they took him to the hospital. He went into surgery and came out, but then he died shortly afterward."
A new voice cut through the shadows. Joey's voice, cold and hard. "And you expect Tea to feel bad about that? He died as a consequence for killing our father, Johnny. Or do you prefer Gianni?"
Johnny let go of Tea's hand and leaped to his feet. They both swung toward Joey and took in the knot of people who'd arrived on the scene with her, presumably mustered by Rachele, who stood to one side, worrying her eyebrow ring.
Tea's mother, Joey, Eve, Beppe Cirigliano, and... Cos-imo Caruso.
Tea's grandfather.
Eighty didn't look a day over sixty-five on him. Maybe it was his Mediterranean diet. Or good genes. Or a criminal conscience. He was upright and lean in his dinner jacket and dark slacks, his full head of silver-threaded hair brushed back from his face with its Roman nose - the masculine form of her own - and sharp, black eyes.
He addressed his first words to Johnny, his voice soft and holding only the slightest of accents. "My son has been found?"
"Yes," Johnny replied, his voice and poker face at their noncommittal best. "Interred, I suppose you'd say, in the wall of the lagoon."
"By your father," Joey said, taking a step forward.
Eve caught her arm. "Stay put, little sister."
"Are you all right, Mom?" Tea asked, her gaze traveling from vibrating-with-emotion Joey, to the older woman who was now clutching Beppe's wrist as if she needed support.
"I don't know," she whispered.
Joey sent another venomous look toward Johnny. "See what you've done," she said. "See what you and your father have done."
He flinched. "Forgive me," he said. "I'm sorry for bringing this back to all of you."
Tea almost laughed. It had never left them. Never left any of them.
"You'll get nothing from us," Joey spit back. "Nothing."
Tea understood her sister's fury. God, she'd felt it herself, hating whoever had taken her father away from them, hating her father for being the kind of man who would get taken away, hating her grandfather for his part in bringing them into this kind of life.
But she'd never hated Giovanni Martelli, because she'd always suspected he wasn't the one responsible. And now she was certain he wasn't.
My dad picked me up on his way back from Vegas. She could tell what she knew... or she could keep it to herself.
Johnny had done her wrong. He admitted that. He had betrayed her with his lies. And leaving him with the image of his father as murderer was the perfect revenge.
She was Caruso enough, ruthless enough, to enjoy the poetry of the payback. She'd given Johnny her body, and - though she was going to have to fight to get it back from him - her heart. He'd betrayed her and she could have her vengeance by giving him coin in kind.
Oh, yeah, that sounded really, really right. Really bad.
Wickedly good.
She could link arms with her sisters right now and walk away, leaving Johnny with his pain and herself with the smug warmth of the perfect reprisal. Salvatore's crown princess having herself a royal good time at Johnny's expense.
But...
"He didn't do it," she heard herself say aloud. "Giovanni Martelli didn't kill our father."
Johnny stared at Tea. The night was only turning more surreal. The damn party, the grisly discovery of Salvatore's remains, the suffocating flashback, this surprise confrontation with the Caruso family.
He wanted to disappear, go away, forget his time here and go back and accept the sweaty nightmares and the paralyzing memories because they seemed infinitely more bearable than this endless night. If only he'd never met the dark-haired, sloe-eyed contessa that could wound him with only the tragic expression she was wearing on her beautiful face.
"Giovanni Martelli didn't kill our father," Tea said again.
Wound him with a sentence. Of course his father had killed hers. Giovanni had been a murderer because Tea's father was truly dead. Bile splashed against the sides of Johnny's empty stomach.
"Oh, right," Joey scoffed. "Giovanni is innocent and you know this how?"
Johnny heard Tea take a breath. "I know," she continued, "because of the book."
His gut roiled. Not -
"The Loanshark book?" Eve said, asking the question for him. 'That book? What does it have to do with this?"
Tension radiated from Tea's body. Standing this close to her, he could see the way her fingers twined and tightened upon one another. "I happen - "
Johnny grabbed her shoulders, and yanked her around to face him. "Don't, Contessa."
She was