Page 5 of The Deadly Candies

She didn’t flinch. Let him leer at the modest neckline of her dress, the silver cross at her throat. Let him taste the lie she’d baked into thesfogliatelleshe carried on a tray—almond cream sweetened with desperation. She set the tray on her husband’s desk; her eyes leveled with her husband.

“Cosimo,per favore. May I speak with you?” she asked in Italian.

Cosimo’s left brow winged up. He made a slight Italian comment that caused DeMarco to sneer.

“How was our boy today? I know you went to see him?” Lucia asked humbly. Her husband gaze swept her attire and then locked back on her eyes. He rocked back in his chair with a sense of satisfaction. He could see no more defiance in her. He appreciated her humility when facing his cruelty.

“My boy is strong. He is good!” Cosimo proclaimed. As if he carried him for nine months, wiped his nose when he was sick, and read stories to him when he was scared to sleep in his bed.

Lucia blinked back her tears. She touched her chest and smiled. “I am so glad you went to see him. I know it meant the world to him, Cosimo. I’m so worried. He should have the best care.”

“Like a mothers’ love?” chimed in DeMarco.

“Exactly!” Lucia smiled for the men. “Cosimo, he can’t speak, to say if they mistreat him. He can’t stand to walk out if they do. He can’t even…” the lump in her throat. She had to keep the emotion contained. Men like her husband and DeMarco fed on fear and suffering. She had to stand her ground. “He can’t even go to the bathroom. Who wipes man’s butt better than his Mama?”

Cosimo chuckled. It gave DeMarco permission to chuckle as well. The bastards had the nerve to find humor in her baby’s suffering. She felt weak on her feet still she stood her ground.

“I think she has a point, Cosimo,” DeMarco replied.

"He's alone, Cosimo." Her voice barely rose above the ticking of the mantel clock. "Surrounded by nurses who don't speak our language, who don't understand?—"

Cosimo's fist came down like a judge's gavel. The porcelain pen holder toppled, rolling toward the desk edge. DeMarco stood, and he headed toward the door.

"Basta!" The word cracked through the room. "You think I'd let my blood be treated like some charity case?" Cosimo's knuckles whitened around the armrest. "My son has the best doctors in New York. What more could he need?"

“I will leave you two alone to speak,” DeMarco said as the door closed.

Lucia's throat constricted. She took a measured step forward, her Ferragamo heels sinking into the Persian rug.

"Not more doctors," she whispered. "More mother."

A boy does not survive… the Sicilian words slipped out unbidden, revealing the other side of her heritage: "Senza la sua mamma," (without his mother). A tear breached her lashes, tracing the contour of her cheekbone before she could swipe it.

Cosimo stood. His face softened. He dropped his hands in his pockets and turned to the shuttered window, but not before Lucia saw the muscle in his jaw twitch like a live wire. When he spoke again, his voice had gone dangerously quiet.

“He chose this path, Lucia, not me. He is my favorite son. The only one you could give me that’s worth a piss. And he turned his back onla famigliafor..." His lip curled. "Una negra."

The slur hung in the air like smoke. Lucia's stomach twisted, but she kept her features smooth as Carrara marble. Inside, she counted -uno, due, tre- the way she'd taught all of their sons to steady their tempers as boys.

"He's young," she offered carefully. "Young men do foolish things for love."

"Love?" He spat the word like a pit. "Thatputtanahas poisoned his mind! Made him forget his blood, his name—" His voice broke on the last word, revealing the raw wound beneath the rage. “he chose her over us. Do you not see the betrayal?”

Lucia didn't flinch when he loomed over her, close enough that she could see the broken capillaries in his nose from too much grappa. She knew this dance - the escalation, the calculated retreat. Twenty-six years of marriage had taught her when to yield and when to stand firm.

Gently, she reached for his hand, which was clenched at his side. His wedding band was cold against her palm.

"He's still your son," she murmured in Sicilian.Il tuo primogenito.Your firstborn. The words she knew would pierce his armor. "However angry you are, don't let him wake up alone in that hospital. Not after..." Her voice faltered as the image rose unbidden - Carmelo's blood on his bedroom floors, the hall, the steps, the sidewalk, dark as wine.

Cosimo avoided her eyes. For a heartbeat, Lucia saw the boy he'd been in Italy- poor and proud, carrying his father's corpse home from the quarry on his back. The memory flashed and was gone, replaced by the Don's implacable mask.

When he spoke again, his voice was steel wrapped in velvet. "You'll go to him. But understand this, Lucia." His fingers tightened around hers, not quite painful. "When our son is well, he comes home. And thatragazza?" His thumb stroked her knuckle, a lover's caress with a killer's intent. "She stays gone. Or I will see to it. Make sure I son never makes that mistake again.”

The unspoken threat coiled between them. Lucia lowered her eyes in apparent submission, focusing on the mission and not the threats.

"On the Madonna's name, I promise,"she whispered. “He will never betray the family again.”

Cosimo sighed. “You want to leave me?”

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