She gave me a half-hearted nod and I could tell she was still nervous. “See you later.”
I went down the stairs to the main floor and made my way into the dining room. My siblings were all already sitting there and when I entered the room, they looked at me as if I was a walking ghost.
“Gianni,” Natalia spoke first. “What… are you doing here?”
Romeo sat next to Marcello on one side of the table, and Natalia next to Savio on the other. Even though we were siblings, I felt more like I was standing in a room full of strangers, and my voice shook a little as I said, “Father invited me down to have breakfast at the table.”
Romeo glanced at a chair to his right, at the end of the table opposite where my father typically sat. “I suppose that explains this spare chair.”
Marcello, the more abrasive of my brothers, leaned forward with a grunt. “What do you suppose this is all about?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said. I tapped Natalia and Savio’s shoulders lightly as I passed, noticing that Savio winced a little when I hit him but did his best to remain resolved. Pulling out the chair at the end of the table, I sat down, and my heart got to galloping a bit faster. “So… how are you all?”
Natalia looked to all of our brothers first, waiting to see if any of them wanted to take the initiative, but they didn’t, so she looked at me with a smile. “I’m doing well. Savio and I graduated last week.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Congratulations.”
Her smile got a little bigger. “Thank you.”
“And you?” All of our eyes shifted towards Romeo, who was glaring back at me. “How are you?”
My guess was that Romeo didn’t care about how my day was going. He was wondering if there was something I knew that he didn’t. He was the kind of guy that couldn’t stand feeling like he’d been left out of something.
If he was me he would have withered away a long time ago.
“I’ve been,” I considered my past handful of torture-free months, “rather good.”
“It’s good to see you here,” Savio said.
I gave him a gracious nod and smiled at both him and Natalia. Since my mom had died and her mother decided to take on my father, Savio and Natalia lived outside of our home for the first halves of their lives. Natalia, the baby of the family and the only girl, had been safely shielded from the iron maiden that was our family, but when my grandmother died, both she and Savio were relinquished to their father. Savio fell to the unfortunate rule that all Cavetti menmustparticipate in the family business. From the way he winced at touches and shook when my father was around, it seemed Angelo had taken a hands-on approach to accelerate Savio’s darkening until he was rough enough around the edges to serve our family well. What had been born into Romeo and taught to Marcello was being beaten into Savio and it broke my heart for my younger brother.
Beyond those few greetings, no one else said anything until my father entered the room. We all watched him as he sat, and waited for him to make clear what the sudden change in dynamic was about, but he never said anything one way or the other. Breakfast was served, and we ate in silence. The dishes were carried away, and after sitting for an extended period of time, waiting for the other shoe to drop, my father dismissed himself and left the table.
“That’s it?” Marcello said, then glanced at me. “You just eat with us now?”
My stomach was twisting into knots of fear and confusion. “I guess so.”
Things went on that way for about two months. My father began to demand that I attend all family meals, and when he hosted our family’s summer luncheon, I was actually invited and allowed to mingle with his connections as if I was truly a Cavetti. I tried to figure it out, and Philippa even kept her ear to the ground in the staff quarters to try and see if any rumblings of what was going on came her way, but nothing ever did.
“I’m terrified,” she admitted to me one afternoon when she was in my room. “There’s got to be something. He has to have some plan, right?”
I was sitting at my desk going over some of the blueprints for a new facility my father was having built in the heart of Chicago’s warehouse district. “There has to be, but until I know what, there’s nothing I can do.” I looked back at her. “Besides, I’m enjoying not getting beat every day and actually being treated as one of the family. My siblings and I are getting closer. It’s… nice.”
Philippa looked at me through a concerned gaze. “Okay.”
I stood up and walked over to her, placing my hands on her arms. “Hey. I can take care of myself.”
“I know that,” she said, “but if something were to happen to you… ”
“Nothing is going to happen. Have a little more faith in your best friend.”
She smiled at me then. “Yeah. I do.”
“I’m wondering… ”
The door to my bedroom opened suddenly. I leaped as far back from Philippa as I could as the door swung open and my father came striding into the room. Philippa was frozen and my heart started to slam in my chest as fear rocked through me that after ten years of hiding our friendship, it all came down to a single, stupid moment.
My father’s eyes landed on her, then cast over to me, then back to her, then he crossed his arms. “I have to speak with you, Gianni. Did you have some specific request for her?”
