Thin Lives (Donati Bloodlines #3) (17 page)

About the time the pregnancy lasted.

About the time it took Affonso to have a healthy son born alive.

About the time it would have taken Affonso to know he didn’t need the defiant, boundary-pushing, bastard son that was Calisto.

Sickness spilled into the back of his throat again. Calisto clenched his fists so tight, his fingernails broke the skin of his palms.

Yet, as quickly as that anger came and rushed his senses, it was replaced by a deep, burning anxiety that filled his blood with ice. Affonso had to know—that was all Calisto could think about.

Cross’s paternity—the affair—Affonso had to know.

He would have come back from his getaway to find Calisto without his memories, and Emma pregnant.

Calisto’s heart stopped at what that truly meant.

It all made sense, and the rest of the pieces began to click together for him. The past few months with Emma, and his confusion at her distance. Her fear whenever he had taken her aside, even innocently, just to talk. The moments she’d opened her mouth, looking as though she wanted to tell him something, or maybe like she was about to warn him, but quickly decided against it.

The anger came back hot, heavy, and swift. Not at Emma, but at Affonso.

There was no doubt in Calisto’s mind that somehow, Affonso had forced Emma into a spot where she had no choice but to lie to him, and to hide things from him that would have explained a great deal of his sense of loss and confusion since the accident. She’d been pregnant, and once again, alone for all this time.

How could he possibly ever be angry at her for doing what she needed to do?

Calisto was sure he would get that explanation.

But at that moment, he had to work on fixing other things first.

Fixing—killing.

What difference did it make?

It was the only option he had, considering what had just happened to him. If Affonso felt comfortable in coming after Calisto, would Emma be next?

His breaths came out a little more painful at the thought alone.

Calisto wasn’t sure why his uncle had chosen not to punish his wife for her affair, or why he let Calisto live for as long as he had, but it was Affonso’s only mistakes.

He had his memories back now.

He wasn’t about to forget again.

At that very moment, Affonso probably thought he was dead.

But for how long?

Calisto didn’t know where to go first, or even who to go to, so he did what felt right. He grabbed a cab, and headed back to the one place he knew was safe, for the most part. His apartment.

The very moment after he closed the door, he rested his head against the cool metal, and took a few minutes to gather his wits again. The cab driver had taken notice of his odd state, and asked if he wanted to go to the hospital several times.

Over and over, Calisto refused.

A hospital wouldn’t help him right now.

He didn’t need his name going on a damned record.

Pushing away from the door, Calisto shrugged off his bloody jacket, and the dress shirt underneath. He tossed the ruined articles aside, going straight to his bedroom for clean clothes. He was just reaching into his closet for a hanging dress shirt, when his hand froze mid-air, and his heart clenched painfully.

All these months …

He looked around his place, staring blankly at the stuff he’d just overlooked because he couldn’t draw memories to them.

But it was more than the stuff.

It was more than his place.

Calisto yanked the shirt off the hanger, and made a beeline out of his room, toward his office. Once he was behind his desk, his knees hit the floor, and he was reaching for the fucking safe.

The safe he couldn’t remember the passcode for.

The safe that held
everything.

His memories. His mother. Her letters. His documents. The faked birth certificate Affonso had forged after Calisto was born.

All of it was inside there.

He didn’t even have to struggle with the code like he had been for months on end. He knew what the digits were now.

The month of his mother’s death.

The month Emma had miscarried.

The month little Affonso had been born and died.

Poignant moments in his life that he had tattooed on his goddamn body. Dates that wouldn’t mean much to an outside person, but reminded Calisto of what it felt like to be alive, and how it felt to lose something important.

He heard the tumblers click.

He pulled down on the handle.

The safe opened—finally.

For a long while, Calisto just stared at the mountain of papers inside the safe. He hesitated, wondering if he wanted to go through the hell of reading all of his mother’s letters again, not to mention the ones she’d given to him that were written to her from Affonso all those years ago.

His hesitation faded fast.

He’d forgotten her—forgotten her hell.

Calisto owed this to his mother, at the very least.

One by one, he pulled the papers and letters out. He read them, touched the curves and strokes of the ink where she had made her words, and then he folded them up and started making a pile.

He didn’t entirely know why, but he thought he might need them.

It was only after Calisto had pulled out most of the papers did he find other documents that would have reminded him during his memory loss of how much of a bastard Affonso Donati was.

Document after document of payments, birth certificates, and information for children—illegitimate children that Calisto had been taking care of for years. His half-siblings.

Calisto froze all over again.

Ice-cold in his veins.

Fire-hot in his heart.

The Irish.

Connor O’Neil—the boss.

Calisto’s clear, crisp memory of that one meeting he’d had with the Irish boss burrowed deep into his brain, holding tight and refusing to let go.

He knew exactly why Affonso wanted the Irish gone, and why he would allow blame to be placed on them. It was just more secrets he wanted to keep. It was possible that Affonso believed the Irish had been the ones to attack Calisto all those months ago, and that he didn’t know it was actually Ray, but Affonso’s motives were never as clean-cut as he tried to make them out to be.

He always had other agendas.

This was no exception.

Calisto grabbed the stack full of letters and slammed the safe shut. He ignored the dizziness as he scooped his phone off his desk, and shoved it into his pocket with the letters.

He did have allies.

He’d simply forgotten about them for a time.

Emma

Emma ran her hands over the skirt of her robin’s-egg-blue dress, smoothing out crinkles that didn’t exist. She needed the distraction as she stared across the floor of the church, taking in the many faces watching her from the pews.

She searched for the one face she wanted to see the most, and came up entirely empty.

Like her heart.

Like her soul.

Gone.

Blank.

Empty
.

“You have a hundred pairs of eyes on you at the moment,” Affonso said at Emma’s side. “The very least you could do for those people is smile, Emma.”

She knew what would have been the right thing to do where Affonso was concerned, especially on a day like today that was incredibly important to him. She should have put her mask on for him, and smiled pretty for the crowd, just the way he would like, in the way that would please him.

Emma couldn’t even bother to muster that up for the bastard.

“Why?” she asked, keeping her tone down so that only Affonso could hear. “Wasn’t it you who told me this morning that today wasn’t about
me
, Affonso? It’s about Cross and you. Isn’t that right? Why should I smile for people who didn’t come to see me?”

Affonso’s jaw ticked a second before his fingers dug deep into Emma’s arm. They had been standing side by side on the altar as the new priest of their church blessed her son, beginning his rites of Christening. No one probably even noticed the husband holding his wife’s arm.

Emma did all she could not to wince, or make a sound. Affonso would like it too much, for one thing. But for another, she knew that if she did make a show, she would probably regret it later.

Lately, it seemed her husband had no qualms with reminding Emma of her place in the family, and in his life. He took no issue with taking her son from her arms regularly, just to make a point that he could. He often called her a whore when others’ backs were turned.

His patience had lessened more and more.

Cross had stayed in the hospital for a total of two weeks until his jaundice left, and his oxygen levels remained steady. Unfortunately, just a few short days after his birth, Emma had been discharged to go home.

She found that home was not as safe or comforting as it should have been.

It seemed like now that her son was out of her womb, Affonso had no issue with removing her altogether, if he needed. Or at least, that’s what he regularly threatened her with.

It killed her—suffocating her slowly.

Emma was beyond acting like the good little house wife for Affonso. She no longer cared about his status, or her place as his wife. She was done with his demands, his abusive nature, and his manipulations.

But she was also alone.

She had no one.

Pushing Affonso in just the right way might lead to a situation that could leave her in a grave, and her son without a mother.

“You are certainly touchy today, aren’t you?” Affonso asked.

Emma didn’t respond.

She didn’t really need to.

“Behave, Emma.”

That warning was enough to make her spine straighten a little more. There wasn’t even an “or else” tacked onto the end of it, but she didn’t need there to be.

“Look, even our son is smiling,” Affonso added after a moment.

Emma’s gaze traveled over to where the priest was holding Cross in his white Christening gown and his little cap keeping his wild, black hair covered. Sure enough, the two-week-old newborn had a slight grin curving his pink lips as he jerkily waved an arm at the priest.

But she knew what it was.

“He’s too little for grins; he’s not even three weeks old yet—it’s gas, Affonso.”

Affonso grunted. “You have to make everything so goddamn bleak.”

No, he did that.

She was simply a product of his vileness.

Their whole marriage was.

Beside the priest, Ray Missotti stood waiting for his time, and his wife waited next to him with a painted on, plastic smile.

Rage simmered through Emma’s nervous system.

Neither of those people were supposed to be standing where they were. She hadn’t wanted them to be the godparents to her son. Affonso had promised her that Calisto would be the godfather.

Yet, there they were.

Another lie to add to the pile.

Emma’s gaze turned on the crowd again, and she searched once more for the face she wanted to see in the crowd. He wasn’t there.

Calisto wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

When someone had mentioned it earlier, Affonso hadn’t said a word, simply walked away. When a second person mentioned it, he brushed it off.

Emma chose not to ask, but obviously, something was very wrong.

All too soon, the Christening was over. Once the regular Sunday services were finished as well, Emma finally had her baby boy back in her arms. She talked sweetly to him and let him suck on the tip of her finger as she followed behind Affonso to leave the church.

She was surprised to find a group of people waiting for them.

Only in passing had she heard them mentioned.

They were a little infamous in the world of Cosa Nostra.

The Marcello family dominated the syndicates, after all. Of course, she had heard of them.

The man in the middle, holding the hand of a red-headed woman, stepped forward.

“Dante,” Affonso greeted, tugging Emma to his side. “I’m glad to see you could make it.”

Dante nodded, and passed Emma and baby Cross a small smile. “Congratulations on your son, Affonso.”

“Yes, thank you. It’s about time.”

Emma couldn’t help but notice how the other people—the rest of the Marcello family, she suspected—stayed quiet as Affonso and Dante discussed the baby, and then quieter, the Irish.

“I was told it would be handled,” Dante said. “He assured me.”

One of the other two men behind Dante sighed and said, “Don’t play word games, Dante.”

“Hush, Giovanni,” Dante snapped over his shoulder.

Giovanni did just that.

“Word games?” Affonso asked.

Dante folded his arms over his chest. “My wife was doing business over in the area of Calisto’s club the other week.”

Affonso stiffened, giving the red-headed woman a dismissive look. “Is that so?”

The woman smiled sweetly, but it radiated coldness at the same time.

Catrina, Emma knew.

She had heard the woman’s—Dante’s wife—name mentioned in passing, and usually because the men who were talking about her, didn’t approve of her, the status she held, or her career choices.

Emma only knew what she heard, but it was enough.

The woman was dangerous.

She found herself wondering what it was like to be feared and respected by men.

“It is so,” Catrina said, still smiling in that way of hers. “Apparently Calisto’s SUV was found behind his club, smashed into a wall, and bullet holes all through the back.”

Affonso didn’t relax in his stance for a second. “Something happened—we’re not sure what.”

Something happened …

Emma’s panic climbed tenfold.

What had happened?

“But was he found?” Dante asked.

Affonso’s jaw ticked again, like it had earlier.

It always did that when he was aggravated, or frustrated.

“No,” her husband admitted.

“One little toe, two little toes, three little toes, and there’s four,” Emma said in a sing-song fashion, tickling each of baby’s Cross’s tiny toes in the bathwater. Her one-month-old son grinned a toothless smile when she tickled his biggest toe and said, “Here’s the fifth little toe, but wait—there’s more!”

She repeated the song as she counted the toes on his other foot, thoroughly enjoying the quiet moment she had to spend with Cross. Things like bathing, clothing, feeding, and changing the baby were not events Affonso wanted anything to do with. He happily passed Cross over to Emma whenever the baby began to fuss for whatever reason.

Emma didn’t mind.

Affonso would disappear, leaving her alone with her son. She rarely got the chance to actually spend time with him without someone looking over her goddamn shoulder.

It seemed like someone was always around—mostly her husband, though.

Cross reached toward Emma, little fingers spread wide, and his face bright with happiness. She took comfort in the fact that he was content and only really knew joy for the short time he had spent on earth. She loved him with her whole heart—every piece of her soul—and she wanted her son to know it, too.

There were times when Affonso would come into a room, take the baby, and stroll off like nothing was amiss. Those were the times when Emma’s heart cracked and fell to the floor, shattering into pieces with all her broken emotions. She kept it together, for the most part.

Or she tried.

That didn’t mean it was easy.

Calisto’s absence was a constant reminder that wouldn’t leave. Each time she looked at little Cross’s features, it was like looking at his father’s face.

A father he was without.

She refused to think of Affonso as Cross’s father in any way. The man could pretend all he wanted, and he could say whatever he wanted to his people, but Emma wouldn’t feed into it.

Especially not to her son.

When she was alone with her son; when Affonso wasn’t hovering over her shoulder; when there was no one else around to hear her whispered words, she told Cross about Calisto … the things she knew, the memories he’d shared, and how the little baby boy had come to be.

Affonso could take a lot of things from Emma, but he couldn’t take those.

None of them.

Cross’s cooing brought Emma from her depressive thoughts. She smiled down at her boy, running her hand over his wet, dark tufts of hair. Letting the plug out of his safety tub, she waited for the water to drain before scooping him up in a soft, fluffy towel.

Instantly, the baby snuggled into the crook of her neck. His little legs pulled up close to his chest, and the only thing that remained visible under the towel was the very top of his head.

For a moment, Emma simply held him like that.

Still.

Silent.

Close.

She felt the silky, baby soft skin of his back. The warmth of his body pressed against the cradle of her palms. She listened to his quiet breaths and the suckling sound of his thumb popped into his mouth as it usually was.

The bathroom door was still closed.

No one could see her moment.

Emma always felt like Affonso was watching her too much whenever she had her son in her arms. Like he was waiting for a reason to say she was coddling Cross too much, or maybe even that she wasn’t taking care of him well enough.

He’d already made those sorts of comments. Or rather, alluded to them.

It terrified her.

She found herself wondering all the time about what might happen to her when she was no longer useful to Affonso and Cross. Or if he didn’t think she was useful.