Page 15 of Tide of Treason
A common belief around here, but not one I’d ever taken stock in, especially coming from the same woman who’d encouraged Viviana to explore love. To experience life. When my sister had come to her, tears flowing, admitting she was into women, Mamma held her and told her it was okay.
Now here we were, choking on her hypocrisy.
“You disgust me.”
We locked eyes.
She broke contact first, turning her head away and shaking it slightly. Neither of us ever felt comfortable saying what lingered in the air. She’d never admit she was at fault, and I knew I could never forgive her. Not entirely.
“Let me ask you something.” Mamma looked back at me. Her eyes roamed my face with a strange expression.
“Go on.”
An unreadable smile pulled on her lips. “Are you still seeing Giorgio?”
The implication tightened the band already cinched around my temples. If she wanted to change the subject, she should have tried harder. Still, I answered with a single syllable to shut the door on my papà’s loyal consigliere.
“No.”
I’d seen more of his dick than I’d seen of my own heart, which was probably why he kept coming back. The problem was, Giorgio wanted the one thing I could never give him: my devotion.
Mamma regarded me with that knowing Sforza stare. We shared bone structure and a mutual lust for what we shouldn’t have, but while Mamma dined on her every craving, I was stuck mopping up the aftermath. Although, that look of hers had me wondering if she knew the real reason I’d been avoiding the library.
“Good,” she said simply.
“You’ve done more laps around the block than I have.”
“At least I am honest about it.”
“Are you?”
She stared past me, her smile faint. “Sometimes.”
“Flavia!”
Nonna’s sharp voice cut through the room, dragging my attention to the doorway.
The older woman hobbled in the library with her metal cane, looking every inch the embodiment of a Sicilian nightmare. Nonna was always frowning, always complaining. If not in Italian, then English. If not in English, she’d pull out French, Spanish, or Latin just to make sure everyone knew how thoroughly unimpressed she was.
“Madonna mia,” she muttered, her face twisted in revulsion. “Pigs. You arepigs, rolling in the filth of your greed! How can I hold my head high and call myself a Sforza when this is the family I must answer for? Embarrassing! Disgraceful!”
With a huff of indignation, she hobbled over to the record player in the corner and flicked it off. Sinatra choked mid-note, leaving behind an oppressive silence. But not for long. Nonna’s weathered brown eyes landed on Mamma, and the tirade began again, this time in rapid-fire Italian.
I leaned back, letting her words wash over me, half-listening as she cursed Mamma for dishonouring our family, disgracing our ancestors, and dragging the memory of her dead father through the mud. If Nonna was to be believed, her papà—may he rot in a pit with dry prosciutto and no espresso—was doing somersaults in his grave because of what Mamma had reduced us to.
A pack of money-hungry heathens.
I couldn’t have agreed more.
I loved my grandmother, but I thought she, too, was a greedy bastard. She was also the most corrupt woman alive. Because if anyone had passed down the art of the gamble inthis family, it wasn’t Mamma. It was her. And Mamma had learned well. Porn had paid for the diamonds, but it was the side hustle of rigged cards that kept her in baccarat and business.
“Are you finished?” Mamma asked in a bored tone when the old woman stopped to take a heaving breath.
Nonna raised her cane.
Mamma tensed.
She lowered it with a smile. “For now,si.”
