by Shay Savage
I head into my office, still fuming. I slam the door open and then stop in my tracks as I hear a sharp cry from across the room, followed by a flurry of motion.
Andrea is lying on her back across my desk with her feet in the air. On top of her is Mark—the guy who cleans the pool.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” Andrea scrambles to try to get out from under him while simultaneously yanking her skirt down and grabbing for a bottle of household cleaner. “I was cleaning the desk, and I fell over, and Mark was just trying to help…help me…uh…”
“That doesn’t work when his dick is hanging out of his shorts!” I yell back at her.
Mark covers himself up and then gives me a stupid grin.
“I think I’ll go finish skimming,” he says as he starts to trot off.
“You’re a fucking cliché!” I yell at him, then turn back to Andrea. “The pool boy? Really?”
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Orso!” She wipes her hand across her reddened face. “He just came to help me move the desk so I could vacuum under it, and it was just an accident, and—”
“Andrea!”
“Yes, sir?” she mumbles sheepishly.
“Clean the fucking desk again.”
“Yes, sir! Right away, sir!”
I stomp off to my bathroom to take a shower. No matter how much soap I use, I can’t seem to scrub off the creepy-crawly sensation all over my skin.
My sister.
I swallow back bile, rinse off, and head out of the bathroom with a towel around my waist, nearly slipping on a puddle just outside the shower. Clearly, I hadn’t shut the door all the way. After driving all night and not taking the medication I’m supposed to take before I go to bed, I feel like I could fall over at any second, wet floor or not. I keep checking the corners for visions of Pops.
I dress and head back downstairs to my office, still trying to figure out what I’m going to say to everyone. Before I can get there, Nora stops me.
“Oh good, you’re back!” Nora rushes up and hands me a folder full of brochures. “I know you want to move quickly on this, so I’ve gotten things started for you. I assume you don’t really care about flowers, and you’re not allowed to see the dress, so I set up appointments to get those picked out, and I’ll take Cherry with me, of course. I was thinking we’d go for the first week of May. Does that sound good to you? I’m not sure we’ll have time to make all the arrangements otherwise. May gives us time, and the spring flowers should be coming up. If you’re thinking of an outside ceremony, we’ll have to make preparations for rain.”
“Nora, stop.”
“Oh, don’t get all excited!” Nora places her hand on my chest. “You’ll get to make some decisions, of course. I figured you’d like to do the music and help pick out the cake.”
“Nora, please—”
“Oh! Photographers! I think that place near the lodge would work out. They did a nice job with my pictures though I did end up burning them all. We’ll need—”
“Shut up, Nora!” I scream. “The wedding is off! Just fucking stop already!”
“Off?” Nora takes a step back, and I watch her face fall. “What happened, Nate? What did you do?”
“What did I do? Geez, thanks a lot. Great support there, sis.”
“Well, what happened then? Where is Cherry?”
“I dropped her off at her apartment. She’s only staying long enough to make sure the Ramsays won’t bother her anymore.”
“Did they come back again?”
“Someone shot at us,” I say in monotone. “I can’t imagine who else it would be.”
“Is she all right?” Nora looks me up and down. “Are you all right?”
“Am I all right?” I turn on her, yelling. “No, I’m not fucking all right! I might never be all right again, assuming I ever was in the first place!”
“Nataniele! What’s gotten into you?”
“The wedding is off!”
“What?” Nora glares at me. “What did you do?”
“Again with the accusations?” I grit my teeth and clench my fists.
“Well, you do have a track record, dear brother.”
Brother.
I don’t look back at Nora. I can’t. If I do, the pressure in the back of my eyes is going to erupt in tears, and I can’t do that now.
“I can’t go over it twice,” I finally say as I start to walk away from her. “Just…come in the office. I’ll explain when everyone gets here.
My family assembles on the couch and chairs around my desk. The customary chatter prior to a family meeting is absent as they all settle into their seats and look at me.
“There isn’t going to be a wedding,” I say. I close my eyes and take a deep breath before I tell them about the PO box, the clues hidden in furniture, the shooting at the cheese shop, and ultimately, our discovery of Cherry’s true birth parents.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Threes mutters.
Anthony shakes his head, apparently unable to come up with a single remark. Andrea is silent, unable to make eye contact with me at all, and Kate wrings her hands and glances at the other family members nervously. Twos looks at Nora, and they nod at each other right before they both stand and start toward the office door.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“To see Cherry, of course,” Nora says. “She’s sitting in that apartment all alone trying to deal with this. I’m not going to abandon her.”
“I didn’t say you should, but she said she needed some time.”
“Time away from you, I’m sure.” Nora shakes her head. “I can’t even imagine what the two of you are feeling right now, but you have Antony and Threes. I’m taking Twos and going to see Cherry.”
Without another word, they leave the room. I can hear them talking to each other up until the time the front door closes. Andrea mumbles something about preparing dinner, and Kate quietly follows her out of the room, looking shaken. Antony and Threes look at each other and then back to me. As soon as Antony makes eye contact with me, he drops his gaze to the floor.
“Shit, man.” He shakes his head.
“Yeah.” Threes lets out a long, audible breath. “Whiskey all around?”
“Make them doubles,” Antony says with a hollow laugh.
I don’t even want a drink and barely touch mine after Threes pours them.
“Dude,” Threes says, “I don’t even know where to start.”
“So, Cherry is really your sister?” Antony says, as if I actually need to clarify that bit.
“Do I have to say it again?” I glare at him.
“So, she’s my cousin, too.” Antony leans back and takes a big gulp from his glass. “I guess that’s about as fucked up as it could be. Is she going to move in?”
“I don’t think she wants anything to do with us.” The thought tears at my heart.
I understand why she plans on staying in Accident and forgetting I ever lived. Maybe it’s in everyone’s best interest, but I’ve gone from thinking we were finally okay—finally going to spend our lives together—to the biggest “Holy shit!” moment of my life. Should I be happy to know I have another sibling? Under any other circumstances, maybe, but not now. At some point, she could demand a portion of the business, and I wouldn’t even think of denying it to her, but every account transfer would be another punch to the gut.
“If she’s really an Orso, why do the Ramsays want anything to do with her?” Threes asks.
“They might not know,” Antony says. “Janna seems to think Cherry is one of her own.”
“Does she?” Threes raises an eyebrow. “Maybe she knew all along.”
“If she did, wouldn’t she be rubbing it in our faces now?”
“She doesn’t know that we know.”
“It’s doesn’t matter,” I say, interrupting their conversation. “I don’t fucking care anymore.”
“Care about what?” Antony asks.
“Any of it,”
I reply but don’t elaborate.
“Maybe this is why the other birth certificate was such an obvious forgery,” Threes says. “Maybe we were supposed to figure it all out at some point.”
“You mean Carlo and Mario made it poorly just to leave a clue?” Antony asks.
“It’s possible.”
“But how did Cherry end up with Sofia Ramsay?” Antony tilts his head to one side as he considers this. “Janna went to see Cherry. Does she know Cherry is really one of us, or does she think Cherry is really her sister?”
“Damn good question.” Threes rubs his finger over his chin. “This mystery just keeps getting more complicated.”
“We could try questioning Jay,” Antony says. “We could—”
“No!” It takes everything I have not to haul back and punch him. “No more fucking investigations! It doesn’t fucking matter anymore! Don’t you see that? Everything I’ve been doing these past months has been to get her back, and it worked. It fucking worked!” I slam my fist on the top of the desk. “What was it all for? Nothing, that’s what!”
“We needed to know the truth,” Antony says quietly.
“Yeah, a lot of good that’s done me.”
“We still have shit to figure out,” Antony says. “We’re…we’re here for ya, but we have to figure out how this is going to affect the family.”
“It doesn’t.”
“It might not be up to you anymore,” Threes says. “I mean, if Cherry is an Orso, she and Nora have a say in what happens with the family business, right?”
“Of course they do.”
“Nora’s never been all that interested,” Antony says. “If she wanted more control, she could have pushed for it.”
“But we don’t know how Cherry will feel abut it,” Threes says. “She might want some control.”
“She doesn’t want anything to do with any of us.”
“For now, sure,” Threes says. “She’s upset, just like you are. But what if she changes her mind in the future? We have to prepare for that.”
“No more.” I shake my head, no longer yelling at either of them. I don’t have the energy. “I can’t deal with this anymore. I know you’re both trying to help, but consider it closed for now.”
“Nate—”
“I said it’s closed!”
“All right, boss.” Antony lets out a long sigh. “It’s closed…for now.”
They decide a game of pool and more drinking are needed before dinner, but I’m just not up for it. I don’t think I could stomach food right now, and the whiskey I’m drinking isn’t sitting well. Maybe it’s best I just call it an early night.
I leave the unfinished drink on the desk and head back to my room. Before I get to the stairs, I hear a soft voice calling me.
“Nataniele?”
“What?” I turn to see my aunt Kate standing in the hallway behind me, wringing her hands.
“I need to speak with you.”
“About?”
“In your office, if you please. We should speak privately.”
Something in her voice makes me follow her back to the office. She sits in one of the high back chairs and continues twisting her fingers in her lap.
“Kate, what is it?”
“Would you mind pouring me a brandy?” she asks.
“Since when do you drink?”
“I do on occasion.” Kate squares her shoulders then sighs. “I think I might need one here just to calm the nerves.”
I hand her a brandy, and Kate stares at the glass in her hands for a full minute.
“Well?” I finally say.
“I need to tell you about the treaty between the Orsos and the Ramsays,” she says.
“I already know about the treaty.”
“Yes, of course, but there are some details that were…left out of the core paperwork. An addendum, you might say.”
“So?” The last thing I want to talk about is the family business or the fucking treaty with the Ramsays.
“Well, it’s very…lopsided, isn’t it?”
“Lopsided?”
“When the treaty was signed, the Orso family got the bulk of territory. All in all, we got the better deal. Did you ever wonder why that was?”
“Ramsays kept the drug trade. That’s a lot more profitable.”
“We weren’t all that invested in the drug trade, even back then,” Kate says. “Giving it up was a minor concession.”
“I should have told you all of this a long time ago,” Kate says. “I thought I would when Carlo died, but everything happened so quickly. Then Cherice appeared out of nowhere, and I wasn’t sure what I should do. I’m sorry, Nataniele. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything sooner.”
“You haven’t told me everything now,” I say impatiently. “Could you get on with it, please?”
“Yes, of course. I’m so sorry.” Kate takes in a deep breath and stares down at her folded hands as she speaks. “When we were at war with the Ramsays thirty-some years ago, we were so evenly matched, we knew we had to come to an agreement, or both families would be destroyed. We weren’t as favored back then, and the other families refused to take sides. They didn’t care who came out on top since they could get documents from either family.
“They didn’t get involved at all until Quinton, Carlo’s and my younger brother, turned up dead in Washington State. Finding his body in the Seattle mob’s territory was an outrage to them, and they demanded we settle the feud and make a treaty. If an agreement weren’t reached, the Seattle family would move in, wipe out both families, and set up someone they trusted to run the document business. Well, Chicago didn’t like that at all, and since Rosa was from Chicago, they told Seattle to come up with another plan.
“Carlo and Roland Ramsay sat down with Joseph Franks from Seattle. He was encouraging them to fight to the death in one of his tournament battles, winner take all. Neither of them wanted to do it the Seattle way, so Carlo and Roland agreed to negotiate. At that point, our family agreed to stop our relationship with the cartels, and the Ramsays turned over all of the documentation and counterfeiting to us. The town was divided fairly equally, but there was still a matter of blood spilt. Carlo’s brother had been killed, and he refused monetary compensation.”
Kate closes her eyes for a moment and then stands up. She moves to the bookcase behind the desk and reaches up to pull out a leather-bound book of Celtic mythology. She sets it down on the desk and opens it, revealing a piece of thin paper stuck in the middle.
Kate unfolds the paper, which is clearly labeled as an addition to the treaty between the Orsos and the Ramsays, and I catch a glimpse of the words “blood trade” and “compensation.”
“Along with the exchange of land and businesses,” Kate says, “there was one additional…well, let’s call it a swap. Cherice was one half of that swap.”
“Kate, you aren’t making sense,” I say, reaching for the paper.
Kate places her hand over the page, obscuring the words, and looks me in the eye.
“No one was supposed to find out,” she whispers. “It was supposed to never be spoken of again. That’s detailed in this document, too.”
“Find out what, Kate? Dammit, let me just read the damn thing!”
“When Cherice first came to dinner, I was going to tell you then, but I didn’t want to cause more stress in your life. You’d already been through so much, and I thought it would all work out. I thought it would balance everything. If you married, the head of the family would be an Orso, so…”
“I can’t marry her, Kate! She’s my fucking sister!”
“What? Oh, no. No, Nataniele. She’s not your sister. You don’t understand.”
I shake my head, and my mouth opens and closes a couple of times before I can get any words out.
“But…but you said she was an Orso. She’s my mother’s daughter. That makes her my sister, Kate!”
“She is Carlo and Rosa Orso’s child,” Kate says quietly. “But you…you aren’t.�
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Chapter 23—The Treaty
“What the fuck are you talking about?” My voice shakes as much as my hands.
Kate glares at me for my language but says nothing about my choice of words. Her glare quickly disappears as she begins to fret with her hands again.
The fact is, I don’t have to ask. I know exactly where this is going. I recall a video I once watched of a deaf child right after receiving cochlear implants and the look of shock and terror on his face as they were first activated, and he experienced sound for the first time in his life.
Everything about my life has been a lie.
“Nataniele, you aren’t an Orso at all. You were born to the Ramsays. You were the other half of the swap.”
I have been overwhelmed with so much new information surrounding the pack of lies I’ve been fed my entire life that this one shouldn’t even shock me. It does, of course. I can’t speak, but I can nearly hear the clicking inside my head as if the tumblers of a lock are falling into place, the combination revealed, and the vault door of my family history is opened, revealing all.
Except it’s not my family.
I’m not an Orso.
“You see,” Kate continues though I can’t really absorb much of what she’s saying, “Carlo demanded they turn over their newborn son to replace his brother Quinton, the family member he lost. In turn, he’d turn over his daughter, Cherice. Your father wasn’t fond of girls, and he already had one, so for him, the choice to give up Cherice was nominal though Rosa didn’t feel that way.”
My mouth is dry, and though I run my tongue over my lips, it doesn’t moisten them.
“Of course, Carlo wasn’t particularly interested in what Rosa had to say about it. They argued, but he made the final decision. She was devastated, but she learned to love you very quickly even though you weren’t her own. Of course, I don’t know how Leanne Ramsay felt about all of it.”
I can’t breathe. It’s all too much. Though I don’t see him, I can hear Pops’ laughter echoing in my head.
I’m a Ramsay.
No. I can’t accept this.
“This isn’t true,” I say softly. “You’re lying.” I know she isn’t. It’s the first time since Cherry entered my life that everything has made sense, but my mouth goes on without my thoughts behind it. “This is just one more lie this family has to throw at me.”
