I appreciate Adora trying. As much as I’m afraid of Cristiano, those injuries on top of him being post-op make me worried for him.
“No one on this street has called an ambulance for the man bleeding on the sidewalk?” I ask.
Matteo laughs. “For the bleeding man outside Don Vincenzo’s house? No one around here is going to interfere in Vici business.”
I almost wish they would.
“Thank you,” I manage. “I’ll try not to overstay my welcome.”
“Overstay?” Matteo laughs, warm and genuine. “You’re welcome here as long as you want. Adora and my cuz have already decided. That little boy needs to rest and get strong, and you need somewhere safe to do that. So stay. A week, a month, however long it takes.”
He pushes off from the doorframe, ready to go, but something makes me call after him.
“Matteo?”
He turns back, eyebrows raised. “Yeah?”
“What kind of business is the Vici family in?”
I expect him to deflect or lie or tell me it’s none of my concern.
Instead, his smile widens. “We’re assassins.”
He says it cheerfully, as though he’s confiding that they’re all bank managers.
“You and…and Mr. Vici?”
“You mean Don Vincenzo. Yes him, and all the rest. While they were still alive, anyway. Most of the family got wiped out a few months back, God rest their souls. Your fiancé’s father’s handiwork. But he didn’t get all of us,” he adds proudly. “Ma can gut a man seven different ways.”
He says it the way someone might brag about their mother’s cooking. I’m reeling from all the information Matteo has just given me. Don Agnello killed members of the Vici family? And Don Vincenzo still married his daughter?
“That’s…” I don’t know how to finish that sentence.
“Impressive?” Matteo supplies helpfully. “Yeah, Ma’s something else. Anyway, you need anything, just holler.”
He gives me a little wave and heads down the corridor, whistling softly.
I close the door and lean against it, my coffee cup warm in my hands.
Assassins.
They’re all assassins.
I grew up in Don Agnello’s mansion. I lived there for years, watching men in expensive suits come and go, seeing the fear in people’s eyes when they spoke to him, hearing whispered conversations cut short when I entered a room, but Mom made sure I kept my face turned away from all of it. It was none of my business what kind of business the Montonis were in. I was just the housekeeper’s daughter.
Cristiano tried to tell me once, when I was thirteen or so. He spoke about his father’s work and what it meant to be a Montoni, but when he saw the fear on my face, he quickly changed the subject.
I realize now how willfully blind I’ve been. The mafia isn’t something distant and abstract in Malus. It’s real, and it’s all around me.
It’s the world I’ve been living in all along, whether I acknowledged it or not.
I take a sip of coffee. It’s perfect. Just the way I like it.
I turn over the conversation I just had with Matteo in my mind. Despite the fear and the horror and the sick feeling in my stomach, I think I like Matteo. I think I like Sofia as well, despite how unnerving she was for a moment, and Adora has been the perfect aunt to Leon. They’re all in the mafia, but they’re so…normal.
I spend the morning with Leon, trying to pretend we’re on vacation. We read his favorite books. I help him build elaborate dinosaur habitats with the toys Sofia brings. We eat lunch together, and I cut his food into small pieces and make sure he takes his medication on schedule.
But I keep the curtains closed.
