“I’ll be able to babysit her too. And I’m not doing it for free!”
I laughed. “Nor should you.”
“Effie!” I heard Isabella’s voice. “Give me that phone, young lady. You know you’re not allowed to be on it after eight.”
“Gotta go!”
She hung up. I smiled to myself, wondering when we’d finally tell her the truth. Tell her I was her father.
I held on to the phone, knowing it would ring in the next minute, and right on cue, it did. I answered.
“Why are you calling her at ten o’clock on a school night?” Isabella asked.
“Because I should never have stopped calling her.”We made arrangements for me to fly to Florida the following week. Surprisingly, Isabella wasn’t opposed to it. Maybe it was because we were in agreement that we wouldn’t tell her until she was an adult that I was her father. It was just safer that way, especially now that I’d taken over the Benedetti family. I had enemies before, and I would have more now. And I wouldn’t make her a target for those enemies.
Reuniting with Effie was more wonderful than I could have imagined. I needed her sweet innocence, her clever way of looking at things, and her carefree nature. I spent a week in a hotel nearby and took her to school and picked her up daily. Over the weekend, we drove down to the Keys to visit Salvatore and Lucia and meet my other nieces and brand-new nephew. Lucia tolerated my presence but was too tired to do much of anything but feed little Sergio, who was born weighing over ten pounds and had the exact same eyes of his namesake.
But all the while we were there, I felt like an outsider. Effie loved and accepted me. Salvatore too. But I didn’t belong in their world. I felt like I cast a dark shadow on their doorsteps, and the fact disgusted me. I didn’t want to be that.
When I returned home, I went to the house in the Adirondacks. To Franco’s big, spacious mansion. For the next eight months, I took care of family business, keeping as busy as I could, but walked through the house like a ghost. I kept everything Gia had worn until her scent wore off the clothes, and even then, I packed up the duffel bag and set it in the closet beside my things.
I thought in time I would forget her. Or at least stop missing her. But I didn’t. It didn’t seem to matter how much time passed.
I kept track of her. She and her mother sold the house she’d grown up in near Philadelphia. Her mother moved back to Italy, where her sister still lived, and Gia rented an apartment in Manhattan. I went into the city often, and each time I did, I got as close as the front door of the building before turning around.
She didn’t need me in her life.
I decided I hated the house in the Adirondacks. It only held dark memories of times past, of hatred and jealousy and an old world I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a part of anymore. All those years, I’d wanted nothing more than to be boss. All that time, I hadn’t realized what it meant to be that. That my father would be dead. That anyone who mattered would be gone. I felt more alone than I ever had in my life, and in a way, as long as I stayed here, I knew I would be stuck in this cold, empty past.
It was on the morning I decided to put the house on the market that I saw the newspaper article. Angus Scava had been indicted on charges of drug trafficking, racketeering, and tax fraud, and was a person of interest in several murders, including that of Mateo Castellano. The key witness? Victor Scava.
I guess he wished he’d cut out his nephew’s tongue now.
I closed the paper and stood. Going to the window, I opened it and inhaled a deep breath of fresh, cool autumn air. Summer was at an end.
I decided something else that morning too. I took the keys to my SUV and walked out the door, calling my attorney, Mr. Marino, the executor of my father’s will, on the way. I gave him instruction to not only put this house on the market but Salvatore’s as well. I also instructed him to find me a place in New York City. One that had never belonged to anyone before me. One that would be mine from the start. It would be the first step in my truly taking over the Benedetti crime family.
I didn’t do this in anger. I didn’t do it to retaliate. I simply did it because I needed to. I did it because I didn’t want this anymore, not alone. I didn’t want this empty house. This empty life. I wanted her. I wanted Gia.