Dante Claiming His Secret Love-Child

Falco narrowed his eyes. “How was it, then?” he said very quietly, and Dante’s face all but crumpled.

“Oh, hell,” he whispered. He looked up. “I loved her. I still do. I’m crazy for her. I want to marry her. Wake up every morning for the rest of my life with her beside me.”

Nick arched an eyebrow. “But?”

“But last night, before I could tell her that, she turned cold as ice. Said it was time I met with her lawyer.”

Falco nodded. “Seems to me it’s one of two things happening here, bro. Either she’s tired waiting for her ship to come in—”

Dante lunged for him. Falco grabbed his wrist.

“Take it easy, man, unless you think you and me taking this outside will help calm you down.”

Dante didn’t answer, and Falco let go of him and leaned over the table. “Or the lady loves you just the way you love her but she’s got her pride, she’s got the baby, and she’s decided she’d rather end this on her terms than wait for you to do it.”

“Why would she think that?”

“Maybe,” Nick said patiently, “because you haven’t said a word to her about what happens beyond today.”

“Maybe,” Falco added, “because of what you told us about how you broke up with her last time. The diamond earrings at dinner routine.”

Dante was bewildered. “That’s how we all do it.”

Falco nodded. “Exactly.”

“I don’t know. I mean, I wanted to bring her to the wedding today. Introduce her to everybody.”

He gave a halfhearted laugh. “Of course, I warned her what it would be like, how rough it would be, what the old man is like, how Mama would probably go nuts learning she has a grandson, how the girls would swamp her, but before I could even finish talking, she interrupted, said she had no wish to go with me, that she wanted to discuss repaying the money she thinks she owes me…as if I’d take a dime from her.”

“And how did she react to what you told her? That she’d be meeting us all at once?”

“I just told you,” Dante said impatiently, “I never got that far. I just told her that—I told her that—” His face turned white. “Merda!”

“What?”

Dante shot to his feet. “I was preparing her for the big Orsini scene, but it must have sounded as if I were telling her there wasn’t a way in hell I’d bring her with me today.”

“The big Orsini scene?” Nick said, but Dante was already racing for the door.

Falco and Nick looked at each other. “He really loves her,” Falco said.

“Sure seems like it.”

“We could have left him in the dark.”

“I know.”

“But opening his eyes was the right thing to do.”

“Still…”

“Still, another one bites the dust.”

Nick shuddered and slipped from the booth.

“Man,” Falco said, “don’t tell me you’re bailing, too?”

“I’m going to get us a bottle of Wild Turkey.”

Falco nodded. “An excellent idea,” he said, and decided they could wait until the bourbon was half-gone before they tried to figure out what in hell was happening to the Orsini brothers.

The beautiful morning had given way to a rainy afternoon.

New York plus rain. A simple equation that added up to no taxis in sight.

“Hell,” Dante said, and started running.

A bus plowed by, the wheels spraying him with dirty water, and pulled in at a stop when he was halfway to his destination.

“Wait,” he yelled, picked up his speed. He made it to the just-closing door, slipped and tore a very expensive hole in the very expensive left leg of his very expensive trousers.

Who gave a damn?

He got off the bus at Fifty-seventh Street, dashed into the store—open, thank God—and was outside again in less than ten minutes. A taxi was just pulling to the curb, a silver-haired gentleman was about to step into it. Dante tapped him on the shoulder.

“If I don’t get this cab,” he said, “I might just lose the woman I love.”

The old guy looked him over, from his soggy Gucci loafers to his drenched Armani suit to his rain-flattened hair. Then he smiled.

“Good luck, son,” he said.

Dante figured he was going to need it.

Gabriella’s attorney’s office was—it figured—on the top floor of a building that housed what seemed to be a nonworking elevator.

He didn’t give it a second try. Instead he took the old marble steps two at a time, stopped at the top only long enough to catch his breath and run his hand through his hair. Pointless, he thought, looking down at the puddle at his feet. Then he opened the office door and walked inside. The waiting room was empty, but straight ahead, through an open door, he could see a conference table. Gathered around it were Sam Cohen, a portly bald guy in tweed who had to be Gaby’s lawyer.