My uncle’s eyes sparkled as he remembered his long-ago lover. The memory smoothed his face, made him appear younger.
“We kept it secret, of course. I was married, and the head of the Saldanas, my uncle Gio, was not tolerant of men who desired other men. But they found out, of course. My wife. My Family. Such anger from them all. My wife blamed me for the lack of child she’d been promised. Of course, how could she know who was to blame? Sometimes children are not born to a married union, and it is the way of Safraella. And I don’t think our scarcity of love for each other helped.
“I blamed her for wasting some of my best years, for sinking her talons in and dragging me into the dark pit she had created. It was she who had driven me elsewhere. I refused to reconcile. No threats from her Family or mine would make me turn away from Savio.”
He rubbed his jaw with the palm of his hand, lost in the tale. I thought about how it must feel, to love someone so well but to be told to turn away from them. I’d kept Val a secret purely because of that reason. But maybe it hadn’t been love between us, or at least on his part. Not if he could betray me so easily. Maybe I didn’t really understand true love, like Marcello described. Maybe love was less about feeling wanted and beautiful and more about feeling safe.
I glanced at Les, asleep on his bed.
“I don’t know who planned it,” my uncle continued. “Probably my wife. I do know, though, that it was her brother, Terzo, and my uncle Gio who murdered Savio. They didn’t even try to disguise it. There were witnesses, and they were in Maietta territory.
“I’d never felt such pain. And anger and grief. And never since. My uncle Gio thought that would be the end of it. That by removing Savio, he had effectively ended the problem. So confident was he that when I approached him in our home it never occurred to him I’d come to kill him.
“It was much easier than I thought it would be, spilling the blood of my family. Truly, I felt nothing. And I certainly felt nothing when I killed Terzo, my wife’s brother.
“After that, things were a little . . . complicated.” He waved his hand in the air. “Dante took over as head of the Family. The Da Vias felt their honor had been damaged, and the Maiettas were calling for a blood price for the death of Savio. I probably would have left on my own if Dante hadn’t disowned me. There was nothing left for me anyway.
“As far as I know,” he said, “Dante paid the Maiettas their blood price.”
A blood price to the Maiettas would have been a large sum of money. Maybe that was where much of the Saldana fortune had disappeared to.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He paused and appeared taken aback. “For what?”
“For Savio. For the way you were treated by people who should have loved you and stood by you no matter what.”
He grunted. “Yes, well. Family before family, of course. There was no real way to ease the Da Vias’ anger. They are quick to cast blame and slow to forget. Even if Dante tried to smooth things over, I don’t see how that would have worked. Estella felt I had personally shamed her, and nothing less than my head would’ve appeased her. She blamed Dante for letting me leave instead of turning me over to them. And then she started to blame Safraella.”
“Estella Da Via is a lunatic,” I said. “And now she’s the head of the Da Vias.”
“That’s unsurprising. She was not all that stable when I left. I heard she never did produce any children, to her eternal shame.”
“How did you hear that? And how did you know my name and know of my brothers? We weren’t even born.”
“Your mother sent me letters, sometimes. Though none in recent years.”
“My mother? Bianca Saldana?”
He rolled his eyes. “Unless you have another mother I don’t know of, then yes.”
This . . . this flipped my world upside down. My mother had sent letters to Marcello Saldana, who we were told never to speak of. Who had brought shame to the Family. “Why would she do that?”
“We were friends. I was glad when she married Dante and joined our Family. I had great love for Bianca and my brother. It opened a wound I thought long healed to hear of their deaths at the hands of the Da Vias.”
“Then why do you refuse to help?” I leaned forward. “Come with me! You know what it’s like to need vengeance. You took yours but now stop mine. Give me the location of the Da Via Family home and we can make them pay for what they’ve done to our Family. I will make sure they never forget the Saldanas!”
“At the cost of your own life, you mean?”
I leaned back. “If need be. I’m not afraid to die.”
He laughed. “No, of course you’re not! You’re, what, seventeen? And a disciple of Safraella. I’m sure you can’t wait to meet Her cold embrace.”
He mocked the gods too easily. “You step awfully close to blasphemy. I am Her disciple, and I’m confident She would offer me a fast rebirth.”
“And then what? You die and are reborn? And what of the people you leave behind?”
“There are no people. Everyone’s dead.”