"I didn't tell anyone where Mark and Tilly and your baby were, Angelo. I don't know how they found that out, but it wasn't me. I think Willow was working you harder than you knew."
"It seems both of you were working us harder than we knew," Angelo said, his voice gruff with what could really only ever be self-recrimination.
"So? Can I stay?" Gemma had the audacity to look adorable while asking for more than she understood.
"Yes!" Bobby chimed in. "Can she stay?"
"You want to keep someone who has been trained from childhood to be a spy in our home with us, in the hopes that this time is the one time in her entire adult life she's not living a complete lie?"
"Yes," Bobby said simply.
There could be some value in the girl, Angelo considered. If she had truly defected, she might be in possession of useful information. Even if she hadn't defected, she could be pumped for it. She had performed the classic backflip out of the frying pan and into the fire as far as Angelo was concerned.
"I can't keep someone as duplicitous as you are without knowing everything. And I can't know everything without taking you apart. Is that what you want, Gemma? Do you want me to disassemble you, piece by piece until there is nothing left but the truth. The truth you don't want anybody to know?"
She shrugged. "Sure. I figured coming back here would mean you beating me to within an inch of my life. I don't expect you to trust me today, Angelo. Maybe not ever. But I'll tell you everything I know."
"She's staying," Bobby insisted. "Of course she's staying. She's mine. I'm keeping her."
"This girl isn't yours. She doesn't belong to anybody besides herself."
"Not as dumb as ya look," Gemma praised Angelo, then immediately back-peddled. "I mean, what an astute observation."
Bobby laughed. The two of them looked especially cozy together, a matched pair of untrustworthy, misbehaved, and yet oddly loyal brats. Looking at the pair, Angelo felt a certain sense of completion which had been missing since Mark left. There was something about the number three which simply felt right. But he could not let emotional geometry cloud his judgment. Gemma was dangerous, both to herself and to them.
Welcome
"Don't hurt her," Bobby said, his expression wracked with panic as Angelo led Gemma away. It had been three days since she appeared in the garden like a pink hooded sprite, and he couldn't stop touching her as if to make sure that she really was real.
Angelo had allowed the reunion so far. It gave him time to investigate Gemma's story with the additional information she had provided. So far, everything seemed to check out, but there were some deeper truths that could not be proved with mere facts.
"Gemma and I have a reckoning in store," Angelo said. "Don't interfere, and you will have her back, as long as she tells the truth."
"I'll be okay, Bobby," Gemma smiled. "Really, don't worry. Just wait for me, okay?"
"I'll be outside the door. Or inside the door, if I hear screaming," Bobby said. "You're not allowed to hurt her, Angelo. She's wounded."
Angelo gave Bobby a long look. The boy was forgetting his place, becoming a man with a woman to protect. That was a change in dynamic which could have far-reaching results.
He led her to his office, feeling her nervousness. She was chattering as she always did when she didn't know what to say. The sight of the door alone set her off into a barrage of questions.
"Is this the basement where you do the torture? Or the bedroom where you do the torture? Or the kitchen, where you do the tortillas and then the torture?"
"Quiet, girl," Angelo chided. He did not need her prattle now. That hid a multitude of sins and lies. He led her into his office, where he did business. And occasionally, torture.
"Sit," he said, pointing to a chair that faced his desk.
"So this is like a job interview? Should I name three qualities which make me a suitable candidate for the House of Vitali?"
She was very nervous. She was right to be. Angelo perched on the edge of his desk, a position which made him loom over her with just the right calculated amount of menace.
"I made a mistake by discounting you from the beginning. I knew who Willow and Digby were. I knew them to the bone. You, I dismissed as an old school friend. I failed to look into your mysteriously absent background. You never mentioned a mother, a father, siblings, a family…."
"I was raised by my aunt, and I won a scholarship," Gemma said. "I guess I had the right look to fit in with the upper class, and I was smart enough to be useful. The Organization starts putting people into place young. They know who is going to be important in the future. Being born into the aristocracy makes you a target from day one. I was used to target Willow. And then, after we left school, I was given a scholarship to Oxford. But I was really given a whole different education. They told me what they had done for me and what they would do for me in the future. They told me I just had to be loyal."