Later that evening, we sit at a beautifully dressed table, silence thick and painful between us.
“You’re not eating, Lu?” Dante asks from across the table where Irina, Aleksei, and I sit. Sadness taints our dinner but none of us is ready to acknowledge it.
I know it’s particularly difficult for Dante to spend his first Christmas dinner without his mother. She was too distraught and I heard her call Dante by his brother’s name earlier. He looked like he wanted to die, and I understood it all too well.
The mansion is tastefully decorated for the holidays, in shades of silver and green, no doubt after Dante’s efforts. Yet, it doesn’t hold any appeal.
I used to love Christmas. Back when I lived in France and my father would organise a proper feast bathed in love, good food, better wine and extravagant gifts. His absence is too obvious. His silence an insult at this point.
“I’m not hungry.”
Everyone has been treading carefully around me, unused to seeing me withdrawn but more than that, I think the fact that I haven’t smiled once has unnerved the chaotic trio. They think I’m in pain. They don’t know the details of my relationship with Toma and how he abandoned me, saying awful things to me just to provoke me into hating him. I believed him then but I know he lied. In a very short amount of time, he showed me devotion, obsession,love.He might not call it that, too stuck into believing he’s incapable of it, but I know the truth of his heart.
“I’m going to kill the bastard,” Dante seethes and I ignore him.
They think Toma succeeded in hurting me. And somehow he did. But he also set me free. The compulsion to lie and smile to make sure my family’s pain and sorrow or concern is lessened is gone. I’m not in the mood to entertain with silly stories and my dazzling personality. So I don’t. The shift is invigorating.
Dante starts an inane story and I have no patience left in my body. “Where’s my father?” I ask.
“You don’t want the answer to that,” Irina says, but I keep my attention on Dante.
“Does she also decide when you take a shit,cugino?”
Their gobsmacked faces would be comical if I just didn’t want to throttle them for keeping things from me.
“What did you just say?” Aleksei’s voice drops low, the menace in the words evident but I couldn’t care less. We’re family. He wouldn’t hurt me. I feel comfortable and loved enough to be myself for once, and to demand answers.
“You need me to repeat myself, old man? Let me try in Russian.Where is my father?” My knowledge of the language is rudimentary but it drives the point across.
They exchange looks, the silent conversation short but effective.
“You wanted out,” Dante grinds out, settling his elbows on the table and his chin on his hands, assessing.
“And I’ve changed my mind.”
He reclines in his chair, eyes sharp clashing with mine. He clicks his tongue, annoyance flaring his nostrils. He doesn’t like to be defied. None of them do. “He’s on a mission.”
“On Christmas?”
“You think crime rests for the holidays, Loulou?”
“I think he hasn’t called me or visited me in months and that’s not normal. I think Diane’s phone has gone dark and that’s not normal. I know about the war against the Moscow Bratva, but this is different.Where are they?”
“Your father is retrieving Diane. Tonight.” Dante picks up his fork like this is answer enough and I slam a fist on the table, surprising Biscuit who lets out a little whimper from her place on the couch. She jumps down and scampers to me. She’s been very aware of my every emotion since Toma left and she never leaves my side. I pick her up and resume my ridiculous staring contest with my cousin.
I’m getting tired of those hateful secrets everyone keeps. All in the name of protecting me like I’m incapable of doing it myself.
“What do you mean?”
“Diane’s been sent to Split,” Dante finally surmises.
My blood turns cold.
Toma’s brother’s domain. My brain runs a mile a minute. “Are you out of your mind? You sent her to The Butcher? How is she not dead?”
“She will be if your father doesn’t extract her. Tonight.”
For months, I’ve been wallowing in self-pity, thinking that maybe Diane abandoned me. That now that I was away, it was the perfect excuse to stop pretending she ever cared about me. Meanwhile, she was in danger. The resentment I felt pops up like a balloon.
