30. Sal
After I finish,Caterina stares at me for a second.
Then, she nods. "Okay. So. You love Gia."
"Yes," I whisper.
"And you're just going to give her up?"
I blink. "It's not that simple."
"Yeah, I think it's pretty flippin' simple, brother of mine."
"Gia doesn't want me," I say bitterly.
"And you think that would stop her?"
Glancing up at her, I can see that Caterina is serious. "What does that mean?"
She huffs. "I mean, if I know one thing about Gia Rossi, it's that she's more than just a dog with a bone. She's a wolf with a kill. She practically invented the whole concept of being persistent. She wouldn't stop if she loved you."
"Caterina," I sigh. "I know. That's why I know she doesn't love me back. Because if Gia loved me back, she'd do everything in her power to show me."
"Except… she wouldn't, would she?"
"What do you mean?"
"She's Gia. So, she'd do everything in her power to keep you safe. If she thought that the only way to keep you safe was to tell this Liam guy that she was going to marry him…"
I shut my eyes. "She doesn't want me, Caterina. Just leave it alone."
"That's not true!" Caterina says.
Her voice is shrill. I realize, looking at her, that she's more exhausted than I thought.
"Caterina," I say gently. "How did you get here?"
She waves a hand. "Helicopter from Milan. Jet from New York."
"I think we should probably go back…"
"No. Not until you admit you can't give up on her."
"Then she shouldn't have given up on me!" I yell.
Caterina blinks.
My chest is heaving, and I feel like I'm panting. I look at my sister, and the full force of my pain cracks through me.
"She should have chosen me. She shouldn't have given up on me. She should have showed me that she's just as into me as I am into her," I croak. "She should have loved me back."
"Oh, Sal," Caterina says.
I put my head down. I don't want to cry.
That's not what I'm going to do right now.
Caterina rushes forward and pats my back. "It's okay," she soothes. "It's okay."
"I…"
Caterina kind of stumbles, and I catch her. I look down and realize that the bags under her eyes are dark, and her lips look a weird shade of bluish purple.
I remember that my baby sister just gave birth, not even a week ago, to twins.
"Come on," I say, lifting her up in my arms. "Let's get you back to New York."
"Ugh. Fine," she mumbles sadly. "But only if you come back with me. I can't lose you, Sal," Caterina says sadly.
"I'm sorry, Cat," I say sincerely.
I am sorry.
I missed my niece and nephew being born.
I missed Luna's end-of-year celebration.
I missed a lot of things.
As we head back to the helicopter pad, where Elio's helicopter is waiting, shiny and sleek in the night, I have a glimmer of hope.
Maybe I can't be loved by Gia.
But Caterina loves me. My nieces and nephew will.
Maybe I don't need to be loved by Gia to survive.
The lie sounds so good that as I put Caterina onto the helicopter, I almost believe it.
Almost.
* * *
The twins are…loud.
Elio and Caterina's house has gone from being a place of relative peace, with Luna as the only source of chaos, to being complete and utter mayhem.
Two are a lot of babies to have at once.
Caterina and Elio need all the help that they can get.
And I guess in this situation, that comes in the form of… me.
Dino's kind of around. He's actually been helping more in the warehouse and with the shipping stuff. He and I take turns running the business and running the organization, while Elio and Caterina do their best to keep up with Luna and the babies.
It's insane.
We have to call in multiple Zia's and Nonna's for backup, and still, these babies run us like we're a military regiment.
No one talks about Gia.
However, I know that I'm not the only one who feels her absence everywhere.
Everyone does.
Luna, true to form, is the most direct about it. She asks for Zia Gia all the time. She's taken to sitting in Gia's room in the house, writing her letters and notes and sprinkling them around like some kind of summoning spell.
It doesn't work, of course.
None of us have the heart to tell her that it won't bring Gia back to us.
I don't know if she's married by now. It's been two weeks since I came back with Caterina from Italy, and none of us have heard anything.
She probably is married.
She's probably somehow managed to convince Liam that the baby…
My eyes shut.
I can't think about our baby. It's an area of me that hurts so badly, I can't even reach for it.
Caterina knows.
But she promised not to tell anyone.
I know she'll keep my secret. There's no point, not really.
Gia made her choice. She chose to make the alliance for the organization, for the family.
She chose Liam.
And she chose Liam for both of them.
One day, I'm just coming off of baby duty, heading to the garden of the house. I need a minute to catch my breath, to breathe in the dusk, and to just be outside. Elio and Caterina have kept a nice garden, which is unusual for the somewhat suburban home that he's purchased for them in upstate New York. I'm just coming around the hedge of roses that Caterina is so proud of, heading toward the cement benches that border a fountain, when I run into Elio in the garden.
He shoots me a guilty look, leaning back against the concrete bench. "Apologies. I needed a moment to breathe and enjoy the silence."
I laugh. "Yeah. I get that. I thought that Luna had a set of lungs as a baby, but she's got nothing on your two."
He wrinkles his nose. "I think that they try to out-compete each other in terms of the decibel levels of their cries."
"Possibly," I nod. "Either way, it's damn impressive that two people who are so small and so helpless can be so powerful."
Elio quirks a small smile at that. "They are fierce," he says in an approving voice. "Just like their mother."
Only time will tell if they're fierce like their Zia Gia as well.
I don't respond. After a while, Elio nods at me. "Caterina has the babies then?"
"Yeah, but they're sleeping," I say. "Put them down just now."
"Good. And Dino's coming to take over?"
"On his way now."
Elio sighs. "I am glad Dino has this chance to redeem himself."
I think about what Marco told us. I haven't revealed that to Elio yet either. There will be time for that.
There will be time for everything, I guess, once life settles in around the babies again.
"How are you doing, brother?" I ask Elio.
He shoots me a look. "I am… I don't know," he says honestly.
I tilt my head.
Elio sits back and shuts his eyes. "I am happy to have the babies here. I am happy to see my family. Being around Caterina makes every one of my days brighter," he says, knocking his head lightly against the cement retaining wall that the bench is positioned against.
I nod, settling into the bench across from him. "Yeah. That's kind of nice."
"It is a dream, Sal. One that I did not think I could ever hope for," Elio says softly.
I still.
My brother-in-law is a stoic man. He rarely shares anything about himself, and I'm pretty sure that Caterina is the only person who really knows him inside and out.
Well.
Caterina and Gia, of course.
"I did not think that, in this life, I could ever have such a treasure as a wife and children. Let alone a wife that I liked. Let alone one that I love as much as I love your sister."
"You're good for each other," I say.
Elio nods. "The only thing missing today, is my sister."
I freeze.
Continuing, Elio nods his head at me. "I know that you two had something. That was made clear to me after you took her back from Belarus. The fact that Gia consented to this marriage with the Irishman… I did not think it was real, Sal. I truly thought it was some kind of plot, made up by the fucking Irish to get back at us once again."
"I did too," I add.
"But then Stassi told us that Gia agreed to it. That she saw with her own eyes. But I have not yet heard from my sister. So I still do not believe that this is true," Elio adds.
"So why haven't you gone after her?"
"Gia is smarter than I am," Elio says. "She is more ruthless. More competent. She is built for this in a way that I'm not. I trust that if Gia decided to do this, then she has her reasons, and she will someday tell them to me."
I snort. "Yeah. Someday."
"The biggest surprise, however, is that she decided to marry someone who wasn't you."
I freeze.
I don't want to look at him, because if I do, I'm going to… I don't know. I've kept my feelings about Gia on a pretty tight leash and bottled up deep inside my soul.
I can't let them out, or I'm going to probably explode into a thousand pieces.
"Gia has never wanted to love someone. Not anyone other than myself, or Luna. She has always kept everyone at arm's reach, because I think it would have been too big of a betrayal if they didn't see her for who she was. For what she wanted. I didn't think such a man could exist. And then you came along," Elio looks at me. "You pulled her out of a burning building. You treat her like a queen. You recognize all that Gia is, and for the first time ever, her excuses were futile."
"Futile?"
"She had no choice but to love you, Sal. I think for someone as in control of herself as Gia is, the inevitability of falling for you was probably more terrifying than anything. She could not control for the variable that was you, and it probably scared her."
"And that's why she married him?"
Shaking his head, Elio looks at me. "We do not know that they are married yet."
"We can assume…"
"We should not assume," he says firmly. "If your sister has taught me anything, it is that we should never assume."
"Oh yeah? Anything else Caterina's taught you?"
Elio's lips curl. "To hope, Sal. She has taught me to hope."
He pulls himself off the bench and stretches. "One of the guards is out tonight. I'm going to patrol the outer perimeter, and then I will head inside to relive Dino."
"Rodger," I nod.
Elio walks away, leaving me in the garden.
I let the stillness of the night consume me.
Everyone but Gia, it appears, knew that we were meant for each other.
It's validating, but it doesn't mean anything.
In the end, Gia chose him. She didn't choose me.
And I need someone to choose me.
I'm out in the garden for a lot longer before a noise registers in my mind. It's weird, like shouting…
Elio.
I sprint for the front gate. By the time I arrive, I can see two shapes in the area in front of the driveway, on the outside of the gated entrance to Elio's home.
I move closer, my eyes searching in the dim light to figure out what's going on.
Elio has someone out front, somewhere in front of the iron gate to his home.
At gunpoint.
As I get closer, I recognize the tattoos, and the lean, almost whip-like stature. The mop of dark hair.
The irritatingly green eyes.
Yeah, I'd know this man anywhere. The very sight of him is burned into my brain, and I'll never be able to get it out again.
Liam.
Rage pours through me, and it takes every scrap of my self-control to not haul off and punch this asshole in the face.
"Here to gloat, you Irish fuck?" I spit at him.
Liam looks up at me, and rage simmers in his gaze too.
Good.
Beating the shit out of him might cause an inter-organization war, but I don't fucking care anymore.
All of the peace that I thought I'd made in this situation is gone. In its place, all I have, all I am, is anger.
He is the one that Gia chose. For better or worse, this man is the one who has access to her body right now.
To her heart.
And I don't give a shit anymore about him.
"It is altogether unclear to me what this man is doing at my house," Elio grunts.
His accent is thick. He's tired, he hasn't slept well in weeks, and he's more than a little protective right now.
I nod, looking at him. "Looks like he doesn't know when he's fucking invited," I snarl.
"No. No indeed. Which begs the question, Irish," Elio says coolly. "Why the fuck are you at my home?"
Liam looks at Elio. He clenches his jaw. I can see it working in the lamplight from Elio's front gate.
When he turns back to look at me, his words fall like boulders, sinking into the ground around me.
Anchoring me to something that I'm terrified to hear.
"Gia's been taken."
Elio and I both explode.
"What the fuck?"
"What do you mean? Didn't you take her from us?"
"Why the fuck weren't you watching her?"
"Why the fuck did you not…?"
Liam holds up a hand, and we both pause. He looks back at me, his eyes locking with mine.
"She's been taken. She's in Brazil."
My eyes widen.
Next to me, I hear Elio suck in a breath. "No," he murmurs. "There is no way."
Liam nods. "She's been taken by Benicio Souza.
The name hits me square in the chest.
"What the fuck?" I murmur.
Benicio is bad fucking news.
He's a despot. A politician who functions somewhere between a cartel leader and a warlord.
Getting something small from Benicio? Impossible.
Stealing back a person?
It's a fucking death sentence.
Liam shakes his head. "I'll have time to explain later. But Benicio took her because she belongs to me."
I growl at that.
Liam shakes his head again. "But I can't get her back alone. I need your help," he says.
Elio and I look at each other.
I look back at Liam.
I know that Elio's waiting on me to respond, but the answer is the easiest fucking thing I've done in a long time.
I nod. My mouth opens.
And without hesitation, I decide.
"Let's go get her."