I turn and Calvino’s staring at Charlie with his mouth hanging open and I watch his brain make connections mine isn’t—piecing together a torn-up ransom note, reconstructing a crime scene, rebuilding a home lost to a tornado—and his skin turns pale, his eyes dilate, and his hands ball into fists.
“You wouldn’t,” he says quietly and his voice is a twisted husk. He’s talking through a thousand leagues of water and I still don’t understand why. “Vincent. Tell me you wouldn’t.”
Vince’s laughter disappears. “I had to ensure the child would look like us, brother. It was the only way.”
Calvino’s face turns red. “It wasn’t the only way. You could’ve come to us and asked for help. We could’ve donated, or gotten doctors involved, or something. A thousand other ways, a thousand better ways. But not this.”
“It had to be done in secret, and there was only one person in the whole world that understood what I was going through. I was the son of the Don and I couldn’t conceive. Do you understand how that looked? I was supposed to take over the family one day, and I couldn’t even get my fucking wife pregnant. It was pathetic, but he understood, Calvino. He understood.”
Charlie’s shaking. She’s sobbing, trembling, like she’s having a fit, and she sinks down to her knees. I sink down with her, hugging her tight, holding onto her like she’s a buoy in the ocean because I’m starting to see the edges of the picture. What Charlie told us was bad, awful, horrible, one of the worst things I could imagine—and yet this is so much worse. Like a horror movie made real.
“You made your wife fuck our father.” Calvino vomits the words out.
Damon gags and steps back, bumping into the bookshelf. “What? No, you fucking wouldn’t.”
Vince is bright pink. He’s angry, embarrassed, everything. I can’t tell because my brain’s a swirling, buzzing mess, and Charlie’s falling to pieces in my arms as I pull her tighter against me, trying to protect her from what’s coming out, the truth she kept hidden and instead told a lesser but still awful story. She tried to come clean but it was too much, and now I can understand why.
Benvolio Manzini, the Don of the family.
Emilio is Calvino’s half-brother.
“I did what I had to do,” Vince says as he punches his fist down against the desk. “Nobody else would’ve gotten it, but Dad knew the pressures I felt. He knew how important it was for Emilio to look like us, for my wife to be pregnant. We had to show that the family would continue, on and on. It’s so fucking barbaric and backwards and yet it’s part of our world, and it was all on my fucking shoulders. When I told Dad that we were having trouble, he suggested a solution. He could get Charlie pregnant. The baby would be mine and a Manzini, truly a Manzini. But my boy is my brother, isn’t he?”
“You twisted monster,” Calvino says and he stalks forward. “You forced your wife to fuck our father. You let Dad rape her.”
“She chose to do this. Don’t get all moralistic on me, brother. You know what we do for this family and what it asks of us better than anyone. Nobody raped Charlie, she did it willingly.”
At that, Charlie only cries harder.
“You forced her into it,” Calvino says, barely restrained. “You think she had any choice when her husband and her father-in-law are telling her this is the only way? Can you imagine how fucking scared and alone she felt? She agreed out of terror, and you let her do it. You let her sleep with Dad, you let her get pregnant, you made it all happen. And god, that night, he tried to fuck her again and she killed him.”
Charlie sobs against my chest and nods her head over and over. Good for fucking her.
Vince looks away. “That wasn’t part of the deal. He wasn’t supposed to do that.”
“But he did and Charlie killed him, and goddamn right she did. Dad deserved to die for that, and you know what, Vince? You fucking do too.”
Calvino leaps at the desk and grabs the Eiffel Tower paperweight. When I pictured it as a bludgeon, I never imagined how small it would look in a hand, but it seems so inadequate. Charlie screams and buries her face in my arms and Damon shouts something weakly but doesn’t move from where he’s holding onto a shelf like he’s desperately trying to keep the house from collapsing. Calvino slams into Vince like a rugby player and the pair of them topple backwards, hit the window, and fall to the floor in a tangle of limbs and punching fists.
“Damon! Do something!”
Damon, still in shock, throws his drink aside. He staggers forward but the paperweight comes up and slams down with a dull thud. When it raises again, blood’s splattered on its edge. Calvino brings it down, again, again, again, until Damon reaches him and yanks him back.