A Family Affair: The Secret Read Free Page A

Italian they call the Godfather of Magdalena.”
    “Oh? And how exactly do you know this?” Especially the part about the Godfather. Had he asked one of his trucker buddies to take a detour? Frank Sorrento had a lot of friends and that sounded like one of his tricks. “Dad? How’d you find out? Come on, fess up.”
    He laughed, saluted her with his beer bottle. “I read about it on the Internet, how else?”
    Angie worked up a smile. “Then it must be true, right?”
    Another laugh. “Absolutely.” He stood, limped toward her in his jeans and plaid shirt. The knee was worse at night after a long day at work, and with winter near, it would get tighter and more painful. Years of laying brick beat up a person’s body, gave him aches, kept him awake at night, and sent him to the doctor’s office for relief, no matter how small or short-lived. “Just be careful.” He tucked a few curls behind her ear, his smile fading, turning sad. “Okay?”
    He meant “Be careful with men” but he didn’t mouth the words, didn’t need to because they were always sitting between them, like mortar, ready to line the truth side by side and seal it in place.
    “I will,” she said, clasping his hand. “You know I will.” She’d always been cautious, but then anyone who loses a parent so young would be, right? But since Johnny made his great escape, she’d been downright obsessed with dissecting people’s comments and the reasons behind them.
    Her father nodded, pulled her into a big hug and said, “That’s my girl. I’m sure gonna miss you.”
    ***
    Roman Ventori’s back in town.
    They say he’s a millionaire.
    I heard he went bankrupt.
    What’s he do?
    Some kind of real estate.
    Probably a scam.
    I heard restaurants name meals after him.
    They do?
    That’s what I heard.
    Huh.
    Bet he still looks like a movie star.
    Probably.
    They say he dumped his wife.
    Huh. Was she pregnant, like the one from high school?
    Dunno. Wonder what ever happened to that one?
    He always said he wasn’t the father.
    Every man says that, right up until the DNA test.
    Why didn’t they do one of those back then?
    Dunno.
    Maybe he did get set up.
    Nah. She played the organ at church.
    Yeah.
    And didn’t his old man call him out, demand he get married?
    Come to think of it, he did.
    That says guilty.
    Yup. Sure does .
    ***
    Roman Ventori yanked the dead bush from the ground and tossed it into a wheelbarrow. The bush could have been a boxwood or an azalea, but that was at least two seasons ago, when the owner watered and fertilized the damn thing. This sad excuse for shrubbery hadn’t seen anything but neglect. Same with the sticks along the back property his mother once called her favorite trees. Most of those would need to go, their diameters so scrawny he could use a bow saw to chop them down. Damn, but the place was a disaster, inside and out. He glanced at the house he’d grown up in, his gaze drifting to the second-story window and the room that had been his for the first eighteen years of his life. How many nights had he opened the window, even in the dead of winter, stared at the blackness outside and imagined the life he’d have? Monumental, never-to-be-forgotten, stellar—an existence that would achieve the unimaginable and, in the process, achieve greatness . He was destined.
    And then it was gone; murdered by a rumor, stripped without warning, stealing hope, crushing a future along with his belief in others, even family. The town turned on him, or most did, with the exception of a few like Pop and Lucy Benito and Mimi Pendergrass. His mother never lost faith in him, though whether that was because she really believed his innocence or whether she couldn’t stand not to believe him was always a gray area. But his old man, Salvatore Ventori? He tossed out the “guilty” verdict before he heard the whole story. Even though there was no story . There were lies, though, lots of them, ones people accepted as the truth. All Sal