Page 17 of Vincenzo's Promise
“It means exactly what you think it means, Zo. If my mother had been Sicilian and from a respectable, possibly affiliated Sicilian family, she would have been welcomed with open arms into your world. But that wasn’t what she was. She was a young, Black woman who fell in love with the wrong man.”
What could I say other than she was right? That was the world both Cyrus and I had come from. Arranged marriages between families and clans had been going on longer than I’d been alive. The Cosa Nostra was no different from the Camorra. Although my parents weren’t Sicilian but Campanians, it was the same way. They didn’t know one another, but my grandfathers had been leaders of two clans and had wanted to strengthen their standings in the criminal world before their children, my parents, came to the United States. It was how it had always been. It was the world we were now going to face, head on,together.
“What happened to her?” I asked.
I understood this was a difficult subject. She loved both her mother and her father, and it was in the way she spoke about them. But it would help me learn more about who she was if she explained a little of her life. What she went through separated from her father. And, to tell the truth, I wanted to learn as much about her as I could.
“She passed away from a broken heart a few days before her birthday.”
“Damn. I’m so sorry, Bella,” I said. “But do you really believe that? That she passed from a broken heart?”
“I do.” She looked at me, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. “And my father believes it too.”
“Do you mind telling me how it happened?”
She shook her head. “He came to visit after a long time away. It was unusual for him to stay away from us for so long. So, to make it up to us, he stayed for about two weeks. That was the longest he stayed at any given time. It was almost like we were a real family.” She sarcastically laughed. “Anyway, we went out together. We even had family dinners every night. It was one of the best times in my life, but then it was all gone. The night he left, I was so upset, and I could hear her weeping. I didn’t think much of it because that was what she always did when he left, and I was always angry. So, I just went to sleep hoping tomorrow would be a better day for both of us. But when I woke up and checked on her, she was already gone and there was nothing I could do to save her.”
“You found her?”
She nodded, and my heart ached for her. I couldn’t imagine finding my mother dead and knowing my father was the cause of it.
I wiped away the tear that fell from her eye. She gave a thankful smile before taking in a breath and exhaling. “The doctor said her heart just stopped. After her death, my father was never the same. He became colder, more ruthless. I decided I would become a doctor to keep families from feeling the pain I’d felt that night.” She sighed deeply. “I’m sorry. This isn’t how I saw this date going.”
“Don’t apologize. I asked. The point of this date is to get to know one another and talking about your parents and their relationship is a part of it.” I couldn’t hold my curiosity much longer. I wondered if she knew anything about the pictures. “Can you tell me what you know about this man?” I grabbed the picture of my father off the mantle.
“According to my mother, he was my father’s best friend.” She took the picture from me, looked at it for a moment, and placed it back on the mantle. “My mother is the one who took the picture, and this is her old neighborhood. Whenever I asked my father about him and the little boy, he would only say I might get to meet them someday, and he’d change the subject.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I don’t even know the man’s name or his son’s. I have a few more pictures other than the one here put away of me and the little boy playing together. I think there may be one of the man holding me as well. I’ll have to look.”
What the fuck?
“Why do you ask?”
“Because the man is my father, and I’m the little boy.”
She gasped and looked back at the picture, then at me. “Wow. Okay. Well, do you remember ever seeing me when you were younger? Because I don’t remember you or your father. I think I’m around three, maybe four at the most in this picture of us together.”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure of my age, but I look to be around seven, maybe eight.”
All of this was strange. I’d had no idea my father and Cyrus had known one another on a personal level. We were Camorra. He was Cosa Nostra. Rarely did the two factions do business together if it could be helped. The only reason we were in this position now was because Cyrus’s son encroached on my clan’s territory, which was unacceptable, no matter what faction.
“Zo, do you find it weird your father knew of my existence when others didn’t?”
“I do, but I can’t ask him or my mother. He passed almost ten years ago, and my mother when I was fifteen.”
“Oh, I’m sorry for your loss,” she said, resting her hand on my arm.
I grasped it, squeezed. “It was a long time ago.”
My parents’ death wasn’t something I liked to talk about. My mother had endured a lengthy battle with cancer, dying when I was only fifteen, and theLifetook my father away from me. It was the main reason I was ready to marry and have an heir. I’d taken control of the organization at twenty-five, basically unheard of in our world. But now, at thirty-five, I wanted to make sure my personal life was in order in case I met the same fate as him. When you head one of the Camorra clans, you never know when your time might be up and who was gunning for you. My legacy had to be established before anything like that happened.
“So, what do we do with this information?” she asked. “Something tells me this is significant.”
I reluctantly let go of her soft hand, which she didn’t seem to mind me holding on to, but I didn’t want to come off as overly touchy. “Don’t mention anything to your father. I want to do some digging before we approach him with what we found. Something’s going on, and I think we need to be careful how we tackle this situation.”
“Why?”
