He won’t be inclined to agree if I present as some bad-tempered street fighter.
“It’s fine,” I say, inspiration hitting. “Someone tried to kill me last night. I’ll make it known.”
The thing about my mother is, she sees the bigger picture. Always. “Yes,” she says, pressing a crimson-nailed finger to her cheek. “Yes, that will do very well, if you play it right.” She doesn’t ask who tried to kill me. Perhaps it’s mundane to her. Or perhaps she thinks it’s a lie.
I want to ask her about the stiletto I found in the incinerator. Want to, but don’t. If I ask her, and she denies having anything to do with my father’s murder, I’ll have to decide whether or not she’s lying.
I don’t have the strength for that today.
“How are the preparations for tomorrow night going?” she asks, and I’m relieved at the distraction.
I press the buzzer for Wilson, and he appears almost at once, as always, in the doorway. “You rang, sir?”
There are times when I feel like Wilson plays his part a littletoopat. A little too cliché, a little too servile.
“The preparations for tomorrow night,” I say. “I’d like an update.”
“Of course, sir. Chef is well underway, and the staff has already begun preparing the formal dining room. If you would like to view the menu before—”
“No.” I wave a hand. “As long as everything is under control.”
“Iwill see the menu,” my mother says, using that aristocratic arch in her voice that makes Wilson stand even straighter than he already does. “I want to make sure it’s appropriate for our guests.”
“Mamma,” I sigh, as Wilson goes off to retrieve it, “It will be fine. Chef has prepared many banquets here—”
“He prepared many banquets for your father,” she corrects me. “You are not your father. And you do not know Don Morelli.”
“Neither do you,” I point out.
My mother merely smiles. I don’t ask what it means. I’ve learned not to, over the years.
“I don’t have time for this,” I tell her. “You involve yourself in kitchen duties if you like; I have more important things to do.”
* * *
Just what those important things actuallyare, I’m not sure myself. I go down to the garage, waving off the bodyguards that try to come with me. “You wouldn’t be able to keep up anyway,” I tell them, as I take up the keys to my favorite Lamborghini, a black and red-trimmed Centenario.
Driving helps me clear my head, and certainly my heart. I need tothink. About last night, about Julian, my mother, the Family as a whole, and…
Most of all, I need to come to terms with Teddy MacCallum.
I’ve been too long at Redwood Manor. I feelinfected, as though the place itself holds a contagion that has started to seep into my blood. No wonder Julian is so twisted.
When I was younger, I hated him for being the chosen one, the favored one, the golden child. Theliteralgolden child: his middle name, Aurelius, he always took delight in reminding me, means “golden” in Latin. Blond-haired, blue-eyed, and charming, he was the complete opposite to my dark hair and eyes, my brooding, arrogant, tempestuous nature.
But despite his charm, he’s always been a poisoned soul. So what did Julian have that made my father love him better? I tortured myself for years asking that very question, until my mother inadvertently answered it for me.Ciro fears you because the son must overturn the father,she once told me.It’s the way of the world. That’s why I’m preparing you for your crown.
A crown of thorns, I’ve now discovered. My head aches again as I picture it pressing into me, down to the bone.
I still have flashbacks, now and then, of the knife scraping along the bones of my face, my skin opening up, parting like curtains for my torturers to see the man underneath.
From that moment until the first moment Teddy McCallum kissed me, I never knew peace.
Even though those men were all dead—I have Jack to thank for that, too—they still held power over me. I couldn’t laugh so freely, or enjoy the simplest things. The knife took away all the good things the world: a soft sunshine square from a window, a sweet dessert after a good meal, time spent with friends—they were all tainted with fear and hatred and the need for vengeance.
But Teddy showed me the heart I believed had turned to brutal stone…it has a little life left in it after all.
I arrive at the exclusive apartment building I call my home. I don’t own the whole thing, though it’s crossed my mind occasionally to buy it. But I have the whole top two floors to myself—the penthouse for living in as well as an empty floor beneath, a careful buffer zone. There’s a private, biometrically-secure elevator from the basement parking lot that takes me straight up to the penthouse. But when I step foot into my domain, it seems changed, somehow. Different, though nothing’s been disturbed.
