Page 93 of I Would Beg For You
“Don Giorgio, I don’t mean to be rude, so accept my apologies in advance, but that bastardo is not anything to me. Or to my wife.”
He watches me with his shrewd eyes for long seconds, then nods. “Va bene. It’s always a tragedy when family falls apart, but it’s not all sangre that deserves honor and reverence.”
“Grazie.”
His lined face hardens. “After what that cazzo did to his own figlia… One of my men was just appraising me as we stepped out of the car. This is unforgiveable.”
“I agree with you.”
“I also hear your wife’s uncle is behind the closing of that asylum.”
I cringe when he says the word, but that’s essentially what Pineridge was, no matter how they labelled it.
“Naomi’s only just reunited with her uncle,” I say, neither confirming nor denying anything.
“Naomi.” He sighs. “Beautiful name. Is she home? I would like to pay my respects to the young Signora Andretti.”
“Unfortunately, she is not here at the moment.”
“Ah. Some other time. I hope it can be then?”
He reaches into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and hands me a heavy, cream-colored envelope.
I open it. It’s an invitation to the wedding of his grandson, Matteo.
“It’s an honor, Don Giorgio. We’ll be there. Thank you.”
He smiles, and it lights up his craggy face.
“Va bene,” he says, then gets up.
I shoot to my feet, too.
We’ve reached the door when he stops and turns to me.
“I had my doubts when your father was taken from us so suddenly, but you’re showing you’ve got coraggioso, ardore.” He places a hand on my shoulder and presses softly. “We all know what you’re doing for us, figliolo. Grazie.”
So, the highest echelons of the organization on the Northeastern coast are behind me taking down Joel Smith. This only fuels my fervor, the zeal—ardore as Don Giorgio just said—to bring this quest to fruition. Smith will fall, and he won’t be able to get back up again.
***
A week later, when Joel Smith’s poll numbers are still free-falling from the shitstorm the Internet has brewed over our leaked revelations, I move my final piece.
In front of the Benedict Hospital, I hold a press conference announcing my acquisition of the hospital as majority shareholder…and also to reveal the shady dealings of the Board of Directors.
Questions surge when I’m done talking, but I’m not hearing the one I’m expecting in order to drop my next bombshell.
Until a plucky woman at the back with a cell phone shouts out.
“Joel Smith vowed at the start of his campaign to go against unscrupulous construction companies, and you are in construction, no? He sits on the board of the Benedict Hospital. Do you have a personal vendetta against the gubernatorial candidate, Mr. Andretti?”
This is what will seal the nail in his coffin.
“Allow me to show you something,” I tell the woman, then look at all the reporters assembled in front of me.
I turn toward the curb, where a car is parked. Carlito opens the back door, and out steps a young woman in a knee-length, deep blue coat dress, her long golden blonde hair loose around her frail-looking shoulders. She walks up to me, we exchange a smile—hers tremulous, mine to bolster her courage—and she slips her right arm in the crook of my elbow, left hand on the sleeve of my suit jacket.
The contrast of her pale skin against the navy-blue fabric is startling, the diamonds on her wedding band shimmering away and utterly unmistakable.
