Page 3 of In Her Blood
Annetta offered a weak smile when Otto clicked the door closed behind him, finally, and they were left alone. “Lina … my love. What troubles you?” Her voice was weak and she could barely ask the question without coughing.
The carefully folded letter and re-gathered picture hidden beneath Evelina’s sweater weighed her down like cement blocks. She dug her nails into her palms.Other than you dying, and Otets treating us both like an inconvenience?She still had a long list, actually. But she drew a breath. “Mamma, I’m sorry, but I wanted to ask you about something that might be hard.” She held her mother’s tired gaze and fought the burn of tears that always threatened.
Annetta’s brow twitched. “Ask away, darling.”
Evelina swallowed hard and straightened. “Remember how I mentioned cleaning up the stuff in the attic?” She paused, and her mother tilted her head in a semblance of a nod. “Ifound some things, and I don’t … I don’t understand.” She drew a deep breath. She’d never been good at subtle. It was the Nikolaev in her. So she pulled the items out and laid them side-by-side in her mother’s lap.
Her mother’s rattled gasp reverberated in her ears.
“Who is Eleonora? Why did you call her your sister in this letter?”
Annetta reached for the picture—the one from the engagement party—with a shaking hand and stroked a thumb over the glossy front. “Nora,” she whispered in an affectionate, almost reverent tone. She sucked in another breath and promptly dropped the photo, falling into a coughing fit.
Evelina leapt up, helping her mother straighten and rubbing her back, her chest pinching with guilt.I shouldn’t have asked.Her mother would continue to have fits regardless, and all she could really do was be present and patient. It hurt like hell. But pushing for conversation, forcing a rise of emotions, pretty much guaranteed more of these moments of suffering. The information she wanted couldn’t be worth it.
When Annetta began to settle again, Evelina passed over her glass of water and encouraged her to take a few sips, then helped her return to her semi-reclined position. The items from the attic had shifted, falling lower in Annetta’s lap with all the movement, and Annetta stretched out a hand. “Bring me … those.”
Evelina glanced down and frowned. “Never mind, Mamma,” she said, the guilt churning thicker in her stomach. “It doesn’t really matter. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No, it does,” Annetta argued, her voice as firm as Evelina had heard it in weeks. She wiggled her fingers in a silent demand.
Still feeling guilty, but increasingly curious, Evelina complied before reclaiming her seat.
Annetta pulled the image up to her chest, laying it over her heart, then glanced over the letter. She brushed her fingers down the paper quietly, exhaled, and finally said, “Nora—Eleonora—was my elder sister.” Her lips lifted in another smile, this time both tired and sad. “I couldn’t tell you now if she still lives or if she has passed. But she was ten years older than me, much as Otto is to you.” Her lips twitched as though she thought the comparison was funny.
Evelina barely heard the joke, still attempting to catch her breath from the sucker punch. “I … have an aunt?”
Annetta dipped her chin in a weak nod. “You may even have cousins.” Her smile turned sad and she lifted the picture to look at it again. “Papa arranged to marry her to a dangerous man when I was still a girl. He was coming of age in a mafia household back then. I only met him twice, and he made me nervous. But I saw the way he smiled at Nora … and I thought maybe, even though she hadn’t wanted to marry … she might be all right.” Her entire chest heaved with a hard intake of air. “The last time I saw my sister, or spoke to her, was the day she left for her honeymoon.”
Evelina rolled her lips between her teeth. It was no great surprise to learn Nonno had arranged a marriage for both his daughters, let alone that he hadn’t considered either daughter’s feelings on the subject. It was still a much larger shockto learn her mother had a whole sister she’d never heard of. A sister she herself had apparently not heardfromin many years. “How long has it been?”
Annetta set down the picture. “I was twelve.”
Her heart cracked. Decades had passed since the sisters had spoken. Yet her mother had written so many letters.
As if reading her mind, Annetta said, “It was a long time before I learned … that Papa had given me a false address … when he told me where she would be.” She drew another shuddering breath that rattled audibly. “These letters you found, these letters I wrote so desperately … she had no hope of seeing them.” She made a sound like a weak laugh. “It’s a bit of a miracle, really, that so many of them … came back to me.”
Evelina gaped. That was too cruel. “Why? Why would he do that?”
“Because, though the marriage hadn’t been his idea, Papa still expected to receive a position of authority within their mafia in return.” Annetta set down the picture and moved both hands to the letter in her lap. “When he realized he would gain no power, he took me and fled. Papa … was a selfish, cowardly man, Lina.” She gasped again, harder than before, and held out the paper. “Please, Lina, do your mother this favor … find her. Find my Nora. Or what family she left behind.” Tears built in Annetta’s eyes.
Fuck.
“Tell her … I’m sorry, and I always kept her … in my heart.”
Refusing to show her own tears, Evelina carefully took back the letter and folded her hands around her mother’s. “Ofcourse, Mamma. I’ll find her as fast as I can, and maybe you can tell her yourself, even.”
Annetta managed a twitch of a smile as a single tear trailed down her cheek. They both knew how unlikely that was.
Evelina helped her mother to lie down, letting her keep the old picture, and quietly stepped from the room. If her aunt was ten years her mother’s seniorandhad married into a mafia household, the odds of finding her alive seemed slim. But she could certainly try. The photos and the letters would hopefully give her claims of relation validity to whatever family her estranged Aunt Nora had built.
She glanced up at Otto and another thought occurred to her—a more dangerous, more ridiculous one.
Her father was pakhan, and she was his only surviving heir. Many were unhappy about that, considering her mixed heritage, but their relation was the same reason she herself was allowed the freedom and provided the protection she was. It was also why she constantly found herself challenged. No one really wanted her taking over—she was female and only half Russian. But this was fucking America, not the motherland, and it wasn’t her fault her father had agreed to wed and bed an Italian woman. Her brother would have been just as half-blooded as she was.
Regardless, she had a fight coming. She didn’t know when, or if it would be loud and sudden or slow and subtle, but she was sure it was headed her way. Because though she was daughter of the standing pakhan, she was not the only blood heir. He had a nephew who was of purer Russian descent. And her cousin was a nasty piece of work.
Evelina made a quiet beeline for her room upstairs, which she’d remodeled into two portions—the actual sleeping space and a work station with a small home office setup. She nodded briefly to Otto as she left him at the door, then headed straight for her computer. First, she needed to see if she could even find anything on these De Salvos. Then, maybe, she’d see if this Italian mafia her aunt had married into might be strong enough to give her a leg-up on the coming competition.
