Page 26 of Promised to the Don of Naples
"Read the book, bella. I won't stop you."
He reached out and laid his fingers on my shoulder, squeezing it for a second.
"If I see my brother behind you in a bookcase again," he said quietly, in my ear, no mockery, no charm, with the clean coldness of the Don, "he sleeps in Rome this week. Chiaro?"
I didn't answer.
He left the library without waiting for an answer, and I stood in the middle of the cathedral of books, holding his great-grandfather's memoirs against my chest.
And I realized, with a cold anger, that the shoulder where his fingers had rested for a second—still burned.
CHAPTER 9
"The dead man who walks frightens you more than the living one who shoots."
VALENTINA ROSSI
I took the book to my room.
I locked the door and sat on the bed with my back against the velvet of the headboard. I opened it to the first page.
Memorie della Famiglia Moretti — 1887–1995.
Written by Luca's great-grandfather, Don Cesare Moretti, two years before he died. Cramped handwriting, old Italian, some passages in Neapolitan dialect I'd have to decipher later.
I skipped the text and went straight to the photos. There were sixty-three photos in the book. I counted them.
I started with the oldest ones. Sepia, weddings from the turn of the century, uncles with mustaches, wives in black dresses down to the ankle. I skipped ahead to the sixties—Don Vito Moretti, Luca's grandfather, young, in a casino in Sanremo. Skip. Seventies. Eighties.
And then...
The nineties.
The first photo that stopped me was from 1993. A baptism—Battesimo di Raffaele Moretti, 12 maggio 1993, the handwritten caption said. The family gathered in the garden of the villa in Posillipo. I recognized everyone: Don Vito, Luca's father (Don Marco, who died in 2016), Luca's mother (young, beautiful, holding baby Raffaele), Luca as a boy of twelve in the corner of the photo, scowling at the camera.
And beside Luca's mother, in the center of the photo, smiling—my father.
Salvatore Rossi, thirty-five years old. In a light suit. Raffaele's godfather.
My father was Raffaele Moretti's godfather.
I swallowed hard and moved to the next photo.
Capodanno 1995, Capri. New Year's Eve at nonna Adelina's house, on Capri. The photo was on the villa terrace, the sea behind them, everyone in tuxedos and long gowns. Don Marco in the center, Luca's mother beside him. Luca as a teenager, fourteen, in a tuxedo for the first time, with the annoyed air of a teenager who'd rather be anywhere else.
And behind him, a hand on his shoulder, smiling—my father. And beside my father—my mother.
My dead mother. A moss-green dress, emerald earrings I still have in my drawer today. Smiling. Beautiful. Alive.
My mother never told me she'd spent New Year's Eve at the Morettis' house on Capri. My father never told me he was Raffaele's godfather.
No one ever told me anything.
I kept going. Summer of '99. Summer of 2000. Summer of 2002. In almost every Moretti family photo from the nineties on, on Capri, my father was there. In half of them, my mother. In some, a black-haired boy who grew up photo by photo, skinny, with that open smile—Matteo.
My brother had grown up with them, my brother had grown up with Luca.
They were brothers of another kind. Weekend brothers, summer brothers, Sunday-dinner brothers, the kind Italian mafia families make when two capos decide their sons will be cousins without blood.
