“Love is always the right word.” She giggled. With my eyebrow raised, I looked over at Wyatt, who leaned forward grinning.
“Nana, are you high?” he asked.
“As a fucking kite,” she replied. “I knew it. The hospitals have all the good shit.”
Wyatt laughed outright at her response and so did she. The only one who didn't laugh was Dona. I was used to her snapping and I was used to her being cold…but this was neither. She was just numb, and I hated being witness to it.
“Grandmother, this Gabriel apparently believes that our parents arranged a marriage between him and Donatella.”
“He believes that…” she hiccupped. “Excuse me, because it's true.”
“Twenty-six years of living with you, eighteen years with father, and not once did I hear about an arranged marriage for anyone.”
“Why would anyone tell you? It has nothing to do with you.”
“Me,” Donatella whispered. “It's about me so why didn't anyone tell me?”
The smile on Wyatt's face fell at hearing how hurt she was. Hurting Dona wasn't easy, but when accomplished, it made everyone else hurt right along with her.
“If you don't want to marry him dear, then don't marry him—”
“Then he gets the routes in Italy?” I questioned, wanting to see if he really was telling the truth.
“Oh right,” she said as if it was an afterthought and not our family heritage. My mother’s home, everything she'd built with her own hands! “If Dona doesn’t want to marry him, then he gets to control the drug flow of Italy. Meaning nothing gets in or out with—”
“I understand the meaning!” I snapped at her and Wyatt cringed, shaking his head. Why I suffered to bring him back, I couldn't remember at the moment.
“Did you just raise your voice at me?” she asked softly.
Rubbing the side of my head, I inhaled slowly. “Nana, I don't understand why my mother or father would ever promise something like that to a stranger. It would be like Father giving away Ireland, it doesn't make sense.”
“It doesn't make sense because you are forgetting who your mother was—”
&n
bsp; “I'll never forget that,” I replied without hesitation.
“Then you know your mother would put everything on the line for only one reason—”
“Her children,” Wyatt answered, not being helpful at all. "If it came down to the whole world or us, she'd choose us.”
“Exactly. See, this is why you were her favorite.”
He beamed like a pet waiting to get his reward. What made him our mother’s favorite? Apparently of us three, Wyatt was the only one to ever say mama and since then he’d been crowned her favorite. So now, due to Wyatt’s big head, our mother’s grudge against Dona and I for calling out to our father first, was cemented for all eternity. Our mother had been so petty…like her daughter.
“No.” Dona shook her head, sitting up straight. Her eyes refocusing on us. “I'm sure Melody would risk it all for us…but only if it was the last option. And only if our lives were at stake… My life isn't at stake, so why put everyone at risk? Because she's sure she won't lose a fucking thing… She's sure I'll go along with it.”
She laughed bitterly, shaking her head as she looked up at ceiling. “Even from the grave she's still trying to make me do things her way.”
“Dona…sweetheart.”
“Nana, get some rest; I'll call you later,” she said, hanging up my phone and dropping it back on the desk. She rose to her feet.
“What are you going to do?” I asked her.
Holding on to the doorknob for a moment, she hung her head. “I don’t—I’ll come up with something.”
Just like that she was gone.