Uncle Giovanni
Chapter 09 - Uncle Giovanni
Giovanni Cavali had been old since I was a child.
Not in age. In atmosphere.
He carried rooms around him like heavy coats. Men lowered their voices for him, women accepted compliments from him with stiff smiles, and I had grown up mistaking his stillness for wisdom.
When we returned to the penthouse, he sat in my living room beneath the palm tree, holding a cup of espresso he had requested from my staff as if nothing in the world could deny him comfort.
Enzo sat across from him.
They had not been placed together.
Someone had moved them.
Nico met my eyes and gave one small shake of his head. He had not done it.
Giovanni smiled when he saw the blue ledger under my arm.
“Your father was always sentimental about paper.”
I set the ledger on the coffee table.
“Is that what you call evidence?”
“I call it an old man’s habit of writing things he should have forgotten.”
Serena stood beside me. Patricia remained near the doorway, looking from her husband to my uncle with the horror of a woman discovering the monster under the bed had friends.
Giovanni glanced at Serena.
“Difficult girl,” he said. “Ruined a simple plan.”
The room went cold.
I looked at him.
“What simple plan?”
He lifted one shoulder.
“Enzo needed access. I needed you softened.”
I almost laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because there are betrayals so large the mind tries to make them ridiculous to survive them.
“Softened.”
“You were too much like your mother,” Giovanni said. “All conscience at inconvenient moments. Your father intended to hand half the city to prosecutors. If he had lived long enough, he would have burned us all.”
“My father was murdered.”
Giovanni sipped espresso.
“Your father was warned.”
Serena’s hand found mine.
The room noticed.
Giovanni noticed most of all.
His eyes narrowed.
“So the marriage was not entirely wasted.”
I moved before rage could choose a worse shape. I stepped between my uncle and my wife.
“You wanted her to keep me distracted.”
“We wanted her to give Enzo what he needed while you learned domestic disappointment.” Giovanni smiled at Serena. “But she became inconveniently noble.”
Serena did not lower her eyes.
“No. I became inconveniently in love.”
It was the bravest thing I had ever heard.
It was also the most dangerous.
Giovanni placed his cup down.
“Love is a word people use when strategy fails.”
Patricia stepped forward.
“I have the flash drive.”
Both men looked at her.
She reached into her purse and withdrew not the flash drive, but her phone.
“I also have your conversation from this room,” she said. “All of it.”
Enzo’s face emptied.
Giovanni stood.
For a man of sixty-eight, he moved fast.
But Nico was faster.
No one shouted. No one performed. The old man’s wrist was caught before it reached Patricia’s phone.
Giovanni looked at me over Nico’s shoulder.
“You think recordings save families?”
“No,” I said. “Truth does not save every family.”
Then I looked at Serena.
“But lies destroy all of them.”
My phone buzzed again.
A message from my attorney appeared.
DANTE, I REVIEWED THE DIVORCE ENVELOPE. IT WAS SWITCHED BEFORE DELIVERY.
I looked down at the beige envelope still crushed in my hand.
For the first time, I opened it.
There were no divorce papers inside.
May you like
Only a single photograph of Serena sleeping.
And a note that read: Choose carefully.
