“We locked them in the room with him,” Mia said with a smile, “so they couldn’t gang up on him and make an escape. I’m sure he’ll be relieved when it’s time to go to the beach.” She looked at me. “My children love to swim.”
“You want to help me in the kitchen?” Stella asked me when the conversation turned to general gossip.
“Sure.”
Stella was doing a chunk of prep work before she and Matteo joined Mia and Saverio at the beach. I was so concentrated on cutting bread into chunks that it seemed like Stella had called my name more than once when her voice finally broke through.
“My mother-in-law does have too much empathy. She understands people, their motives, even when she doesn’t want to. It’s a blessing and a curse. Was Aunt Lola right, about you being the same? I mean, if you don’t mind me asking.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “I am.” I hesitated. “But I’m not the same—I don’t think. It’s hard to explain, but…I think I’m better at feeling things and then working them out on the page. Or in dreams. It seems like Scarlett is just flooded with feelings and sheknowsin a second. A woman I know from New Orleans, Eva’s her name, she’s even more…intense about it.”
“The thing is,” Stella said, “Rosaria Caffi, to me, was not a good person—at all. The women are right when they say she was truthful. Her tongue could cut a person down to nothing, if that person allowed her to. Massimo, Rocco’s oldest, found love in Paris at the same time Matteo found me. Rosaria came between them because she wanted Massimo to fight Matteo for his spot in the family.
“Since this family operates by a hierarchy, the spot behind Rocco is rightfully Matteo’s. But since Brando gave his birthright to Rocco, Rosaria expected all spots after to rightfully go to her sons. Massimo didn’t want it after he’d found Chloe. Rosaria went…if I’m being honest…rabid over it. She even drugged her own son and slipped a woman in his bed so Chloe would find them together.”
“That’s…I don’t even know what to say,” was all I could say.
“Yeah. It set off a chain of terrible events after. Chloe left Massimo. She claimed Rosaria was going to kill her. Heard shetried. Chloe is allergic to hazelnuts, and during their ‘engagement party,’ Rosaria and her sister tried to kill the poor girl with them. Then Massimo followed Chloe after she left. He…ah, killed a man in her honor in the town where she’s from, after getting her pregnant. Basically, he sentenced himself to a life behind bars. It was symbolic. Have you ever seen a lion behind bars?”
“A circus,” I said.
“Yeah, a terrible fate for any animal, much less a wild one.”
“I take it she was cruel to you too?”
“Yep. I’m the wife of the next Fausti king. My husband outranked her son. She called me the daughter of a whore—her favorite saying. But no one disrespects my mama. I cut her with a piece of broken pottery for the slur. That started a chain of terrible events too. She sent their third son, Tiziano,after me. His real name had been Marzio, but after he held a snake to my face, it caused dishonor, and the name Marzio was erased from his record, replaced by a name that’s the equivalent of Judas in the family. Between us, though?” She hesitated. “I don’t think he’s Rocco’s son. It’s always been rumored that one of Rosaria’s affairs produced him.”
“I honestly don’t know what to say,” I said.
“Trust me,” she said. “I don’t think anyone truly does. The news of her death was a shock, but do you want to know what’s truly terrible?”
What could be more terrible than all that?
Oh God.
Rocco.
My heart shattered for him.
This entire situation was worse than I’d first assumed.
I nodded in answer to her question.
“My first thought was…did anyone see the body? Because she was so mean, I doubted the hard rock she landed on would even fuck with her. She probably crushedit.”
A lump formed in my throat, and I could barely force it down to ask this important question.
“Did anyone?” I whispered. My voice was strangled. “See her body?”
“I don’t think so,” she whispered back. “I don’t think there was anything left. Supposedly, the car exploded when it hit. I think that was another struggle forZioRocco. He didn’t get to see her. I think that’s made it harder for him to accept. Her family took over all the funeral preparations. That’s why it was such a production. The Caffi family is big on having an audience for all occasions.”
“Did you say Massimo got Chloe pregnant?”
She nodded.
“Where’s the baby? With Chloe?”
She paused but then sighed. “No, he’s with us. Michelangelo. Chloe asked that Luca and Magpie raise him and that we help. We keep him most of the time. But that was before Rosaria’s death.”
