His aunt was in her flower garden when Gio arrived. He did not announce his presence, content to stay in the shadows and watch her work.
Her hair in a loose braid thrown over her shoulder, aunt Cecilia was focused on the task at hand. Before her was a bouquet of yellow roses, and she was cutting the thorns from all of them with the utmost care.
She moved through them with an efficiency borne of years of practice and whenever she finished with a rose she held it up, examining it in the light before putting it aside.
"You know, Giovanni, if you just wanted to stare, you could have just looked at my picture and not wasted fuel coming all the way here," She said it without looking up, or even glancing in his general direction.
Stepping out of his hiding spot, Gio walked to her. She turned to him, and he kissed both her cheeks in greeting.
When she turned back to her task, Gio stayed by her side, handing her a flower when she finished with the one she was working on. His visit was not really a social one, but standing by his aunt, Gio suddenly found himself at a loss for words.
His aunt, clearly sensing his discomfort decided to take both of them out of their misery.
"I take it you are here about Rafael," She said it simply enough, but her breath hitched around her brother's name. A clear sign that she was not as unaffected as she was pretending.
Nevertheless she soldiered on, continuing to clip off rose thorns as she spoke.
"What would you like to know?" She asked and this time, the quiver in her voice was impossible to hide.
Throwing a hand over her delicate shoulders Gio pulled her in for a sideways hug.
"Nothing," He dropped a kiss on the side of her head.
"I do not want to know anything about all the horrible things he did," He breathed out, his own voice was beginning to waver.
"I just want to know what he was like. Not as my uncle, but as a captain, what was he like out in the streets," A bony arm sneaked around his waist, squeezing briefly before she let go and went back to working on the roses.
"Thank you… it has been so long since I have talked to anyone about him," She wiped a tear, but when she spoke up again, her voice was stronger.
"Your father might have had the book smarts, but out in the streets, if anyone ever thought they could pull the wool over Rafael's eyes then they were dreaming," She stared off into the distance, her mouth twitching slightly as she thought of a memory.
"When we were in our teens we had this guy. A newcomer, a lawyer, he thought he was smarter than everyone because he had a fancy degree,"
"Anyways, he was skimming money off the top of our profits and thinking no one would notice…we definitely did, and our father sent all three of us to deal with it,"
"No bloodshed though, the man knew a few powerful people who were not on our payroll,"
"I was all for poisoning him, no bloodshed but it would still get the job done," She smiled like a shark, and Gio shuddered at the glimpse of the steel beneath her gentle demeanor.
"Your father wanted us to tie him up in legal strings, sink his business, his reputation, and then have him take the fall for all the things he had covered up for us," Gio would have been disturbed by how petty the whole thing was sounding, but she looked so happy with the memory he could not help but feel cheery.
"Your uncle suggested we go through with both our plans and then added his own twist,"
"You see, the lawyer was a bit of a ladies man, something the wife did not know. And the wife happened to be a very powerful heiress,"
"I used one of my lighter poisons, took away his ability to ever have kids. Your father had him up to his eyeballs in court cases and your uncle made sure his wife found proof of various infidelities,"
"Had we chosen a single plan and gone with it, the man might have recovered. But your uncle's decision on a full on attack from all sides ended all hopes of that. It's part of the reason why to this day people think thrice about betraying the Romanos," It was a coldblooded story about basically ruining a man when they were all not even old enough to drink yet, but there was a lightness to his aunt as she finished telling it. This was a woman who had bottled up too much for too long, and she clearly had much she wanted to say.
"I have some time today. How about we continue with the stories over some snacks," Looking up, aunt Cecilia smiled at Gio like he had just given her the world.
What followed was hours of his aunt regaling him with stories of her wild younger days with her brothers. Some of them funny, the majority terrifying, but with each one Gio got a clearer picture of the experiences that had shaped his uncle.
When he finally left, he had a better understanding of things that made his uncle tick and had done so without breaking his aunt's heart in the process. In his books, that was a clear win any day.