141: Connecting the Dots

Jon closed his eyes.

It was easier to concentrate on the voice relaying inconceivable truths than get sucker-punched in the gut by Chiara’s visible fear.  Hell, he was experiencing plenty of his own turmoil listening to what the man had to say, but he’d push aside the heavy heart and incredulity at the end of this call because that's what he had to do.  His reaction would have to take a backseat to the counselor and her reaction.

“I understand.  We’ll be in touch tomorrow.  Is this a good number to reach you?”

Receiving the anticipated affirmation, he thanked the man – Carmine – for calling, and opened his eyes to disconnect.  The phone’s face had barely come in contact with the tablecloth when Chiara grabbed his arm and started with a rapid-fire series of questions.

“Well?  Who was that?  Whatever it was isn’t good.  It’s Millie isn’t it?  Is she in jail?  Tell me NYPD didn’t have the nerve to pick her up for vagrancy on Thanksgiving day!”

“Hey, now!”  Three of the four Del Vecchio men audibly objected to the character assassination of New York's finest, and Vince took it a step further.  “You know better than to automatically assume the worst of cops.  What the hell is your problem?”

Dark hair swung when she whipped an angry face in his direction.  “Don’t give me that crap.  You’re a cop not a saint, and anybody who would put a sweet little old lady in jail is an ass, no matter what he does for a living.”

The back and forth sniping of the siblings gave him a brief reprieve to gather his thoughts – and drink.  There wasn’t a lot left in his glass, but all of it disappeared in one swift gulp and he looked around for the nearest open bottle.  He had to think and wine lubricated his brain cells.

“Why don’t the two of you stop yappin’ at each other and give the man a chance to tell you what it is you want to know?” 

Cutting his gaze to Luke with a mixture of gratitude and resentment, Jon gave up on a refill and placed his empty stemware next to the barely-touched dinner plate with meticulous precision.  The brief exchange of opinions between brother and sister hadn’t provided enough time for him to cultivate the perfect presentation, or even decide if such a thing existed.

He wished he didn't have to tell her at all, but this wasn't something he had the luxury of keeping to himself.  She had to know and if anybody was going to tell her, it would be him.  

Shifting in his seat so that they faced one another, he lifted the counselor's hand from his forearm and folded warm fingers around it.  There was no good way to do this, so Jon chose to be direct when gently laying it on the line. 

 “Millie passed away last night.”

Pain streaked through cocoa irises in the instant before they glazed with tears, and his heart wrenched before she shielded herself behind tightly pressed eyelids.  “How?”

The thickly uttered word was nearly overshadowed by Lilah’s intake of breath and sympathetic murmur, Vince’s quiet swear and a variety of other muted reactions from their family members.   Vince was the only one who personally knew Millie, but the rest of them knew of her and were aware of her role in the counselor's life.  

“It’s not what you think,” he reassured, completely sandwiching her now-cold hand between his.  Would he ever acclimate to seeing his badass girlfriend brought to her emotional knees?  Did he really want to?  Becoming immune to her pain would mean becoming immune to her, and immunity wasn’t what he was in the market for.  “She had congestive heart failure and went peacefully in her sleep at Columbia Medical Center.  Her nephew Carmine was with her when she passed.”

Chiara’s lids parted, blinking heavily to displace teardrops that glistened on the tips of thick lashes.  “Is that who called?  I thought she didn’t have any family.  Why would she be homeless if she had family?”

He used a thumb to sweep away the dampness under one of her eyes.  That had been his first thought, too, but they were both wrong.    

“Millie wasn’t homeless, baby, nor without family.  I don't know anything beyond that, but Carmine wants to meet with us in the next few days to talk.  He said he would explain everything in accordance with his Aunt Camilla’s wishes.”

Chiara dashed away the tears from her other cheek and laughed. “Camilla.  That fits the aristocratic part of her personality, but she was also Millie.  She’d say ‘pish posh’ and ‘shit’ practically in the same breath.  Did he tell you her last name?”

“Castellano.  Camilla Castellano.” 

She accepted his answer with a slight nod.  “I’m going to miss her, Jon.”

 “I know you are.  So am I.” 

The counselor was shaken but not shattered, and it allowed him to relax.  This was going to be easier than some of the other things they’d been through.

“Did you say Castellano?”

Breaking the brief kiss he pressed to Chiara’s mouth, Jon nodded at Edward.  “Yeah.  That mean something to you?”

“I wonder if she’s related to Paul Castellano.”

“I don’t know.”  Seeing that too many wineglasses – including his own – were empty, he rose to get another bottle from the sideboard.  “Who’s that?”

“Mobster,” Vince supplied around a bite of turkey.  “Was the head of the Gambino crime family until Gotti had him gunned down in the mid-eighties.  I was about to graduate the police academy when it happened.”

Jon drew up short as he was preparing to tip wine into the counselor’s glass, because in that moment, a vivid memory transported him back to the Love jewelry display in Cartier.  What was it Millie said about the woman who was the inspiration for the original bracelet? 

“His beloved was married to a member of the Gambino crime family, so there was no hope of them ever being together.”

“Aldo died in 1984, only a year before his beloved became a widow.”

Setting his jaw, Jon resumed pouring the red wine as he casually forced out, “What year was that, Vince?”

“Same year I graduated high school – 1985.” 

Completely disregarding the etiquette that should have him serving others before himself, he splashed a hearty dose of cabernet into his glass before handing the bottle over to Tony with a quiet request to finish the pouring.    

There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that Camilla Castellano was related – married – to Paul, and the knowledge had Jon sinking to his chair to guzzle wine while staring blindly at the plate of food he’d barely touched.  This revelation was a pivotal dot in one of those Mona Lisa dot-to-dot pictures that the counselor liked to assemble with her facts.  

Only this was more like The Last Supper. 

Millie was Aldo’s motherfucking “beloved”.  The mobster’s wife who possessed a keen interest in Chiara’s need for swift justice that same day outside of Cartier.  Was she also the one who arranged for the unexpected twist of fate that had a mob guy sticking a shank in Owen?

Jon wasn’t a betting man, but he’d be willing to lay money that she was their avenging angel.

J J J J J

“I love you.”

Jon smiled into the hair of the woman whose head rested on his chest, having forgotten how much he liked hearing those three words.  While he’d made the statement a handful of times in the past month, it was the first time she had since… He actually couldn’t remember the exact instance, but it was well before Disney. 

“I love you, too, Counselor,” he reciprocated and touched soft lips to her crown while gliding a hand down her bare back.  There were few things in the world that he liked better than having her naked in his bed and his arms.  “You doin’ okay?”

“Mhm.”

When she didn’t expound upon that, he ducked his chin to take a peek at her face but found nothing of concern.  She simply seemed to be lost in thought while fondling his chest hair, and Jon wasn’t going to rock the boat by bringing up Millie.  He chose a less emotional topic of conversation.

“I thought our families got along well.  You still wanna do this again for Christmas?  And cook?”

Everyone stayed until late to watch football, drink, eat too much dessert and drink some more.  His family left a couple of hours ago while hers were all still on the property, either in guest rooms or the guesthouse.   As much as he enjoyed company – especially family – Jon looked forward to this time alone.  The counselor’s silky bare skin pressed against him was soothing and provided him with the welcome opportunity to decompress by thinking of nothing outside this room.

“I’m not quite as gung-ho about cooking as I was before,” she admitted.  “It’s a lot of work for that many people, but I’m going to try it once, anyway.  It's nice having both families in one place.  What do you think?”

Satin strands tangled in the coarser curls of his chest when she angled questioning eyes up at him, and he found himself unable to resist teasing.  “Doesn’t matter what I think.  You let Lilah bully you into drawing names.  You committed us.”

Lilah hated the concept that everyone in his family bought gifts for everyone else, mostly because they all bitched about not knowing what to get each other.  Her theory was that the adults' names should all go in a hat with all of them choosing one name and buying only for that one person instead of everyone.  It would reduce shopping stress and unwanted gifts, she said, and assured that the kids would be unaffected by the change.  They would receive the same amount of spoiling that they always did, since it was Christmas and Christmas was supposed to be all about them.  

She’d been trying to implement this plan for a couple of years to no avail.  Now, though, she used the Del Vecchio’s presence to try again and managed to get the counselor on the bandwagon.  With the two of them petitioning for it, everybody bought in.  Jon personally thought his brothers agreed just to shut Lilah up, but whatever.  

He had a couple of very ugly sweaters in his closet from her.  His theory was that she did it intentionally to make her idea look better while getting the adding bonus of annoying the shit out of him.  If this scheme kept him from receiving another purple and orange monstrosity, he was all about it.

Besides, if he wanted to buy his brothers an unauthorized gift because he saw something they’d like… his sister-in-law’s approval was not required.  That's why he added his endorsement and it came back to him in the form of the beautiful karmic rainbow that granted him Lilah’s name from the hat.  It could very well be the best Christmas ever.

The counselor wasn't privy to his ulterior motive, though, and stuck her tongue out at him before dropping a cheek to his right pectoral muscle. “It sounded like fun.”

He soothed away her belligerence with a pat on the butt.  “It will be.  Whose name did you get?”

“Your dad.”

“Dad’s easy.  He loves whatever he gets.  It’s Mom that’s hard to buy for.  She’s so fucking particular about everything.”

“But is a painting of his grandkids going to be a cheapskate gift?”

“Not if you frame it in twenty dollar bills.  Ouch!”  It felt like she just ripped a bald spot over his left nipple, and Jon rolled, taking wicked woman with him.  Pinning mischievous hands into the pillow, he loomed over her with a scowl.  “That hurt!”

She didn’t struggle like he expected her to.  She didn’t give him some smartass retort.  She didn’t do anything but lie there and blink up at him for the longest time.  He was about to ask what was wrong when she finally posed her own soft question. 

“Will there ever come a time that I don’t want you?”

This was one of those soft Chiara moments he cherished yet it wasn’t like any he’d experienced so far.  The vulnerability in her doe-like eyes gutted him so fiercely that he found himself struggling to draw the next breath.  Never before had she let her defenses down to willingly reveal this... sliver of gentle purity that remained unscathed by life’s cruelties.  A childlike innocence and trust that she’d hidden deep inside her and protected all these years, performing a miracle by keeping it intact.   

It was the most beautiful fucking thing he’d ever seen.  And the most terrifying, because she was handing it to him.

Jon didn’t deserve it.  He was just a tenacious fucker from Jersey who’d gotten lucky more often than most people, but she was looking at him like he could do no wrong.  Like he was the whole enchilada.  The whole ball of wax.  All that and a bag of chips. 

Her entire world.

Chest drawing tight, Jon realized he might be an idiot because all along he’d been demanding more from her.  She was the one who deserved more, and without knowing how to give it to her or even having an idea of what “it” would be, all he could do was stumble through and hope he didn’t screw up this remarkable moment.

“Not until I become a fat old man with erectile dysfunction.”

The shutters closed on the windows to her soul, leaving him to hold his breath until they twinkled with indulgence.  Her smile carried on that theme of indulgence, and she wiggled until captive fingertips stroked the backs of his hands. “Well, today you’re still the sexiest man walking the earth, so how about you kiss me like you mean it and fuck me like there’s no tomorrow?”

Exhaling without being obvious, Jon knew that was something he could do.

“Hold on, baby,” he whispered against her lips.  “It’s gonna be a long night.”