Page 35 of I Would Die For You

He doesn’t add anything else, his face looking haunted when he turns to me again.

Something’s not right, and I scramble to my feet to reach him and clasp his cheek. I’ve never seen him so pale.

“Stefano? What is it?”

He blinks. “It’s Valentino. His father has been murdered.”

Chapter 11 Stefano

Theshockstayswithme even though I have to shake it off to think properly. Val needs me, and I have to be there for him. It’s really our luck he had dropped in to check onMamma, she forced him to stay for a late meal, and he was still there when the call came from the US.

“Go,” Kaya urges me.

I have to. The last thing I want to do is leave her, but this isforce majeure, and I need to be there for my cousin. Whatever’s going on between me and her, it will have to wait. I think she also understands this—now is just not the time.

I nod and run a hand over her hair, pressing a kiss to her temple before hightailing it out of the club. It’s almost midnight, and there’s no chance I’ll get a taxi at this time given how this area is a dead zone on nights when most of the clubs are closed. It’ll be easier to hot-foot it to my parents’ place.

It takes me a moment at a steady jog, then I’m arriving at their building, making it up the stairs to pound on the door. WhenMammaopens, the upset is clearly visible on her face. I pull her to me with one arm all while I’m entering the apartment.

At least, Valentino wasn’t alone when he got the news. It’s not much comfort, I know, but he had someone he can count on next to him, and my mother didn’t disappoint. Seems to me she took over when shock numbed him, and she called me right after. My father is nowhere to be found, but that’s nothing new. He’s taken to drowning his sorrows in the bottom of a bottle or three every night. Let’s see how much longer his liver will hold and he’ll soon darken my mother’s doorstep. One might argue it won’t be a huge loss when he’s gone.

My feet stop on the threshold of the living room. Valentino is on the couch, his head in the palm of one hand, shoulders drooped. He looks like he’s aged to his full thirty-four years in the matter of half an hour, yet at the same time, he also seems so young, like the weight of the world crashed on him and he’s just a green shoot instead of a sturdy-enough branch to hold it all on him.

Here's the twisted part. Where I’d welcome the passing of my father with fanfare now, it’s completely the opposite for Valentino. He’s had his differences with his dad, but Marcello Andretti was always a solid man who knew what he wanted yet didn’t stifle his children to force them to see his vision of the world. His first sons, the heir and the spare, have had to toe the line because their birth order demanded it in the scheme of hisBorgata, but Valentino and Luciano have always been encouraged to be their own man despite being destined to take over one day. And the younger siblings, Franco and Victor, were set free, able to soar as they wished.

Val has had the epitome of what a good father is supposed to be, and now to have lost him like this, so abruptly, while thousands of miles away…

My cousin lifts his head, registering I’m here. He gets up, and I’m wrapping him in my arms in the next instant.

What do you say in a moment like this? Sorry sounds empty, flat. All my words are going to fail me, so I let my embrace speak for itself. Valentino doesn’t cling to me, but I know he’s welcoming my hold, my support.

When we part, he falls back onto the sofa. I park myself on the edge of the coffee table, facing him.

“What happened?” I ask.

He hitches in a deep breath. “Francesca called.”

His baby sister? I would’ve expected one of his brothers to have shared the news.

“And?”

“He got shanked. Somecazzogot the drop on him.”

Disbelief floods through me. “How?”

“Beats me.” He shakes his head. “That’s all I know.”

It’s not much to go along with, for sure.

“Who’s holding the fort? Francesca?”

She’s still so young, though. She’s not even twenty-five, and though not a coddled princess, she has four overprotective big brothers. This shouldn’t be landing on her.

“No. Luciano. He knows…”

Right. The second-eldest Andretti son. Luciano would know what to do in such a situation given how he’s dealt with the death of a close one before. We celebrated a subdued Easter last year because his wife had just passed after an intense battle with terminal cancer.

“I need to go back,” Val is saying. “Book the next flight, get on the ground there, find out what really happened.”

---