Thin Lives (Donati Bloodlines #3) (6 page)

If he had changed the digits for the dial to open it, it must have been because he didn’t feel comfortable using the ones it needed before. Maybe someone else had known the numbers.

Calisto wasn’t sure.

He just wanted inside the fucking thing.

Frustrated, Calisto tried different combinations of numbers. His birthday. His mother’s birthday. Even his uncle’s birthday. He tried other dates that jumped out in his mind as important, but they also failed.

Nothing.

He needed those damn papers for his lawyer, or else he was going to be stuck paying rent to a bastard he didn’t owe money to. Years of owed rent, for that matter.

More irritated than before at his lack of knowledge of even the most basic things in his own damn home, Calisto stood and then promptly fell into his computer chair with a mumbled curse. A throbbing ache had started in the base of his skull, warning that a major headache was eminent. He’d had those damn things pretty regularly ever since he woke up in the hospital.

Your brain is constantly working too hard
, he was told.

Stop pushing it
, another doctor said.
You’re not doing yourself any favors by demanding more than it can give you.

Fuck.

They just didn’t understand.

He couldn’t let it go.

Calisto spun the computer chair around, and scrubbed his hands down his face. The date and time flashed in the corner of his computer screen, catching his attention. It had been just three weeks since he found his priest murdered. The officials had finished their investigation inside the church, and thankfully, left him the hell alone after that first initial interview. They had yet to release Father Day’s body, despite the many requests from the Diocese to do just that. A proper funeral should be held for the man, and Calisto wanted to attend.

The police had marked the murder as a robbery gone wrong. Calisto still wasn’t sure he believed that nonsense, but he didn’t know what else to think, either. His uncle had known he was going there based on nothing more than a memory he wanted explained, Affonso’s attitude had been less than pleased, and then the priest ended up dead.

That wouldn’t sound good to anyone who heard it.

But why would Affonso do that?

What could he want to hide?

Calisto didn’t have a good answer for that, because obviously there wasn’t one. His mind was just making up its own end to a story to explain things it didn’t understand or know. But it still didn’t sit right with him no matter how he looked at it. Having no other options, he had to drop it and move on.

October had practically sneaked up on him before he even knew what was happening.

He hated how the world seemed to be turning much faster than he could keep up with.

Taking another look around his office, Calisto wondered just how scatterbrained he must have been before the accident. Papers and files were everywhere, piled on his desk and the chairs. Even the couch had taken a hit. Either he had been in the midst of reorganizing something—unlikely, as he kept shit organized anyway—or he had been looking for something and the mess was left behind.

Or you just didn’t care
, he thought.

Calisto’s brow fell at the passing idea. That was probably closer to the truth than his other two options, given he hadn’t cared much about the space since he returned to his home. Actually, he’d added to the piles since then, dropping papers and a file here or there and then leaving it before he went off on something else again.

As if this place wasn’t important, and he was just passing through, using it to rest when the time called for it.

He supposed it didn’t matter, not at the moment anyway.

Other things needed attended to, and so his messy office and life had to wait.

Calisto found Affonso sipping on a glass of bourbon and laughing with his underboss, Ray. Neither of the two men tampered their laughter at Calisto’s arrival into the office, and so he assumed whatever it was that amused them wasn’t all that bad.

“Could have called if you were coming over, Calisto,” Affonso said, placing his drink on the desk.

Ray said nothing, just watched Calisto out of the corner of his eye as he took a seat in one of the high-back leather chairs across from his uncle’s desk.

“Do I need to?” Calisto asked. “I’m rarely here as it is.”

Affonso shrugged. “Worth noting. Why did you come?”

“The Marcellos want a sit-down. You, them, and the Calabrese. The Irish nonsense is getting out of hand as far as they’re concerned, and they want it to stop by whatever means necessary. I think they’re willing to put a hand in it themselves if that’ll make it go away.”

Ray cursed under his breath. “I warned you, boss.”

Affonso didn’t pay Ray any mind, as his attention was solely focused on Calisto. “And when did you get asked about arranging this … sit-down?”

“I met up with Gio today. Friendly stuff, not business,
zio
.”

“I should hope not.”

Calisto resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He was twenty-eight, working on twenty-nine years old. He’d been his uncle’s consigliere for four years, but Affonso still acted like he didn’t know what he was doing sometimes.

It irritated him to no end. He respected Affonso as the Don of their family, but his uncle was also the man who put him in the seat he was in, as his right hand.

Didn’t that say something?

Calisto knew what he was doing.

“I wanted to bring it to your attention,” Calisto said, refusing to feed into his uncle’s need to reprimand who his friends were. “Better not to poke the bear that is the Marcello family, right?”

Ray shifted in his seat, looking entirely uncomfortable. “Maybe they can help with the Irish, seeing as how our streets are like a war zone right now.”

Affonso scowled. “Perhaps. My issue with sitting down at a table with the Marcellos isn’t the topic at hand, but that man’s wife.”

Calisto figured as long as Affonso was open to the meeting, then that was the important thing. “I’ll set it up.”

He got up out of the chair, ready to leave.

“Leaving already?” Affonso asked, picking his glass back up for another drink.

“Long day,” he offered in explanation.

Affonso looked him over, dark eyes surveying him like he was trying to find something specific. Calisto wasn’t entirely sure what his uncle could be looking for, but he was doing it.

“Do you need something from me?” Calisto asked.

“If I do, you have a phone,” Affonso said.

Point taken.

Calisto left the office without a goodbye.

A long day was a goddamn understatement.

Shutting the door to the office behind him, Calisto noticed the doors to the library were slightly open. They hadn’t been when he first arrived. He’d spent a lot of time in the library, playing the piano as he sat in a wheelchair during his recovery.

Stepping up to the door, he peeked in, hearing the melody of the piano coming from within the library.

Emma sat at the piano, her fingers dancing over the ivory keys, and a small smile playing on her lips. At her feet, the little black dog slept happily. Her loose dress did little to hide the swell of her stomach, and she stopped playing for a moment to rub her pregnancy bump.

“This always helps you, baby boy,” she whispered, obviously talking to the unborn child. “Just a little while longer, huh?”

Calisto couldn’t help his own smile growing as Emma went back to the piano and began playing again. He opened the doors a little further, stepping in just far enough that he could lean against the wall and listen to her play.

She was good. The tune was familiar, one he too enjoyed playing. Before long, Calisto had closed his eyes and was drumming his fingers against his side in tune with the piano.

For a second, he was lost in it all.

Lost in her playing.

Emma didn’t miss a key in the song, so she must have been practicing.

Calisto’s eyes popped open as the music stopped and a throat cleared. Instantly, he found Emma looking at him over her shoulder.

Something unknown burned in her eyes, like she was silently asking him a question, but couldn’t make the words come out for him to hear them. After a long silence stretched between them, Emma dropped her gaze, a pink flush coloring her cheeks.

As much as it looked sweet, it also seemed sad to him for some reason.

He wished he knew more about this woman, but his mind was blank. She seemed so interesting, like she was someone he might relate to and whose company he might find enjoyment in. Unfortunately, he was always running from one thing to another, and constantly stuck inside his own head when he wasn’t, and there hadn’t been much time for him to really sit down with Emma.

Maybe he would try to fix that.

Emma’s head lifted again, her stare flicking to his as she smiled.

“You sound wonderful, Emmy,” he told her.

She turned into a statue at his words.

Calisto tipped his head to the side, confused. “I’m sorry. Did I say something wrong?”

Emma’s red lips parted like she was going to say something, but she quickly closed her mouth and shook her head. “No, of course not, Calisto.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“You called me Emmy.”

He had.

Calisto racked his brain, searching for a reason why he had done that, and coming up with nothing. No one called her Emmy. Not Affonso, not his men, or the few people she talked to. He hadn’t once heard anyone use that nickname for Emma in the few times he had been in her presence that he remembered.

“Who calls you Emmy?” Calisto asked.

Emma’s face remained passive—blank, even. But he saw it, the brief flash of pain and sadness in her gaze, and the tremor that rocked her bottom lip before she bit hard into it.

“No one,” she said quietly.

Calisto didn’t believe that, or he wouldn’t have used it. “Someone must.”

Emma waved it off, saying, “No one here, Cal.”

“But I do?”

Subtly, she nodded. “Yeah, you do.”

Calisto

For a long while, Calisto simply stared at Emma without saying anything after her quiet confession. He wasn’t quite sure what to say. Before long, she had Midnight in her arms and was making her move to leave the library.

Calisto couldn’t let her do that, not after what she said.

“Wait,” he said, reaching out to grab her arm.

His fingers encircled her wrist, stopping her entirely. She froze on the spot, and it was impossible to ignore the heat that seemed to siphon straight from her skin into his palms, never mind the shiver that raced over her arm.

Calisto watched Emma as her gaze flicked between his hand on her wrist, and back up to his face.

“Just … wait a second,” he said quieter.

Emma swallowed hard, gaze darting to the open doorway. “Can you make it fast? I’m supposed to be resting. Doctor’s orders and all.”

Yes, Calisto was aware of that.

He just didn’t know the extent of the problems with her pregnancy, or why she had them at all. None of that had been explained very well to him except for the fact that Affonso made it clear the issues were personal business, and not for public consumption. Calisto had enough respect for both his uncle, and Emma as a woman, not to ask for more details.

But he was curious.

“I’ll make it fast,” he said.

Emma smiled a little. “Okay. Ask whatever is on your mind.”

“I called you Emmy.”

“I already said that, Calisto.”

“But no one else around here does,” he pressed.

She shook her head. “Affonso doesn’t like it.”

“Yet I call you it.”

“You used to,” she corrected gently.

Calisto took that in slowly. “Before my accident.”

“Yeah.”

“So … we were friends,” he said, catching her eyes with his own. “Or, friendly enough that I called you by a nickname your husband doesn’t approve of.”

Emma’s lips pressed together, like she was trying to hold back words. He saw the slight clench of her jaw, and how her hand balled into a fist around Midnight’s unmoving form. “I suppose you could say that.”

Calisto glanced down at her dog. He’d given her that puppy, too. None of this seemed right to him the longer he thought about it. It would never be acceptable for a made man to treat another made man’s wife with things like affection and gifts.

It would never be appropriate for Calisto to do something like that with any married woman, let alone his uncle’s wife.

“How close were we that I gave you a puppy and—”

“Friends,” she interrupted quickly. “We were just friends, Cal.”

Too quickly.

She would no longer meet his stare.

“Emma,” Calisto said, squeezing her wrist a little firmer. “If we were friendly enough before that I did these sorts of things with you, then why haven’t you told me? Or tried to sit down with me more just to chat? I would have appreciated the effort. Just because I don’t remember you and how you came about in this family doesn’t mean I don’t want to.”

She wet her lips, shooting another look at the doorway.

Why did she keep doing that?

“Hey, I’m right here,” he said.

Emma’s gaze snapped to his instantly. “I’m very aware of where you are.”

And she sounded frightened about that fact.

Scared that he was anywhere near her.

“Is there something wrong with me being here with you?” he asked.

“No, of course not.”

“You’re acting like there is, like you might get in trouble for just talking with me.”

Had something happened—had someone said something—that made her afraid to be near him?

Emma openly frowned, and briefly, Calisto was positive he saw a sheen of wetness in her green eyes before she was blinking the tears away. “I should go.”

“But—”

“I have to rest,” she said, repeating her earlier statement.

Not wanting to, but knowing he had no right to force Emma to stay and explain his confusion about their friendship before his accident, Calisto let her go. He took a step back, a wide step. It gave her lots of room to pass him by.

But at the doorway, she paused, glancing back over her shoulder at him. Her mouth opened to speak, like she was going to say something, but the loud, raucous laughter muffled from behind the closed door of Affonso’s office across the hall stopped her.

“What is it?” Calisto asked.

Emma tore her stare away from his, and she did it in such a way that told him it hurt her to do so. “I keep hoping …”

He tipped his head to the side, unsure and wary. “For what?”

“For something impossible.”

Calisto smiled. “Nothing is impossible, Emma.”

Her pretty features darkened with sadness. “Some things are, Cal.”

“Like what?”

Emma didn’t answer him, instead saying, “If something feels wrong to you, it probably is. If it doesn’t seem right, then it isn’t. Don’t trust based on loyalty and blind faith. He is
not
who you think he is. I just want you to know that, okay?”

Calisto wasn’t quite sure what to make of her passing remarks. He didn’t get the chance to question her on them, either, because she slipped out of the library without another word or look at him when she went.

Stunned, he stared at the spot where Emma had disappeared.

Her words kept ringing loudly in the back of his mind.

Their conversation was the most he had ever gotten out of Emma, and the longest time he had spent alone with her.

Well, that he knew of.

Calisto was just stepping out in the hallway from the library when Affonso and Ray appeared on the other side behind the opening office doors. Affonso looked Calisto over, and then behind him.

“Go on, old friend,” Affonso told Ray. “I’ll catch up.”

Ray went without question. Once he was gone down the hall and out of sight, Affonso turned back to Calisto with a smile.

It didn’t look true, strangely.

“Where is my wife?” Affonso asked.

Calisto straightened a bit. The first words out of his uncle’s mouth had been to question him on Emma’s whereabouts like that was automatically what Calisto would know.

Why would Affonso do that?

It seemed like lately, Calisto had far more questions than he had answers. He didn’t like that a lot of them seemed to be leading straight to his uncle.

And … now Emma.

He is not who you think he is.

If it doesn’t seem right, then it isn’t.

Emma’s words whispered a little louder in his head. Calisto wasn’t entirely sure why, but he thought they might be directed toward his uncle. From the very moment he had seen Affonso after he woke up, things just felt off to Calisto.

Affonso was not who he remembered. It was little things wrapped up in small issues, to be sure. His uncle’s attitude, his lack of apathy and trust. The way he controlled the most basic daily routines around Calisto, as if he didn’t think he could do it on his own. How he kept a distance between them, when he had never done that before.

Little things, yes.

But it added up to something that didn't feel right at all.

Calisto had believed for months that his uncle was hiding things from him, for many reasons. One of the biggest was the ending of a relationship between Calisto and a woman from a fellow New York family. He hadn’t loved her, but he’d considered marrying her for status, and his uncle. After waking up without his memories of the last two years, Affonso brushed the relationship off as something that hadn’t worked out and nothing more. It couldn’t have been that simple.

Still, it was one thing Calisto chose not to push on.

Like other things.

A lot of things.

Affonso told him something, and Calisto trusted his uncle, giving him …
blind faith
.

As a consigliere for their crime family, he should have been given access to almost anything he wanted in regards to his uncle’s dealings, but he wasn’t. Not even close.

Calisto had the distinct feeling Emma was trying to tell him something without actually telling him. He just had to figure out what it was.

“I’m not sure where Emma is,” Calisto lied smoothly.

Sort of.

He didn’t know where Emma had gone after she left the library.

Affonso cocked a brow, seemingly unpleased at that answer. “She wasn’t in the library? She spends most of her time in there.”

Calisto shrugged. “No. I went in to check the piano. It’s been awhile since I tuned it.”

“Does it?”

“Does it what?”

“Need tuning,” Affonso said.

“It could use one,” Calisto lied again.

The piano was fine.

“I can come over next week and do it,” he added.

Affonso’s face remained a mask of cold composure as he replied, “No, that’s fine. I’ll have that man come and do it. It’s his job, after all.”

“It’s not a problem,
zio
. I can do it.”

“No worries, I have someone for it.”

“It’s my father’s piano,” Calisto said, confused why Affonso would argue the point on the instrument. “I have always tuned it.”

It made him feel closer to a man he had never gotten the chance to meet, as odd as that may seem. It was one thing Calisto held onto.

“I’ve had someone else doing it for a while. You were busy these last couple of years.”

Oh.

Well, then.

Calisto went to respond, to agree and give Affonso what he wanted, but he quickly realized something before he could.

Affonso didn’t want him to come to the house. Thinking over the last few months since he’d gotten out of the hospital, and then left the Donati home to go back to his own place, his uncle had done this very thing several times.

Dinners with no invitation for Calisto. Excused.

Meetings that should be held in his office. Rearranged.

Visits with his cousins when they were home had been put off, or canceled with more excuses. Quick stops at the house to pass on a message or discuss an issue were ended before they had even begun.

Little things
, Calisto thought again.

Things he had overlooked, but were far bigger in the grand scheme of things when he put them all together.

And here his uncle was, doing it again.

Keeping him away.

Why?

“Didn’t you have some money to collect tonight?” Affonso asked, forcing Calisto out of his thoughts.

He did.

“That and a Capo to see about a shipment coming in next week,” Calisto replied, keeping his tone easy and unconcerned.

Something was wrong.

Nothing felt right.

What was he missing?

“I suppose you should get on that, then,” Affonso said. “I swear, all you do is work, Cal.”

Calisto forced a chuckle. “Isn’t that what a good consigliere does for his boss? Works?”

“Sure, but you’re a man, too, my boy. Make some time for that. Find a pretty girl, why don’t you? Amuse yourself. You’re closing in on twenty-nine. Time to start refocusing on … different things.”

Like what?

Marriage?

Calisto’s stomach churned, and he didn’t even know why. He owned several clubs, and spent the majority of his evening time there on the weekends. Beautiful women went in and out all of the time. He had plenty of chances and offers, as far as that went.

But they didn’t interest him.

He turned them all down.

“Are you even listening to me?” Affonso asked.

Calisto just wanted out of the house all of a sudden. “Yeah, I’m listening,
zio
. But business right now, huh? It’s more important than a woman to keep me occupied.”