Page 54 of By Blade, I Love
“Do you want me to take your last name?”
He grabbed his fork again and spun it around the pasta. “Doyouwant to take my last name?”
“I know that’s important to most men.”
“Well, I’m not most men, baby.” He put the pasta in his mouth and chewed as he wiped the corner of his lips with a napkin. “You can have a different last name, but trust me, no one is going to be confused about who you’re married to.”
That was another reason why I loved him. He didn’t conform to typical traditions. He was his own man with his own thoughts and opinions. So secure in who he was, his masculinity was rock solid. Having a wife who kept her last name wouldn’t create any resentment on his part.
“Do you have to decide now?” he asked. “You can always change it later, right?”
“Yeah, I guess I could.”
“Then worry about it later.”
“If we have kids, I should probably change my last name.”
He shrugged. “They could take your last name instead of mine.”
Now that was as nontraditional as it could get.
“You’re the one who’s going to grow them and give birth to them. Shouldn’t it be whatever name you want?”
I thought I might have just fallen even more in love with him.
“In any case, that’s tomorrow’s problem.” He grabbed his wineglass and took a drink. “Not today’s.”
After he’d shared his true name with me, we hadn’t really talked about it. We’d had too much going on at the time. “Do you think you feel that way because you don’t feel connected to your given name?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t think that has anything to do with it.” He looked at me head on across the table, his elbows moving to the surface now that his plate was wiped clean. Focused and intense, he just stared at me.
“Do you prefer Wolfe or Cesare?” It was hard to imagine calling him anything but Wolfe since that was the name I associated with him. But at the same time, he looked like a Cesare. I felt like I’d uncovered a new layer to him.
“No one has called me Cesare since I was eight,” he said. “Let’s stick with Wolfe.” He spoke freely about it with me, so it didn’t seem to be a sign of contention.
“Where did Wolfe come from?”
“Don Russo, actually,” he said. “I was young, but I was hanging around with Cosa Nostra at the time, and some assholes broke in. Cosa Nostra thought they got them all, but I found them hiding in a utility closet in one of the laundry rooms. They’d planned to sneak out when our guard was down and slit our throats. He started to call me Wolfe after that, because I hunt like a wolf. Never give up on the kill. And the older I got, the more fitting that name became. So I don’t identify with Cesare really at all. The only person who ever called me that was my mom.”
Any time he mentioned his mom, it always made me sad. He was this strong and powerful man, but once upon a time, he’d been a little boy who loved his mom. It made me sad that he hadn’t gotten to have that relationship longer. That for most of his life, he didn’t have a family. I was lucky I’d had my father as long as I did. “I wish I could have met her.”
He gave a shrug. “I was so young when she died, I couldn’t even tell you if you two would get along.”
“What do you remember about her?”
“Chaos, unpredictability, money always being scarce…but I never felt like a burden. I always felt her love. It was unconditional and never weakened based on our circumstances. It’s something that makes me feel better about being a father. At the end of the day, all that matters is that the kid feels loved. Everything else can go to complete shit, and it’ll be just fine.”
I nodded. “That’s a good way to think about it.”
He grabbed his glass and took a drink.
“Have you ever tried to reach out to other relatives?”
“What other relatives?” he asked.
“Italian families are always big. There’ve got to be uncles and aunts and cousins out there.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t know them. Why should I know them now?”
