REESE

chapter thirty nine.

Reese POV:

In the short one and a half weeks I had been back in Italy, I discovered one very important thing about myself. I loved driving through the streets of Milan.

Milan was breathtaking, not exactly in a scenic way but in an architectural way. The city was a northern powerhouse, draped in renaissance to neoclassical design and style. Driving past and through the metropolis was nothing less than captivating, something my eight-year-old self took for granted but my eighteen-year-old self took back with pride.

The force in which the city sucked you in and held you was almost inescapable. The spring weather was still fairly cold but it did little to deter people from roaming out and about. Milan was heavily tourist-oriented much like New York City was but here the crowds pulsed with energy, bringing life to the stunning artistic and charming streets. The architecture, the atmosphere, the people, all so incredibly different from New York I sometimes wondered just how exactly I even adapted to living in the United States so seamlessly in the first place.

My two homes were vastly different from one another. Lombardy bled old money while New York encompassed new. I remember stories my mom used to tell Max, Rocco and I about our dad; the three Di Genova kids whose memories of their father were either non-existent or rapidly vanishing. We did everything we could to absorb every sliver of information about the father that was taken away from us too soon. 

Apparently, Alessandro Di Genova had an infatuation with the Big Apple, frequently planning trips and discreetly scheduling all American business in the city, back when the older generation of Vanderbilts were still in rule but not in alliance with the Italian empire. I loved hearing stories about my dad, he might have passed away when I was only a couple of months old but that didn't mean I didn't know him. I knew him through pictures, stories, and non-existent memories viewed through the lenses of my mom and brothers' eyes.

I think all those stories about my biological dad's love of New York unconsciously lead to my eventual settlement in the state. When asked, I told people that my offer of admission to NYU, alongside the fact that New York City is generally ahead of most global trends making it a birthplace for many economic and cultural developments, were the two main reasons I knew New York was where I wanted to live. That wasn't exactly a lie but there was more to it. Something else called to me every time New York passed through my mind as a single thought, that something was the rooted presence of my biological dad in my subconscious.

To me, Alessandro Di Genova and Jonathon Vanderbilt were vivid representations of New York, while Lombardy spoke to me in the phantom form of Arabella Di Genova. I loved and needed both, but could appreciate one over the other from time to time.

"It's beautiful, is it not?" My gaze shifted, begrudgingly leaving the windows and landing on two men whose fear and uncomfort sept into the already tense ambiance of the private limo we were currently traveling in. Tommaso and Flavio Fiore were noticeably wary of the Don and two hiers sitting in front of them. The father-son duo were quiet, too quiet. It was almost as if they had come to the conclusion beforehand that keeping their mouths shut would keep them alive, a valid but unnecessary conclusion to make this time.

We needed the Fiore family just as much as they needed us.

"Yes, ma'am. It's incredibly beautiful." Tommaso answered, eyeing me with the same amount of caution and surprise he held when I first introduced myself a little over a week ago. I couldn't help the deep sigh that left my mouth at Tommaso's formality. If he continued to hold an exuberant amount of wariness everytime we interacted, then this mission was going to fail before it even started.

"Mr. Fiore, please call me Reese. I think we have passed the point of formalities, don't you?"

Tommaso let out a breath of air that sounded more like a wheeze, indicating just how much he disagreed with the statement I had made seconds ago. He gaped like a fish, hesitantly opening and closing his mouth in an attempt to respond but it was Flavio who ended up replying to my question.