They Spoke Sicilian Over My Head, So I Called My Don Grandfather novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Cousin

Massimo Greco, the man who carried her to the boat at six, arrives at her hidden apartment a day early and sets terms; Remo's text says someone has tracked her phone.

My private apartment was on the fifth floor of a building Remo had never heard of.

My grandfather's trust paid the rent.

Nobody knew about it but my grandfather and me.

I got there at eleven, kicked off my shoes and sat on the floor with my back against the couch.

I did not cry.

I opened my banking app and looked at the buildings in my name.

Three of them, on Dock Street. A balance with more zeros than my whole life had ever held.

Remo had called it a present.

At midnight the doorbell rang once.

I stood on the other side of the peephole for a long moment.

A tall man in a dark coat, his face turned slightly away from the light.

A pale scar cut through his left eyebrow.

"Miss Bell," he said through the wood, in Sicilian. "Your grandfather told me you would not open for a stranger."

"Then why are you here?"

"Because I'm not a stranger."

I opened the chain, and he stepped in without touching anything.

Up close he was bigger than the coat had made him. Black hair cut short, eyes the color of strong coffee.

He looked at me for a long time.

"You have your mother's forehead," he said.

My throat tightened.

"Who are you?"

"Massimo Greco. I carried you to the boat. I held your hand on the dock. You bit me."

I looked at his hand.

There was a small crescent scar at the base of his thumb.

"I was six," I said.

"You had very good teeth."

I laughed. It came out cracked, and it frightened me, so I stopped.

"Your grandfather said you called tonight," Massimo said. "He said you sounded calm. He doesn't believe it."

"I'm calm."

"You're holding a shoe."

I looked down.

I was holding one of my shoes by the heel.

I put it on the table.

Massimo crossed the room and took my chin in two fingers, turning my face to the lamp. He did it slowly.

"Good," he said.

"What's good?"

"You aren't hurt."

He let go.

My skin stayed warm where he had been.

I sat on the arm of the couch and told him everything. The restaurant, the crab, the cold ice cream, the line about a commoner.

He listened without moving.

When I said "she's useful for now," his jaw tightened.

"The Cammarata girl," he said. "The one who sat beside you."

"Cinzia. She's been my best friend since we were twelve."

He didn't answer that.

"Remo's deal on Wednesday," I said. "He thinks it makes him underboss."

"It makes him a man who bought guns from the Ruggieri family without checking whose granddaughter he left at home."

"I want what's in my name taken out of it. The buildings. The money. All of it, before he knows."

"That will take a day."

"I want him to walk into that room on Wednesday with nothing underneath him."

Massimo almost smiled.

"Your grandfather said you would say something like that."

"What else did he say?"

"That you asked him for an ordinary life, and he gave it to you, and he regrets it every month."

I looked at my hands.

"What do you want me to do until Wednesday?" I asked.

"Nothing," Massimo said. "Stay hidden. Let me work."

"No."

He raised one eyebrow, the one with the scar.

"Remo thinks I'm stupid," I said. "If I vanish, he'll wonder why. If I go on being what he thinks I am for five more days, he won't look at me at all."

"You want to go back to his house."

"I want him to think I'm sick tonight and fine on Sunday."

"And if he touches you?"

"He hasn't taken me to bed in a month. He pinches my cheek like a pet. Cinzia's been busy."

Something in Massimo's face went very still.

"Then here is how it will go," he said. "You tell me everything, before you do it. Nothing happens to you that I haven't heard first."

"Fine. And you tell me everything too. No deciding what I can handle."

"That's a hard rule for me."

"That's the rule."

He looked at me for a while.

"To your doorman, I'm your cousin," he said. "To Remo, I'm a stranger until Wednesday. And you do nothing until then."

"I'll do what I need to."

"Fiora."

It was the first time he had said my name, and he said it low.

"Fine," I said. "Nothing until Wednesday that you haven't heard."

"Good."

He went to the window and stood to one side of it, so no one on the street could see him.

I watched his back.

I had spent five years being looked past, and in a quarter of an hour this man had looked at me more than Remo had all year.

My phone buzzed on the table.

I picked it up.

Remo: Where are you? Your phone says you're at an address I don't have.

I read it twice.

Massimo had turned from the window.

"What is it?"

I held out the screen.

"Remo shouldn't have been able to see my phone at all," I said. "Someone put a tracker on it."

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