The Path To Forever (10th Anniversary Edition. Forever, Vol 1)

Copyright © 2010, 2015, 2020 by Etienne

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Wherever possible, the syntax and spelling in this book follows guidelines set forth in The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th Edition, and in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary.

Cover Art © 2015—2020 by Gerald Lopez

Acknowledgments

A great many people have helped make this story what it is today, including several beta readers who pointed out inconsistencies and asked all the right questions. My thanks to all of you.

When I decided to use Italian titles and forms of address, I quickly realized that what little I knew about Italian came from years of listening to Italian opera, so I posted an appeal on my blog for a volunteer. An expatriate Italian who now lives in London answered that appeal and agreed to not only beta read the story but to set me straight on all things Italian. Thank you, Silvano Stagni. Any shred of Italian authenticity this story has is due largely to your advice and guidance.

I must also thank my patient and long-suffering editor Jim Kennedy, who guided me through the morass of commas and other punctuation errors and, made any number of helpful suggestions along the way.

Then there is my partner of twenty-five plus years, who is also my best and most thorough critic. We have had many lively discussions along these lines:

This is a good chapter, but your characters wouldn’t do that.

Why not?

Because it’s out of character for them.

Babe, they’re my characters. I created them. They can do anything I want them to do.

"Yeah, but you’ve got them doing something that’s out of character for them.

These discussions can last for hours, but he prevails—most of the time.

Thank you again, one and all.

Etienne

Dedication

To my mother,

who somehow managed to instill in my stubborn head an absolute respect for language that has served me well through many decades.

Author’s Notes

The Boston Freedom Trail is a major tourist attraction. It starts at the edge of the Boston Common, and ends at Bunker Hill. As you walk the two and one-half miles of the trail, you pass by, or can stop and visit, many sites of historic interest: the place where the Boston Tea Party was planned; Faneuil Hall; Paul Revere’s house; the Old North Church; and the USS Constitution, better known as Old Ironsides; to name a few.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

About the author

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The Path to Forever

10th Anniversary edition

Chapter 1

Boston, MA

Marco

IT WAS LATE SUNDAY evening; I had just finished a double shift—sixteen hours straight—in the trauma center at the hospital; and I was beyond tired as I dragged my weary body through the door. Dani, where are you? I said as I closed the door of our Back Bay apartment in Boston and locked it behind me.

I’m right where I always am, waiting for my prince to come home, he said from the doorway to the bedroom. I turned in the direction of his voice just in time to see him look me up and down carefully. Rough one?

No more than usual—just another sixteen hours of dealing with the worst that humanity can inflict upon one another. I cannot for the life of me imagine why any doctor would willingly work in a trauma center. I need a drink.

Really? Is that all? I can recall a time when you found other things more important at the end of the day.

He was naked except for a pair of white boxer briefs, which looked even whiter against his Mediterranean skin. They were obviously new, as they still clung to his body in all the right places. The one thing I dislike about boxer briefs is the fact that after a few trips through the laundry they begin to sag in all the wrong places. Then he turned around in the doorway, raised his arms to the doorframe on each side, and flexed his gluteus maximus muscles. We are both fairly short men, five six, if you must know, and we are both very trim, the principal difference between us being his broad shoulders and impossibly narrow hips, the flexing of which always incite me to lust.

God, you drive me crazy when you do that, I said.

That’s why I do it.

Before he could say anything else, I rushed him from behind, grabbed him by the waist, and kept going. The momentum of my attack carried us into the bedroom, and we landed on the bed. Which of course is what he’d envisioned happening when he’d posed, oh so carefully and seductively in the doorway.

Later, as we reclined side by side in the bed in post-coital languor, propped up on a stack of pillows, wineglasses in hand, I took a long look at him. Danilo Rosati, I said, how in the world did I ever meet, fall in love with, and settle down with someone as gorgeous as you?

Pure dumb luck, Marco d’Argenzio, and it’s a two-way street as you very well know. I was but a babe of eighteen when you found me and took advantage of my youth and inexperience.

Youth and inexperience, my ass. I was only twenty, and you had twice as many notches on the headboard of your bed as I did.

Yeah, I guess I was a bit of a pop tart back then. But that, my love, was then, and this is now. Here we are, ten years later, still fucking like bunny rabbits—every chance we get.

I’ll be a full-fledged doctor in just a few short weeks. Then I’ll show you all the attention you deserve.

Promises, promises.

Speaking of full-fledged, when do you meet with your committee?

Tuesday, he said.

Do you foresee any problems?

I don’t think so, and my adviser tends to agree.

That’s great, I said. Twenty-eight years old and a second doctorate almost under your belt. I’ll have to buy you a bigger hat.

Very funny.

Seriously, Dani, have you given any thought as to what comes next?

Meaning?

Both of us will need to seek permanent and gainful employment by the end of summer.

True, but it’s only late spring at the moment.

So?

Newly minted doctors with your credentials and lab rats with mine don’t grow on trees, Dani said. We’ll find someplace to settle down; there’s no doubt in my mind.

I suppose so, but meanwhile I’ve had a brainstorm.

Really?

Yep.

Well?

Let’s spend a month or two in Italy before we settle down.

Can we afford it? he said.

Certainly—haven’t you looked at our savings account lately?

Babe, although I realize both of our names are on the account, you and I both know all of that money came from you.

Yeah, my father has done well by me, paying for my education and living expenses, and I’ve been a faithful steward of his money.

You’ve been considerably more than a faithful steward, kiddo—you have the ability to squeeze every nickel until it begs for mercy. You worked all the way through four years of college and three years of med school, even though you didn’t have to, and most of that went into savings. Not to mention the fact that you only use a fraction of your living allowance and save the rest. I, on the other hand, have had to work my ass off to get myself educated, and I’m still up to my neck in student loans.

Having a ‘pity me’ moment, are we? I said.

Just stating the facts as I see them.

Dani, we’re getting off track with this discussion. Do you want to spend a month or two in Italy or not?

You know I do. I’ve always wanted to visit the place my family came from.

That’s right. All four of your grandparents came from the same village, didn’t they?

I think it was more like a wide place in the road, but yes they did.

My friend Joel has been stationed in Rome for two or three years. He and his wife can be our tour guides while we’re there.

That’s your roomie from prep school, right?

Yep. We were thrown together by the luck of the draw, and were best friends by the end of the first term.

What did you mean by ‘stationed’?

He’s the cultural attaché at the embassy in Rome, and you know what that means, right?

CIA Station Chief.

Yeah.

Are you planning on seeing your father while we’re there?

You bet.

That’ll be a bit strange, won’t it? I mean, meeting your father in the flesh for only the second time in your life.

That’s true. He sent me a first-class ticket to Aragoni as a graduation present when I finished prep school, and I spent a couple of weeks with him. He really wanted me to spend the entire summer, but I’d already enrolled in a full load of summer courses and was too stubborn to change my plans. All I really remember from that trip is an old castle in the mountains, and a bunch of people who wanted nothing more than to please the son of their master. I think I must have met a zillion relatives, but I don’t remember a single name or face.

Remind me why he hasn’t come to see you.

He refuses to fly overseas, except in the direst of emergencies. The last time he was in this country was when he rescued my mother from that abusive bastard her father had forced her to marry after he learned that she was pregnant, and that was a few months before I came along.

Too bad she wouldn’t divorce the guy.

True, but she was too staunchly Roman Catholic for that. A permanent separation was as far as she would go.

Yeah, the church has a lot to answer for.

Well, to be honest, it wasn’t just the church. As I understand it, she was already well on her way to being more than a little batty at the time.

That’s not a nice thing to say about your mother, he said.

Why? It’s the absolute truth. As someone once said, she spends most of her time in the arms of Jesus and/or Morpheus. To put it in simpler terms, she dealt with a bad situation by creating and withdrawing into her own reality, and she’s spent the rest of her life drifting in and out of it because she feels safe there.

That’s so sad, Dani said.

True, but I’ve had thirty years to get used to the situation. I’ll give my father credit where it’s due, though. He supported us—from afar—all those years, and he paid for my very expensive education without a whimper. I’ll contact him when we have a tentative itinerary worked out.

By the way, can we spend Monday together, just the two of us? I’ve already cleared my schedule for the entire day.

Sure, I said, what’s up?

For one thing, you go back to work Tuesday; for another thing, I have to defend my thesis on Tuesday; and finally, the minute that momentous event is over, I have a huge project to begin.

What huge project?

You’ve familiar with my DNA database? he said.

How could I not be? For the last three years you’ve been testing every blood sample taken in the hospital for DNA and doing God only knows what with the results—and don’t tell me what, because I probably wouldn’t understand it.

Yeah, and I’ve got a huge database built up.

So?

So, someone was cleaning out the oldest and deepest compartment of a cooler in the morgue last week, and they found a stash of more than a thousand vials of blood.

Really? Blood from where?

That’s the best part. Someone had a pilot project going back in the fifties—nobody seems to know why—and they collected and saved a small vial of blood from everyone that came through the Emergency Room for a period of six months or more. Dr. Cauthen was going to have the vials destroyed, but I talked her into letting me test them first.

That’s going to keep you busy for a few days.

I plan on doing at least a hundred tests a day for the next week or ten days. In any case, I have to finish the work by the time the term ends, because my access to the lab at MIT and all that very expensive equipment ends with it.

And I’ll be mostly working nights during that period. We’ll just be ships passing in the night. Are the people at MIT okay with you running all those tests?

As long as they collect my grant money, I can run as many tests as I like, Dani said. And the trip gives me something to look forward to. Not to mention the fact that I’ll have you all to myself for most of the summer. That’s worth waiting for.

WE SLEPT LATER than usual Monday and spent the rest of the morning in bed—until we were finally driven into the kitchen by hunger. After a very late lunch, we showered, dressed, and went for a long, leisurely walk that lasted all afternoon—we decided to take the Freedom Trail from beginning to end and back again, winding up in the public garden. From the public garden, we walked over to Newbury Street and stopped by a favorite café to have a light supper at an outdoor table. By the time we returned to the apartment, it was dark. As was our custom, we went into our little den slash office—formerly a second bedroom—to check our respective e-mail accounts. I skimmed through a number of messages until I found one that caught my attention.

Well, well, I said, someone has been reading my mind.

Say what?

Remember our conversation about Italy?

Sure, Dani said.

My father has just issued an invitation for us to spend some time—as much of the summer as we would like—with him before, as he puts it, we begin our life’s work.

When do we leave?

As soon as we work out a schedule. He wants a list of the places we’d like to see and says he’ll be more than happy to add a few suggestions of his own. I guess we’d better fill out those passport applications—I need to renew mine, and you don’t have one.

Yeah. Can we afford to spend the entire summer?

Babe, we had this conversation yesterday. Oops, I forgot to mention that he wants to pay for everything.

No shit?

No shit. Come read it yourself. He seems to think we’ve earned it.

Our desks were side by side, which allowed Dani to roll his chair over beside my chair. He scanned the e-mail quickly, then scrolled back to the top and read it more carefully. Hot damn, he said, Italy, here we come.

Yeah. We need to make a list of spots to see, and you need to get the name of the village your family came from.

As to the former, Rome, Pisa, Florence, Venice, Tuscany. As to the latter, it’s a tiny little place near Spoleto. I’m not sure it even has a name, so put Spoleto on the list for now.

That would be my list, as well, with the addition of Milan and Conti, the place my mother came from, which is in the Veneto region of northeast Italy.

What are you waiting for? Compose a gracious message of acceptance and send it.

I’ll take care of that as soon as we sit down with a calendar and settle on the dates.

Are you really gonna let him pay for everything?

Oh puh-leeze—after all these years, you know me better than that. My reply will be along the lines of, ‘Thanks for your generous offer. We gratefully accept the plane tickets and the offer to stay with you, but we’ll pay for the rest of the trip ourselves’, or words to that effect.

Works for me.

I’ll send a quick, brief acceptance now, and promise to have an itinerary available in a few days.

Then what?

I hear the bed calling, don’t you?

Now that you mention it.

I sent the e-mail, shut down my laptop, and headed to the bedroom, where I shed my clothes and crawled under the sheets and into Dani’s open arms.

I had an early shift the next morning, so I was out of the apartment before Dani was even out of bed. As I bent over to kiss him good-bye, I said, Remind me again, what time do you meet with your committee?

One.

I don’t get off until three, so I can’t be there to hold your hand.

Thanks for the thought, but I don’t think that would be allowed.

Probably not. Good luck.

Chapter 2

Boston, MA

Marco

I FINISHED MY Tuesday shift and hurried home in a somewhat anxious state. He didn’t call after his meeting—is that good news or bad news? I wondered.

At the apartment, Dani was in bed waiting for me.

Well? I said as I undressed.

Well, what?

Don’t be coy. You know damn well what. How did it go with the committee? Did you successfully defend your thesis?

Oh, that. Yes, I believe I did. When the ordeal was over, my advisor winked at me. I interpreted that as a good sign.

When will you know for sure?

Unofficially, in a couple of days. Officially, by the end of next week.

Good thing you have a thousand or so DNA tests to run. You won’t have time to think about anything else.

Yeah, but right now, I’m thinking about this. He grabbed a tender portion of my anatomy by way of emphasis. After that, all conversation ceased for a time.

Somewhat later, after a light supper, we carried our wineglasses into the den and watched the movie I’d picked up on the way home.

THE NEXT TWO WEEKS were hectic, to say the least, and Dani was in his lab from early in the morning until early evening. He even returned to the lab and worked until midnight a few times. The formal notification that his second doctorate had been granted was almost overlooked in his rush to finish the lab work and enter the results in his computer database. Somehow we found time to hammer out an itinerary for our summer in Italy, and I sent it to my father. A few days before the end of the term, my cell phone rang two minutes after I’d finished a shift.

Hi, babe, what’s up? I said, noting the name in the display.

I’ve got something to show you.

Babe, I’ve seen it before, but I’ll be home for a closer inspection as fast as I can.

Not that, fool. As soon as you wrap things up, come down to the autopsy suite.

Okay, give me a few minutes to sign out and change.

Don’t take off your scrubs, just come on down.

If that’s what you want.

I signed off my shift and headed for the elevators. When I entered the autopsy suite, I found a visibly excited Dani waiting for me.

What’s up? I said. And why do you look as though you’ve been rolling in dust all day?

A—there’s someone I want you to meet; and B—I’ve been in several dusty storerooms trying to track down some old medical records.

Really?

Yeah. Follow me.

He led me into the back room and went to the wall that contained a bank of coolers for bodies. He selected a door at waist level, opened it, and began to pull out the tray. By the time I was standing beside him, the tray had been pulled from the vault as far as it would go. Okay, I said, looking down at the body of a man who appeared to be in his thirties. What am I looking at?

This guy has your dick.

Excuse me.

"Dr. Cauthen called me into the autopsy room the other day. When I got there, she said she had something to show me. I asked what, and she pointed to this guy, who was on the autopsy table at the time. I didn’t get it until she pointed and said: ‘This man presents an example of aposthia, also known as natural circumcision. He was born without a foreskin. It’s very rare, and most pathologists never see one’. I didn’t tell her that I’ve seen one every day of my life for the past ten years, which made me think about something else, so I asked her if he’d also been born without an appendix. She said yes and wanted to know why I asked, so I mumbled something about an article I thought I remembered reading."

That’s interesting, I said. As it happens, I asked my father about that back when I visited him, and he said it runs in the males in his family, but only the sons of sons in a direct line. Daughters don’t pass whatever gene it is to their children.

It gets much more interesting.

How so?

I’d run his DNA, just as I do for each body that comes through here, so I added it to my database. I already had your DNA, so I added it to the database as well. Guess what popped out?

I have no idea.

Babe, this guy is your brother.

Excuse me!

You and he have the same father. Different mothers, but the same father. DNA doesn’t lie.

I don’t know what to say.

There’s more.

Really?

Yep. His DNA results popped out of my program as a duplicate, so I did some checking. This guy was admitted to the ER back in the fifties, so I went looking to see if I could find out anything about him.

Looking how?

Each of those old vials of blood had a patient number on it, so I started digging in the storerooms looking for old patient records until I hit pay dirt. That’s how I got so dusty.

What did you find?

He was admitted to the ER with a broken arm and was presented as a thirty-five-year-old male at that time.

I guess I’m too stunned by all of this to get where you’re going.

Think about it, babe. If he was thirty-five in 1955, he’d be pushing ninety today. Does he look like a ninety-year-old to you?

No, he doesn’t. What the hell does this mean?

I don’t know. And by the way, X-rays of the body reveal that one of his arms had been broken and set sometime in the past, which is additional confirmation that it’s the same man, as if the DNA match wasn’t enough.

What’s his name?

He was brought in without any identification on him. The police report says that they think his wallet was stolen by a pickpocket in the Quincy Market area. Witnesses said that he was chasing some guy across the street, yelling, ‘Stop thief’, when he was hit by a truck.

Okay, so what was his name back in 1955?

The paperwork gives it as Tommaso Argenti.

Sounds Italian.

Yeah, doesn’t it? And Argenti is awfully close to your surname.

I think we need to go home and make a telephone call.

To?

My father, of course.

Yeah. By the way, I did something else you might want to know about.

What?

Before I called you, I slipped in here and opened the autopsy incision just enough to remove a two-inch piece of one of his ribs.

Why would you do that?

I sent it to a buddy of mine over at MIT. He’s going to radiocarbon date the rib on the side—that is, without any official record of what he did. He’s done it for me several times over the past year or two.

You’ve been a busy boy, haven’t you?

That’s me. Let’s go make that call, it’s kind of late over there.

By the time we get home, it’ll probably be ten in Aragoni. And I still need to go upstairs and change into my street clothes.

WE ARRIVED AT the apartment in a state of excitement. Dani was so dusty and dirty that we took a quick shower together before making the call. For perhaps the first time ever, we were too distracted to start something in the shower. Later when we were clean, dressed, and had wineglasses in our hands, we sat down side by side at my desk. I opened my cell phone, turned on the speaker function, punched in the numbers, and placed it on the desk.

This is supposed to be a very private number, I said. My father said to use it if I wanted to bypass most of his underlings.

"Castello d’Aragoni," a deep male voice said.

"I would like to speak to il Duca d’Aragoni," I said in Italian.

May I say who is calling?

His son.

"Which one, Signore? He has several."

Marco Sartori d’Argenzio. I’m calling from the United States.

"Un momento, per favore."

There was a pause. Then we heard Father’s voice. Marco, my boy, what a pleasant surprise. Are you calling about your trip to Italy?

Hello, Father. No, this call isn’t about our trip. Dani and I are in our study, and the speaker is on.

Hello, Sir, Dani said.

Good evening, Danilo. Now, what can I do for you boys?

Father, I don’t know how to say this.

Just say it.

You are aware of Dani’s most recent doctorate?

Of course. I read all of your e-mails very carefully. It’s something very technical involving DNA, is it not?

Yes, Sir. As part of his research, he has compiled a large database of DNA from all patients that have been in our hospital in recent years.

And?

There’s a body in the morgue of a man who appears to be in his late thirties. According to his DNA, he and I have the same father.

What is his name?

I don’t know. He was brought in by ambulance with no identification. The police report indicates that his wallet had been stolen. Witnesses say that he ran across a busy street chasing a man, hollering ‘Stop, thief’. He was hit by a truck and killed instantly.

There was a very long moment or three of silence.

Father, are you still there?

Yes. I’m thinking.

Who was this man who appears to be my brother? What was he doing in Boston? And for that matter, why didn’t I know about it?

Marco, there are some things that you need to know now that you are about to venture out into the world… things which I had planned to tell you when I see you this summer. For now, let me say that throughout your entire life, there has been either a member of the family or someone in my employ nearby.

Why?

In case you were ever in need of anything important. For example, had you ever been arrested, someone would have been at your side the moment it became known. I have someone near your mother’s home as well.

Why didn’t I know this?

Think about it for a moment—if you were aware that someone was, as the Americans say, ‘keeping an eye on you’, it might have influenced your life. If I resided in the States, it wouldn’t have been necessary to do this because I could be there quickly when and if needed.

I don’t know what to say.

There is nothing to say, my son. I have a large family, and I do my humble best to see that none of them come to harm.

What was my late brother’s name?

In America he went by the name Tommaso Argenti.

Is there anything you would like for me to do?

Help me make arrangements to have his body flown home to Aragoni for burial.

Certainly.

If you and Danilo would be so kind, I would regard it as a favor if you would go to Tommaso’s home and check for certain documents. I can tell you what to look for.

Did he live alone?

Yes.

How will we gain access? For that matter, if his wallet and identification were stolen, the thief may already have visited his home.

Any identification he carried, including his passport, would have contained the address of the New York office of one of the family companies. A thief wouldn’t know how to find his residence. Were there keys in his possession?

Dani, I said, are his possessions still at the morgue?

I have no idea. Let me make a couple of calls and I’ll find out.

He left the room to make the calls, so I said, Dani has gone to another room to make inquiries by telephone.

If you have something to write on, I’ll give you all the information I can. I have it right here in my computer.

I pulled a yellow pad out of my desk drawer and grabbed a pen. Ready when you are.

All right. The first information I’m going to give you is the name of a New York attorney and his private contact information. Feel free to call him at any time of the day or night.

He dictated the information and asked me to read it back to him.

I can’t imagine why I would need to, but thanks.

One has to be prepared for any contingency. Suppose, for example, a neighbor observed you entering Tommaso’s residence and called the police?

I take your meaning.

Good. Now I’m going to give you the address and the code to the alarm system.

Dani came back into the den just as I finished confirming that data.

Marco, Dani said, the hospital still has some clothing and a set of keys that were in the deceased’s pockets.

"Great. Will