Callie
I felt like I’d aged twenty years in the last twenty-four hours. Even though I was sitting down in a comfortable chair, I still felt tense and uncomfortable. I stared at the bed. My mother was sleeping. It felt weird to be looking at her alive. She had the same face, except she was more wrinkled now, older, and yet she still had that light that I remembered. I didn’t know how she’d kept it being locked up for all those years. Gia and Imogen were sitting on the other side of the couch, chatting quietly with each other. They’d been so happy to see me. I could tell that their eyes were bloodshot. They’d been crying for a long time.
“I didn’t think I was ever going to see you again,” Imogen said, reaching over and grabbing my hand. “I am so thankful you’re okay.”
“It just feels really weird,” I said, staring at her and then at Gia. “I don’t know how you grew up in this sort of world. I don’t know how you can deal with death and…”
“I get it,” she said, nodding. “I hate this world. It’s part of the reason why Alessandro and I stopped being friends.”
“Oh?” I asked her.
“I’ll tell you more another time,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t believe your mother is still alive. Have you told your dad yet?”
“No. I’m going to call him later. I need to see him, speak to him. I just don’t even know how to feel anymore. I don’t even know how my mother is going to feel.”
“I know. Mentally, that’s a lot for both of you,” she said.
There was a slight knock on the door. “Hello?” I said, my heart racing, hoping it wasn’t Antonio wanting to come in.
“Hey, it’s me, Elisabetta.” I peeked around the door. “Can I come in?” I nodded, my heart in my throat as I watched her come in timidly. She looked at me nervously and then over at the bed. She walked over to my mom’s side and looked down at her. She lightly grabbed her hand and held it. I could see that she was crying. I stood up, walked over to her, and put my arm around her shoulders. “Is everything okay?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I always knew I didn’t really fit in, but…”
“I know,” I said, nodding. “I know exactly how you feel.”
“My world’s been upended.”
“I know, but I’m your sister,” I said, squeezing her shoulders. “I’m your big sister, Elisabetta, and I’m always going to be here for you.”
She looked up at me, her beautiful face nervous and sad, and I wondered how she would get through the next couple of months and years. The woman she thought was her mother was dead. The man she’d found out was her father just recently was dead, and now she had a mother she’d never known about, and she was born due to a rape. That was a heavy burden to carry.
“Hey,” I said, turning her around to look at me, “maybe we can get an apartment and live together and…”
“I want to join you guys,” Gia said.
“But you’re at Columbia,” I said.
“We can work it out. We can live in Midtown or something.”
“I want to live there, too.” Imogen jumped up.
“How are you going to live there, Imogen? You go to Berkeley.”
“There’s no way I’m staying at Berkeley now. I can’t trust you to not get into trouble again,” she said, giving me a wry smile.
“I know. I made some bad mistakes.”
“The absolute worst mistakes,” she said. “I should have known, when you said you were going to a party and you met a guy that was part of the Mafia, that all hell was going to break loose.” She tried to make a joke, but I wasn’t quite ready to laugh yet.
“I’m sorry,” Gia said.
“It’s not your fault.”
“I know, but when I saw you at the party, I knew you didn’t fit in this world. I should have made you leave right away. I should have…” She shrugged. “I don’t know. I feel like I should have been able to figure out that something was going on, the way that Antonio’s eyes kept following you around the room and the way he wanted to see you, and it just… it didn’t add up, huh?”
“Not really,” she said.
“I know. I mean, trust me. I look at it from an outside point of view as well, and I was an idiot. There was me, this shy little college girl, going into this party, and I got all dressed up, and I really thought, Wow, this man is into me and he wants to be with me. And then, yeah, I figured out he was lying, but I still thought I could be a part of those games and that treachery, and look what’s happened. Jimmy’s dead.”
I could feel myself about to cry again. “And so is Luisa and Don Roberto and Tommasso Romano.”
“They deserved to die,” Elisabetta said, “all of them, for what they did to Mom.”
I nodded. “They were evil incarnate,” I said.
“I know, and it’s not your fault, Callie.” Elisabetta squeezed my hand. “In fact, if none of this had happened, we wouldn’t have known Mom was still alive, and maybe she’d still be locked up. Maybe she’d die locked up. I’d rather we have Mom than those three.”
“You’re right,” I said. “How are you so smart and you’re my little sister?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’m the smartest of all the siblings,” she said with a half-smile, and then my heart raced slightly because it was kind of weird.
Elisabetta was my half-sister, but she was also Antonio’s half-sister, and even though we weren’t blood related, it still felt kind of icky and weird and…
“Hey,” Elisabetta said, looking me in the eyes, “Antonio is my big bro, and you’re my big sister, but you’re not related in any way whatsoever. And while he’s a jackass and deserves to pay for everything that has happened, he’s not all bad.”
“I don’t know if that’s true,” I said, shaking my head.
“I know, maybe you’ll never forgive him, and maybe you’ll never want to give him another chance, but don’t beat yourself up for liking him,” she said, “or for falling in love with him.”
“How did you know?” I said, my eyes watering as I looked at her.
“I see the way you look at him.” She shrugged. “It’s the way I think I’d look at a man if I was in love.”
“Are you trying to tell me you’re in love with someone?”
“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head. “I never want to be in love. I don’t think I could handle relationships.”
“Yeah, they kind of suck.” And I wasn’t even really in one.
There was another knock on the door, but this time the person didn’t wait to ask if it was okay to enter.
I looked up, and Antonio’s dark eyes were staring into mine. He looked beat up. He looked dirty. He looked more wolf-like than I’d ever seen him before. My heart raced as I stared at him. I just wanted to run and hold him, but I didn’t want him to think I forgave him. I didn’t want him to think that what he’d done was okay because it wasn’t, and even though my mother wouldn’t have been in this room with us, if it weren’t for his games, he’d betrayed me, and he’d lied to me, and I didn’t know if I could ever forgive him.
“Can we talk, Callie?” he asked, taking a step forward and running his hands through his hair. “I know you probably don’t want to talk to me, but please.” I pressed my lips together and then looked to Elisabetta, Gia, and Imogen.
I was about to say no when my mom’s eyes flew open. “Speak to him, Callie,” she said, reaching up and touching my arm. “It won’t hurt. I’ll still be here when you come back.”
“Okay, Mama,” I said, leaning down to give her a quick kiss. “I’ll be back in just a few moments.” I looked over at Elisabetta, and she nodded. Then I looked over at Antonio. “You’ve got ten minutes, and that’s it.”
“Can we go somewhere else to talk?” he asked, nodding, his face grim.
“I suppose. Where do you want to chat?”
“My room,” he said, shrugging.
I let out a deep sigh, nodded, and walked out of the room. Antonio followed behind me and closed the door softly behind him.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Don’t thank me,” I said, looking back at him. “Thank my mom. It’s only because of her that I’m even going to give you a chance to explain yourself.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m glad you have your mama. For a couple of moments, I was kind of hoping that my mama was going to be alive as well.”
And that was when it hit me that he’d had hope that maybe his mom was still alive, and I could imagine how devastated he must have felt when he realized she wasn’t.
It was like he’d lost her all over again, and he’d lost Jimmy. I wasn’t going to console him. I didn’t want to be that person in his life. I didn’t want him to think he could treat me any way and that he could always get me back because that wasn’t the sort of person I wanted to be, but I wanted to show him some compassion.
We walked down the corridor toward his room, and he opened the door. We walked inside, and he closed it. “Going to make me take a lie detector test again?” I joked, and he just shook his head sadly.
“I wish we could go back to those days,” he said.