The Secret (The Evolution of Sin 2)

“You come here a lot.”

“Yes.” He poured a perfect two fingers into each glass, one with ice and one without. “It is one of the reasons that we are able to have a friendship. Cosima was my friend before I even met Elena.”

An arrow of hatred painted with the name of my eldest sister found its home in the center of my heart. I cemented it there with guilt and shame and felt it throb.

“You know, I would say that I can’t see you and Cosima being friends but,” I laughed lightly, “she is infectious, isn’t she?”

“Yes.”

He handed me the glass with ice and watched me intently as I lifted it to my lips and touched the burning liquid to my tongue. I watched his eyes but he was either unaffected or being very careful.

“How did you meet her?” Talking about Cosima seemed as good a topic as any. In fact, it seemed to be one of the only topics I could even begin to feel comfortable talking about with Sinclair.

He stepped back to lean against the counter across from the island, giving me a full view of his beautiful suit clad physique.

“Willa signed her.” I recognized his adopted mother’s name and noted that he didn’t call her something affectionate like mom. “When she was nineteen. I was in Italy with Willa when she discovered her, standing in the rain wearing a long black dress. You couldn’t tell where her hair ended and the dress began. She looked like something from Dante’s Inferno.”

He shook his head and stared into his glass as if divining a memory. I waited for him to continue but he remained silent. Cosima never spoke about her time away from home and honestly, I think the rest of us were too afraid to press her into confessing. What exactly did an eighteen-year-old girl have to do to pull her family out of destitution?

I shivered, pulling Sinclair from his reverie. His lips compressed into a flat line. “She was too young to have such sad eyes. I didn’t want her living with my parents – she had obviously already been through a lot – so I offered to host her here in New York.”

“Wow,” I blinked a few times as I tried to process the picture of my vivacious sister inhabiting the same space as the fiercely private and enigmatic Frenchman.

A tiny smile twitched his lips. “It was an interesting experience to say the least. It was just for a short time; within the year, she had enough money to bring over Elena and Mama. Sebastian arrived from Los Angeles soon after.”

And you met her.

What would have happened if I had stayed in Italy? If I had moved to New York with my family and Sinclair had met both Elena and I at the same time?

The hypothetical made my teeth ache.

“You know,” I said, to distract myself from that destructive line of thought, “I don’t know very much about what happened to my family during the last five years. Cosima and Sebastian never talk about it and, as you know, I am not very close with Elena.” I sighed and took a long sip of the burning whiskey. “We all used to be so close.”

Sinclair crossed his arms and inclined his head, waiting for me to go on. I was surprised by his readiness to talk about my family when they were the cause of the mile wide distance between us, but I was even more surprised by my relief at having someone to talk to who would understand.

“Have you been to Napoli?” He hesitated but shook his head. “Well, I can understand why not. Tourists go for the pizza and the history but they never leave as enchanted as they were with Florence or Rome, Venice or Umbria. Napoli is a deeply dirty place, especially if you are poor.”

Sinclair nodded to convey that he was still listening before turning around to grab a few things from the fridge and cupboards. I watched him assemble the ingredients for crepes with a slight smile.

“You need to eat,” he explained, without facing me.

On cue, my alcohol weighted stomach sloshed and turned over nauseously. “Okay.”

“Continue.”

I watched the ice in my glass swirl and tried to collect my thoughts.

“I’m sure you’ve heard about Seamus? He was an English professor at the university but by the time the twins were born, he had basically been forced out due to his gambling and drinking problem. He loved Italy, every single thing about it and it had been his goal growing up as an Irish Catholic in Boston to move to the country.” My laugh was forced. “He was ridiculed by his family about it and when he finally made the move, they basically disowned them. I don’t even know their names.”

“Would you like to?”

His question surprised me into answering honestly. “Yes, but only because I’d like to know how Seamus turned out the way he did. What made him decide to bury his family in debt to the mafia and disappear without a trace.”

Sinclair nodded and I paused for a minute to watch the surprisingly erotic sight of his strong wrist whisking the crepe batter.

“He disappeared after Cosima moved away. Sebastian moved to America a few months after that. We were almost destitute and so lonely.” I could remember the dull vibration of too much silence in our small Neapolitan home and the collapsed look to Mama’s handsome face, how her smile dragged and her soft hands trembled.

“It would be understandable if you resented them.” He competently swirled the runny batter evenly over the surface of the pan while his eyes remained bolted to mine.