Animus (10 page)

There wasn’t a reply.

“What’s with the silent treatment?”

Nico headed upstairs leaving his nephew to talk to the walls. Sergio gave his grumpy Uncle the finger which Nico didn’t see, or he’d break the bone. Sergio looked around. The place was nice. Paintings and fine pieces of furniture enriched the room. French doors gave access to the garden. There was a large kitchen close to the living room with a breakfast table for six. Charming, Sergio grinned and opened the fridge. Yep, stocked full. He pointed to the personal water then the beer in indecision. He chose the beer.

“Hey, I see you made yourself at home,” Nico said from the doorway.

“I’m thirsty.”

“I put some clothes out for you. They’re upstairs in the bedroom. The one that’s open sticky fingers, you hear me?”

The metal lid made the click-fizz sound when Sergio pulled on it. “Um-hum,” he muttered as he took a healthy swig.

Nico walked away, snatched his bag from the sofa and retreated to a bedroom on the main floor behind the staircase.  Sergio’s heavy footsteps resounded as he ascended to the second level. He blocked out the cumbersome noise and was about to view the contents of the flash-drive when his cell went off.

“Yeah?” was the terse response to the interruption. He set the computer aside, stretched out on the bed and stared at the ceiling.

The man on the other line uttered, “She’s returned. Your plane is waiting.”

Nico sat up, shoved the phone in his pocket and stood. There wasn’t any time to prep Sergio. This second job wasn’t a test. Sergio was receiving a crash course in retribution, Giacanti style.

Nico’s mouth set in grim determination. Alfonzo want
ed the person responsible and so did he. Sabrina Deguardino, his biological mother would meet her son face-to-face and answer for her crimes. The child she birthed and nearly aborted would be the final vision. 

He shouted upstairs, “Let’s go nipote. You and I have more work to do, ora!”

Morte ai nemici della mia famiglia!

CHAPTER TEN

“I’ll be home once I’m sure Geo’s okay,” Alfonzo said to Selange as she reached in the nightstand for the last of her belongings.

“I knew you’d say that, but it’s fine, Geo needs you.”

Alfonzo had showered, his ass didn’t stink anymore and his face didn’t have the itchy stubble. His chest still hurt, there was
a prickly sensation in his arm, but he didn’t complain because he was lucky and lucky’s better than dead. He noticed the large gold band in her hand. Hell, when did she buy that, he thought? Then he frowned when he recognized it as the bracelet Semira wore in that picture secreted in the chest. “Where’d you get the bracelet?”

Selange paused. Oh God, here it comes, she said quietly to herself. The truth…always give him the truth and she did. “Alberti wanted me to have it.”

“My Uncle’s dead, exactly when did he give it to you?”

“Nico did, yesterday before he left.”

The fire blue anger contained behind the lens was about to ignite. “Really, he waited until now to give it to you?”

“Honey…”

“Sugar-Honey-Ice-Tea, I’m pissed!”

Selange politely asked the bodyguard to step out before sitting slowly on the bed. Patient eyes settled on her husband’s. He’d been good about the entire situation and today was merely a relapse. It was bound to happen, he was human and she would never love him less or take offense. “Do you trust me?”

A slight hesitancy occurred. “Yeah, I do but Nico holding on to a bracelet and giving it to you behind my back makes it hard.”

She held her bottom lip, pulled on the thing like food and he saw Allie. She sighed and then released hold to speak. “That’s understandable. I can’t tell you how to feel, but honey I promised never to lie to you. I haven’t lied about anything since. The bracelet is a family heirloom Alberti gave Nico to hold for me. That is all there is to the bracelet and my friendship with Nico. I’m crazy in love with you and if it takes the rest of my life to prove it, I will.”

Alfonzo wanted to fuss, shatter her argument to pieces but she made sense. She slid off the bed and walked to her husband. Gave a wry smile, caressed his face and kissed him so softly it melted the anger. Free of the IV and that damn pole, he could hold her. He remained rigid due to the healing ache of his ribs but that did not stop his hands or mouth from claiming what was his. Her ass felt nice. He squeezed and rubbed the material encasing it. The juices clinging to her tongue was sucked and mixed with mint saliva to make an oral cocktail.

“Ummm….damn…babe!” he cursed when she stroked his ears, hair and temple while pushing her pelvis against his dick stimulating his senses. Usually, he’d immediately stand at attention but his penis behaved and remained flaccid. This wasn’t worrisome, certainly once he got home
, the dick would misbehave –as usual.

~ ~

Rain had not touched Firenze soil. The driver let Nico and Sergio out before concealing the car in a field nearby. Nico hadn’t told Sergio much except that they were making an unannounced visit on a family member. This was true. Not the entire story, but the shorter version sufficed. Anyway, Sergio would only ask more questions and perhaps try to discourage the slaughter of a mother who was nothing but a stranger. The arrogance of the villa’s inhabitants was evident by their shrubbery. Yes, shrubbery!

Magnificent Cypress trees, so quintessential and symbolic of the Tuscan landscape sat in neat clusters in the beautiful garden whose doors were made of green hedges. Nico snapped their branches to enter. The Tuscan Cypress trees were not originally from Tuscany, they were as many things, taken from another place, in this case Persia and brought to the area by Etruscan tribes thousands of years ago.

How could any mother not want her children? How could a mother not care her son died and forego the funeral? How could a mother seek to kill someone because of their heritage? How could a mother live in splendor when a son’s soul was impoverished?

She is not my mother. I will snap her neck and feel nothing when
I do, Nico swore silently!

He deliberately crushed plants in her garden bed
when he walked. His anger was raw and lit his chest on fire. And just as told, there she was in some silly straw hat, tending to her precious flowers with more love than she had for her sons.

She was alone, a distance from the house, concealed from anyone inside by the same trees that were her pride. “Hello mother!” Nico scowled as his foot
stomped on her hand, pushing it into the soil and crushing her dumb flora.

Her head rose slowly. The woman he hated displayed
affection. Her face wore fine wrinkles at the edges, so subtle that from the distance she looked very young. He knelt on one knee for her to see his cold eyes devoid of compassion. Nico wanted her to see what type of man he had become!

She slipped her hand free of the gardening glove and went to cup his face, but he recoiled. “Do not put your hands on me
,
traditore!”

“It is the only way that I can see you
better Nicolo…my Nicolo?”

Amid evergreens is how he learned his mother was blind. H
is shock caused him to ask, “How long have you been without sight?”

“I lost my sight many years ago.”

Sergio was part of the landscape, listening to this strange conversation with his face contorted, not understanding shit but piecing it together. So, this blind woman was Nico’s mother and she’d never met him? Okay, well maybe that’s why he’s crazy. The man really wanted a mother’s love, or something like that was Sergio’s personal opinion.

“Why did you send men to kill my family at the church?”

“I have done no such thing!”

He put the gun to her cheek and Sergio jumped. “Nico, whoa this is your mom –chill!”

“Chiudi quella cazzo di bocca!” he growled. “Say nothing nipote or I will kill you as well!”

“You are Nicolo. My baby Nicolo!”

“Mama, do not speak my name. Do not offend me with lies. Do not hurt me anymore. You are dead in my heart!”

“I do not lie. Ti amo, hear truth from my heart!”

The gun dug a hole in her cheek. The color of pink circled. His finger did not flex. He imagined the blood spilling into soil and just as all traitors her human plasma would give nourishment to the plants.

Sergio reasoned with him.
“Uncle Nico, I don’t know what the hell is going on but you can’t shoot your mom. That shit’s wrong. Don’t do it, if you do you’re going to live with this nightmare. You’re crazy as it is word.”

Sergio’s interruption prompted Nico to ask a question he harbored for years. “Why did you not come for us, mama, perché?”

“I wanted to but I did not know where you were. My father told me many lies. I was forbidden to go to Alberti.”

“Forbidden, perché?”

“There are things that I will explain to you in depth, but not here. I will tell you a bit, you deserve that much. I was engaged to my husband when I met your father. Alberti lived nearby and he watched me in silence when I helped my mother in the garden. When I tended the flowers alone, Alberti introduced himself. We talked about many things and I learned he loved flowers. We fell in love in a garden figlio and when I told my father about my desire to marry another, I was taken away before Alberti could ask my father’s permission. Later, my mother suspected I was pregnant and again I was fed lies and placed in what was a house prison until I gave birth. I held you and Vincenzo, you were my loves. Only once did I touch you before you were stolen from me by my father and taken away.”

“You did not give us away?”

“Mai!”

Nico’s world stopped.

“It is my father who took you and sold you to your father in order to pay many gambling debts. He owed dangerous people large sums of money. Some of those he owed were Mafiosi. Your father told you what was necessary.”

“Mama…
do not try to cover with lies!”

His mother’s head lifted, she was listening and m
ay have heard something. “Kill me if it is your wish, but know my son I have bargained my life for you and your brother many times over.”

The weapon lowered. “
What are you saying? Did you marry this man against your will, are you a prisoner mama?”

“I am not a prisoner
. I swear to you, I have nothing to do with killings of people you love.”

“Then why was your number in an assassino’s directory?”

“The man I have married has many friends. It is possible he may know something of this. He leaves for Russia soon and I will investigate.”

“You did not come to the funeral of your son
and now you seek to aid me.”

“Alberti sent word
after the burial. He told me nothing more. I will help you Nicolo because I too would like to know if my husband had any hand in the killings.”

“Do you love your husband, is that why you stay?”

“It is an arrangement Nico. If I leave everyone I love is in danger. Your grandmother is an old woman, and there is my sister and brother’s children and grandchildren to consider. My parents were indebted to my husband’s family which I did not know until many years later. I did leave and my father mysteriously died. I cannot say for sure if it was my husband, or his relatives, but I know enough Nico. I know the history of your father’s family. It is here that I can learn many things.”

“Mama, you’re coming with me, I’ll protect you,” Nico said
as he reached for her hand.

She
did not accept. “Nico, I have survived these years without need of a gun. The church shootings have disturbed me as well.” She touched his leg. “Put out your hand.” When he did she traced his palm with invisible numbers that he stored in his brain. “Call two weeks from today, exactly at eight di notte. I will know more to aid you, capisce mio figlio?”

Nico dropped to his knees. “How can I trust you have not lied? My existence is a lie mama…help me see, por favore?”

“Trust is more than sight, it is things unseen. I have shed tears for my sons. I have wondered whether you were alive and if so, what you might look like. My vision is impaired, I see vaguely but I can see your heart. The hardness in your voice is pain. I also carry an enormous ache that is, until now. I will aid you figlio, but you must not come here again. We will discuss a way to contact one another. Do not reveal to anyone we have spoken or our lives are forfeit, giuro sul sangue Semira!”

“On the blood of Semira, lo giuro,” he promised and then he embraced his mother very tight and years of yearning
dissolved in his mother’s warm embrace.

She stroked his hair, kissed his cheeks and whispered, “Figlio, you and Vincenzo beat in my heart. Ti amo Nicolo. Odio me non di più, ti prego.”