"Isabella Mancini, dear, please try to understand..." The Donna had taken my hands in hers, her grip surprisingly warm. "Nico has selective mutism. He cannot speak—not to most people. Not about most things."
I reached for my phone now and called her.
"Isabella?" Elena Volpe's voice was alert despite the hour. In our world, phones rang at all hours, and rarely with good news. "Why are you still awake, child?"
My nose stung. My voice cracked like thin ice. "Did you know Massima is back?"
The silence on the other end was its own answer.
"I'm sorry, Isabella..." The Donna's voice softened with something that might have been genuine regret. "I wasn't honest with you three years ago. Nico's mutism—it started when Massima left. She was... she was his world, before. The daughter of the Gallo family, before their disgrace. When she fled to Europe, something in him broke."
I heard her exhale, the sound of a woman carrying too many secrets.
"I had no choice but to push him into that arranged meeting with you. Your father was eager for the alliance. And Nico needed... he needed something. Someone."
"Ridiculous, isn't it?" A bitter laugh escaped her. "The heir apparent to the Volpe Crime Family, the Young Don who will one day command half the Eastern Seaboard—and he can't speak a word to his own blood wife. But don't worry, dear. No matter what happens, I'll keep that boy in line. Massima Gallo is nothing but common trash dressed in designer clothes. She will not destroy this Family."
I don't remember hanging up. I don't remember how I survived that long, lonely night, staring at the shadows that crawled across the ceiling like accusations.
Back then, when I first learned of his condition, I had researched everything I could. I'd pulled medical journals from the Family's underground archives, consulted with physicians on the Volpe payroll, read until my eyes burned. One line under "causes" had stood out like a brand:
Severe external trauma.
I didn't understand. I asked around the Volpe compound, approached capos and soldiers and household staff, but no one would give me a straight answer. Omertà extended even to this—the silence protected him from his own wife.
So I tried everything.