Page 50 of His Wicked Wants (West Coast Mobsters #6)

CHAPTER 46

NERO

The house is still filled with people, and I feel safe leaving Gabriel there in the kitchens with so many others milling around. Then I catch hold of Max Pedretti on his way through the foyer. “Is Sandro still here?”

Pedretti points up to the second story. “He took Teddy to his wing upstairs. Jack and Freddy are making up rooms to stay here with Miller and Nate, at least for a few nights. Raffi’s talking about sending Darian away to visit his mom while things cool down, but Darian thinks he’ll be safest here. Not sure how that will play out, but my money’s on Darian. And between you and me, I think he’s right: Redwood is the safest place for him to be right now. Everyone who had a reason to hate us turned up for the battle—and they’re all dead. Anyone else who thinks they have a chance is going to think twice about trying to invade Redwood again.”

Not long ago I would have had to bite back a response about not caring about the love lives of various Castellani men. But now I can only sympathize, and my thoughts return to Gabriel. Should I send him away? Surely he’s safest close to me. Redwood has withstood its greatest challenge, after all, as Pedretti pointed out.

“Gabriel should move up here, too, for a few days,” Pedretti says, watching me closely. “While his cottage is cleaned up.”

“Yes. I think that’s wise,” I say slowly. “And Pedretti—I need to talk to Sandro. I need to…inform him of a few things.”

Pedretti doesn’t even raise an eyebrow. “Okay.”

“Could you ask him to meet me in his study? But give me twenty minutes.”

“Will do.”

“And Pedretti—keep an eye on Gabriel for me, will you? He’s in the kitchen.”

I run back to my guesthouse, where I pick up the phone I use for La Contessa along with the code key. I hid it well enough that not even the horde passing through managed to disturb its location. But now it’s time to come clean. The invasion has shown me that I was not the man I thought I was.

No, I’m far better. Far more loyal.

And far more loving.

I want to make sure Sandro knows it, too.

Sandro is already in his study waiting for me when I return. “How is Teddy?” I ask after his lover rather than him because I can see for myself how Sandro is. Furious. Vengeful.

And yet his temper holds. The boy I knew struggled with that temper, but time has helped him tame it. He has matured into a great leader, just like his mother always said she wanted.

“He’s unharmed—physically,” Sandro tells me darkly.

“And Julian?”

“Alive.”

“That’s good news.” When Sandro says nothing, I add, “Isn’t it?”

I have seen him staring at enemies the way he’s staring at me now. Eventually, he says, “If you have asked me here alone in an attempt to kill me, Nero, I wish you’d get on with it.”

“I’m not here to kill you,” I sigh. “I’m here to…to confess, I suppose.”

“A supplicant?” He raises an eyebrow, then gestures behind him. “Then sit. Confess. Let me weigh your sins.”

This is not going to go well. But I’ve begun already; I can’t stop now. I take a few steps forward until I have to move sideways to get to his desk, walking around Sandro, who is not going to back down.

It’s not in his nature.

“I need to show you these, first,” I tell him, as I empty my pockets onto his desk. There’s a faint but large, discolored stain across the top of the desk, and it always surprises me that Sandro, with his impeccable taste, has not had it removed. But at last he comes round to the other side and looks down at the objects I’ve laid out for him. “I think you know I have been working for your mother all this time,” I begin, sitting down.

Sandro remains standing. “Of course.”

“These are the tools we used to communicate. I wanted to show them to you as a sign of good faith, though I know you must have intercepted most of our messages.”

“Yes.”

“But not interpreted them?” He makes no answer to that, and I push forward a flash drive. “The key to the code is on that. You can ask Pedretti to run it to decode the messages. But I want to tell you myself what they said.”

Sandro gives an impatient twitch of the face. “I don’t care about my mother’s love notes to you. Did she order this invasion? Tell me that.”

“No.”

“And I am to trust you at your word, my mother’s agent?”

“If you’d just sit down and?—”

“Do not presume to command me.”

I can’t hold back a joyless laugh. “Oh, I would never,” I tell him. “I would never presume to command you because I understand our relationship all too well. It’s you who has mistaken it all these years.”

He folds his arms. “Then explain it to me.”

“First of all,” I say slowly, “my name is not Nero Andretti. I’ve forgotten, over the years, what it once was, but it doesn’t matter. Nero was your mother’s name for me, and Nero I have become. She gave me the name after I accidentally burned down a palazzo she owned in Rome. She had me brought before her—a child of ten—can you imagine how terrifying it was?”

Sandro says nothing. Gives nothing. But I know my story is fresh news to him. His mother was very careful with my cover story.

“She gave me a choice: to make friends with her son, or to die. She was not so explicit, of course, but you know your mother. She makes things clear in her own way. And so I was reborn as Nero Andretti, the grandson of one of her recently-dead loyalists, and a natural companion at the boarding school you loathed so much. So now you know the truth, Sandro. I’ve been reporting on you and your activities for a much longer time than the few months I’ve been here.”

Now Sandro does take a seat, sinking heavily into the chair behind his desk, and I see for the first time that my words have unnerved him. It’s painful to me, too, to lay out these betrayals. But I have to, if I want to keep Gabriel safe. And if I want to keep Sandro safe.

“What do you mean?” he asks. “What did she…”

I pick up where he trailed off. “Ask me to do? Protect you, mostly. Make sure you always had someone in your corner. But also to watch you. Report back to her when she asked, so that she could make sure you were being trained into the man she wanted you to be. Like a climbing vine being coaxed into a certain shape,” I add, thinking of Gabriel’s work with the jasmine around the pool house. I watched him carefully set up the trellis for it and then guide it over the weeks. “She had strong ideas of how she wanted you to grow, the paths she wanted you to follow.”

“So you were never my friend.”

For the first time, I wince. “That’s not true. I grew to love you, Sandro. You’re difficult not to love, even at your worst. My friendship was genuine—and I’d never experienced such fierce loyalty as I had from you. On the streets where I lived before your mother snatched me away, I was surrounded by boys who would have sold me out for a cigarette. I was shocked the first time you stood up for me to some of the older children at San Bernardo. Do you remember?”

“I remember we stood up for each other.” I can’t get a sense of his mood at all. “You defended me just as much as I defended you.”

That’s true enough. We had quite different fighting styles. Sandro, having been trained in boxing and martial arts, was clean and disciplined. I always fought dirty. “Together, we were a formidable team,” I agree. “We could be again.”

“What does my mother want?”

He’s brushed aside all reminiscence. That’s not a good sign. But I plunge onward. “She wants what she has always wanted—and it’s what I want, too. To see you secure in your kingdom.”

At last I provoke a reaction, though not the one I’d prefer. A quiet scoff and a contemptuous smile. “My mother wants to bring the Castellanis in under her own umbrella. If you haven’t realized that by now, Nero, you’re not as clever as you think you are. She’s an expansionist.”

“She’s a mother . Don’t you understand that she loves you more than anything? You’ve always been her life’s work, Sandro. You just felt too sorry for yourself to see it. When we were children, you were so full of unearned grievances—” I break off, because that path won’t help. “But we are not children anymore.”

“No,” he says meditatively. “We are not.” We look at each other for a long moment. “If this is your confession, it’s unnecessary. I know my mother likes to meddle. I always assumed you were her agent. You learned nothing that would make you any danger to my business here—and you won’t learn anything, I promise you, no matter how hard you try to insert yourself.”

My heart drops. The idea of always being an outsider—it’s not what I want.

Not anymore.

“I’m telling you these things because I want to be clear about my own ambitions. I still have a few for myself, though your mother tried to stamp them out.”

There’s that cynical smile again. “Your ambitions are no secret, Nero. You’ve always been open about them. Wealth, power, respect. You have all that already, so—” He shrugs. “Go back to Italy.”

“My ambitions have changed.” I wait for him to scoff again, and when he doesn’t, I plunge on. “Your mother may have used me for her own ends, but I came to realize during my time here…I am your brother. I’ll always be your brother. And I will always look out for your interests. If you can forgive me—if you can find a way to trust me—I want to stay here, to make my vows to you. To be a true part of this Family. To be known as a Castellani.”

His finger traces across the faint staining on the desktop. “I have a brother already,” he says at last. “His name is Julian. I don’t need another.”

And here we come to the most dangerous part of my confession. “You never saw him that way when we were children.”

“Things have changed.”

“I can see that now.” I hesitate one final time, but if I truly want things to change—if I truly want to change myself, for Sandro, and most of all for Gabriel, then I need to air the last of this dirty laundry. “Your mother hates him still. My orders here were to protect you, to facilitate the marriage of Roxanne Rochford and Gino Bernardi to ensure an indebted ally, and to sound out Anna-Vittoria Esposito on her own ambitions here in the city. But her final, most important order, sent just yesterday, was to kill Julian.”

At those words, Sandro’s gaze lifts to mine. “And did you try to kill Julian?”

“If I wanted him dead, he’d be dead.”

“If you wanted him dead without suspicion falling on you, you would have done exactly what you did: taken your time getting him to help.”

It’s hard to argue with that, but I have an ace up my sleeve. “When he wakes, he’ll tell you about a conversation we had. He practically dared me to end his life. I didn’t.”

“ When he wakes? There is no guarantee that he will.” He stands. “I’ve known from your arrival here that I couldn’t trust you. What I didn’t know was how deeply your betrayal ran. Be thankful that I am letting you leave here alive, Nero Andretti—or whatever your name is.”

“ Listen to me,” I start, frustrated, and rise from my chair just as Sandro has. But behind me the door opens, and Max Pedretti and Raffi DeLuca both enter the room. The message is clear: either I go, or I’ll be dragged. “Alright,” I concede. “I’ll go. But I need to speak to Gabriel Carstairs first, explain?—”

Sandro sneers. “If you think I’m going to give you one last chance to seduce my gardener as a way back into my business?—”

“He’s a landscape architect ,” I shout, losing my temper completely. Irrationally. And of course, it doesn’t change anything.

“Get him out of my sight,” Sandro spits at his men, “before I kill him after all.”