“You have not been here in weeks.” Sofia’s tone of reprimand had taken Anna straight back to childhood. “Always, you have an excuse.”
It was true. So Anna had sighed and agreed to show up. After the meal her father had insisted on walking her to the front door, but when they were about to pass his study, he’d stopped, jerked his head to indicate that Freddo, his capo and ever-present shadow, should step aside.
“A word with you alone, mia figlia,” he’d said to Anna.
Reluctantly she’d let Cesare lead her into the study. He’d sat down behind his massive oak desk, motioned her to take a seat, looked at her for a long moment and then cleared his throat.
“I need a favor of you, Anna.”
“What kind of favor?” she’d said warily.
“A very important one.”
Anna had stared at him. A favor? For the father she pretended to respect for the sake of her mother but, in reality, despised? He was a crime boss. Don of the feared East Coast famiglia.
Cesare had no idea she knew that about him, that she and her sister, Isabella, had figured it out when Izzy was thirteen and Anna was a year older.
Neither could remember exactly how it had happened. Maybe they’d read a newspaper article. Maybe the whispers of the girls at school had suddenly started to make sense.
Or maybe it was their realization that their big brothers, Rafe, Dante, Falco and Nick, had struck out on their own as soon as they could and treated Cesare with cold disdain whenever they visited the mansion and thought the girls and their mother were out of earshot.
Anna and Izzy only knew that one day they’d suddenly realized their father was not the head of a waste management company.
He was a crook.
Because of their mother, they hadn’t let on that they knew the truth. Lately, though, that was becoming more and more difficult. Anna, especially, was finding it hard to pretend her father’s hands were not dirty, even bloody.
Do a favor, for a man like him?
No, she’d thought. No, she wouldn’t do it.
“I’m afraid I’m incredibly busy, Father. I have a lot on my plate just now, and—”
He’d cut her off with an imperious wave of his hand.
“Let us be honest for once, Anna. I know what you think of me. I have known it for a very long time. You can fool your mama and your brothers, but not me.”
Anna had risen to her feet.
“Then you also know,” she’d said coolly, “that you’re asking the wrong person for a favor.”
Her father had shaken his head.
“I am asking the right person. The only person. You are my daughter. You are more like me than you would care to admit.”
“I am nothing like you! I believe in the law. In justice. In doing what is right, no matter what it takes!”
“As do I,” Cesare had said. “It is only that we approach such things differently.”
Anna had laughed.
“Goodbye, Father. Don’t think this hasn’t been interesting.”
“Anna. Listen to me, per favore.”
The per favore did it. Anna sat back and folded her arms.
“I need to see justice done, mia figlia. Done your way. The law’s way. Not mine. And you are a lawyer, mia figlia, are you not? A lawyer, one who carries my blood in her veins.”