“A man in my position cannot afford to be too sentimental. The Ricci family owns much and has considerable wealth. Who should I leave this wealth to, huh? The son who is probably going to bring the whole family down with him, blemish the name? Or the son who wants nothing to do with it? Or the grandson who isn’t much different from his father?”
“Do you see now why I was so excited when we met? It was like my papa coming back from the grave, a sign and new hope for the future. I saw you that night, in the room after he did what he did. You want to kill him; maybe you were thinking of your mother and what had been done to her. But niputi, you cannot have blood on your hands.”
“You must be the first, the first of the Ricci who has no darkness hidden in your past, whose hands are not stained with blood. You will come with me tomorrow to meet with the Cardinal. I will tell you then what I have planned.” I watched him as he stood from the table, looking like he’d aged yet again.
That was yesterday! True to his word, he’d taken me with him to the meet, even though I still refused to tell him where his grandkids were. I’m sure he suspected that I’d sent them to the States, but there was no way for him to find them. The meet went better than expected, but I think Sal was a bit taken aback that it was because of me.
When the Cardinal started asking about Nana and how she was doing, and the fact that he seemed more interested in talking to me about familial things than anything else, it kind of showed me in a new light. In short, it was there he realized that if he was planning on backing this horse, he’d picked the right one.
Once the formalities were over and they got down to business, I excused myself, but both men asked me to stay. I got the feeling that either Nana or someone else had put a bug in the priest’s ear because he seemed to think that I was Sal’s heir, or at least his conversation leaned heavily in my favor. Whether Sal had intended it or not, it was made obvious that the only way he was going to get what he wanted was if he indeed planned to pass it all to me.
Sal didn’t seem too bothered; in fact, he all but genuflected before the man as we stood to leave. Believe it or not, my mind was far removed. Today is the day I was supposed to go see Teresa behind bars. I didn’t plan on being there long, just a quick in and out. There was no way for her to be released since she couldn’t make bail. All assets had been seized.
I made my excuses as soon as we got back to the palazzo and made my escape not long after. Matthew and Denver were waiting for me on Pop’s orders since I couldn’t very well ask Fabrizio or one of his men to take me. They looked like two frat boys on holiday. I guess that was their way of not bringing attention to themselves.
She looked like she’d lost weight when I walked into the stone room that looked like it had been built sometime during the Inquisition and hadn’t been updated since. She looked gaunt when she looked up at me as I walked in. “Hello, Teresa.”
“You? Why are you here? Not even my friends have come to see me.”
“They’re a little busy.”
Something in my tone tipped her off as I meant it to. “What do you mean?”
“Do you remember my mother? Sofia? No, scratch that, do you remember the night I was conceived?” She was already squirming in her seat and looking anywhere but at me as I took the seat across from her.
“How would I know such a thing? Alonzo had many girlfriends back then; it wasn’t my place to keep track.”
Instead of playing into her bullshit, I just pulled out my little recorder and hit play. The nun’s voice came through loud and clear, mentioning her name and the fact that she was there that night. She muttered the name Athena proving that she recognized the voice. When it was over, she looked at me with something approaching fear in her eyes.
“You, what have you done?”
“It’s called Magun poison. I put it in the wine. It wouldn’t harm you, but your sexual partners would be slowly poisoned each time you engaged since it passed through your sexual secretions. I changed the dosage so that it would drag out for some time. I had other things to take care of, and I didn’t want to miss your husband’s passing, so I made it so that he’d rot away slowly until I came back. The last bottle I brought you had a higher dosage, and that is why he didn’t last much longer after you drank from it.”