“Good God, be careful, Claud!” Daniele leaned over the railing, shaking her head. “You’re going to throw out your back again, you stubborn mule.”
“I could have gotten the landlord’s son to help bring the box up,” Cara said, two steps above her aunt.
“Will you donnas shut up? Knock it off,” Claud barked down below in the stairwell. “It is one goddamn set of stairs and a crib. I can handle this.”
Daniele sighed. “I see an emergency room visit in our near future.”
“Oh, just go get the apartment door open!”
“Fine, throw your back out! I don’t care.”
Daniele cared, Cara knew.
Even as her aunt stalked down the hallway, huffing, she still looked back over her shoulder with concern to see if her husband was coming. Cara leaned over the railing to see her uncle scratching at his jaw while he stared at the crib.
“I’ll get the landlord’s son to come help,” she told her uncle.
“I had a son to help, but where is he now, Cara?”
She only stared at her uncle, unsure of how to answer that. She had no idea where Constantino was. There had been no funeral, no memorial, or anything to suggest he was dead, yet her uncle spoke like Constantino was buried somewhere, or dead in a ditch.
“So, do you want me to get you help, or not?” she asked.
“Not, girl. Not.”
“Zia was right, you are a stubborn mule.”
“She only uses that word because she’s too polite to call me an ass!” Claud shouted as Cara followed the path her aunt had taken.
“I’m not too polite, you fucking ass.”
She was grateful that her aunt and uncle had been sweet enough to pick out a nursery set for her, as once she was no longer able to hide the fact she was pregnant, they were the first people she had told. She had told her brother second.
A whole lot of questions followed, from both ends. To be fair, Tommas asked a whole lot less questions than her aunt and uncle. Questions about the father, or the fact she was just a few months off graduating. That led them into the fact the baby would come soon after, or shortly before, graduation. Then, even more questions about the baby’s father.
Cara supposed the questions were normal, given her circumstance. She chose not to answer specific ones, while she gave vague answers for others.
She rubbed a hand over her twenty-eight-week pregnancy swell to soothe the jabbing elbows of her unborn son driving into her organs. Inside her apartment, Cara found her aunt moving a few pieces of small furniture out of the hallway to make it easier to get the crib inside what had been Lea’s bedroom.
Cara finally got around to cleaning it all out.
She had a reason to now, after all.
“The rest of the nursery set will be delivered,” Daniele said, “so at least for the rest of the furniture, you won’t need someone to carry it in.”
Cara agreed. “Thanks for all of this, Zia.”
“No need to thank me, Cara. You work hard and I know you’ll be a good mother, so you deserve all the help and whatever else you can get, believe me.” Daniele went back to her work, randomly asking, “Of course, you could get lots of help by way of the baby’s father.”
Cara side-eyed her aunt, trying not to be too rude when she replied, “Zia, I am sure he will help, but right now, I am handling this on my own. And I am okay with that, as I have told you many times. The father is my business. Please respect that.”
“I worry about you, Cara, that’s all.”
“I’m perfectly fine, Zia.”
“Yes, yes, I know. You keep saying that.” Daniele waved a hand at her. “Go check on your uncle, and make sure he hasn’t had a heart attack in the stairwell.”
Cara set her purse and phone on the couch, before going to do as her aunt wanted. Just as she reached the end of the hallway, Claud was finally pulling the large crib box through the stairwell door.
“See, I managed just fine on my own,” Claud muttered.
“Huffing, puffing, and red-faced the whole way,” Cara agreed.
Her uncle shot her a dirty look, but didn’t respond.
“I think just setting it in the bedroom will be good enough for today,” she added with a smile. “No need to put you through the torture of setting the crib up today, too.”
“Who will do it for you, Cara?” Claud asked, pulling the box down the hallway toward her apartment. “Gian? His brother, perhaps?”
Cara froze, her back turned to her uncle. “What did you just say?”
“Nothing. I was thinking out loud. It was nothing.”
She slowly turned around. “It was not nothing—you specifically said a name, not that I have given you a reason to use that name, so why did you, Zio?”
Claud wiped a hand over his face, effectively removing the sweat from his brow at the same time. “Word travels in this business, between us made men, I mean. I happen to know you get occasional visits from the boss’s men, and I also know you were seen out and about with him last year before your trip to Chicago.”
“So?”
“I also know you had a visit with him in the jail a couple of months ago, Cara.”
She grinded her teeth in an effort to stay quiet.
It didn’t work.
“Zio, this is not your business,” she said firmly.
“You’re right, it isn’t. And your brother told me that, too, when I called him to chat about your current predicament.”
“You called Tommas?”
“Lower your voice,” her uncle snapped.
Cara’s back straightened at the sound of a man scolding her.
Fuck. That. Shit.
“I am not in a predicament. I am pregnant, and by whom, is my fucking business to handle how I please.”
“I know Gian Guzzi is the father, Cara. Or I have a strong enough suspicion to use his name, for good reason. And considering your reaction, I am not wrong. Tell me I am wrong.”
“And so what if he is?”
“He’s a married man!”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” she cried, throwing her hands wide. “I do know that, Claud!”
“Have you considered how difficult this road will be for you and the child?” her uncle asked quietly. “To be the mistress of a made man and the bastard boy, born to a goomah mother? Have you considered that at all?”
Cara felt the familiar prickling behind her eyes that signaled her tears were trying to fall. She held them back, and settled for hiding the trembling of her hands at her sides.
“I know I made choices that might not be what everyone else would make,” Cara replied, level-toned and stone-faced, “and I know this won’t be easy, but don’t toss those words at me just because they’re the ones everyone else wants to use. You only see the surface, and how that looks, but you don’t care about the rest. You don’t care to know the details, about me and him, about us, or why. So that also means you don’t get to tell me fuck all. Not what to do, how to handle this situation, or anything else about me, my baby, his father, or what I should do with my feelings. Take your opinion, and shove it up your—”
“Cara,” her aunt called softly from behind her.
She turned to find her aunt standing a few feet down in the hallway. No doubt, Daniele had heard every single word.
Walking past her aunt, Cara said, “Well, there you go. Now you know who. Does it make it better, Zia?”
Daniele didn’t say a thing.
She didn’t have to.
Cara knew the answer.
No, it was not better.
Cara dug into a takeout container full of noodles, as the news program on the television repeated the highlights of the day. She checked her phone, seeing a new message from Gian, one in reply to her latest update on the baby’s gestation.
I like Marcus for a name, Gian had wrote. It’s my middle name, and my grandfather’s father’s name. A family name.
Cara thought to reply, but she decided she would do that after she finished eating. She had just taken a good mouthful of noodles when a shot of Gian came across the screen.
New Guzzi Crime Boss Released, the headline read across the bottom of the screen. That wasn’t exactly news to Cara, as she had known Gian’s date of release for a good month, and had counted down the days. She also knew, through Chris’s last update, Gian might need to lay low for a few days before she would see him, it really just depended on circumstances.
That, Cara had also understood.
What she didn’t understand—or like, for that matter—was seeing a shot of Gian fresh off release, walking into what looked like a restaurant with his wife on his arm.
Then, the shot changed.
Gian stepping out of a car, moving to the other side, and then helping his wife out. She kissed his cheek, her wide-brimmed red hat that matched the color of her heels and dress, hid half of her face, but not enough.
Cara had not been able to forget what Elena looked like since the moment she had seen those wedding pictures. It was burned into her fucking retinas.
“Gian Guzzi, heir apparent and new boss to the Guzzi Crime Dynasty is free today,” the anchor said. “We were unable to question the purported Don on his release, or the investigations the police say continue to be active, as he moved directly from the jail to a restaurant, where he seemed to meet with his father-in-law, while his wife was close by. Guzzi’s father-in-law, Gabriel Canali, is another well-known gangster from an Ottawa organization, a leader of a Camorra clan, who was also recently released from jail.”
The anchor continued talking, but Cara shut the television off, and tried to focus on eating her food. She no longer had an appetite.
Cara didn’t want to be that woman—jealous because she saw Gian with his wife, and not her. She didn’t want to become irrationally angry anytime a news program mentioned something about Elena.
She had no right to feel those things.
And yet she did.
Cara quelled her irritation and useless jealousy by rolling her hands over her unborn boy’s movements. Each little kick and jab, calmed her a bit more.
There wasn’t much else she could do.
It was the loud knock on her apartment door that broke Cara from her daze. She wasn’t expecting visitors.
Cara quickly got up off the couch and made her way to the door, when the knocking became slightly more persistent. “Just a second, I’m coming.”
She pulled open the door to find an unknown, older woman standing behind it. For a long moment, she only stared at the woman, taking in her ashy blonde hair, green eyes, and the way she smiled ever-so-slightly at the sight of Cara. The woman’s gaze dropped to Cara’s slightly rounded midsection, and then just as fast, flew back up to her face.
“My, you are quite a beautiful thing, aren’t you?” the woman asked. “He always did have an eye for the ones that could stand out in a crowd. I believe it’s because he never learned how to blend in, either. He always had to be front and center, a prince waiting to be a king.”
Cara held the door, unsure if she wanted to close it or not. “Do I know you?”
She looked familiar.
“Under different circumstances, I am sure we would have known each other very well,” the woman said softly. “It’s Cara, right? Cara Rossi?”
“I am dangerously close to shutting this door,” Cara warned.
The woman laughed, her crow’s feet becoming more apparent around her eyes. It was that laugh, and the way her features changed enough, that Cara thought she might know exactly who this woman was. It also could have been the French accent coloring up the woman’s words that did it for Cara, too.
But that woman wouldn’t come here, would she?
She wouldn’t seek Cara out, right?
After all, Cara was the whore, the mistress, the piece of ass on the side. She wasn’t worthy of the family name, she couldn’t sit beside her man in church, and her very presence was a dirty word for some.
Surely that woman, would not come to Cara.
Surely not.
“Celeste Guzzi, Gian’s mother,” the woman said, smiling softly again. “It’s nice to finally meet the woman I’d heard all those rumors about nearly a year ago. Gian wouldn’t budge an inch, when I asked. Your aunt is an old friend, from way, way back.”
“Oh,” Cara said dumbly.
“She thought I might like to meet you.” Celeste’s gaze dropped to Cara’s stomach again. “For obvious reasons, sweetheart. And she was right.”
“Not that you’ve given me a reason to think this, but to what, tell me to crawl in a hole somewhere?”
Celeste frowned. “Not at all, dear.”
“Sorry, knee-jerk reaction.”
“I can understand why.”
Cara stepped back, widening the apartment door a bit more. “Would you like to come in, and maybe have a tea or something?”
Celeste nodded once. “Oui, I think I would.”
“Does Gian know you’re here?”
“Oh, no.” Celeste laughed as she walked into the apartment. “I get to wait until tomorrow for breakfast to see him. We’re going to have so much to talk about now.”
Cara shot Celeste a look from across the way. “I’m not sure if you mean that to be a good or bad thing.”
“Well, it’s both. I understand the predicament my son found himself in, and not just with you. Between his grandfather, all the rules and expectations they shoveled onto him over the years, and then his wife …”
“I’m not sure I want to know anything about her,” Cara said, trying not to sound trite.
Celeste shrugged, as if to say, do what you will. “Perhaps you should learn about Elena, or at least, learn why she is where she is with my son. I wish more people had looked beyond the surface when they married years ago, or for that matter, paid attention to it all. No one thought to, and it’s no wonder he’s found himself—” She looked over to Cara, then said, “It’s no wonder he’s found himself in this situation. A man or woman can only be so unhappy in every aspect of their life, before they eventually start looking for something—or someone—to fill that void.”
Cara turned the electric kettle on. “I never thought about it in that way.”
“You don’t know her. Elena, I mean,” Celeste said, her assumption spot on. “But that is not my place to say, either.”
“Is it your place to be here?”
The older woman didn’t even hesitate. “No.”
“Yet here you are.”
“Here I am, Cara.” Celeste smiled wider. “Now, tell me about my first grandbaby.”
Cara stared at the tubs of ice cream in the store’s freezer, trying to decide which flavor—or rather, favors—she wanted to buy. Shrugging, she pulled several mini tubs out and dropped them into her cart. If she couldn’t decide on just one flavor, then she would try them all.
Winning, Cara thought.
Pregnancy was no fucking joke.
Neither were the late-night cravings.
“Is that one any good, do you know?”
The question came from Cara’s left. She had been so involved in her task of getting the last, but most important, thing on her grocery list, she hadn’t been paying attention to her surroundings.
Cara found the woman who the voice belonged to, and damn near tripped over her own two feet. Elena Guzzi.
Elena stood only an inch taller than Cara, but that was probably because of the sky-high heels the woman had on her feet. She certainly didn’t look dressed to be grocery shopping in a black knee-high, pencil skirt dress with a beige trench coat overtop. Her makeup was flawless—impeccable, with nothing over or under done. Even her blonde hair laid straight down her back, and not one stray hair was out of place.
She was beautiful.
Perfect, even.
Yet, cold in her eyes.
Cara recognized her instantly, but Elena looked at her as though she didn’t have the first clue in the world who she was.
“I-I’m sorry?” Cara managed to ask, finally coming out of her shock.
Elena leaned over Cara’s cart, balancing her basket with nothing but wine inside, on her hip. “That one right there—the peanut butter one. Is it any good?”
“That one is, but I don’t know about the rest.”
“Oh, good. I like peanut butter.” Elena moved around Cara’s cart, seemingly unaware that she was being watched like a bug under a microscope. “Although I don’t think I have the same excuse as you do to be snacking on these, do I?”
“Pardon?”
Elena pointed at Cara’s stomach peeking out beneath her opened jacket. “How far along, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Oh, God.
Cara did not want to be having this conversation with her lover’s wife, especially considering the woman didn’t seem to know who in the hell she was. Didn’t that make it even more wrong on some level?
She was going to hell.
“Twenty-nine weeks in a couple of days,” Cara said quietly.
“Almost there, then. Boy or girl?”
“Boy.”
Elena smiled, but Cara couldn’t help but notice how it didn’t feel true. It certainly looked warm enough, but the iciness in Elena’s gaze was hard to hide. Cara wondered if that was just a part of who Elena was inside her soul—perpetually cold, always distant.
Cara didn’t have any right to speculate on those things, anyway.
“Have you thought of any names?” Elena asked as she put a couple of tubs of the ice cream in her basket.
“Um, his father likes Marcus. A family thing, I guess. I haven’t said yes or no to it.”
Cara’s awkward tone did not go unnoticed.
Elena shot her with an apologetic look. “Oh, my gosh. I’m so sorry. You probably think I’m a creep or something, randomly questioning a stranger in a grocery store about her pregnancy. Don’t mind me, really. Babies just make me curious, and so does pregnancy.”
Cara knew better than to ask, and she should have just taken the chance to get out of the conversation while she had it, but she didn’t. “Why is that?”
“I lost a baby, nearly four years ago, shortly after I married my husband. We haven’t been able to … well, you know.”
Guilt and shame compounded hard in Cara’s chest, squeezing the fucking life out of her heart.
“I’m sorry,” Cara said lamely.
What else could she say?
I’m sorry your husband knocked me up?
Elena smiled widely at her, as though her admission meant nothing, and neither did Cara’s apologies. “Well, enjoy your ice cream, and have a great day.”
“You, too.”
Cara watched Elena disappear down the aisle. It was the strangest, most random interaction of her life.
Worse, was the fact Cara didn’t even know if it was random.
Cara balanced the four bags of groceries in her one hand and arm as she tried to get the main doors to her apartment building open. She felt his presence slide in beside her before he even spoke. He slipped the bags from her grasp easily, and his sweet kiss landed on her cheek without a word.
An arm slid around her waist, and Cara’s body reacted as though heaven had just come to wrap around her soul. She leaned into Gian’s embrace as he kissed her cheek once more.
“What did I tell you, mon ange?” Familiar, comforting dark eyes looked her over, before moving onto the contents of her grocery bags. “Come on, tell me.”
“About what?”
“When you need something, Cara.”
“Gian, I am not getting someone to grab my groceries. I can handle it—”
“Then take someone with you to help you carry all this shit, love.”
Cara shrugged. “You showed up. All is well.”
Gian sighed, and gave her a quick kiss on her forehead. Cara smiled, and managed to get the main doors open at the same time. Quickly, the two slid into the building, and Gian led the way. His arm stayed firmly tucked around Cara’s waist, his palm hidden under her jacket, resting flat to her swelled stomach.
“I didn’t expect you so soon,” she said as they climbed the one stairwell to her floor.
“I should have come sooner,” he replied. “Things got in the way.”
“Like what?”
“Life,” Gian said roughly, “and nothing that matters, to be honest.”
Once the two were safely hidden away in Cara’s apartment, she stood back and let Gian put all the groceries away. He never missed a beat, sliding things into cupboards as though he had lived there for as many years as she had. He really did pay attention, and he didn’t forget things.
At least, not where she was concerned.
“I want to apologize for something,” Gian said, his voice muffled by the freezer as he shoved in the mini ice cream tubs.
“What’s that?”
“My mother showing up here the other night.”
Cara’s tension released in a laugh. “She’s a wonderful, interesting woman.”
“Wonderfully interesting is one way to put it.” Gian closed the freezer door, and looked back at Cara. “Still, you shouldn’t have been put in that position. I should have told her first, and then—”
“You’re right, you should have.”
Gian nodded. “She let me know that. Repeatedly.”
“I like her.”
“She likes you,” he replied with a smirk. “I knew she would, it was just everything else that I didn’t know about, I suppose.”
Everything else, like his wife.
Cara thought to tell Gian then and there that she had run into Elena, but only decided against it because what would be the point? His wife clearly hadn’t recognized her, and she hadn’t done anything wrong or rude. If anything, wasn’t Cara the one in the wrong, just by being pregnant with Elena’s husband’s child?
The meeting was random. Nothing more, nothing less.
Cara did have other questions, though.
Things she wanted to know.
“Gian?”
“Yes, amore?”
“Why did you marry her? Why her, Gian?”