Too Easy to Believe

The first person that Gio told about his engagement to Elle was his consigliere. He had gone into the video call expecting Maria to have a hundred and one questions. For him to interrogate him and go through his reasoning for wanting to marry Elle. Instead, Maria had thrown her head back and laughed, a full belly laugh that had her clutching her sides, her hair breaking free of its band and surrounding her head in a wild halo. 

"It is about time. I was beginning to think you would spend the rest of your life dancing around the issue and staring at her with cow eyes for the rest of your life," He should have been affronted that he had been easy to read, but instead his mind settled on one thing.

" Cow eyes? I do not have cow eyes when I look at her, " Maria laughed again.

"How would you know, you are too busy looking at her to look in the mirror and see,"

"I do not have cow eyes," Gio repeated, feeling like a cranky toddler. The feeling only intensifying when Maria gave him a fond smile.

"Yes you do, you should be glad, cows have lovely eyes," She ended the call with that, the two of them knowing that the longer it persisted. The more likely they were to start talking business, which would lead to them talking about the attack and how there were barely making any progress. So far all they had was the one living attacker's name. Paolo Moreno, a low level crook who was very loyal to whomever their secret boss was. But as far as anyone knew, Paolo had always been a freelancer. He had not worked exclusively for anyone, simply following the money, completing his tasks and moving on to the next boss and the next job. He was also well known to flip on anyone for the right price.

But the Paolo they had in their grasp was a different man. Not only was he tight lipped about who his boss was, he was also displaying uncharacteristic loyalty with regards to sharing information on what was going on. They had offered eye watering amounts of money and Paolo had just looked at them. They had beaten him black and blue and while the man had cursed and swore, he had not let anything important slip.

Shelving the topic, Gio ended the call with Maria. 

After a glass of whiskey, and a few deep breaths to steel himself he final made a three way call, not wanting to repeat the experience of telling his aunts and uncle one by one. 

Gio broke the news in the most matter of fact way he could.

"I am getting married," His hope was that he could drop the bomb and then hang up before they could process.

But the elders rallied quickly.

"About time, I thought I would only get to see my precious nephew get married from beyond the grave," Aunt Cecilia followed up her statement with a very fake cough.

"Sush, Cecilia, our Gio is too much of a good boy to do that to us," His uncle spoke up in his defence, effectively cutting off aunt Sofia who looked ready to add to his guilt trip.

His aunts and uncle were proud of him, and also took great pleasure in admonishing him for taking so long. Apparently while Gio and Elle had thought they were keeping things casual, and somewhat secretive. Everyone, including his elderly relatives knew about them and thought that not only were they in a serious relationship, but also that Gio had wasted time by not popping the question sooner.

He had never introduced Elle to his family, let alone talked about her to them, but they did not bother pretending as though they were not keeping tabs on him, and Gio did not pretend like he did not know. Instead he was bombarded with variations of the same thing over and over…"We have heard only wonderful things about her. Why have you not brought her over to meet us?"

" Are you ashamed of us Giovanni?" His aunts asked in sync, giving him identical expressions of hurt. Had he not known that his aunt Cecilia was from his father's side and aunt Sofia from his mother's side of the family, he would have sworn they were twins. They had the same exact guilt-tripping voice. It was only his uncle's interference (again) that saved Gio from feeling like the worst nephew on earth.

"Alright you two, leave the boy be, a man must have his secrets," The call came to an end after that and Gio took a moment to massage his temples.

With the hardest announcements done, he turned to the one that he had known would be the easiest. He called Big L and the man came in quietly.

"You called, boss," Gio nodded.

"Yes, I need you to upgrade the security for a new family member," Big L's eyebrows raised in shock but he did not say anything, simply pulling out his phone in preparation to take notes.

"Name?" He asked, and Gio suppressed a smile. Big L's curiosity was clearly eating away at him despite how professional he was being.

"Danielle Cutting, soon to be Danielle Romano," Big L typed the first letter and paused, his head snapping up.

"Congratulations, boss," He said, and then turned and walked out. He was so out of it he did not even notice that he had left without being excused.

Biting back a smile, Gio let him go.

Danielle Romano… he liked the sound of that.