“Someone like me.”
Gigi was considered one of the most beautiful women in the world. I was never one to be swayed, though, by the popular vote. In my eyes, the woman standing across from me, full of dirt from the garden, was the most beautiful woman in the world. She had something that I’d never seen in anyone else.Or felt from anyone else.Maybe attraction had the same rules as pheromone phenomena. Whatever attracted me to Mariposa was mine alone—therefore, what a fucking rare treasure.
ZiaStella andZiaEloisa stepped into the garden. They wanted Mariposa to shower and get ready for a dinner they’d planned with all of the women. All of the men were going to play baseball. Mariposa wouldn’t move. She refused to stop staring at us.
Gigi groaned. “I will catch up with you later.” She quickly kissed my cheek and then hustled in the opposite direction. Lola had started to make her way toward us.
This time my grin came slow and satisfied. After Gigi had gone, Mariposa allowed my aunts to cart her off.
“There you are!” Lola said when she reached me, pinching my cheeks. “How are you,bell'uomo?”
“I’m fine,Zia, and you?”
She smiled. “I love her, Amadeo! She will make a wonderful wife. She seems like a wonderful girl.” She hesitated for a second, then opened her mouth but quickly closed it. “Your grandfather and uncle would like a word with you,” she said in Italian, nodding toward the garden. “I’m going to find Gigi. I need celebrity gossip!”
Before I could reach them, one of the guards stopped me. He spoke in Italian. “A man has come to the gate. He claims he is looking for the place where the women make the chocolate. He was told that he could find some here.”
My aunts had shops all over Italy, and the one in Modica was extremely busy, especially during tourist season. Once they sold out, they sold out. You’d have to come back the next day, but no one would direct them here. The chocolate operation was a family business, and our secrets were our own, including where we lived.
Over the years, a couple of men had done the same thing, except their excuses for stopping had varied. This was the first time any of them had claimed the workers at the shop had given them this address. They were getting low on lies.
It wouldn’t have surprised me if the king wolf himselfhad showed up. He felt the devil on his heels lately. And with Armino missing, Achille was adding to the flames.
“Bring him to one of the villas deep into the property,” I said in Italian, nodding behind the main villa. “Wait with him and do not let him leave. Do not tell him he has come to the wrong place, either. Do not tell him anything but that he must wait.”
“Sì.” He readjusted the gun hanging from his shoulder and dug in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. He lit one up and said, “I will inform the others.”
The scent of smoke lingered even after he’d gone.
* * *
Tito was talkingtoNonnoabout new treatments for cancer when I walked up. He was listening but shaking his head. I could’ve told Tito to save his breath, but he never did. I had tried to talk my grandfather into more treatments, butNonnorefused to even entertain the idea. He said he was old enough, had lived enough, and when his time came, he wanted to be at home, in the comfort of his own bed. It was time for him to see my grandmother and my mother again. A life full of living had given him the grace to accept death.
Their conversation slowed when I pulled up a seat in front of the bench, but Tito didn’t stop talking until he felt he was done. After, silence filled the space between us until my grandfather knocked his cane against the ground. His eyes were heavy. He was tired.
“You wanted to see me,” I said.
Tito looked at me from underneath his explorer hat and crossed his skinny legs. “Mariposa looks different, Amadeo.”
“She does,” I said. “She’s flourishing.”
My grandfather leaned against his cane and then cleared his throat. “You did not tell me,” he said in Italian, “that Mariposa was the child you traded your life for.”
My eyes locked with his. “She told you.”
“I told her a story, a story of a man who traded his life for a woman he hardly knew, the greatest sacrifice known to man. She told me she knew a man who was as honorable as that. When I asked her who was this great man, she told meyou. I am dying, but I have not lost my mind yet.”
The old man was sly. He had taken her comment and connected it. He probably asked her how old she was and did the math. Then he had tricked me into admitting it. The only way he knew that I would.
He slammed the cane down again, looking away from me. “Tell me, grandson, will you give her the life she deserves?” He met my eyes again. “You saved her life by sacrificing your soul. What will your sacrifice mean if she ends up hiding in a closet while the only man she loves is killed because he is a reckless fool?”
“Amore?” I laughed, but both men narrowed their eyes at me. I continued in Italian. “Loyalty. That’s what we share. That’s our foundation.”
“What of love? Now or in the future.”
“Love makes us foolish.”
“Says the man who has never opened himself up to it,” Tito muttered.
