Chapter 5 - THE NAME MY MOTHER FEARED
Toby's surgery was scheduled for Tuesday.
I spent Monday night beside his hospital bed.
He was frightened.
So was I.
But he kept making jokes.
At nine, he asked whether Gerald could wear a surgical mask.
At ten, he demanded to know whether hospital surgeons got snack breaks.
At eleven, he asked if Dante was my boyfriend.
I nearly dropped my coffee.
“What?”
Toby grinned.
“The tall guy.”
“What tall guy?”
“The one who brought the dinosaur puzzle.”
I froze.
“Dante came here?”
Toby nodded.
“Yesterday.”
I stared.
“He visited you?”
“Only for ten minutes. Nurse Patel was here. He asked if I liked dinosaurs.”
I swallowed.
“What did you tell him?”
“That dinosaurs are better than people.”
I laughed.
Toby smiled.
“He agreed.”
Then his expression became serious.
“Lena, is he dangerous?”
I hesitated.
“Yes.”
Toby nodded.
“Okay.”
“That's it?”
“He was nice to me.”
I brushed his hair back.
“Nice people can still be dangerous.”
Toby considered that.
Then said, “Dangerous people can probably be nice sometimes.”
I didn't know how to answer.
That evening, I called my aunt Rosa.
She had helped raise Toby and me after our parents died.
When I mentioned Dante Vanel, she went silent.
“Elena.”
Something in her voice frightened me.
“What?”
“Stay away from that man.”
I sat upright.
“Why?”
“Because his family destroyed ours.”
My blood went cold.
“What are you talking about?”
Rosa began crying.
“Your father didn't die in a car accident.”
I stopped breathing.
“What?”
“He was killed because he refused to cooperate with the Vanel family.”
I stared at the wall.
Our father had died when I was fourteen.
Our mother had followed two years later after a long illness.
I had spent years believing the accident was random.
Now Rosa was telling me something else.
“Who killed him?”
A long silence.
Then she whispered a name.
May you like
“Vittorio Vanel.”
Dante's father.
