I not only have thoughts, but I think them through.” He touched his temple. “I knew you were looking for Alcina long before you did. In more ways than one. I also knew that she needed you.” He dug in his doctor’s bag, bringing out a picture from our wedding day, slipping it toward me.
I was looking down at her and she was smiling up at me. That light, it was so fucking bright, like she carried the moon in her eyes. The one that drew me out and made me feel almost insane.
“I have been in the room when a heart is transplanted into another body,” he said, but I didn’t look at him. I stared at the picture. “I have heard the first beat when the connection was made. I have seen it give life to the almost dead.” He knocked on the desk, once, twice, making it sound like the beat of a heart.
“That was why I sent you to her. You needed each other. The body and the heart. I stood as the hands, the medico, that made the connection. I heard the first beat of it when your eyes met. And the two shall become one.” He slapped his hands together.
I looked at him.
“You are rejecting your heart,” he said. “The second chance you have at life. You do not get them every day, Corrado. We are both men who know that. For the first time in your entire life, I saw something other than the acceptance of death when you looked at her. I saw the life in you. Something other than this.” He looked around.
“Mark my words. You keep rejecting your heart, Corrado, and you will lose it. I see it in her. She is being strong because she feels she has chosen this life. She chose you. But didn’t you choose her, as well? I am not saying that you have to give this up. Or even change completely. But you have to decide—is an old ghost worth losing your life over?”
“What does my wife have to do with this? Tell me what you know.”
“You see,” he snapped at me. “But you are not looking! Your mind will not allow you to see what you are doing—to your family, to yourself. I knew a man like you once. A man who could not give up a thought even at the detriment to his family. Your father, Corrado. Corrado Palermo. He sacrificed his wife for an idea.” He stabbed his temple with a finger. “An idea that he was owed something he did not deserve.”
I stared at him for a minute. “You know who my sister is. Where she is.” He said Corrado sacrificed his wife for an idea, but nothing about the little girl.
“Sì.” He sat back in the chair. His temper had fizzled some. “I have known for a while.”
“Does she know about me?”
“Sì. She found out about you when you discovered her.” He lifted a finger. “Your relationship with her will depend on your relationship with the man you intend to kill.”
“Ah,” I said, sitting back. “She respects him for saving her life.”
Tito stood, picking up his bag, preparing to head toward the door. “See. Hear. Think.” He touched his temple. “You are a smart man, Corrado. I have always said that about you. Except for this. You are being anything but smart. So take my advice, ah? Use your brain and remember your heart.”
“Tito,” I said, stopping him before he left.
He stood close to the door.
“Tell me one thing,” I said. “Where was she all of this time?”
“Not far from you,” he said. “On Staten Island.”
Fuck me.
I could have called Gene, the genius, and asked him to search for records of children on Staten Island when she would have been there, but I didn’t. It was a waste of my time. What I hadn’t mentioned to Calcedonio was that Gene’s computers had been confiscated the day after we met in the park.
“I think he told on me,” he had whispered. “The only reason I’m not in big, big trouble is because the government wants me. B-A-D,” he’d spelled the word out.
In our world, that was called fucking ratting, but it just meant that Macchiavello had turned the tables on me once again. I thought he’d be in touch through Gene, but apparently, he had other plans for our first meeting.
I stood from my seat, shaking my head, going to stop Tito before he left the building. A few of