Was it dumber to tell the truth or continue lying? “I don’t exactly remember. A long time ago.”
“How did you figure it out?” she asked.
“It was right after I met Sid. He’s a Ghiardo, Carmine’s a Skully, and I’m a Binachi. Cherri and Bennett were Costas. I knew from being around my dad and brothers that Angelo Varasso had a bastard son, so I looked him up and realized that he and Bennett looked very similar. Then I looked up Callista, and she and I looked alike. She also looks like you. I just sort of put it all together.”
She nodded. “Impressive.”
I cleared my throat. “Thank you.”
“Why did you reach out to her?” she asked.
My eyes flicked briefly to Carmine, but he seemed intrigued, almost amused instead of being angry. “Um…” I directed my attention back to Illiana. “I just wanted to know all my siblings. I’ve never really had a family, and I thought maybe we could be one. All of us together.”
“So you’ve spoken with Gabriel, as well, then?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“And do they both know?”
I took a deep breath before finally nodding my head. “Yeah.”
She shook her head. “Denise. You have single-handedly screwed up over thirty years of careful planning. How selfish could you be? After everything I’ve done for you. After coming and saving you from that brute, Donovan.” Saving? What an interesting way to say she abandoned me as a baby. “All I asked from you in return was to learn my ways and be loyal to me, and instead, you’ve risked everything.”
“You’re right, I was selfish,” I said. “I never should have reached out to Callista. It was a mistake. Gabriel too.”
She took a deep breath in, held it for a while, and then blew it out through her nose. “Well. You know as well as I do that this sort of thing can’t go unpunished.”
I nibbled my lip to hold back my emotions. “I do.”
“Going forward, you will have to check in with Carmine daily. No excuses. A face-to-face meeting. He needs to know where you’ve been, what you’ve been doing, and with whom.”
My head shot up to look across at Illiana. “Wait, what?”
“Don’t give me that attitude. I’m not just gonna let you off. If it got out, my reputation would be ruined.”
“You’re…you’re not gonna kill me?”
“Goodness, no,” Illiana said. “You’re my child.”
My heart swelled to the point of shattering. “Thank you.”
“Besides, we’ve got far too great an opportunity here to waste. Are you and Callista on good terms?”
I thought about the ambiguous way Callista and I left things the last time we spoke. “We’re not onbadterms, just kind of indifferent.”
She nodded. “Good. What about Gabriel?”
My mind reeled backward. The last time that Illiana and I spoke about Gabriel, I told her he was dead. From wherever she unearthed the truth about my knowing Callista, it was just as likely she unearthed the truth about the Varassos actually being alive. I felt like I was on a chessboard, battling a checkmate. If I stuck with the lie and she actually knew the truth, she could end up deciding to kill me after all. On the other hand, if I admitted that I’d lied about that, too, when she didn’t know, she could decide she couldn’t trust me and kill me for that reason.
Then again, if she still believed Gabriel was dead, why would she even ask? “Uh, no. Gabriel and I did not end on good terms.”
Her shoulders relaxed a bit, and I let out an internal sigh of relief. She’d been expecting me to lie. “What happened?”
“I tried to get close to him, but his sister-in-law figured out that I was a Binachi and then figured out I was a Costa.”
Illiana’s eyes widened. “Did you forget everything I taught you?”
“For a while, yeah.” I shook my head. “They treated me like family. I kind of fell for Marco Varasso. It was a mess.”
