“Charlie?” I watch her carefully as she bounces Emilio on her knee. “Do you want me to tell him?”
“Please, don’t make me,” she says, not looking over. “I can’t do it twice.”
I sigh and feel my stomach twist, but I do my best to give Damon the whole story. I start with Riley, move through her failure, into her murder, and finish with Charlie and Louie. When I’m done, Diego throws his drink back and stares at the ceiling with his eyes squeezed close, mouthing what looks like a prayer in Spanish.
“This has to be a joke,” Damon says, his face utterly pale. “Louie, of all people? That fucking psychopath?”
Calvino shakes his head. “I’m sorry, brother, but it’s real. Vince forced his wife to sleep with another man, all because he couldn’t get her pregnant.”
Damon shakes his head and starts to pace. Charlie watches him warily. “I knew Vince was a little unhinged. It’s part of why we’ve been fighting lately. He doesn’t have his emotions under control and I’m afraid he’s making bad decisions, but you’re telling me it’s even worse than that. You’re telling me he committed some heinous crime, all because he didn’t want to go to some fucking fertility doctor.”
“I think he’s unhinged because of what he made his wife do,” I say and look at Calvino, who seems thoughtful. “It explains a lot, doesn’t it? His anger and paranoia.”
“We have to do something about this,” Calvino says, approaching his brother. “Vince is out of control. What he did to Charlie is bad enough to warrant death, but—”
“Death?” Damon steps back. “You want to kill our brother?”
“He forced his wife to sleep with a trigger man. He let a member of the family rape his wife, Damon. Do you understand this at all? What kind of people would we be if we saw that and let it slide?”
Damon throws his drink back, visibly trembling. “You want to kill Vince. Which means I’ll become Don.”
Calvino closes the distance between them and swats the glass from his hand. It hits the floor and tumbles to the side but doesn’t break. He grabs Damon by the shirt and jams him backward into the wall, snarling like a rabid wolf. “Are you thinking about yourself right now? After what you just learned about your sister-in-law? And what your brother did to her?”
“I’m thinking about the family,” Damon says and he’s sweating and his eyes are wild. “If we kill Vince, I’ll become Don. Can we survive another leader in less than a year?”
“We’ll fucking survive it because you’ll step up and be strong.” Calvino stays close, talking right into his face. “I’ll make sure of it.”
For a long, tense moment, nobody moves. Diego shifts subtly, moving closer to Calvino like he plans on helping. The only sound is the TV and the PJ Masks defeating a night-time villain, and Emilio gurgling and laughing and babbling along while his mother plays with his hair and blinks away the tears.
“Okay,” Damon whispers. “We’ll do it. God help my soul, but we’ll do it.”
Calvin releases him and steps away. He’s breathing hard and I go to him, touch his arm, press myself to his side. He hugs me tight as Damon pours another drink and throws it back.
“There’s one more thing,” I say as I get on my toes to kiss Calvino’s cheek. “We still don’t know what happened the night your mother died.”
Calvino closes his eyes. “I don’t want to know anymore. But we need to know, don’t we?”
I nod and kiss his hand before I turn to Charlie.
“We went on that trip four months after I had Emilio.” Charlie talks and stares ahead at the TV and doesn’t acknowledge anyone, only keeps playing with her son’s hair, combing it, pulling it, twirling it. “We left my son at home with the nanny with enough frozen milk and formula to get him through a few days. On the second night, I went upstairs to pump and he followed me. At first, I didn’t understand why until he started lighting candles.”
I groan and Calvino whispers something sharp in rough Italian beneath his breath. Diego curses in Spanish, and Damon turns green like he might be sick.
“I didn’t let him do it,” Charlie says. “He came onto me saying how much he liked it before and how maybe I’d start to like it too, kept calling me his wonderful lady, and I grabbed a fireplace poker and started hitting him with it. He fought back, and I guess we struggled and knocked over the damn candles. That’s how the fire started. I pulled the poker from him when he tried to turn around and douse the flames and hit him in the head over and over again, and maybe I killed him then or maybe he died in the fire, I don’t know. But the smoke was bad and the flames were growing, and I didn’t have time to warn everyone. I got out of there, and Vince came stumbling out next, but your mother, she never made it. She’d gone to bed earlier with a headache after drinking too much wine and I think she just never woke up.”