Page 41 of Wicked Rivals

"That's one of the reasons, yes," I said.

His questions just kept coming.

The more the boy talked, the more he reminded me of my brother—blunt, direct, straight to the point. He wasted no time with pleasantries or asking questions to which he truly didn’t care to know the answer.

A trait like this could serve Enzo well if he learned how to apply it properly. If not, he might end up like Anthony. Dead before his twenty-eighth birthday.

“Your turn to answer a few questions for me, Enzo.”

“Okay. I'll tell you what I can.”

After parroting my own words back to me, a sly smile curved his lips. Good. He was smarter than Anthony.

“Most kids your age wouldn't know how to deal with any of this,” I began. “Sometimes even I don't know how to deal with this. But you're sitting there, so calm after all the violence tonight, and finding out your mother’s been hiding you from me all these years. How do you do that?”

Enzo took another sip of water from his crystal glass, then set it on a coaster on the wooden table.

“It’s always been just me and Mama and the café. Well, hernonnatoo. I don’t think she was Mama’s real grandma, but she loved her like that. Before Nonna died, her mind got sick and started falling apart.

“She told me stories about her kids and how they died and the mafia. It made her so sad, but she didn’t stop talking.

“One day she was telling me about her last son and how he got in trouble. How he died because powerful men used him as a pawn. That was when Nonna told me why my mom has her secrets too.

“I don’t think she knew what she was saying, but she still knew a lot. That my mom was keeping a secret from me. After Nonna died, I was going through some of her things and found where Mama keeps her secrets. Some of them anyway."

“What kind of secrets?” I asked.

Enzo looked me in the eye with one brow slightly raised, the same way my mother had whenever I’d acted up and earned her disapproval.

“The kind I shouldn’t be talking about,” he said. “If you really wanna know, ask her.”

The way Enzo seemed to look through me and yet see absolutely everything was more than a little unnerving.

My father had been able to do the same thing, especially when someone tried to hide a certain truth from him. He could sniff it out like the best bloodhound on a trail.

Now I could practically see the wheels turning in this boy’s head as he pondered his next moves, as if he were calculating all the outcomes of every scenario and then choosing his actions accordingly.

“My point,” Enzo continued, “is that I know Mama had to make really hard choices in her life. I know her choices have always been to protect me. So when she keeps a secret from me, I know Mama has a good reason.”

I nodded, searching his face for clues, but there were none.

“I understand. And you don't want to tell me what those reasons might be.”

“I think what happened tonight is one of them. Something she was trying to keep me safe from.”

Again that eyebrow arched, reminding me of my mother and her silent warnings that I knew better than to act in whatever way she disapproved of so much.

“Maybe it is,” I conceded. “In that case, why don’t we talk about a few things your mother won’t object to?”

That seemed agreeable enough to him. Enzo asked me questions about my family, which I answered as honestly as I felt was appropriate.

I told him I was the last one of us, that I had a sister who was married into another family. I told him my father and brother had passed and that my mother had followed shortly after, though I didn’t divulge how.

I got the impression that Enzo learned more from my conversational pivots and strategic silences than he did from my answers.

I asked him about school, what subjects he liked, which he didn’t like, and what his goals were.

The boy lit up when he talked about how much he enjoyed reading and exploring new worlds, fictional or otherwise, and watching the movie that played out in his head whenever he dove into a good book.

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