When everyone had full plates and had a chance to dig in, Alessandro cleared his throat. “So, Denise, tell us about yourself.”
I could see everyone eyeing him in confusion, but I knew better. He wanted to do some fishing, and for the first time, I wanted to hear what she had to say.
“Like what?” Denise asked. “I’m twenty-five. My birthday is December tenth. My favorite color is orange. My favorite food is honey buns.”
Alessandro laughed, but I recognized it. It was vapid and hollow, one he’d given me several times before—totally fake. “Well, that’s all good to know, but I guess I’m more wondering about your childhood. What was it like growing up with Dario and Dante?”
Luca gave Alessandro a completely confused expression there but kept his mouth shut. All eyes were on Denise as she bit into her hot dog with a roll of her eyes. “Annoying mostly. Donovan coveted them like precious angels, but they were bullies, and stupid, at that.”
I remembered how easy it was for Stacy to goad Dario and Dante out into the hallway when she saved us from them. Marco and Luca had worked pretty closely with them and thought they had okay intelligence, but I didn’t think that the older Varasso brothers were the most intelligent men around, either.
“Dante wasn’t awful, I guess, especially when he wasn’t around Dario, but when they got together, they were a shit storm.”
“You were the youngest, right?” Alessandro asked. “Like Gabe?”
I listened with anticipation. In Stacy’s studio, Denise had said she was born between the boys. Alessandro was a techie and had incredible attention to detail. I highly doubted that he forgot.
Denise shook her head. “No, I’m in the middle. Er…I was.”
The Varassos had open-fired on Donovan and Dante Binachi back after they kidnapped us. Dario only escaped because Stacy had already shot him in the leg and left him outside so that he couldn’t stand at the door when Donovan kicked it down.
“Was Dario as arrogant as he is now as a kid?” Marco asked, but he wasn’t playing into Alessandro’s ploy. He was just genuinely curious. “I fucking hated working with him.”
“Yes,” Denise said with a roll of her eyes. “It didn’t help that my dad acted like the world began and ended with him.”
“Must be nice,” Luca said.
“One time when he was ten, eleven, something like that, and I was seven, our school had this science project. He had this amazing volcano project, and I had a dumpy little soap and sponge experiment. Granted, Dario’s was so good because my dad had some scientist from Malldie’s under his thumb and agreed to cut his debt down if he helped. So we went to school, and I had this friend, Kaitlyn, who was, like, in love with Dario. He convinced her to set up the whole damn thing, and she did it really cool. His professionally built volcano looked like it was in the middle of this tropical island.
“The teachers fawned over him, even though he didn’t even do anything. Meanwhile, I’m standing off to the side with my sponges and the different colored soaps that my mom helped me make. My dad didn’t even come over. He stood by Dario the whole time, and my best friend, who was really just my friend to be around Dario, abandoned her own project to go look after his. He got to stand on this podium for winning, too.” Denise was boiling. Her fingers were causing indents in the bun around her hot dog, and she was staring off like she was revisiting the scene. “Then my dad left—left the science fair—with only Dario and forgot me there.”
“Where was your mom?” Gabriel asked.
“At home with Dante. He was still in preschool, so he wasn’t at the fair.” She threw her hot dog down on her plate. “Don’t even get me started on him. He could do no wrong. One time, Dante and I were playing tag, and I didn’t even want to fucking play, but my dad made me. He couldn’t catch me, so he got really pissed off and tried to throw a ball at me to knock me down. He missed and hit this marble pillar that my mom had an old, victorian vase sitting on—something my dad got her as a wedding present. The vase fell and shattered, and my mom cried for, like, three days. My dad asked who did it, and Dante was standing, like, right fucking there, looking as guilty as the day is long, but he said I did it, and my dad just took his word for it. He locked me in my room and fed me meals like a prisoner for damn near a month.”
“So, I take it you don’t miss him?” Marco asked.
“If I could dig him up and kill him again, I would,” Denise spat back. “Sorry,” she grumbled, “I didn’t mean to ruin the fun with my family stories.”
“That’s my fault. Maybe I should not have asked,” Alessandro replied, side-eyeing me.
He, no doubt, had the same confusion that I did. Denise’s stories and subsequent anger seemed truthful. I didn’t believe a whole lot of what came out of her mouth, but when her body started to shake with anger as she told stories about her childhood, I could hear the ring of truth.
She grinned at Alessandro. “It’s okay. I appreciate you taking an interest in me. What about you guys? I know things were tough between you and your dad, as well, but you seem pretty close as brothers, at least.”
Marco and Gabriel took the lion’s share of the conversation after that, telling miscellaneous stories about their childhood. Luca and Alessandro would occasionally throw in little tidbits of their own, and it made me uncomfortable how quickly they’d all fallen into a sense of normalcy with her. I realized that Alessandro had started it in order to delve into Denise’s past, but soon, they were all chatting with her like an old friend. I was more than a little relieved when everyone started to stand up from the table. Luca, Marco, Gabriel, and Alessandro went off to have a two-on-two game of bean-bag toss, and Denise and Molly went to replenish their drinks and watch.
Stacy stood up and started to clear the table, so I joined in.
“Thanks, Willow,” Stacy said with a smile.
“You don’t have to thank me. I ate, too.” We threw the paper plates in the trash, covered what was left of the food, and cleared the table of any debris. When we were done, Stacy looked as if she was going to walk over to the group, so I grabbed her arm. “Hey. Can I ask you a question?”
She nodded. “Of course!”
Stacy’s aura and connection to the universe stuff was a little far-fetched for me, but it seemed to have some basis when she spoke about things she wouldn’t otherwise know. I didn’t know what to think about Denise. My gut reaction was to think that maybe she was really a Carducci, but there was truth to her stories about being a Binachi. Maybe Stacy just had a really above-average ability to read people, but I thought maybe getting her thoughts on the woman would help inform my opinions a bit.
“What do you think of Denise? Do you think she’s being truthful?”