31. THE ALWAYS-BOY
GIOELE
“Come with me, Ina mia. My love. My darling. My dove.” I grin when laughter trickles out of her like the gush of a miniature waterfall. Such a happy sound. It’s because of the lake, the summer sun, and the grass tickling our calves.
Yes, this world without bloodshed has the power to heal scars. We’ve been here for a few days, and a lazy summer stretches out before us. Not too long ago, I couldn’t even have dreamed up a time like this, with Silvina and me in our childhood paradise, she without walls against our love; me, with the right to hold her and make her smile.
The last six months haven’t been easy for her. The loss of Zio Cosimo hit her with the darkness of a daughter who’s lost a loving father. Then, there was the press and their sudden scrutiny of us. For the most part, she went to class, but after hours, we stayed in my apartment. Headlines like, Cousin Lovers and their Vendetta on their Family, made her cry in my arms. But Mafia Prince and Princess taking down the Nascimbeni, was the spread that stabbed me in the chest.
“I’m a dove, now?” she titters.
“I think so.”
“I have something for you,” she says, smile fading. When her eyes darken too, a ripple of concern runs through me.
“What is it?”
“These.” She’s wearing a billowy yellow shirt that’s tied at her waist. I love how the buttons are open to the middle of her breasts. I’m entranced when a small hand fumbles inside, surely dipping inside her bra. She pulls out a piece of paper and folds it open for me.
“What is it?” I run my eyes over her face first, before I dip them to black words on white background. It’s an email. A printed email?
“Read it,” she challenges, steepling her hands in front of her mouth. I know this girl better than anyone, and right now she’s trying to cover up a sly smile.
“Who’s it from?” I ask while my tentative smirk blows into a full-on grin.
“Night Shifts Black’s tour manager. They’re in Milan tomorrow, and you and I are going.”
“What are you talking about? No way!”
“Way. And guess what?”
“Tell me.”
She tips her nose up a little, sun-freckled and begging to be kissed. “I’m close with Callie now.”
I squint at her. Can’t hold back any longer and need to stroke my finger along the bridge of that perky little nose. “You’re close with the drummer’s girlfriend?”
“Yep!” She opens her hands to me in a low-key ta-dah. “Bully ran his mouth to her backstage in San Francisco. Talked up a storm about me and how I’d been ‘beaten up in a back alley.’ She felt sorry for me and asked for my email address, and we’ve been emailing ever since.”
I bite my lip, smiling. “And this new BFF-ship you’ve got going: you’ve kept it a secret from your boyfriend why exactly?”
“Because, one”—she lifts a stubborn little index finger between us, pulling it back with her other hand—“my boyfriend doesn’t need to know everything I do. And, two”—she joins her middle finger with the index finger, pointing them skyward—“I wanted to surprise him.”
I crouch abruptly and hoist her off the ground. She squeals and kicks her legs, but with my arms around her ass, I keep her above me, making her jump.
“Ah!” she squeals. “Let me go!”
I fake-drop her, and she latches on to my shoulders. The soft hollow of her throat tempts, so I nuzzle into it, humming out my approval. I let my mouth fall open at the scent of sun-warm skin. I lick, suck down to the nape of her neck, and I don’t stop until she shivers.
“I can’t wait, darling,” I whisper.
SILVINA
The Mediolanum Forum is sold out. We’ve already learned from the band’s tour manager that the stadium takes twelve thousand seven hundred paying customers. We’ve also learned that it’s not the biggest arena they’ve filled.
Callie’s boyfriend offered to let us watch from the side of the stage, but I was craving the sizzle of the Italian version of a mosh pit, and Gioele begrudgingly relented.
The arena has filled up around us, and my boyfriend’s watchdog modus has switched into high gear. Since he freed me in San Francisco, my rebel has turned into a younger replica of his brother. No joke. We’re to the point of me doing regular heart to hearts with Tatiana to deal with my new, difficult, hot as hell always-boy.
Tatiana and I might have different solutions to the issue, but it’s nice to have a sister-in-arms when protectiveness crackles on high voltage. With Tatiana, I laugh and exasperate over l‘amore della mia vita and his antics, before gushing my heart out. I don’t have to censor myself around her. She understands and knows the same frustration-slash-gratitude over a man whose boundless all-in can be a lot to absorb.
Gioele resents Il Lince for all he’s put us through, but he gave a gift to his sons, a huge, pink, figurative pearl Tatiana and I will cherish as long as we live: a boundless capacity for love. The depth, the loyalty, the belief in its eternity his sons have inherited from him and Zia Carola. What they have can’t be destroyed by anything in this realm, and I am grateful for it.
My parents loved each other too, but it didn’t stop them from finding comfort when disillusion seeped in. The most significant escapade of their marriage came out after my father’s death. No one knew of it until Gioele threw our love in everyone’s faces, daring people to accept or get lost, including poor la nonna who’d been flown in to be with the survivors of the Santa Colombini Ambush.
Later, at the end of the night when my bane hugged my ring finger with a Nascimbeni wolf of promise, Mom stood from her seat. Cheeks flaming with humility, she admitted the truth of my conception to the entire famiglia.
Eyes light for me, cheeks ashamed for herself, she let out that my father was not my father. While Cosimo’d had an affair on the East Coast, her revenge was too much time spent with a flutist from the L.A. Philharmonic.
Gioele glares down the NSB fans pressing by us. Closer by the second, they fill all rows and push in against our bodies. Straightening, he folds his arms around me from behind, unconsciously sating my need to be lined up with him.
“Stop worrying so much, baby.” I twist so I can look up at him, but he’s too busy scanning a group of teenagers. I turn and link myself around him. It takes him a second before his stare sinks to my face, changing from frozen alertness to tenderness.
“You okay?” He kisses my forehead.
I tip my face back and get a taste of his lips. “Of course, I’m okay. No one’s gonna stomp on me.”
He puffs out a snort and says, “They better not.”
A static snap runs through the stadium as all floodlights go out at once. The roar from the audience starts in the back and swoops us into a rope of howled excitement that’s drowned by a sudden bassline.
I whirl toward the stage. Gioele accommodates my shift, laughs against me, his chest rising and sinking in a staccato fusion with my body. Gargantuan, the sound envelops us and reverberates in our bones.
He pulls me tight, moves with my hips, lets me steer this ecstasy—makes bliss soar through me in ways no one does like him. He revels in us, like with every moment of our days—happy, sad, boring, funny. Pink spotlights flood the stage and shift to white. Luke, Casey, and the rest of the band turn their chins up, smiles broadening in a disarming acceptance of Milan.
“We did it,” Gioele muffles into my ear.
“Yes. We’re here!”