“Sweetheart.” She cups my face. “I need no apology, and the things you said were true.”
“No, Mom.” I hold her hands when she drops them from my face. “I was wrong. It wasn’t your fault. I know you were as trapped as me. I know it wasn’t your decision to marry me off to that monster and that you couldn’t stop it. I didn’t confide in you, and that’s on me. When you asked if he was treating me right, I constantly lied instead of opening up. I should never have shut you and Sierra out.”
“It’s not easy to admit the truth. Especially to your loved ones,” she quietly says. Lifting one shoulder, she jerks her head forward. “Let’s walk and talk.”
We set forth at a leisurely pace. “I know you protected us the best way you could,” I continue. “I have done the same with my own kids. Even if I had told you the truth, there’s nothing you could have done.”
“I suspected, Serena.” Pain flickers in her eyes. “Deep down, I knew, and that is my biggest regret. That I pretended it wasn’t happening so I wouldn’t have to deal with it. I failed you because I couldn’t bear to imagine you were suffering the way I was, so I chose not to see the signs.” A strangled sob rips from her mouth, and I clutch her hand in mine. “I’m so sorry, honey. I never wanted any of my girls to go through what I did.”
“I know.” I squeeze her hand. “You’re a great mom, and you did your best to shield us. You couldn’t have done any more.” I tug on her hand, stopping her. I need to face her when I say this. “I take back all the terrible things I said, and I want you to know there is nothing to forgive. I love you, and I’m grateful you are in my life. In the kids’ lives. You are as much a victim as I am. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I prefer survivor,” she says. “We are survivors. Those bastards tried to destroy us, but they’re the ones rotting six feet under, and we’re the ones rising reborn from the embers of their attempted destruction. Who’s the winner now?” she shouts, lowering her eyes to the ground. “Burn in hell, assholes. I hope you are both in unimaginable pain.”
* * *
“You should have seen her. She was magnificent,” I tell Alesso later that night when we are drinking wine in my living room. “She’s my hero.” Mom has really come into her own since Dad passed. I’m not going to say I wish I had bounced back as easily because every abused woman’s path to healing is different. I am trying to stop beating myself up over things, preferring to focus on the progress I have made instead.
“Georgia’s great, and the kids idolize her.”
“They do, and they wore her out! Why else did she retire to bed at nine!” I have a sneaky feeling it was as much to do with giving Sierra time alone with Ben and me ample opportunity to make a move on Alesso. Both Mom and Sierra spent the rest of the afternoon encouraging me to be brave.
“They’re full of energy for sure.” His brow puckers, and his eyes seem troubled.
“Is everything okay?”
His sigh is weary as he makes eye contact with me. “The call Ben got an hour ago has us all on edge.” Mom had only gone to bed when Ben had to leave for Chicago.
“Why? What’s happened?”
He scrubs a hand over his prickly jawline. “It looks like the Russians set fire to a number of warehouses owned by The Outfit. Things aren’t good there, and this is the last thing we need.”
“I can’t believe Gino is making such a mess of things and all because of some dead ringer for his deceased wife. He makes me sick,” I hiss, enraged all over again on Natalia’s behalf. She discovered her husband was cheating on her with a woman in Chicago a couple of months ago, and though Ben warned him off, I know Nat believes he is continuing to conduct the affair. She doesn’t really seem to mind, and I have noticed she and Leo seem more at ease with one another. I wonder if something is going on? If it is, I guess Nat will tell us in time. I’m not one to pry, and if she is grabbing some happiness at last, then I will silently cheer her on.
“He’s an asshole.”
I bob my head. “I’m glad Ben is changing things. The attitude toward women in themafiosoreally needs to change.”
“It does,” Alesso readily agrees, “but it won’t happen overnight, and Ben isn’t a miracle worker.”
“I understand, but it helps to have a forward thinker steering the ship, and I trust him to make positive changes.”
“I do as well, but too much change at once can be detrimental, and I worry we have bitten off more than we can chew with Chicago.”
23
SERENA
“Have you asked him yet?” Sierra inquires a couple of weeks later as we are preparing breakfast in the kitchen before the hungry mob descends.
“No.” I stop slicing bread, eyeballing my sister. “I know I’m being a chicken shit, but a lot has happened the past two weeks and the timing isn’t right. I have hardly seen him, and when we do speak, he seems stressed. I don’t want to distract him.”
Everything came to a head between Nat and Gino the day after the warehouses were blown up in Chicago. Leo discovered Nat had been pregnant with his baby when she married Gino and he had forced her to get an abortion. Turns out, it was all connected to the death of Carlo Greco fifteen years ago. Gino’s first wife Juliet had been murdered by the Grecos in retaliation for Carlo’s death because they believed Gino was behind it. Only now the truth has come out. Mateo—Natalia’s older brother who was gunned down when he was twenty-two—and Leo took Carlo out because he was abusing Nat, and it was the only way to prevent her from being married off to him.
Little did they know what they were setting in motion.
The power play has swung back and forth this past fortnight as Gino seeks to play Ben against Don Maximo Greco, and Ben has been allying himself with Don DiPietro and Don Maltese to win their support in case Greco goes through with his threat to ask The Commission for a vote of no confidence in Ben as president.
Alesso has been going to the city most days because Ben needs him there. The situation is tense, the guys are stressed, and they are pulling out all the stops to ensure the fragile peace they have painstakingly built doesn’t crumble. It doesn’t seem like a good time to ask Alesso if he wants more than friendship, so I’ve been biting my tongue. Even if I’m dying to have a heart-to-heart with him, now I have made the decision to confess my feelings.
