Reiko tightened her grip of his hand as they crossed the threshold. The tension in the air was thick enough to choke on, and he hated it. He hated that he couldn’t shield her from the reality that this would not be a cozy introduction.
They were going to make a scene. It was all but unavoidable. And no matter how it happened, the family would be ripped apart in the end. He could only hope was that those who remained understood he’d done what was best for all of them.
A few staff members gave them wide-eyed, startled looks and scampered out of the way as they progressed down the hall. Santino locked eyes with one long enough to raise his free hand to his lips in a wordless signal for silence, but never broke stride. It seemed Nonno and Mamma weren’t visiting in the interior sitting room, but rather a room that faced the backyard. That forced them to trudge through damn near half the house.
His mother’s voice was the first to greet them as they drew near. “It’s a nice change, Lo,” she said, a forced smile in her tone.She was trying to inject optimism into a room that had become too heavy for her again. “The view is lovely.”
The next thing Santino heard was the low, consistent beeping of a heart monitor.
Sunlight poured into the hall from the room Mamma’s voice had drifted out of, and Santino knew with certainty where they were headed. Years ago, it had been a playroom. Then Zia Lorenza had converted it into a painting studio to take advantage of the hours of sunlight and garden view. Santino hadn’t had occasion to poke his head so far inside the Segreti Estate in long enough that he couldn’t say if it had remained a painting studio or not. He knew it had a long wall full of floor-to-ceiling windows, a sunlight designed to perfectly catch the late afternoon rays, and only one actual door to the outside.
Meaning two ways in or out, discounting destruction of property.
He was already rounding the corner when the next speaker’s words scraped across his nerves and prompted him to pull Reiko the slightest bit closer. Adele was in the fucking room with them. Of course she was.
“How about I put on a fresh pot of tea?” Her voice was as unassuming as always. Calm, gentle, implicitly submissive, and entirely full of bullshit.
Santino heaved a mental breath and projected his voice before any of the bodies not facing the doorway could notice him and his beautiful companion leading a charge of six armed men into the room. “No one’s going to need any tea for a bit, I’m afraid.”
Adele pivoted where she stood, her shoulder-length brown hair flaring over her shoulders and one heel clacking loudly on the hardwood floor to catch her suddenly re-balanced weight. Her eyes were wide, darting between him, Reiko, and the men he could feel moving into the room at his back, before returning to his.
Mamma twisted in her seat, her eyes also widening. Surprise melted into poorly disguised suspicion as her gaze shifted from him for too many seconds. “Santino, who—”
Nonno pushed to his feet from the chair he’d pulled up beside the angled, raised hospital bed where Zia Lorenza lay, her head rolled in Santino’s direction. “What is the meaning of this?”
It was the sight of Zia Lorenza’s sunken, tired eyes that hurt Santino’s heart in the moment. He would vastly have preferred to do this without her. On a good day, she was capable of holding conversation for an hour or so. If she was guilty of more than venting a frustration on the wrong shoulder, he’d be shocked.
But he couldn’t think about any of that. Instead, he slid his stare around the room until he was holding his grandfather’s gaze.
Nonno took that as a cue to resume yelling as best he was capable. “I explicitly told you—”
“Nonno.Respectfully, sit the fuck down and shut up.” He watched shock drain the color from his grandfather’s face, and even his mother’s.
Something else crossed Adele’s quietly tightening expression.
“You don’tgivethe orders anymore, Old Man, and we don’t have the luxury of catering to your pride today. You disobeyed your boss. You’ve put yourself and my mother in harm’s way, and I’m fucking pissed about it.” Santino’s voice tightened in a way he’d never directed at his elder before. “Now sit. The fuck. Down.”
Zia shifted on her bed, trying to prop herself up more than the bed’s incline allowed. “What’s—” Her voice was a strained gasp, worsened and emphasized by the tubes attached to her nose.
Santino slid his gaze to her and relaxed his eyes marginally. “My deepest apologies, Zia. We’ll take this to another room.” It would be far easier for the group of them to move than for someone to move her, and forcing her to watch what was aboutto happen to her daughter—her last living child—was too cruel to ask.
He turned his attention where he needed and locked his eyes on Adele, who’d dipped her chin to assure they couldn’t make eye-contact. She’d also taken a much subtler step backward, as if she thought she could vanish through a wall if only she could reach one. Her hands were folded and unclenched in front of her waist, exactly how Santino would have expected them to be any other time. She’d never once shown an interested in discussion surrounding the family business, let alone openly interjected herself.
“Adele,” Santino greeted, his tone cold. “Let’s not play games. You’ve nowhere to run and I’m not in the mood to chase.”
She lifted her head slowly, her brow creased. “I don’t understand.”
Santino clicked his tongue. “There’s a nice, open sitting room down the hall. Why don’t we reconvene there and let our elders have their peace, shall we?” He sidestepped, making sure she had no direct line to Reiko, and indicated the door they’d just come through.
Of course, his mother made a sound of protest. “Santino, what’s going on? What is all this?”
He struggled to keep from glaring at her. “Mamma,” he said sharply. “I’m angry with you, too. You knew better.” He barely looked away from Adele while he spoke, but if he were in a clearer headspace, he’d have known the words were wrong.
“Angry? Why? Tell me what I did—”
His stare snapped back to hers before she could do more than stand. “I gave you two choices. Very specific choices.Neitherof them involved taking Nonno on a joyride and willfully violating my orders. Yet here you are, enabling your father’s stubborn pride and proving you can’t take orders from your son. When I said to sit down and shut up, I was speaking tobothof you.”
She clapped a hand to her chest in predictable dramatic fashion and her mouth opened.
