“Parisian fashion is so predictable these days,” she says in Italian, sweeping toward me. She’s dressed in formfitting red, her favorite color, the deep red that sets off her clear complexion and vivid features. “Hello, darling. How are you?” She kisses me three times, a cloud of perfume enveloping us as she does. She is the only person I permit to kiss me these days.
Except for Teddy, as it turns out.
“It’s good to see you, Mamma,” I greet her in English, and continue in Italian. “As for me, my father has been murdered and the Family is in disarray. Aside from that, I am perfectly well. When did you arrive?”
“This morning, I think. Or last night?” She gives an expressive shrug. “You know how travel destroys any sense of time.”
“And what are you doing in Los Angeles?”
Her eyebrows, perfectly maintained, arch above the dark eyes that I inherited. “I came for the funeral, of course.”
The funeral. In between everything else, I’ve had to sign off on the arrangements for the funeral. It will be held tomorrow.
She turns aside, waving a hand toward the dining table across the room. It’s set up with flowers and candles, appetizers already on the table. “I ordered for us already. Come, sit, tell Mamma all your troubles.”
“You came for the funeral?” I follow her to the table, and wait as she prays silently, crosses herself, picks up her fork. “To spit on his grave, or merely to make sure that he’s in it?”
She gives a wide smile. “Oh, Sandro,” she says fondly. “You’re as dramatic as always.” Her fork hovers over several different morsels as she continues, “Heisdead, though?”
“Very dead.”
“Ah, that’s good news indeed. I can let myself believe it now that I’ve heard it from your lips.”
“Now that you’re certain, do you really need to be at the funeral?”
“But of course,” she says. “Propriety, darling. Hewasthe father of my precious son. Besides,” she goes on, more businesslike now, “I want to get a good look at those scoundrels who surrounded him. If one of them is moving to usurp you, I will be able to see it in their eyes.”
“No one is going to usurp me,” I sigh.
“I assume you’ve dealt with the bastard?”
“Julian has been neutralized,” I tell her. “For now.”
She sets down her knife and fork carefully, folds her hands together, and fixes me with a stare. “For now?”
I finish my mouthful and take a sip of wine before I reply. “For now.”
“You’re telling me he’s still alive?”
My mother has been a great influence in my life. When my father sent me off at ten years old to a boarding school in Italy, it was with my mother that I spent most of my vacations, learning the true, traditional ways. My values, as a result, were very different from my father’s when I finally returned to America. It caused a great deal of friction between us.
I’ve never blamed my mother for that, but I also don’t plan to let her interfere in Family affairs here in America.
“I am telling you it’s not your concern,” I say now. “The Family is mine, Mamma. I don’t need your advice, nor your protection.”
She regards me for a long moment before a smile slips across her face. “Every boy needs his mamma, Sandro. You’ll find out soon enough.”
But she says no more about Family business, and turns the conversation to other things. Unfortunately, they are also things I’d prefer not to discuss.
“Have you taken a lover?” she asks over the next course.
I make a noise of exasperation.
“You should,” she tells me. “A man like you needs an outlet.”
“Mamma, for God’s sake.” I pass a hand over my eyes.
“And more importantly, you need a confidant. You have a tendency to isolate yourself. You must let yourself love and be loved.”
