Page 21 of Amico
“When he found out the truth,” Giovanni begins. “Sofia and I, we should have been killed.”
He picks up his glass and takes a long sip from it. I stare at him in disbelief, too dumbfounded to do the same. Setting his glass back down, I look at Sofia once, before glancing back at Giovanni and waiting for him to speak again. “Instead, I was ex-communicated for helping hide the secret. Sofia as well. Luigi would never be disgraced with a divorce, so he sent us both away from Rome. To theold housein Sicily. And made us swear to take our secrets with us, or else meet our death.”
“And you agreed to this?” I yell, turning and looking nowhere but at Sofia. The only thought running through my mind - what kind of mother and father could let their daughter go and not fight until the end to save her? Get her back! Make sure no harm came to her! “It is worse enough that Luigi, her own father…
“He isn’t her father!” Sofia snaps, as she slams her wine glass down on the counter breaking her calm, cool, collected behavior from moments before. Startled, I look at her with wide eyes and wait for her to continue. “Vincent Nitti is.”
My world spins with the truth I have just been handed as I stare at both of them, dumbfounded, confused, entirely not believing a damn word they are telling me.
“There is more in that notebook than you think, Leonardo,” I hear Giovanni say while my brain is still trying to play catch up. While I am still trying to find a way to understand that the woman I’ve stupidly fallen for, is the sworn enemy of the man I work for. The man who took me in, gave me a home when I had none, and saved me from death.
“Why do you think Vincent has always fought for control, for the power that Luigi has?” Sofia asks, making me look her way confused, although I’m slowly grasping onto the truth as more is revealed.
My mind scrambles to try and make sense of it all, but I don’t know much, having blocked out earlier memories much like Maria. But unlike her, it wasn’t out of amnesia, but hate. Loathing for what I saw and what I couldn’t change mere months before my parents disappeared, were murdered, and I still have yet to know by who but all signs point to Nitti.
As I wait for one of them to speak, it is not lost on me that the truth is bigger than the Lombardis. Bigger than the Nittis. And once it is discovered there is no telling what will be done to stop it. Cover it up. Change the course of the future the only way the mob knows how.
Death.
Sofia comes from what most would consider Italian royalty. Her father was the last “capo di tutti capi,” or “boss of all bosses.”A position that has not been held since the 1930s or 40s, before he was brutally murdered. Rumor has it, the Lombardi Family is to blame. Although no one has been able to prove it, until now. If my assumptions are correct, the notebook tells the story, and I slowly realize now why Luigi needed Maria brought in, dead or alive, no questions asked. The only problem, if other rumors are true, not bringing her in would help the man who killed my parents in cold blood. And I will be damned to hell if I ever let myself do that. No matter how strongly I feel about her.
“We need that notebook, Leonardo,” I hear Sofia whisper as she comes a step forward. “How Costello got it and where it came from, neither of us know. There is no way a soldier like him could have wrote it, regardless of what you have been told. But I do know it may just be the key to more than any of us can imagine.”
I look up at her and catch the eye of someone in the doorway. Maria. I don’t know how long she has been standing there, but by the look in her eyes it has been long enough. Her face is void of any life. Her features dimmed by the news, the revelation, that all she has lived before now, for as long as she can remember, is a lie.
Her presence calls to me. Her weakness, frailty, turmoil, making me want to heal her. Free her. Take us back to the boat in the harbor and forget everything that just happened and the truth we both just stumbled upon.
But I don’t. I can’t. And heaven help me because I won’t let myself. I stand and stare in her eyes, wondering how much she just overheard and feeling my heart harden because I have beentrainedto hate her. Trained to not associate myself with the enemy. Never.
The Nitti’s being the one and only thing I have ever been told are all that is evil, wrong, an abomination in the world. The one person, one entity, I have been instructed to take out and spare no expense in their torture. Something I have found delight in often and swore I always would again.
She is one of them.
My stance becomes hostile. My heart turns sour, bitter, as I take in all I have just been told and know there is no way to change it.
Maria Nitti is the girl I have waited for my whole fucking life. The girl I fought for and swore to protect at a young age.
But now, I know she is the one thing in this world that can end it all. Sabotage what I have worked for. Ruin all I have ever known.
Not only that, she’s the one person, above all others, I have sworn to kill. Crucify. Murder.
That is if I don’t let her destroy me first.
Maria
I stand in the shadows staring into a room of strangers. Of people I have known, my whole life but yet forgotten. Blocked out. Forced myself to forget.
My eyes switch from my mother to Leonardo. My breathing quickens when I see the look on his face. The one that tells me hatred is more welcome than his vengeance. A wrath he has sworn to see through. No matter what the expense.
I stare in his eyes as he goes to war with himself. I can see his dark blue irises clear, right before they cloud over again and make me nervous where I stand. What was said before between us, in the heat of passion, holds no weight here anymore. Not while Luigi rules his mind. And maybe not even after.
My mother motions for me to come into the room, and I don’t comply at first. I wait, until Leonardo looks away before taking a step forward and meeting both my mother and Giovanni’s eyes with a smile. A weary smile, that is all I can muster up as my present collides with my distant past and I have no clue what to think.
“Maria, please,” my mother says gently as I walk further into the room. “Would you like a drink? Wine maybe?” I see her look to Leonardo, a gesture asking him to pour me a glass. But his jaw is set in stone and his glare makes me worry for my life before he walks away from the bar altogether to take a stance across the room.
I watch him leave as my body struggles to let him go and pull him closer all at the same time. I want him with me. The young boy I knew I loved all those years ago, and the man who takes my breath away every second he is near. With his back turned to me, he gazes out a window and raises his glass to his lips. My heart breaks as I take the glass of wine my mother offers me and slip into a seat at the bar.
“I need to decode that notebook, Leonardo” I hear Giovanni insist before my head snaps up and I realize they are talking aboutmynotebook. The one I brought with me. That I took from my then mother’s dresser drawer and swore to always keep safe. The notebook that I suddenly realize I haven’t been in possession of since Leonardo drugged me in the garden.
