In our family, it was vital that we did, or we would owe blood for it.
La mia parola e buona come il mio sangue.
My word is as good as my blood.
Those words helped create the foundation of who we are. It is our family motto. Our thing. We become men of honor by those words.
“It is good to see you, uncle.” I squeezed his hand.
“Let me see it.”
We let go, and I turned and raised my shirt up. He examined the tattoo that took up most of my back. It was of a lion with a sacred heart tucked into its a mane, a rosary draped around his neck. I’d added two wings to each side to symbolize who I am—a pilot.
Getting the symbol of our family inked into our skin was a rite of passage. It stood for accepting who we are, our position in the family, and letting the world know it.
“Ah.” He slapped my back. “This makes me proud. It reminds me of theLion of Venice. Now sit. Tell me how life has treated you.”
He took a seat on an armchair. I took the seat across from him after I’d made myself more presentable. A blazing fire burned behind him, and even though most people would accuse him of being created by those flames, I always thought he resembled what his middle name implied, a lion. At least in spirit.
“I would have come to see you sooner,” I said. “I did not know how or where to find you.”
He grinned at this. “I made an entrance.”
I returned the grin. “A spectacular one.”
He waved a hand, dismissing my praise, though I could tell he ate it up. “Tell me all I have missed. You are a pilot now.”
Not a question, but a segue into catching up on my life. He’d been in prison for years, and the last time he looked at my face in person, I had looked a lot younger. Only select men were allowed to see him in prison in Louisiana. I was not one of them.
I caught him up to speed on my life, and he seemed pleased by all I’d done and accomplished. Then he brought up the reason for my visit.
The angel and that she had asked for me.
I did not give him a lame excuse, claiming to not know why she had. Even though we had never met, formally and with words, our meeting last night drew her back to me. Perhaps surrounded by a new society she did not know the rules to, she felt she could trust me.
There was not a reason I was certain of, just that our meeting seemed to explain everything to the heart beating inside my chest. It accepted it as truth, sense or not.
ZioLuca sighed at my silence, then continued. He went on about how Ava could not return to New York until we knew the truth behind her visit. Olivier Nemours was a bigger threat than I’d known, and I could tell my uncle was somewhat taken back I did not know the depth of it.
“I do not concern myself with much going on below,” I said. “I keep to the skies.”
“Like a lion with wings.”
“Yes, uncle,” I said.
He gazed at me for a few seconds. Sweat dripped down my face, even though the weather was not hot.ZioLuca was digging for the truth, then forming a picture from it.
Even though I was my father’s son, my father did not bring me into his circle and trust me with all his secrets. He considered me different from him, even though we shared the same blood. I was sureZioLuca was considering this.
“Your father tried to have my son and his wife killed, though not by bloodying his own hands.” He lifted his. “I kill. It stains my palms and I let the world know. I do not hide behind any man.”
He was basically saying what my father had done—tried to have his son and his daughter- in-law killed by someone else, and then denying it—was cowardice. I had heard rumors…but I had left them on the ground.
My uncle was not expecting an apology from me. I had not done it, or I’d be dead, or without my legs. But he wanted me to be aware, and in his own way, he was putting a certain amount of trust in me.
That made me suspicious.
Trust was not easily earned, and if he was investing in me…
