Heavy Crown: Chapter 34

The weeks that follow are something of a blur.

The death of my father and the bloody battle outside the Gallo house whip up a shitstorm of epic proportions with the Chicago PD. The police were already investigating the massacre at the cathedral—it doesn’t take much detective work to link together the botched wedding, the bodies on the Gallo’s lawn, and the charred remnants of their house.

Sebastian and I are forced to sit through endless consultations with the Gallo’s legal council, and then endless more police interviews. Meanwhile, Sebastian is paying a king’s ransom in bribes, plus relying on every bit of collective political pressure the Griffins and the Gallos can muster to make the whole thing go away.

It probably wouldn’t work if there wasn’t an almost total lack of witnesses.

The Gallos have lived in Old Town for generations. Enzo Gallo was an institution. No one wants to testify against his son.

The official story is that my father killed Enzo at the cathedral, then came to the Gallo house to burn it down. He was killed by Bosco Bianchi, who was shot in turn by one of my father’s men.

Vincenzo Bianchi is perfectly willing to go along with this, for a price. Sebastian gives him my father’s sports betting operation, though he keeps his half of the money that Mikolaj wired to his account.

The rest of the Bratva’s operations are handed over to the Polish Mafia. Mikolaj is full of plans for expansion, determined to give his unborn child a life worthy of, as he puts it, “the most beautiful baby in the world.”

I’ve tried to visit or call my brother a hundred times. He won’t allow it. I think of the pain he must be suffering, and how angry he must be at what’s happened to him, and I want to cry. Adrian wasn’t vain, exactly, but he was extremely proud of his looks and his success with women. He would consider disfigurement a fate worse than death.

I don’t know what to do about it. And honestly, I haven’t been able to focus on it as I usually would.

First I was exhausted, then I was sick. And then I confirmed the thought that came into my head the morning we visited Mikolaj and Nessa.

When Nessa announced her pregnancy, I had a strange realization. I remembered that I hadn’t had a period in well over a month.

Sebastian and I hadn’t exactly been careful about protection. Most of the times we had sex it was spontaneous and in public places, sneaking around before we were married. Not the most convenient circumstances for a condom. Then there was our hookup down in the basement cell, when caution was the last thing on our minds . . .

So I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. I guess I just thought it took a lot more “trying” to make a thing like that happen.

I took the test not really believing that it would be positive.

The double pink line popped up immediately, bright and clear.

I drop the test in the sink, stunned into clumsiness.

I have no idea how Sebastian will react. Part of me is afraid he’ll be angry—we already fell in love and got married so fast. It seems like I should have been a little more cautious with this next and most permanent step.

One thing I know for certain is that I won’t be hiding this from him, not for a single day. I promised never to do that again.

So I wait in our empty living room, sitting on the piano bench because we don’t yet have a couch. I try playing for a while to distract myself, but my hands are too tense and jittery.

I sit up straight when I hear his key in the lock. Everything I planned to say seems to have flown out of my head in an instant.

Sebastian pushes open the door, at first pleased to see me waiting there, then concerned when he reads the nervousness on my face.

‘What’s wrong?” he says.

“Nothing,” I say. “Or, I mean, I don’t know if it’s wrong . . . it could be good . . .”

“What?” he says, half-smiling and half-concerned. “Are you okay?”

“I’m . . . pregnant, actually,” I say.

He stares at me for a moment, frozen with shock.

Then he sweeps me up in his arms and spins me around, something only a man his height could do.

“Are you serious?” he says, over and over again. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” I laugh. “I’m very sure.”

“This is the best news you could give me,” he cries, his face lit up past anything I’ve seen before. “The best thing that could possibly happen.”

“Really?”

“YES! God, I can’t believe it. I’m so excited!”

He gets down on his knees right there in our living room, pressing his ear against my belly.

I laugh. “You’re not going to hear anything except my stomach growling. It’s only the size of a pea right now.”

“When do we go to the doctor? I want to see him!”

“You don’t know that it’s a him!”

“I don’t care what it is. I want both. It could be both—aren’t twins hereditary?”

“God, I hope not,” I say. “One will be crazy enough.”

I feel a twinge of sadness, imagining having twins if Adrian isn’t there to see it. He would have thought that was the best joke—another little blond twosome running around, wrestling and teasing each other . . .

I shake my head hard to get rid of that thought. I don’t think I’m having twins. I’d know if I was. When I press my hand against my belly, I only picture one baby in there.

Besides, my child won’t be blond anyway. The Gallos are dark even for Italians, and Sebastian is the brownest of all. I knew from the moment I saw Miles Gallo that any baby I had would look like Seb. And that’s exactly how I want it.

Sebastian’s happiness washes away my worry. I want this baby just as desperately as he does. Seven months seems far too long before our baby will come—just a month after Nessa’s. They won’t be cousins by blood, but they’ll be cousins-in-law, or second-cousins, or whatever you want to call it. I’m glad that Nessa and I are swiftly becoming friends, so I’ll have someone to share this experience with.

Aida is over the moon when I tell her.

“That’s fantastic!” she shrieks. “I didn’t think Miles was going to have any cousins around on my side. I was so annoyed with Dante moving Serena away before we even got to know her. Ours will only be a year or two apart in school—that’s barely anything!”

She looks me up and down appraisingly.

“You’re not showing at all yet,” she says. “You’re lucky to be so tall. I looked enormous by the end. And don’t let anyone trick you into giving birth naturally—it’s fucking awful! Take all the drugs!”

The only thing inconvenienced by the pregnancy is Sebastian’s and my planned honeymoon to Europe. I’m too nauseated to want to hike around the Alps.

It doesn’t matter, though. Our loft already feels like a vacation—like the most beautiful and peaceful escape. I’m so happy exactly where I am that I don’t want to go anywhere else.

Sebastian and I spend all our time furnishing, decorating, and cleaning it, so we can throw a party for Nero when he finally gets out of the hospital.

To be funny, Sebastian orders him a cake shaped like a racecar—the kind you’d usually get a kid for his fifth birthday.

After weeks of hospital food, Nero looks at the cake like it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“I love it,” he says, sincerely. “I want to eat the whole damn thing.”

“It’s all yours,” Seb says. “It’s the least we could do.”

“Damn right,” Nero says, digging into the cake with his fork without even cutting off a slice.

“Don’t worry,” Greta says. “I brought cannoli for the rest of us.”

She starts passing around the little pastries, expertly filled with just the right amount of ricotta and dusted with powdered sugar. They look like they came from a fancy bakery, but I know Greta well enough by now that I would never expect anything less than homemade from her.

Camille is sitting next to her father, who is medium height, balding, with dark hair and eyes, and a kind face. I remember Sebastian saying that he was a mechanic, responsible for teaching Camille her wizardry with cars.

He looks at the cannoli with great interest, then takes a bite.

“My god,” he says, “I’ve never tasted anything better.”

Greta flushes with pleasure. “They’re my specialty,” she says, modestly.

“Have you ever thought of opening a bakery?” Camille’s father says. “Or a café?’

“Oh, no. I mean, I guess I thought of it once or twice, but not seriously . . .”

“You should! It would be a crime to keep these just for ourselves . . .”

Greta laughs and flaps her hand at him in embarrassment, but I notice that she sits down on the other side of him to eat her own cannoli, and that they spend the rest of the night talking together.

We’re all healing, slowly.

Sebastian has to go back to surgery himself, to get his knee fixed. He jokes that he and Nero can carpool to physiotherapy together. Nero lost his gallbladder and a piece of his liver, but should recover in full, other than six distinct and dramatic scars on various areas of his body.

Even Adrian goes home eventually, back to the mansion my father rented on Astor Street.

I hear about that through our cousin Grisha Lukin. He calls me shortly before Christmas, saying, “They sent Adrian home finally.”

“Have you seen him?” I ask, my heart fluttering against my ribs. I feel another little motion in response, down below my bellybutton—the baby kicking, as he always seems to do when I feel any strong emotion.

He is a boy, after all. Sebastian was right—the twenty-week scan proved it.

“No,” Grisha says, and I can almost hear him shaking his head over the phone. “He won’t see anyone. He’s shut up in his house with just his nurse there with him.”

“What nurse?”

“He hired the one from the hospital, I guess. Mikhail told me—some pretty blonde girl. She worked on the burn unit, and now she’s taking care of Adrian full-time. Mikhail says he thinks there’s something going on between them.”

“Romantically?” I say, in surprise.

“I dunno,” Grisha says. “That’s just what Mikhail told me. But you know he’s a fucking turnip.”

Strangely, the thought gives me comfort. I don’t want Adrian to be alone. If he has at least one person there who cares about him, that’s so much better than no one.

“Who is she?” I ask Grisha.

“Fucked if I know,” he says. “It’s all just gossip. I only called you ‘cause I always liked you best. My little Elsa.”

Now I know he’s grinning on the other end of the line. Usually I’d tell him to fuck off, but somehow the nickname doesn’t bother me as much anymore.

“Thanks, Grisha,” I say.

“Come on,” he coaxes me. “Sing just one line for me . . .”

That’s too far.

“No fucking way,” I say, and I hang up on him.

I sit there for a while, watching thick, puffy snowflakes drift down outside my window.

I can see the lights of our tree reflected on the glass. Sebastian and I picked it out together, and decorated it. Then we made popcorn and watched a movie, cuddled up on the couch that was finally delivered last week.

Such simple pleasures, and yet I wouldn’t trade them for anything in the world. That’s what life is made up of—tiny moments of happiness, like lights on a string, Put them all together, and there’s nothing more brilliant.

Digging through our stationery drawer, I find a blank Christmas card with a picture of a deer on the front, standing in a birch forest beneath a starry sky.

My brother changed his number, and I know he won’t let me in if I go to his house. But he might open a card.

I sit down again and I write,

I close the card and slip it into its colored envelope. Then I seal it and write the address.

I don’t really expect Adrian to respond.

Sometimes you have to reach out. Even when you know you’re only reaching into empty air.