Page 34 of The Doctor

“Zeno—” Paulo tried, but I couldn’t stop.

“Maybe if you spent an ounce of time with your daughter you’d have some idea of what she’s going through.”

“I’m busy—”

“Yes. You’re busy. You’re so damn busy with your work and your wife and your son that you don’t have a goddamned minute to spend with your own flesh and blood. You have to push her off on me, make her my problem, because you can’t see what’s right there in front of you.”

“Why don’t you enlighten me, Zeno,” Berto spit. “Tell me, what’s wrong with my daughter?”

I scoffed again. “It figures, you’d ask me that.” Standing, I shook my head. “Paulo, I think you’re right. If you don’t mind, I’m going to find a room and take a brief rest.”

Berto must not have caught the slight dip of Paulo’s head. He watched after me, anger that should have been directed at himself displaced onto me as I stormed past him out of the room.

A minute alone wouldn’t help me in the grand scheme of things, but it would keep me from biting Berto’s head off if he said one more goddamn thing about his daughter.

There’s no rest for the wicked, it seemed. For the next hour, my mind was on overdrive, worrying over every last thing I’d said both before and after Paulo’d found me half-asleep in the sitting room. As a doctor, I was so used to not speaking about other people's problems, even though I made it clear with every patient I had that I’d talk to Paulo about anything we deemed necessary for him to know.

I hated our discussion of our injured soldier, Angelo Santini, and the path we were forcing him to go down to recover from the spiral he’d been stuck in the past year.

But mostly, I didn’t want to talk about Clara behind her back, especially with her father, someone who tried so little to have any form of a relationship with her. But holding my tongue in front of Berto had proven impossible to my sleep-deprived mind.

When I finally pulled myself together and headed downstairs to meet with Paulo and the lieutenants—one of the main reasons for my coming here today—my friend acted as if my outburst hadn’t happened at all. He welcomed me as he always did, drawing me into a conversation with his brother-in-law, Lorenzo Giordano, and his fixer, Jet Pasternelo. I’d caught Berto watching me out of the corner of his eye across the room, but whatever conversation he was having with Cosimo and Arik kept him occupied enough to keep him away from me.

When Maso announced dinner was ready, we shuffled into the dining room with our drinks in hand. We’d long had our traditions of where to sit at the tables. During our larger family affairs, when wives and children, as well as Paulo’s good friends, Giraldo and Saul Pasternelo, were invited, the seats around the table were fairly set in stone. But these smaller, lieutenant-only shindigs were another matter entirely.

Somehow in the free for all, I’d been sandwiched between Paulo on my right, and Jet on my left. Add to that Paulo’s daughter, Queenie, taking up a spot on his right, somehow Berto ended up sitting next to Cosimo and Arik, nearly as far from his normal spot at Paulo’s side as he could get.

Some petty part of me enjoyed watching his dismay as he realized he wasn’t sitting next to his bestie, and I was. But the bigger part of me was just happy I didn’t have to do more than look at his ugly face across the table. Even that was enough to make me want to introduce him to my fist for his complete lack of trying with Clara.

For fuck’s sake.

Now I was acting like a child.

Paulo allowed us to dig into our meals—a delicious osso buco with fresh bread, caprese salad, and red wine—before he got down to our meeting.

“First and foremost,” he said, taking a moment to raise his wine glass, “I’d like to welcome Jael David to the table for the first time.”

As everyone lifted their own glasses, I caught Cosimo’s eye. His glass was full of water, and he made sure I saw that’s what he was drinking. I gave him a slight nod before turning my attention back to Paulo.

“She’s been instrumental in bringing on the Alvarez’s, not to mention the way she handled the aftermath of the little situation down in Kansas a few months ago.”

“What did happen down in Kansas?” Arik, Jael’s oldest brother, asked. He said it with such warmth, and a teasing sort of love, that I had to look away.

Only to catch Cosimo with the saltshaker poised over his plate. As a few at the table let loose good-hearted laughter, Cosimo made a show of rolling his eyes and putting the saltshaker down.

Looks like I’m not the only child here tonight.

Next to Cosimo, Lorenzo beamed a proud smile. “Don’t tell me she hasn’t told her own blood what she’s done? She’s been tight-lipped about the whole thing around me, too. Here I was, thinking Miss Jael didn’t like me anymore.”

With her signature cocky grin, Jael tossed back, “You gotta try harder than that, Lorenzo. Your interrogation techniques are weak.”

Beside me, Paulo gave a hearty laugh. “Jael, it’s going to be a pleasure having you at our table.”

Everyone raised their glasses once more in a toast.

Everyone except Berto and Cosimo.

The two were leaning together, and a sudden lull in the room had Cosimo’s voice sweeping our way. “…is she doing here anyway?”