I smile to myself and I have to admit it feels good to know someone wants to be my friend. “She’s a sweet girl. Why’s she all mixed up with your brother, anyway?”
Calvino snorts as he gets out of the car. We meet at the base of the steps and he drapes an arm across my shoulders. “You see, sometimes good girls like very bad boys. There’s something about the charm of a man that can rip off your own arm and beat you senseless with it. Though Charlie comes from her own sort of darkness.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Her people are connected like we are. She’s familiar with the mafia code and how a mob wife’s expected to behave.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re always talking about that sort of crap like you really want your women to be quiet and obedient.”
“You think we’re joking about it?”
“I think you talk a big game but you like it when I call you on your shit.”
“You’re not my wife, little thief, and you’re not really my girlfriend.” He leans down and bites my ear gently. “So be very fucking careful.”
I shiver as he leads me into the house, through the main foyer, and out onto the back patio where Charlie’s sitting with Vincent and the cutest little boy I’ve ever seen in my life.
He’s got light hair like his mother, curly on the top and buzzed on the sides and back though it’s thin and downy like baby chicken feathers. He hops out of Charlie’s lap where he was all snuggled looking at a book and comes crawling over to Calvino, throwing the book aside like it’s nothing.
“There’s my boy,” Calvino says, grinning, and catches the little guy up in his arms. My heart nearly freaking breaks watching big, bad Calvino hug his little baby nephew and tickle the tiny guy until he laughs and starts hiccupping. “Grace, this is Emilio.”
“Hi, bud,” I say and poke at his belly which makes him laugh and hiccup some more. He’s got wide, dark eyes and an easy smile with little baby teeth like Chiclets. “How old are you?”
He only babbles and grins at me.
Calvino laughs. “That’s right, big guy, you’re one.” He puts Emilio down, and the little guy immediately crawls back to his mother. “He’s going to be walking in no time.”
Charlie comes over and greets us and Vince isn’t far behind. We’re served wine and a cheese plate by two staff members in black and a nanny comes out to scoop up Emilio. “This one’s bedtime,” the woman says, an older lady with curly dark hair. “Say night-night.”
Emilio squints and says, “Night-night,” or something that sounds like it, and does the most adorable freaking wave in the world. Charlie kisses him and the nanny carries him inside.
“He’s our miracle,” Charlie says, smiling and watching the pair of them disappear. “We had so much trouble getting pregnant.” She talks quietly and doesn’t look back. I glance over at Vince and he’s watching his wife with a strange expression—one of anger instead of joy. It’s confusing and I don’t understand what would piss him off in a moment like this, but Charlie doesn’t seem to notice or care. “We tried so hard for so long until one night it all just came together, and now Emilio’s here. We’re truly blessed.” She turns around with tears in her eyes, blinks them away, and laughs. “God, I still get emotional over it. Should we drink?”
“Let’s drink,” Vince says, pouring Charlie more wine.
I glance at Calvino, not sure what the hell to make of that, and he only shrugs slightly like he doesn’t understand that interaction any better than I do. I sip my drink and rack my brain, and wonder if maybe Vince is embarrassed that they had trouble conceiving? But Emilio is here, so it couldn’t have been that horrible? I just don’t understand it, but Vince launches into a story about how he and Charlie went on a trip to Italy a few months before she got pregnant with Emilio and the conversation moves on.
But I keep thinking about that look on his face.
Charlie drinks a couple glasses of wine and loosens up. We have an incredible meal prepared by Olive, the cook, and after we’re finished, I excuse myself and drag Charlie down to the pool so we can sit and chat in privacy for a while.
“Here’s to your little boy, Emilio,” I say and we clink glasses. She laughs lightly though there’s a strange, hysterical edge to her voice.
“You don’t know how happy I am to have him. For a while I thought it would never happen.”
“It must’ve been hard on you two, especially Vince.”
She shrugs and waves a hand. “Vince didn’t care. I don’t think he ever really wanted kids, to be honest, so it was fine by him to keep having sex without ever conceiving. I was the one that was desperate for a baby.”