, settling in for the argument I could feel coming.
“The eye roll says differently,” he countered. “Now, I must demand you attend. When was the last time you conferred with your fellow Italians? America is a lonely place for an immigrant without community.”
“I have a community,” I said even though I wondered if my single close friendship with Beau counted toward that.
Dante just cocked an arrogant brow.
I bristled, trying not to let him tempt me into acting like my worse self. I’d been going to therapy once a week for the past year, and usually, I found myself capable of harnessing the dark heart of my temper and pride, but something about Dante lured my worst self out from hiding.
“Besides, you may be my client, but you aren’t the boss of me,” I informed him. “In fact, any relationship or interactions we might have outside of our professional relationship are incredibly inappropriate.”
“The best things often are,” he agreed solemnly, only his glittering obsidian eyes giving away his humor.
“I could lose my license.”
He pursed his lips then waved a hand dismissively. “Only if someone reported you.”
“A transgression is still that even if there is no one there to witness it,” I snapped, my mind immediately fixating on Giselle and Daniel.
No one knew about their affair at first, but that didn’t mean what they had done was anything short of abominable.
Dante’s voice softened, his eyes too observant. “It is those in power who decide the rules, Elena. I don’t feel I have to remind you of this, but I will. In this case, I am the one with the power…” He pushed off the counter and strode toward me on a strong, rippling gait that made my throat dry.
I backed up slightly only to bump into the desk, suddenly trapped by his large body as he bore down on me. My heart raced, leaping and bounding over the hurdles of fear, anxiety, and something like desire that cropped up in my chest.
When he raised his hand to collar my throat again, I flinched, baring my teeth at him, and flung off his grip.
His eyes went dark, all black, no definition between his pupil and iris, just twin black holes trying to suck me up. With deliberate slowness, he raised that meaty palm and gripped my neck again, squeezing tight for just long enough to feel my pulse flare against his thumb.
He leaned close, his voice a whispered hiss. “I am the one with the power here, Elena, not you. And I say, you will come to the party tonight.”
“Perché?” I croaked to my horror, my voice tight and rough. In my panic at his proximity, my thoughts turned Italian, reverting to the identity I’d tried so long to stifle. One I associated with fear and weakness.
“Because,” he said, his tone rife with dark humor as he bent down to say the words an inch from my open, panting mouth. For a moment, I thought I could taste them, olive bright on my tongue. “I said so, and what the capo says goes.”
“This isn’t some psychopathic game of Simone dice,” I seethed, leaning into his grip so I could sneer into his face. “I’m not one of your pliant Italian women who will do whatever a man wishes.”
“No,” he agreed, abruptly releasing his grip on my neck so that I stumbled forward on my high heels and fell into the hard expanse of his chest. Once there, he pinned me briefly with a hand on the small of my back, fingers spanning nearly from hip to hip. “But you will obey me, nonetheless. Not because you respect my authority, but because you won’t do anything to risk your position. One call to Yara and she’d order you to do anything I asked.”
No. He was right.
But why was he treating me like this?
I felt like taffy in his strong hands, constantly pulled and stretched as he tried to reform me into something I was not, something I would never be because it was something I abhorred.
“If it makes you feel any better, Yara will be here,” Dante mentioned, turning away to walk back to the kitchen where he continued to prepare his gnocchi. “You might even recognize a few politicians and celebrities in attendance. You could use it as an excuse to rub elbows with some of the more powerful figures in the city.”
When I only glared at him, wishing I had the power to kill someone with a single gaze, he sighed gustily as though I was some unruly child who wouldn’t eat her dinner. “Despite what you may think, Elena, I truly want you to come to the party to have some fun. I know life has not been so easy for you. In my experience, we must make the most of opportunities we have to enjoy ourselves between the drama and the chaos.”
It vexed me that he sounded exactly like my therapist, so I only pursed my lips and stalked forward to grab my purse. It occurred to me as I turned my back on Dante to leave that Dante’s sunken living room had five people in it. The men all stared at me with varying degrees of amusement on their faces at having witnessed my altercation with their Don.
I kicked my chin into the air and glided past them with my eyes trained on the entry hall, refusing to be cowed by their humor or ashamed of Dante’s bossy disregard.
It was only when I was pushing the button to call the elevator that Dante called out, “Oh, Elena? I ordered some of your mama’s famous tiramisu. Bring it with you when you come back tonight. Eight o’clock sharp.”
Giving in to a childish impulse I hadn’t indulged in since I was a girl, I leaned around the wall hiding the entryway from sight of the kitchen and flashed Dante my middle finger.
Laughter erupted in the main room, and I stepped into the el
evator with a smug, grim smile.
Little Italy transformed for eleven days every September from an urban mecca with faintly Italian leanings, some of Chinatown’s ever-expanding influence popping up here and there, to something straight out of the Old World. Red, white, and green everywhere, from streamers to awnings and elaborate arches of balloons. Saint Gennaro himself stared at the tourists and locals gathered to celebrate him from posters, banners, and arches set up over the teeming streets. Over the course of eleven blocks for eleven days, there would be parades, floats, concerts, and so much food there was no possibility it would all be consumed.
Typically, I avoided Little Italy at that time of year even more staunchly than I usually did. It was impossible to skirt entirely because Mama’s restaurant, Osteria Lombardi, was situated on the edge of Little Italy and SoHo, and for years, the family had congregated there for Sunday lunches. In the past year, Giselle and Daniel had given me those lunches, not daring to show their faces around me. Instead, they hosted the family at their mega-mansion apartment in Brooklyn every Sunday evening for drinks or dinner.
They’d invited me a few times, but I’d rather skin my own flesh than attend, and that was before they’d had baby Genevieve. Now, I never wanted to witness my sister living the exact dream I’d once wished for myself.
It wasn’t surprising that Mama, like many other Italian cooks and delicatessens, had a stall on Mulberry Street where she served cannoli stuffed full with fresh ricotta and cones brimming with her famous tiramisu.
I watched from a distance, jostled by the festival-goers as my mama interacted with her customers. She was a gorgeous older woman, though still fairly young because she had basically still been a girl when she’d given birth to me. A few older neighborhood men flirted with her shamelessly as they bartered for food and maybe a kiss, but Caprice only ever offered them a soft, secret smile that said more than words could that she would never be interested, but she wasn’t offended by their attention.
It was the babies, though, that she loved the most.
I watched as a young Italian-American mama with baby fat still in her cheeks and a toddler on her hip approached Mama. The baby was fussing, and Mama didn’t hesitate to pluck the girl off her mother’s hip and plunk her down on her own side. Though I couldn’t hear the words she spoke, I knew she was cooing in Italian as she bounced her and swayed back and forth.
The baby girl laughed and hit Mama in the chest excitedly as they danced together beneath the red, white, and green streamers rippling in the warm Indian summer breeze.
Sorrow wrapped around my heart and constricted like a serpent, squeezing so hard tears popped into my eyes.
I wanted so badly to give her a grandchild, to watch as she cooed to my daughter and taught her all she knew about cooking, about motherhood, about the secrets of being a strong woman in a culture that valued subservient women.
An arrow of agony pierced through my chest as I thought of Giselle and Daniel’s Genevieve. I realized inevitably, one day, I’d have to bear witness to Mama, not only my parent but my closest confidant, loving and cooing over the baby they’d conceived while they had been cheating on me together.
Someone elbowed me in the side so painfully I gasped, jerking me out of my self-pity. When I turned sharply to bark at the offender, I was face-to-face with a slight auburn-haired man with close-set eyes and a soft, full smile. There was a bad scar at the corner of his jaw, puckered and still pink with healing.
“Scusi,” he begged of me in a poor Italian accent as he patted my arm and readjusted my purse on my shoulder for me. “Scusi, bella raggaza.”
Before I could forgive him, he was off in the crowd, powering upstream away from the festivities. I frowned after him for a long moment before I shook my head and finally made my way to Mama’s booth.
“Lottatrice mia,” she cried loudly, spreading her arms wide the instant she saw me, uncaring that one thudded into the young woman who was working beside her. “What a lovely surprise this is!”
My troubled mood, my worries about work and Dante, and Giselle and Daniel all faded away under the beaming light of her love. I could feel myself open and expanded like a flower soaking up her rays and I let myself relax my shields as I hurried forward through the thicket of people to duck beneath the stall awning and let my mama take me in her semolina-scented arms.
She hushed and clucked her tongue at me nonsensically as she gathered me to her and stroked my hair.
A sob rose in my throat and lodged somewhere behind my voice box, robbing me of the ability to speak. There was nowhere I felt safer than in the arms of my mother. Nowhere I felt more loved and accepted than against her plush side, face buried under her thick black hair. She was the only person who was never disappointed in me, the only one who believed in my goodness and rooted for me no matter what.
She was the only one who stayed resolutely by my side when Daniel left me for my own sister.
I knew that over a year after the affair had come to light, with a newborn first grandchild, Mama saw Giselle frequently again, but I didn’t care. Mama had shown me, like no one else had, that she had my back first.
That I was a priority for her.
It meant more to me than I could ever express that she would do that for me, so whenever I saw her, I battled the overwhelming urge to cry like a baby with gratitude and love.
Only with her did I ever let myself succumb to such tender, weak emotion.
She wasn’t perfect, I knew, not even close. She’d stayed with Seamus far too long because she clung to her Catholicism and she’d been oblivious to Christopher’s evil ways, but it was hard to blame her too much for either. She’d grown up in Naples where getting married and staying married was a cultural prerogative and the only thing she’d ever known.
As for Christopher, he was a sociopath through and through. No one saw the monster if he wanted them to see the man. I knew that better than anyone because I’d fallen in love with one as a girl and ended up with the other.
At the end of the day, Mama had done her best for us and I’d always love her for the simple fact that she’d always loved me.
“There she is,” Mama murmured as she pulled away with her hands on my shoulders to study my face. “Such a beauty.”
I smiled at her and smoothed my hand over the raw silk of my belted black button-up dress. “It’s new, thank you.”
“Not the dress, Lena,” she said, clucking her tongue at me and wagging a finger. “You. My beautiful daughter. I love to see you smile. So rare like a jewel.”
I laughed, leaning forward to press a warm kiss to her soft cheek. “You are biased, Mama.”
“Si,” she agreed gravely, eyes sparkling as she reached out to snag the arm of the teenage boy who was replenishing her bamboo cutlery stack. “Gino, is my daughter not very beautiful?”
The poor boy stammered and blinked as a blush stained his cheeks, but he nodded before he ducked his head and went back to work.
“Mama,” I scolded in a whisper. “You shouldn’t embarrass him.”
“Boh,” she countered with that typical Neapolitan word that meant I don’t know or meh. “It is good for children to learn humility.”
I laughed again, letting Mama pull me farther into the stall so she could hand me a scooper. Following her silent order, I began to spoon tiramisu into paper cones and slot them into the holders on the table. Mama silently worked beside me, leaving the orders to her assistant.
“I didn’t come to help you,” I teased her. “Dante actually…asked me to come. He said he’s ordered some food from you for his party tonight.”
“Ah, si.” She nodded casually, then shot me a sidelong look. “You are becoming close with Dante, to be getting his dessert?”
I scoffed. “Apparently, in his world, being his lawyer also means being his slave.”
Mama only hummed.
“What?” I sighed, pausing in my duties to fist my hands on my hips. “Oh God, Mama, do not tell me you like him.
”
“Do not take the Lord’s name in vain, Elena,” she reprimanded. “But yes, I do like this man. He is very…sicuro di sé.”
“Self-confident,” I translated for her. “And he’s like that because he’s a capo, Mama. He’s used to getting his own way or killing the men who disobey him.”
“Mmm,” Mama hummed again. “I do not think such a man needs to kill for his orders to be obeyed.”
I thought of Dante, all six-foot-five inches of muscle, the intimidation of his glower, but also his acute charisma.
“Maybe,” I allowed grumpily.
Mama laughed under her breath. “Ah, figlia, sometimes I wonder if I should have kept so many secret things from my children. Maybe if I had shared my history, your own would not be so disappointing.”
“No one blames you for Seamus,” I said instantly, horrified that she would even think so. “He was responsible for his own actions, and he was the one who put us all in impossible situations.”
“Si, Elena, but you see, in the beginning, your father was not a bad man. He was a professore, very, very smart and very different from the men I knew who I thought were boring as dead fish.” She sighed wistfully, her eyes trained on the crowd, though her mind focused on memories. “He was very good at pretending to be what he was not, you understand?”
Oh, I did.
In a way, Daniel had done the same with me. Maybe I’d encouraged him to hide the extent of his sexual proclivities from me, but he hadn’t been honest about so many things. He told me he didn’t want marriage, then married my sister after knowing her for a few months. He said he wanted to adopt a baby with me, then months later, he decided he did not, only to get that same sister pregnant immediately. He told me he loved me, and I assumed that meant something.
But it was just another lie.
So, I understood Mama.
“This is what I like very much about Dante,” Mama continued. “He is like his brother, Cosima’s husband, yes? They are who they are. No lies, no masks. Dante Salvatore is exactly who he made himself to be.”
When Heroes Fall Page 9