Page 103 of Little Dove

“No, nothing that we can see right away,” Alessio replies. “But Lazaro found another diary and two certificates at Giovanni’s hideout, so they may give us a direction.”

“There’s a diary from my mother too?” I ask, my heart pounding.

Alessio nods, giving a knowing smile. “Perhaps it will finally answer some questions of how you were all smuggled out.”

Hope burns. I want that, desperately.

“Wait, what’s this?” Gia suddenly asks, pointing at the diary and the section where the certificates were. “Why does this say ‘Gia’s twin’? I don’t have a twin.”

Everyone freezes.

“What?” Sienna asks, moving around Nico to stand with Gia.

Gia’s hands shake as she picks up the diary, reading aloud, her voice thick with emotion.

“I knew this pregnancy was wrong. It was wrong from the first moment. I prayed for two sons. I prayed that I didn’t have to send away another daughter, but God did not answer my prayers. No, he punished me instead. He made my suffering a million times worse than any other before. Even sending away my beautiful girls, it was not enough. Perhaps this is my punishment for not keeping them with me. For daring to send them away. He gave me the final sign. The one that will surely have my husband killing me before long. Perhaps that is better. I will not be able to protect my daughter from her father now.Nor do I know if I want to. This is her fault. She came breech, and she prevented the doctors from saving her brother in time. He came out black and blue, the cord wrapped around his neck so tightly that there was no hope of saving him. He was dead before his birth. Leonardo was so angry, I thought he would kill her then. The doctor stopped him, barely, but perhaps it would have been kinder for him to stay out of it. She will never be loved. She will never be anything more than the reason that another son was taken from him. I can’t get her out, and that’s her own punishment to bear. She will not be as lucky as her sisters or her brother.”

“She h-h-hated m-m-me,” Gia sobs, staring at the diary. “I k-killed my b-b-brother.”

My heart breaks, and Sienna looks both horrified and heartbroken. She gently extracts the diary from Gia’s hand, trying to calm her down. “No, Gia. No. She didn’t hate you. She was in pain. She was tired and grieving. She didn’t mean it.”

“Yes, she did!” she screams, pain and anger so sharp that Sienna takes a step back from her in surprise. “Yes, she fucking did,” she screams again. “They all hated me. She never held me. She never loved me or treated me with anything other than disdain. She never read to me, she never tucked me in, and she never spent any more time than necessary in my presence. I knew she hated me. I thought I just wasn’t good enough. That I wasn’t trying hard enough. But that’s not it. It’s not. She hated me because I was born first, because I didn’t come easily like the others. She said it herself. My father should have killed me. I should have been the one who died, not her son.” Brutal sobs wrack her body as she cries in anguish, “It should have been me.”

Sienna moves like she wants to hug her, but Nico steps in, scooping her up in his arms. He leaves the office, not so much as glancing at any of us. His face is so hard, so cold, but his eyes areso full of pain. He’s gutted, just like his wife, but he has to be the strong one. Gia’s sobs echo through the house.

Is this what we have to look forward to? Vicious diatribes from long-dead mothers, and the death of our dreams that they once loved us?? Has everything been a lie?

Sienna starts to cry silently, and Alessio rushes to scoop her into his arms. He carries her out of the room, the diary falling to the floor out of her hands. I reach down to pick it up, holding it with shaking hands.

“Don’t, Rori,” Alonzo suddenly says, his tone far gentler than I’ve ever heard from him. He’s holding Rori back against him. She struggles, her expression a mixture of rage and desperation. “I know you are her friend, but she needs her man right now,” he tells her gently.

“I’m her best friend, her sister,” Rori snarls. “She needs me too.”

“She does, but not yet,” he admonishes. “Just give them a little bit of time and then you can be with her.”

Rori slumps, her face contorted in despair. Then she does something completely unexpected. She turns, wraps her arms around him, and holds him tight. Alonzo looks surprised, but he hugs her to his chest, then lifts her and carries her over to the corner of the room, murmuring quietly.

I look at the others in the room. Sofia appears troubled, and I see her holding Dante’s hand tightly, while the other men look a mixture of angry, shocked, and resolute. The weight of the diary in my hand is almost too much to bear. I want to open it, to read more, to find the parts that prove this faceless woman isn’t as terrible as it’s proving her to be, but I don’t. It’s not my story to find. She was my aunt, not my mother, and I have no right to it.

I turn to Pietro and hold out the diary to him with shaking hands. He takes it and sets it back on the desk without looking at it. “Aurelio, we need to find the other girl. Quickly.”

“I’ll work as long as I have to find her. Both her, and your sister.” His voice is determined, but he can’t keep the worry from his eyes.

We’re all thinking the same thing. What else will we unearth in these diaries, and how many other lives are they going to destroy?

34

LAZARO

The first thingI see is Amara’s tear-streaked face. “What happened?” I demand, rushing toward her and scooping her up into my arms. “Someone start talking,” I bark, holding her close.

“I’m alright, Lazaro,” Amara reassures me hastily, wrapping her arms around my neck. “It’s just been an emotional couple of minutes. I’m fine.”

I look around the room, pausing when I see Alonzo in the corner with Rori, holding her tightly against him, murmuring quietly. Then I see Sofia close to Dante, and a sinking feeling fills my stomach. “What happened?” I demand, my tone no less worried. “Has there been another attack?”

“No, son,” Papa says, a heaviness to his tone. “We were reviewing the diary and certificates, and some revelations have come to light that we didn’t expect.”

“Revelations?” Massimo repeats as he moves to stand next to me.

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