My thumb brushes across his lips. “It doesn’t bother you that our sister has the same color eyes?”
Aron kisses my thumb and rubs my hip. “Not one bit.”
Talk of Emily brings my headache back to the surface. I let go of Aron’s face and rub my temple, rolling onto my back and throwing an arm across my eyes. “She’s going to be a pain to deal with. I’d almost rather go up against the entire Empire alone than face whatever she ends up planning.”
“We’ll deal with her together. Later, though. Go to sleep, already!” He playfully shoves me, then turns out the lights.
***
I don’t know how long I slept before our guard started banging on our door, but judging by the depth of darkness outside, interspersed by bolts of lightning, it hadn’t been long.
“What the fuck do you want?” Aron yells. He’s already halfway dressed, which tells me he likely didn’t sleep at all.
“Hypocrite,” I say as I get out of bed. “Did you even catnap?”
“I’m a former guard,” he says. “I don’t need sleep.”
“Sorry, my dons, but we thought you’d want to be notified when they brought Lucinda back.” The response, muffled by the door, sounds frantic. Either the guard on duty is not accustomed to waking mafia dons from a dead sleep, or something’s wrong with Mom.
“Where did they bring her?” I shout as Aron tosses a suit at me.
The tense pause is unnerving. “Th-the doctors. Dr. Nilczek, he—well, he said to get you right away.”
That doesn’t bode well. I rush to dress myself, letting Aron fix my tie while I button my suit jacket. Something tells me Mom doesn’t have much time left, if any. Dr. Nilczek knows better than to have me woken for something that’s not emergent. Unfortunately, appearances must be kept up, so I can’t just run down to the physicians’ wing bare-chested in sweatpants.
The closer we get to that wing of the mansion, the grimmer the faces we pass become. Something’s wrong with Mom, but no one seems inclined to be the first to tell me.
We turn the corner, and as soon as I see Dr. Nilczek in his blood-and-pus-covered scrubs, I know.
My mother didn’t make it.
Aron grabs my upper arm as though he expects me to break down, but I simply pat his hand and shake my arm free. I’m not a ten-year-old boy anymore; I’m a don, and I have to act like one.
Dr Nilczek gives us a curt nod as we approach. “Don Matteo. Don Aron. This way, please.”
Memories of the night my mom’s car exploded come flooding back, only this time, my dad’s not here to tell me to go to my room. I’m the only person who can handle this. Even Aron knows that this isn’t something he can do for me, though I’m sure he would if I allowed it.
We follow the doctor back to an exam room, which is really just a modified bedroom. There hasn’t been enough time to properly renovate this part of the mansion into an adequate hospital wing. Dr. Nilczek pulls back a curtain, revealing Mom’s body lying on a bed. There’s a sheet covering her up to her neck, likely put there for modesty’s sake, but even with the grey pallor and the unkempt hair, I’d recognize her anywhere.
“I did what I could, Don Matteo, but the infection was too widespread. It appears that someone, um …How do I put this? Tampered with the wound.”
That tracks with what Aron and I already suspected. Mom wasn’t shot long enough ago to have died from sepsis, but if my sister was poking and prodding the wound like she did on the video call, it could have easily spread and worsened any growing infection.
“Don Matteo?” Dr, Nilczek interrupts my introspection. “What should we do with the body? We can’t exactly open her original grave without rousing suspicion.”
“That’s a good point.” Aron scratches his chin, which still needs a good shave. “What do you think, Matteo? Should we bury her somewhere? Cremate her? I’ll follow your lead on this one.”
Considering Mom’s … unorthodox method of dissolving her marriage to my father, combined with their practice of the Catholic faith, I can’t really cremate her.
“We’ll bury her,” I say, “but no ceremony. An unmarked grave somewhere on the property.”
With that decision made, I turn my back on my mother for the last time. I want to head back to bed, but Aron stops me halfway out the door.
“Wait, Matteo.”
“Yes, Aron?”
He steps closer and puts a hand on my shoulder. “We need to discuss what to do with Emily. The Syndicate will need a verdict on her after this.”
