1
“Buon giorno, Giovanni,” I say to the beautiful green-eyed boy when he joins me at the dining table for breakfast.
“Good morning, sir,” he replies with solemnity as he takes the seat across from mine with his hair still damp from the shower. He is far too somber at the tender age of nineteen. How I miss his laughter and his joy.
“How did you sleep?” I ask while knowing the answer already. He has nightmares and sometimes wets the bed, byproducts of his trauma. Ever since I brought him into my home, he’s made it a point to sleep in my bed every night.For safety, he insists since I’m the one with a gun. It’s a terrible idea, but like most things with this young man, I have a hard time denying him.
“Not well,” he admits with a blush. “I’ll clean the sheets.”
“It’s nothing. Accidents happen.”
“Not to grown men.”
“Yes, accidents happen to grown men too. Would you like to talk about it?”
“No, thank you,” he says, not meeting my eyes. I motion for him to eat his breakfast. He only ever picks at his food, a lifelong habit. I can remember his grandfather, Matthew Senior, trying to coax him to eat more, then letting him have dessert after not finishing his meal. He was far too lenient with him, but that’s not the real source of the boy’s troubles. I wish it were.
“This is good.” He cuts another small bite of his French toast and scrapes it through a pool of syrup.
“Rico suggested I use the brioche. It’s something his wife does when she makes it.”
“It’s delicious.”
I watch him for a few minutes, trying not to be too conspicuous, then say with the utmost delicacy, “We need to talk about Matthew.”
“Don’t call me that,” he snaps in a voice that’s an octave lower than his normal one. I recall only days after his assault when he told me patiently but firmly that Matthew was dead. “Poor, poor Matthew,” he’d said, sounding haunted, then stared blankly out the window for an hour or so. Disassociating, I have since learned. When he finally returned, he told me to call him something else (anything else), so I rechristened him as Giovanni Ricci. The first name is shared with countless Renaissance painters and poets—both his passions—and the last name means “curly” for the beautiful blond ringlets he had as a child. The new identity also helps keep him safe—from the mob, from his past, and from anyone who might seek to harm him. I’m trying to follow his cues, but I fear I am failing him.
I try again, gently, “I need to know if you’ve remembered anything from that night.”
“I don’t.”
“Are you sure?”
He toys with his fork, drawing shapes in the syrup. And I wait.
“I don’t mean any disrespect, sir,” he says at last, setting aside his silverware, “but I’d rather not think about that night ever again, much less talk about it.”
“I know you don’twantto, sweetheart, but if you could tell me where you were or who you were with…that’s all I need to know.” I saw already what they did to his body. He was barely conscious when I scraped him off a bench in Central Park where they’d dumped him the morning after his assault. I called my close friend and former emergency room doctor, Conrad Greyson, to stitch him up and dress his wounds. Giovanni’s physical injuries have mostly healed by now, but the psychological ones remain.
“Sometimes I wish I could do the same.” He wrings the cloth napkin between his fists. “Hurt them. Violate them. Does that make me a bad person?”
“No,” I say firmly. “It’s natural to want some sort of justice. Or revenge.”
“They took a piece of me, so shouldn’t I have a piece of them?”
His musing is hypothetical and without any real teeth, which is where I come in. Perhaps we are getting somewhere at last. “I could punish them. If you tell me their names.”
He looks away with a morose sigh, and I know already I’ve lost him, because although Giovanni is a fighter and a survivor, he isn’t vicious. “I don’t know who they were.” His tone takes on a faraway quality that tells me he’s about to drift away again
“An address,” I persist. “A street name. Were you in Manhattan?”
“I don’t remember,” he says, lying to me, lyingforthem. “I don’t feel well.” He winces and then he’s gone, floating away to that place inside his mind he retreats to whenever he feels threatened or unsafe.
Damnit.
I circle the table and slowly guide him into the living room and onto the soft, overstuffed chair he favors. I lay a blanket over him as well. I’m out of my depth, but I have little choice in the matter. It’s my duty to his grandfather and my duty to him to protect him. Besides that, I love this kid.
“I’m heading to work. Rico’s here if you need anything.” I squeeze his hand. His eyes follow my movement like a haunted painting, but he stares through me, unseeing.
