I winced. It wasn’t quite like that but . . .
“I’m not physical, in case you missed that point,” he continued. “I can’t do anything to help Tennyson—”
“I know, but even Tennyson thinks that having you there would be an enormous emotional support. Tenn is super lonely. We all know that. He can’t feel your emotions, so that makes you the perfect person to keep him company.”
My triplet brothers shared a powerful gift of Second Sight—a paranormal ability that had cursed each first-born male in my family line for hundreds of years, giving them the ability to see, hear and sense emotions in both the past and the future. The D’Angelo women, like myself, had never been involved with the gift. We were simply the helpless witnesses to the plight of our men.
However, the gift or curse or whatever had fractured at the birth of my triplet brothers, changing and morphing into something new.
Dante and Branwell could see and hear scenes from the past. Tennyson’s gift enabled him to feel others’ future emotions.
Tennyson was unable to stem the powerful flow of feelings constantly bombarding him. Consequently, he sequestered himself away in the family villa outside Volterra—Villa Maledetti—deep in the Tuscan countryside and away from people and their overwhelming emotions. Anything to quiet the stream of noise before it became too much.
In fact, generation after generation of D’Angelo men had taken their own lives when they could no longer handle the constant barrage of emotions.
Sofia’s brother, Lorenzo D’Angelo, had been one of them.
Cesare D’Angelo, my father, had been another.
Images punched through my mind.
Dad laughing as he swung me up to his shoulders, his dark Italian eyes sparking with humor. “C’mon,mia passerotta,let’s go find some gelato before your brothers catch us.”
Brutally, I shoved them down.
Nope. Not thinking about Cesare today. Not gonna dive into the whirlpool of those memories and the morass of all my ‘daddy issues.’
Dad chose to end his life and leave us. A fate that Tennyson struggled to avoid.
Jack could help. He could be Tennyson’s . . . what?
Guardian? Warden? Observer?
Pet ghost?
“Look, Jack,” I said. “Both you and Tenn would benefit from a project, something to occupy yourselves. Maybe you guys could—I don’t know—go excavate something together. Hasn’t Siri been talking all morning about the treasure you were looking for?”
Jack’s head snapped up. “What did you say?”
“Treasure, Jack. Did you ever find the treasure?” Sure I had written his Wikipedia page but that didn’t mean I knew everything about him. Jack was still very much a mystery.
He paused and then nodded slowly. “Perhaps.”
Okay.
“So . . . what happened to it?”
“Whatdidhappen to it?” Jack asked no one in particular, gaze unfocused. “It was lost off the coast of Sardegna.”
“Wait, what? You lost treasure off the coast of Sardegna? How did I not know this? What happened?”
Jack pursed his brow. “I excavated a horde of Etruscan gold and jewels.”
“That’s huge, Jack!” My eyes were surely too wide. “And you’re justnowtelling me?”
Did the man not know me atall?
“Unfortunately, there is not much to tell. I kept the find secret, as thievery was rampant at the time. Instead, I sent the artifacts to London for safekeeping. But the ship sank off the coast of Sardegna.”
