Chapter 4 - The House of Secret Windows
The Bellandi estate in Lake Forest was not a modern mansion of glass and steel; it was a fortress of dark gray stone built in the 1920s, surrounded by ancient oaks whose branches hung over the high iron walls like old guards.
When the black sedan dropped Mara at the stone portico, she was wearing a simple navy dress she had bought three years ago for a cousin’s funeral, her hair pulled back into a neat, practical bun. She carried nothing but her small leather purse and a jar of homemade fig preserves she had stolen from Chef Lorenzo’s private pantry.
The front door was opened not by a butler in a tuxedo, but by Nico himself. He was wearing a black wool sweater with the sleeves rolled up, his forearms heavy with thick, faint white scars that looked like old rope burns.
“She’s in the garden,” Nico said, stepping back to let her enter.
The interior of the house smelled of beeswax, lemon oil, and the deep, rich aroma of tomatoes simmering with pork bone. There were no modern paintings here; the walls were covered in old, silver-framed photographs of unsmiling men in heavy wool suits and dark-eyed women standing in front of stone houses in the Mediterranean.
They walked through a long conservatory into a high-walled courtyard where Lucia Bellandi sat in a wicker chair, her legs wrapped in a thick wool blanket despite the mild spring sun. She was chopping parsley with an old, double-bladed knife that looked older than the city of Chicago.
“Mara,” the old woman said, her face lighting up with a sudden, sharp network of wrinkles that made her look like an ancient saint. “Sit down. Don't look at my son. He looks like a policeman today. He always looks like a policeman when he’s hungry.”
Mara sat on the low stone bench beside the wicker chair. She took the jar of fig preserves out of her purse and set it on the small iron table. “Chef Lorenzo said these were for you, Mrs. Bellandi. He said the figs came from the tree his grandfather planted in New Jersey.”
Lucia took the jar, her old fingers tracing the glass with a reverence that only old people have for things that take time to grow. “Lorenzo is a good boy. He knows that sugar is the only thing that keeps the salt from eating the mouth.”
She looked up at Nico, who was standing by the glass door with his arms crossed over his chest. “Go away, Nico. Walk the dogs. Talk to the drivers. Leave me with the girl who knows how to write my name.”
Nico didn't argue. He gave Mara a long, slow look—a gaze that lingered on the curve of her throat before shifting back to his mother—and disappeared into the house.
“He’s a difficult man, my son,” Lucia said, her knife resuming its rhythmic thwack-thwack against the wooden board. “His father was a wolf, Mara. A big wolf who thought that if you didn't bite everyone you met, they would think you had no teeth. Nico is different. He doesn't bite unless you touch the fence. But Bianca… Bianca wanted to build a new fence.”
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“She’s your son’s choice, Mrs. Bellandi,” Mara said softly, her fingers tracing the stone of the bench.
“She was a choice made in the dark, Mara,” Lucia said, her green eyes fixing onto Mara’s face with the force of a searchlight. “He thought he needed her father’s concrete to keep the family safe from the federal lawyers. He thought that if he married a girl who went to the big schools in Europe, the city would forget where our money came from. But a man who marries for concrete always ends up buried in it.”
