Then stop.
Can I do this?
Can I really meet a journalist and ask questions about Mario?
A woman who writes about Chicago’s elite. A woman who may have sources, notes, suspicions. A woman who could misunderstand my interest, trace me, expose me, or… realize I am part of a story.
And if she tells me something terrible?
What then?
Can I live with knowing?
Can I live with not knowing?
My stomach turns again.
I press my hand over it.
This time, the gesture stops me cold.
“My baby.” The words come out quietly but determined.
They’re not wrapped in fantasy or fear.
They’re fact.
There is something inside me now that did not exist before.
I can no longer make decisions the way I would if it were only me.
I have to know.
For my own sake, yes, but not only mine. Not anymore.
If there is a chance Mario is dangerous in the way those articles suggest, then I have to find out before I tell him anything. Before he has time to decide what happens next. Before I put myself and this baby directly in the center of his world with no idea what that world truly is.
I sit back down.
My hands are still shaking when I pull the laptop closer.
I type one line.
When and where?
Chapter Twenty Eight
Mario
Dinner with my sons should be simple.
It used to be simple.
When they were young, it was loud and messy and never as dignified as Anna wanted it to be. Matteo would read at the table if she let him. Tomasso would talk enough for both of them. Anna would pretend to be stricter than she was, pointing her fork at them and telling them they were not being raised by wolves, while I sat at the head of the table and let them all fill the house with noise.
Now they are grown men, and there is still noise, but it is different.
Deeper voices. More inappropriate jokes. Work threaded between bites of food. Men instead of boys, though I still see them as boys sometimes, without meaning to.
