But now this. Connie Taylor. Tino Morelli’s lover, pregnant with his kid, currently lying comatose in the hospital on our dime. But Celia insisted that Connie would want her baby born, and Finch agreed.
“I thought we’d already decided about Connie,” I say after a pause, forking through my sunny lemon risotto. It comes with a square of edible gold leaf, and I’ll be honest, that’s the reason it’s my favorite thing on the menu. Devouring wealth appealed to me for a long time. Now I’m starting to digest it, I wonder if what I’ve eaten really agrees with me after all.
“Cee’s not happy,” Finch says.
I glance up at him. “How can she not be happy? She’s getting everything she—”
“Don’t. Don’t say it, I don’t want to hear it, not after the day I’ve had. Come on, Luca, just because you don’t understand howhardit is for her—”
“I understand,” I say sharply, and there are plenty more words lining up and ready to go, to race out of my mouth towards some shitty finish line, but I stop myself before I pull the starter trigger.
Finch and I are forging a relationship, finding ways to work as a team, but Connie has been a sticking point between us. It’s a failure of mine, and I know it, that I disregard emotional ties. It’s not that I underestimate them—I know better than most how love and hate and jealousy and affection, all those messy emotional reactions, can drive a man to act against his own better interest. God knows I’ve done things for Finch that I never would have done for anyone else.
But Connie is dead, and in my opinion it’s time to get on with the grieving process. It’s a cruel thing to let her lie there and incubate a life when her own is already extinct. Finch was originally of the same mind, but I suppose it’s different for him. The baby is his half-sibling, after all.
All thosefeelingsthat get in the way of common sense.
“It’s not just Celia,” Finch says, frowning. “Connie’s brother is making noises about seeing her—”
“He can’t go in that room, not until after the baby is born. He can’t know.No onecan know.”
Not with Sam Fuscone, one of our greatest enemies, braying all the time about how he plans to make the Morelli bloodline completely extinct. He’s been driven solely by his lust for revenge since Frank and I killed his nephew, Joey Fuscone, and a whole lot of his men.
The news about Finch being a Morelli by blood got out fast, and Finch is first on his list. If Fuscone hears about the baby, Finch’s half-sister…well. So to protect the kid, Celia and Finch cooked up a crazy fake-pregnancy scheme. Personally, I thought they’d been watching too many telenovelas.
And yet, here we are.
“But once the baby is born—” Finch tries again.
“Then this brother can see Connie. I really don’t see what else there is to talk about. We arein agreementhere, angel. Unless you’ve changed your mind?”
“Ofcoursenot,” Finch spits. I put down my fork and really look at him. He’s red in the face, breathing hard. “But that’s what I’mtellingyou—Connie’s brother is there every day. He’s getting desperate.”
“He should have cared about her when Connie was alive.” Neither Finch nor I think much of Connie’s parents, New Jersey natives who disowned her at fourteen. They haven’t even asked again about their daughter since they found out she was in a coma.
Her brother, on the other hand, showed up right after it happened, has been coming into New York for months, but I want him kept out of things—at least until after the birth.
The baby is due to inherit a sizeable sum when it’s born.Ifit’s born. But it’s not about the money. For Finch, it’s family. For me, it’s honor. Tino Morelli’s last instruction to me was to protect his children from harm, and the Morelli Family still has enough sway in the New York legal system to ensure that we can keep Connie sequestered, and that Frank and Celia will be granted custody of the kid in secrecy, no questions asked.
Finch puts down his knife and fork. “Husband. You are nothearingme. This guy is not going to go away. He wants to see his sister; says he won’t go away until we let him into the room.”
“But why on earth—”
“Luca,” Finch growls. “Put yourself in his shoes. Imagine this was you, with Frank in that room. What would you do?”
Easy. I’d bribe, threaten, cheat, and if that didn’t work I’d kill anyone who still stood between me and my brother.
“Point taken,” I concede. “So whatwillconvince this brother to back off? What’s his name, anyway?”
“Hudson. Apparently he’s her twin. Celia and I are meeting him tomorrow at the hospital. You know he hasn’t been given any information at all about Connie, nothing about her prognosis?”
“I should hope not. We’ve paid a fortune to that hospital to make sure no one tells any tales.”
“This is herbrother, Luca. He loves her, and she’s… You know she’s dying. It’scruelof us to keep him from seeing her.”
I try to remind myself that Finch and I are ateam. But something stirs inside me, something protesting and dark. “You seem to have made up your mind already,” I say. “So why come to me at all about this?”
Finch sends an appraising glance my way before helping himself to the last of the Caprese salad, piling it on a slice of rosemary-studded focaccia like an open-faced sandwich. “Because you’re the Boss, baby,” he says simply. “Ultimately this decision is yours.”
