SWNOVELS When She Loves: Chapter 27
Gino and I walk out onto his terrace, and he leads me toward a rectangular pool full of koi. The fish are apparitions in the dark water, coming to the surface for only a few seconds before they disappear again.
“They don’t get cold in the winter?”
Gino follows the movement of one with his gaze. “They’re resilient. The pool is deep enough for them to swim near the bottom even when the top freezes over.”
“They can live under the ice?” That sounds like a claustrophobic nightmare.
“They can.” A smile pulls on his lips. “Impressive, isn’t it? One of my earliest childhood memories is sitting by a koi pond with my mother and watching them swim. She’d take me to the Japanese garden in Brooklyn and tell me the tale of the koi that climbed up the waterfall. A Japanese legend. The fish that managed to overcome the challenge of swimming upstream in a waterfall became a fearsome dragon. She’d say to me that no matter how impossible it felt to navigate a given situation, pushing through would make me stronger.”
A bitter taste floods my mouth. I can’t remember ever having moments like that with my mother.
Father didn’t like her spending a lot of time with me, so he kept us apart for most of my childhood. She was always with the girls, and I was cared for by a rotating menagerie of nannies, none of whom ever stuck around for long. When I turned eleven, he sent Mamma with the girls to the house in the Hamptons. By then, I was glad she left. It meant she’d be safe from him.
“She sounds like she was a good mother.”
“She was. She left us too soon.” Gino clasps his hands behind his back and wanders over to the edge of the terrace.
Only a thick sheet of glass and a black railing prevent a gust of wind from throwing us off the side of the building. Central Park sprawls below us, a dark gash in the sea of concrete and skyscrapers.
Gino drags his hand over his beard. “I’m curious… How did your father explain our tense relationship to you?”
“He said it was because he killed one of your uncles.” He always claimed it was an accident, but knowing my father, that was probably a lie.
Gino exhales a low laugh. “Of course he’d give you that reason. He probably believed it himself.” He places his hands on the railing. “My father had eleven brothers. He got along with about half of them. One of them, he choked with his bare hands over an argument that had something to do with a car his brother borrowed without asking for permission. Another was so brutally humiliated by my father on multiple occasions that he hung himself. We are a complicated family. The uncle your father shot was frankly irrelevant.”
I glance at him. “Then what really happened?”
“As I’m sure you’ve realized being inside my home, I have an affinity for water. But your father… He loved fire. Did you know that even before he killed my Uncle Aldo, he burned one of my warehouses down to the ground on a cold night in December?”
Fire.
A memory scurries through me.
My father used to burn the faces of the men he interrogated. He’d grab them by the scruff of their neck, drag them to the fireplace, and shove their face into the flames. When I was a kid, he’d sometimes make me watch. I had repressed that memory for years.
Gino continues, “I’ll never forget it. It was Christmas Eve ninety-one. You weren’t even born then, were you? I was with my family, and Vita had prepared a feast. I can still remember that giant roast turkey. It looked like it was taken straight out of a commercial on the Food Network.” He chuckles. “I couldn’t wait to try it. I think I ate one bite before I got the call. They shouted that a warehouse was on fire. I had to leave the dinner to go check it out. Vita looked like she was going to kill me, but we had about twenty million dollars’ worth of product in that warehouse, and back then, that was a lot for my family. By the time I got there, there was nothing left to salvage. The fire burned everything to the ground.”
Yeah, that sounds like my father. He liked to destroy things.
“I walked through the smoking rubble and found a charred corpse. A guard. We only had one that night because we thought no one would dare try something on Christmas?” Gino sounds incredulous. “None of us are upstanding citizens, but for men like us, family means something.”
I purse my lips. My father was first and foremost a don. For him, family wasn’t even in the top ten of his priorities. He cared about me in his own twisted way, but when it came to my mother and my sisters… He treated them like possessions devoid of thoughts and feelings. He wasn’t the kind of man who’d ever have any empathy for another man’s family. For all his rigid rules and traditions, he spit on all our family’s core values.
He respected only one thing—strength. Which is why he loathed dying a weak man.
I turn to Gino. “Let’s not keep our families in this decades-long standoff over something that happened before I was even born. Let me repay you for the damage my father caused.”
He lifts his shoulder. “I appreciate the gesture. I do. And maybe we can start there. But I can’t promise that it will be enough, because it wasn’t just my business that was harmed that night.”
Foreboding slithers down my spine.
“You’re married now. One day, you might disappoint your wife the way I disappointed mine that Christmas, and if you love her, maybe you’ll find it just as difficult to forgive the man who caused that disappointment.” His gaze leaves me, moving back to the Manhattan skyline. “That year was hard on Vita. I was away a lot, always working, always trying to grow the business. We were newlyweds, and she was adjusting to a world that was completely new to her. I tore her away from the life she had, a life where she was successful and independent and happy, all because I promised I’d make her happier, but that year, I failed on my promise.”
I take a sip of my whiskey. Gino might be the only don in this city married to an outsider. I can see why he thought Vita was worth the trouble. Even now that she’s older, she is a strikingly beautiful woman. His affection for her is blatant. He doesn’t try to hide that he worships her.
How strange. Isn’t he afraid someone will use her against him one day?
“Cosimo was one. Vita was already pregnant with Alessio. She spent all evening with our baby, both of them waiting for me to return so that we could enjoy that moment with our little family. But I didn’t come back until the morning, and I brought bad news.” He sighs. “That lone guard was Vita’s cousin, Andy. Andy was ostracized by the rest of her family for being an addict. But Vita never gave up on him. She helped him get clean, and she even got him a job with me. She invited him to spend Christmas with us, but he wanted to work, wanted to be busy on the night when those with messed up families feel most alone. Imagine how it felt for me to tell her that he’d died.”
Fuck. My jaw clenches.
I wonder if my father knew the man’s identity. Probably. He was exceptionally good at finding other people’s weak spots.
“Vita struggled for a while. My boy seemed to act differently toward me too, even though he was far too young to understand what had happened. Seeing how I hurt them broke my heart.” He draws a loud breath through his nose and exhales with a shake of his head. “Not much gets to me like that.”
Emotions flicker across his face in quick succession. Disappointment, pain, grief…
I shift on my feet, uneasy. He’s opening up to me, leaving his feelings bare for me to see. His love for his family. His love for his wife. His need to protect them. Doesn’t he know doing this is a sign of weakness? You don’t reveal your soft spots to a rival. Even better, you don’t develop soft spots at all.
When he meets my eyes, there’s a clear warning in his, the kind that can’t be misunderstood. He’s telling me that if I ever hope to establish peace between us, I have to stay the fuck away from him and the people he loves.
I smooth my hand over my tie. I’m not a fan of apologizing for my father’s many sins, but the situation warrants it.
“I’m sorry. I know my father never apologized to you, and hearing it from me won’t carry the same weight, but I want you to know that I am sorry for the harm he caused you.”
It appears it’s the right thing to do. Gino’s gaze flashes with a hint of respect. “I can see you’re sincere, and I appreciate it.”
He brings his glass of whiskey to his lips and finishes it off. “Let’s keep this conversation going. We should touch base week to week. The threat of the Bratva isn’t one we should ignore, and it will serve everyone if the two big players in the city are a united front.”
Good. This is progress. “I agree.”
He pats me on the shoulder. “We should go back.”
I look toward the room, searching for Cleo on the other side of the glass. But I don’t see her anywhere.