Belonging (24 page)

In the late afternoon, Christopher
Robin and Kieran told us they needed to go, since they were hosting
an event that evening at Christopher’s art gallery. The street was
closed off at both of the nearest intersections, but Dante’s
security team was allowed to pull a big SUV with tinted windows up
to the front of the house. As soon as it appeared on the block, all
the reporters and the paparazzi snapped into action.

Four security guards formed a square
around Kieran and Christopher, who’d put on baseball caps, hoodies
and sunglasses to make the short dash to the car. The paparazzi
went completely crazy, pushing and shoving to try to get a shot,
even though one of them yelled almost immediately, “It’s not them,
it’s not Tillane and Dombruso!”

They still pursued the couple
aggressively, throwing out questions and trying to get the cameras
and microphones right in their faces. Christopher was
well-protected, though. The bodyguards were actually kind of
superfluous, since Kieran, the ex-cop, was absolutely determined to
keep his man free from harm, embracing him protectively and using
his arm to shield his smaller husband. The two made it to the SUV
relatively unscathed, presumably with their anonymity
intact.

“Well, that could have gone worse,” I
said, watching the live feed on TV. I turned to my brother and
said, “Don’t you and Charlie need to get out of here, too? Your
restaurant’s going to be busy on a Friday night.”

“No way am I leaving you and Nana to
deal with all of this shit on your own. Besides, our staff has it
under control,” Dante said. He’d remained vigilant all afternoon,
making calls and keeping a close eye on the situation.

I turned to my friends. “What about
you guys? There are plenty more sunglasses and hoodies to go around
if you want to slip out of here incognito.”

“I’d like to stay,” Christian said. He
was curled up on his fiancé’s lap in a corner of the sofa, his head
on Shea’s shoulder. “Even though it seems like my dad’s coping
well, all things considered, I’d just feel better if we remained
close by.”

“We’re staying as long as Christian
does. We got our landlady to look after our pets and we cleared our
schedule,” Skye said, reaching out and giving his best friend’s
hand a squeeze. He and Dare were curled up together in an oversized
club chair that they’d slid right beside the couch. “You look
tired, Z,” he added, referring to the nickname Christian used for
his street art. “Why don’t you take Gianni up on his offer and
crash in one of the guestrooms for a while?”

“That might be an idea,” Christian
said. I directed them to the nearest empty bedroom and Shea scooped
him into his arms, kissed his forehead, and carried him out of the
room.

“I’m going to go upstairs and see if
Zan needs anything,” I said. I turned to Nana and Jessie, who sat
side-by-side on the couch monitoring the news. “Let me know if
there are any changes.”

“Will do,” Nana said. The dog at her
feet looked at me and wagged his tail happily before going back to
chewing the sneaker I’d surrendered to him.

Zan had gone up to my bedroom a couple
hours earlier, saying he wanted to lay down for a while. I
suspected that he’d actually wanted a little time to himself. As
the day wore on, I’d watched the stress building in him. For a man
used to being by himself, it was certainly
understandable.

He called, “Come in,” when I knocked
lightly on the door to my bedroom.

I opened the door just a few inches
and stuck my head in. “I hope I’m not intruding. All you’ve eaten
today is toast, so I thought I’d see if you wanted me to bring you
something.”

He shook his head no and held his arms
out to me, just like he’d done at the airport. It was such a
vulnerable and childlike gesture. I came into the room, closing and
locking the door behind me, then hurried to him. Zan was sitting on
the floor in the corner, his knees drawn to his chest, and I knelt
down and hugged him as I asked, “How are you doing?”

“In some ways, I’m doing better than
I’d have expected. But a big part of me wants to run and hide so
sodding bad. Not from you. If I ran, I’d want to take you with me.
But from everything else.”

I held him for a while before asking,
“Would it help if I called a therapist or a counselor for you?
Maybe they could give you some advice for getting through
this.”

“No thanks, love. I don’t do well with
shrinks. I spent years in therapy with so many different people:
psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, and it never made any
difference. And yes, I do fully understand that the common
denominator in all those instances was me. It just wasn’t what I
needed.”

“I was in therapy too, actually, for a
lot of my childhood. I really don’t know if it helped or not. I was
so young when my parents died that I don’t think I was capable of
processing it, with or without all those counselors.”

“Were their deaths related to the fact
that your family was involved in organized crime?”

I nodded, shifting around so I was
leaning against the wall beside him. “My dad had been trying to go
legit, but it didn’t matter. After so many generations in the
business, stretching all the way back to Sicily, the Dombrusos had
made plenty of enemies. Chief among them were the Natoris. One
night, the head of that family and several men broke into our house
with the intention of killing all of us and sending a message to
the rest of our organization. They started with my parents and
murdered them in their beds while they slept. My baby sister
Sophie’s nursery was right next to my parents’ bedroom and they
shot her next, then came for my brothers and me. Dante heard them
coming and held them off with a shotgun so we could
escape.”

“Oh God. Gianni, I’m so sorry. I can’t
imagine.”

“I really didn’t understand what was
happening at the time,” I told him. “Dante woke us up, and Vincent
helped Mikey and me climb out a window and run to the neighbor’s
house. I remember being scared because it was pitch black, and
holding Mikey’s hand really tightly because I was afraid of losing
him in the dark. I remember the wet lawn under my bare feet, and I
remember Vincent telling us over and over that we had to run as
fast as we could.”

I looked at my hands, which were
fidgeting on my bent knees, and said, “It was years before all the
pieces from that night finally came together for me. Nobody would
talk to us about what had happened or why. I guess they figured we
were too little to understand.”

“Did you ever go back to that
house?”

I shook my head. “My uncles brought
our toys and clothes here, and we never went back. I barely
remember the house now. I don’t really remember my parents, either.
Most of what I remember are things other people told me about them,
and when I try to recall what they looked like, all I see are the
static faces in my photographs.” I leaned over, opened a chest that
was pushed up against the wall and took out an old teddy bear. “I
think I have a faint memory of my dad smiling at me and handing me
this when he came back from a business trip, but for all I know, it
was just a dream.” I turned the little bear around in my hands as
tears prickled at the back of my eyes. Zan pulled me into his arms,
and I murmured as I put my head on his shoulder, “I’m sorry. I
didn’t mean to start acting all pathetic. Talking about this stuff
just never, ever gets easier.”

“Don’t apologize, love. I’m grateful
that you’re opening up to me.”

“You’re really easy to talk
to.”

“I’m glad you think so, and I feel the
same about you. I regret all those months I was too stupid to
manage this.”

I grinned and said, “You weren’t
stupid. We both just needed a push to get where we
belonged.”

Chapter
Thirteen

Zan remained in my room the rest of
the afternoon and into the early evening. I stayed with him for a
couple hours, then told him I had a surprise for him and went to
pull it together. He looked a little uncertain when I came to get
him, but took my hand and let me lead him downstairs.

We bypassed the family room, where
everyone was hanging out, and cut through the kitchen to the back
door. “The helicopter went away and the backyard has a really high
fence,” I told him, “so I don’t think we’ll be bothered on our
short walk.”

“Where are we going?”

“Someplace nice. You’ll
see.”

Nana’s house had a surprisingly large
backyard, despite the fact that it was in the center of San
Francisco. It had started out as a double lot, and then in the
1960s, my grandfather had bought the house next door and knocked it
down, partly to expand the property, and partly because he’d
thought the neighbors’ house was ugly and he was tired of looking
at it. To create the illusion of even more space, trees and shrubs
had been heavily planted along the high masonry fence, so it was
hard to tell where the yard ended.

In one corner, blocked from view by a
tall hedge, was one of my favorite places in the world. The little
white treehouse, built in the same Queen Anne style as the main
house, was only six feet off the ground, nestled amid the branches
of an oak tree that was older than the neighborhood. But once
inside, it felt like another world.

“Wow,” Zan murmured as he stepped
through a little gap in the hedge and saw the tiny house for the
first time.

“Nana had it built for my brothers and
me a few months after we moved in with her. It was meant to make us
feel welcome and more at home. It did that, but it also served a
more important purpose and gave each of us a place to escape when
we needed to be by ourselves. I’ve used it a lot, not just during
my childhood.” We climbed the ladder, closing and latching the door
behind us. I’d drawn all the curtains to make sure we had privacy,
and earlier I’d brought everything I thought we might need into the
little space and set it up.

It was very deluxe as far
as treehouses went, with both electricity and a tiny bathroom, the
exterior plumbing hidden by a wooden enclosure behind the tree. It
had one main room, and its walls were painted to give the illusion
of being in a lighthouse surrounded by a turbulent sea. I’d always
thought that was an interesting and oddly apt choice on the part of
the
trompe l’oeil
artist who’d been given free rein in this space, since I’d
weathered many storms in the treehouse.

That evening, I’d placed bunches of
flowers around the room, just whatever I’d found blooming in the
yard, along with a hodgepodge of candles from Nana’s party closet.
Soft music played from a couple Bluetooth speakers, and in the
center of the space, I’d set a low, round table for dinner. Once
Zan was seated on one of the pillows that ringed the table, I
removed the cloche from his meal, revealing a green salad and a
piece of grilled salmon. According to Christian, this was one of
Zan’s favorite go-to meals. “I thought maybe we could go ahead and
have our first date. Is this okay?” I asked, watching him closely
for a reaction.

“It’s absolutely perfect, except for
one thing.” I looked around quickly to see what I’d forgotten. Zan
removed the cover from my dinner, then slid my plate around so it
was beside his instead of across the table. He smiled at me as he
pulled a pillow right beside him and I settled onto it with a
little grin. “Thank you for doing this,” he said sincerely, leaning
in and kissing me.

“Don’t thank me yet,” I said as I
poured him some wine. “I might not have cooked the salmon the way
you like it.”

“It looks fabulous.”

“
I didn’t dress the salad,”
I told him as I put down the wine bottle and draped a cloth napkin
over my lap. “I didn’t know how much you preferred. The dressing’s
in that decanter. I made us some dessert too, but it’s not from
your shopping list, so you might not like it.”

He took a bite of the fish and claimed
it was wonderful, but I was pretty sure I’d overcooked it. I
watched anxiously as he ate a couple more bites, and then he asked
me, “Aren’t you going to eat anything?”

I picked up my fork and held it poised
over my plate, watching as he swirled a bit of dressing over his
salad. I blurted, “I tried to make it the way you do, but might
have used too much olive oil. I’m sorry. If you write down a recipe
for me, I’ll get it right next time.” He took a bite of salad and
pronounced it perfect too, and I looked down and said softly, “You
don’t have to say that. Just tell me what I did wrong. I can learn
to do better.”

He kissed my forehead and told me,
“It’s wonderful, Gianni, and I’m grateful that you went through all
this trouble.”

“It’s really okay?”

“Absolutely. The food’s delicious, the
setting is enchanting, and I’m with you, so this is the best meal I
could possibly imagine.” I grinned shyly and took a bite of fish.
It had turned out well after all.

When the main course was finished, I
moved our plates to a little credenza against one wall and brought
over dessert. I’d made a fruit plate for two and a chocolate
dipping sauce to accompany it. Most of it was run-of-the mill,
stuff like strawberries and raspberries, but I’d slipped in a few
slices of star fruit, just because. Zan grinned when he saw the
platter. “This shows a lot of restraint. Was the market out of
tentacle fruit and tanginas?”