Twenty-four: In the morning, I woke up feeling sore, and achy, and pleasant. I glanced over to see if Cesare was there but he wasn’t. He did leave a note though. I grabbed it and read what it said. To keep up the ruse-Cesare I smiled at the words. Cesare had a plan. He always did. I got up, showered, and got dressed. Before I even could get out of my room, there was a knock on the door. Galileo was standing there waiting for me, his brown eyes filled with fury. “Er, hi.” Guilt filled my stomach. “You were with him.” He glared at me, and his nostrils flared. “You don’t understand---” He reached out and grabbed me by the wrist. His grip tightened so hard that I couldn’t get out. “What are you doing?” I demanded. “I’m not yours, Galileo. I have a child with your brother.” He shook his head. “That doesn’t mean that the two of you get to run off and hide. Not when there are people that care about you that
Twenty-five: It had been a long time since I’d been to New York. I thought maybe we’d take a private jet or something. But as Galileo explained, if we took a jet, Cesare would know. “The train?” I said, surprised when the train station was where he had parked the car. Galileo glanced over at me. “You’ve been rich for about five seconds. Don’t tell me you’ve become a snob already.” I laughed. “No, I haven’t. I just thought that you’d have some fancy way of getting there, that’s all. Also, I wasn’t sure that the Luna brothers would even know what the train was.” Galileo smirked. “Cesare probably wouldn’t. He’s a posh priss. But when I started working at the restaurant, a lot of my co-workers took the train home. It seemed weird to show up in my car. So, I started taking the train home with them. It’s actually what made them trust me so much in the kitchen. We’d take the train home and talk and then I wasn’t just Octavious Luna’
Twenty-six: I left the train station with Cesare. Galileo didn’t even bother following us. Even though he was my security guard, I was with the most dangerous person that he knew. He was the one that could keep me safe no matter where I was. “You shouldn’t have doubted me,” he said, as we drove away from the station. “I’m sorry,” I apologized, “but we don’t really know anything about each other and when I met you…I wanted to kill you.” Cesare sighed. “If you have something to ask, Emmilia, you ask me. You don’t go to my brother or anyone else. They only think they know the real me. The truth is, you’re the only one that has come even close to knowing me. I would never share my plans about my father with them. I’ve only shared them with you.” I glanced over at him. “I think you’re making a mistake doing that.” “Why?” he asked. “Laura and Galileo aren’t little kids anymore. I know it might be hard to see them as any
Twenty-seven:I had called Nero so that the two of us could talk. Nero and I were about a month apart. Maybe that should have been the tip off that there was something more to the two of us than we had thought. But I couldn’t imagine that my mother wasn’t my mother. There were two many secrets to fathom. The two of us were sitting at the Luna family restaurant, staring at each other.“Well….” Nero fiddled with his drink, which was wine, even though it was in the afternoon.“You put it together, didn’t you?” I said.He raised an eyebrow. “Put what together?”I groaned. “Come on. Don’t be like this. You’re too smart for that. You know exactly why I’m here. We’ve got to talk about the truth.”Nero sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I’ve never wanted a cigarette more badly and I’m trying to quite.”I snickered. “Why, exactly, are you trying to quite? Does that have anything to do with a girl?”He glared at me. “Oh, come on. Don’t talk about this. Things are already weird enough.”“W
Twenty-eight:When I got to my apartment, I was surprised that Galileo wasn’t standing out there with the other two security guards. “Billy,” I said, “where’s Galileo?” Galileo normally went with me everywhere, unless I was with family or Cesare. Since I was with Nero, he hadn’t gone with me. But now I was beginning to think that maybe I did need one around my brother. In fact, I wasn’t even sure who I could trust anymore. I had thought that Thalia was my real mother---but now I wasn’t so sure.“I don’t know,” said Billy, “Galileo hasn’t been here all day.”I raised an eyebrow. “That’s strange. Normally he’s always skulking around somewhere.”Billy shrugged. “Who knows?”“Is Laura here?” I asked.Billy coughed. “Think about that question.”I frowned. “Right, of course. You wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t here.” I opened the door. Inside, Laura sat on the couch, staring outside at the window. I raised an eyebrow. “Laura?”She glanced over at me. “Oh. Hey.”“Are you okay?”She sighed. “I
Twenty-nine: There was someone stroking my face. I woke up, and I was not in a place that I knew of. My vision kept on going in and out but slowly, I focused on the face before me. It was not Galileo. It was not Cesare. And it was not even Nikos or my father. “Daddy?” the words came out of my mouth before I could stop them. It was not Donatello I was looking at. It was the man that I had thought was my father. The Fixer. He smiled up at me. I never called him by his given name. I only kept his last name because it kept me safe. He and Donatello were twins, although it was easier to tell him because he had a big scar above his eyes. His nose also looked like it was broken. “Hey, sweetie.” He also had a deep voice because he’d been in a fire that had damaged his vocal cords. I pulled back from him. “I thought you were dead. I thought…I thought Cesare killed you.” He shook his head. “He let me go.”
Thirty:It wasn’t a dream this time.My real father was alive and well. I was in a secret loft that Cesare Luna apparently owned. I had lived with my aunt. She had pretended to be my mother. But she was not my mother, and my real one had been on the run from Donatello. My father’s brother. My uncle. Nothing made sense.When Cesare finished telling me what we were going to do, I couldn’t help but feel strange. Not because I didn’t believe that he would help me save my family. But because I didn’t know what was real anymore.I was a Vitore.But who was my father? Titus claimed to be. Donatello had also. I didn’t know what was the truth anymore. My father had left me alone. But Cesare was still in the room, looking directly at me. “What are you thinking?” Cesare asked.“I’m thinking you’re unhinged,” I told him, “And I’m thinking that I don’t trust anyone anymore.”He smiled and walked over to the wall. There was a picture hanging from there that I hadn’t noticed before. I squinted at it
Thirty-one:We had to have a family dinner to announce our engagement. Cesare had a whole closet for me full of clothes in his room. I shouldn’t have been surprised. He was always one step ahead of me and seemed to know from the beginning that I was going to be with him. I was glad that someone had had faith in us. I didn’t know that I had faith in anyone. Everywhere I turned, people weren’t who they said they were. Or they wanted something from me. The one thing I could control was which viper’s den I went into.Cesare was the deadliest.So, I was trusting him.Maybe my judgement was a little clouded because he was the father of my child but I had to trust someone. With Cesare, there was a chance that I could have a family and a future. With everyone else, I would be a pawn in someone else’s game. At least Cesare would let me play in it.“What did your father say when you told him that we were engaged?” I asked.The two of us were in a black car. Cesare’s security guard was driving.