Chapter Text
The invitation arrived on Giorno’s desk at 3 PM on May 3rd, 2014.
That day hadn’t been interesting otherwise. In fact it had been what felt like several years at that point since he had a day he could consider particularly interesting. That might seem to be an odd thing for a Mafia Don to say, but it was true nonetheless. It had taken him about five years to fully cement Passione’s hold on southern Italy’s underworld. Those days seemed so crazy when he looked back on them. He had always had something strange or challenging to focus his attention on. Striking down any who might oppose him or his dream. But with Gold Experience Requiem at his side as well as all the other powerful Stand users that now followed him, few could pose any real threat. Nowadays, the most exciting thing that seemed to happen was gossip about which of his Capos had been the best dressed at the monthly parties he was expected to make an appearance at.
The envelope was yellow. A bright shade similar to that of the daffodils he had watered on his window sill just that morning. The postage stamp marked it as being sent from America. Which wasn’t that odd, Passione did have several contacts in the States. However, they typically didn’t send him letters personally. The return address was stamped up on the top left, though the sender’s name wasn’t listed. Which seemed… bizarre. The address listed was in New York City. When he did a quick google search on his phone it came up as some Real Estate Agency’s building.
But by far the oddest thing about the invitation was who exactly it was addressed to. Haruno Shiobana. A name that Giorno had not gone by for well over ten years. No one outside of his inner circle should even know that name, and they certainly shouldn’t be able to link it to Passione’s headquarters.
He glared down at the handwriting. Was it supposed to be some sort of threat? Had someone been digging into his past in hopes of finding something to use against him? Not that there was anything to find that they would be able to use. He supposed his mother was still out there somewhere, he hadn’t heard news of her being found dead yet. But if someone was hoping to use her against him they would find themselves disappointed.
Giorno reached for the ornate letter opener he kept on his desk, slicing the seal open. He took a moment before fully opening it to sniff at the opening. People had tried to poison him via his mail several times in the past. Once he was sure it was safe to do so, he slowly took out the content of the envelope. He used GER to transform the envelope itself into several sunflower petals which slowly danced down towards the floor. He didn’t want any association of that name anywhere near him. He turned his attention back to the letter in his hand.
It appeared to be an invitation. With the event name typed out in colorful, bold lettering in English: The First Annual Joestar Family Reunion.
Gionro raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t familiar with that name. Perhaps he had heard it in passing before, but he couldn’t think of anyone he knew with the surname Joestar. Even if he had, he couldn’t imagine anyone feeling comfortable sending him an invitation to their family reunion. Mista, Fugo, and Trish were the only people in his life that he was close like that with and none of them had any family members that they were close with anymore. The four of them fit together in that way.
His eyes strayed further down the invite. June 8th through the 15th were listed as the dates for the event and an address was included as well. It looked to be some place in the United Kingdom, though Giorno did not recognize the name of the town or city. The invitation requested an RSVP with a return address that matched the sender’s address that had been on the envelope.
The only other thing on the invitation was a small hand written note on the bottom left hand side. The writing was shaky, whoever had written it must have a rather unsteady hand. Luckily Giorno was able to make it out.
‘Feel free to bring another plus one, but please make sure to bring Polnareff. I miss that crazy French bastard.’ Followed by a messy signature Giorno was just able to make out as being from someone named Joseph Joestar.
Giorno squinted down at the paper in his hands.
“Polnareff?” he asked out loud to his empty office.
He stood up, gathering up the invitation as well as several other documents he had sprawled across his desk. He pushed in his chair and made sure to close and lock his window before making his way towards his door.
His office, which had pretty much become his second home at that point, was far larger than it needed to be. He had wanted to take one of the smaller rooms when they had first bought the building for Passione’s use. The building was huge and old, one of the oldest buildings that wasn’t a museum still standing in Naples. Many of the rooms featured ornate marble or gold designs along the walls mixed into the stone and brick that made up the rest of the building. Polnareff had insisted he take one of the larger rooms for his personal office. After all, he would likely need to entertain guests and having a large and opulent office like his could send a message. Giorno had come to like it over time. He had made it his own with his flowers and the bonsai trees he kept. He had to admit his plants looked quite lovely in the room when the sun showed through his windows just right.
Giorno opened the door and, before he could even take so much as a step through the door frame, spotted Mista leaning up against the nearby wall. His underboss glanced at him, surprise in his dark eyes at the sudden exit. He kicked himself off the old brick wall and stretched out with a large yawn.
“You leavin’ already?” Mista asked, sparing a brief glance at the pile of papers under Giorno’s arm.
“Not yet,” Giorno replied. “Walk with me?”
“Sure.” Mista nodded with a shrug. He fell into step beside Giorno as he headed out of the door frame and into the hallway.
Mista often insisted on keeping guard over Giorno whenever he wasn’t off on some job. It was completely unnecessary and frankly a waste of Mista’s time. Giorno had yet to face a foe he couldn’t handle himself and Mista, as Passione’s Underboss, almost always had something more important to do. Surely one of the many grunts they had running around the place, or even Sheila E who had previously been his bodyguard before shifting over to work primarily under Fugo, would be better suited to act as Giorno’s bodyguard. But it seemed to make Mista happy and Giorno enjoyed having him nearby anyway, so he didn’t put up too much of a fuss about it. Besides, Mista usually seemed to be secretly just about as bored as Giorno was those days despite being the one who got out to see the most action.
Giorno snuck a glance at Mista out of the corner of his eye as they walked unhurriedly throughout the stone halls. Seeing the other man’s eyes focused on the path ahead of them, Giorno briefly allowed his eyes to travel up and down his form. While Giorno had gotten taller than him at some point, Mista had bulked up far more than he had over the years. That probably had a lot to do with Giorno spending more time behind his desk, or at least that’s what he told himself. The other man dressed much more conservatively than he had back when they were teenagers now that he had entered his thirties. He was still only rarely seen without a hat but both to Giorno’s relief and chagrin he no longer ran around in absurdly tight pants and a crop top. He would still wear those sorts of things in his free time when they were just hanging out but while at work he now wore strictly business casual.
Giorno allowed his eyes to briefly linger on Mista’s looser pants, eyeing the way the fabric still managed to catch on the curve of his ass as he walked.
“Something bothering you?”
Giorno’s eyes snapped back up towards the path ahead.
“It got something to do with that letter on the top there?” Mista pointed at the invitation, which was laying on top of his stack of papers and clearly visible.
“Turn here.” Giorno let out a sigh as they turned down a different hallway. He grabbed the letter off the top of his pile and held it out for Mista to grab.
Giorno watched Mista’s face as he read, and had to stop himself from laughing as he watched Mista’s face scrunch up as he continued down the page. He knew Mista spoke English well enough, his friend watched far too many cheesy American rom coms not to. But reading it could be a whole different beast. It was sort of cute, the way his eyebrows and nose crinkled while his dark eyes traveled across the page.
“Polnareff?” Mista asked, holding out the page as if getting a different angle would help him understand it better. “How the hell do these people know Polnareff is even here?”
“That’s what I want to know,” Giorno answered, taking the invitation back. “Also, it wasn’t addressed to him. It was addressed to ‘Haruno Shiobana.’”
“What the hell?”
“My thoughts exactly,” Giorno replied. “I’m hoping Polnareff might be able to shed some light on the situation for me.”
Giorno had known Polnareff for over thirteen years at that point. And while the beginning of their relationship might have been odd, Giorno had grown to trust the man with his life. He wasn’t just his Consigliere anymore. In some ways he was almost like the father he had never had. Offering advice and guidance to him in both his dealings with Passione and life in general. He had been with him since he had begun to rebuild Passione brick by brick. Giorno had spent many a night laid out in CoCo Jumbo’s room bouncing around ideas and confessing doubts or insecurities. The very notion that he was hiding something from Giorno did not sit right with him.
They reached the door that led to Polnareff’s ‘office.’ Mista took up his usual position beside the door and Giorno stepped up and placed his hand on the handle. Giorno turned to glance at Mista before turning the knob and raised a well kept eyebrow.
“You’re not coming in?” Giorno asked.
“You want me to?”
“Of course I do,” Giorno replied. He didn’t think that the meeting would go sour. Again, he trusted Polnareff too much at this point to think the older man would actually keep anything malicious from him. But he would still rather have Mista by his side as support just in case. “Besides, you're curious too, aren’t you?”
“I mean, duh,” Mista said as he rolled back off the wall and took up his place behind Giorno instead. “But I don’t want to pry.”
“Yes, you do,” Giorno scoffed. “But it doesn't matter. Like I said, I want you with me.”
“Yes, sir.” Giorno could practically hear the cheeky grin on Mista’s face through his teasing voice. He tried to ignore the way hearing those words come out of Mista’s mouth like that made him feel. He had work to do.
Giorno twisted the door handle and pulled the door out, holding it open for the two of them to enter.
Polnareff’s ‘office’ was more like one huge terrarium with its own little ecosystem. Back when they had first moved in, the floor had been lined with a tarp to allow them to fill it up with fresh soil. Giorno had happily taken on the task of populating the room with plants and non-invasive insects that would be reminiscent of the Sardinian wildlife CoCo Jumbo had likely once called home. He had even made sure to install a small pool as well as a humidifier to ensure his reptilian friend’s health. No expense had been too great. He was actually quite proud of it.
The whole room had been Giorno’s idea. While some may mistakenly think that Polnareff had completely possessed the tortoise, banishing Coco Jumbo’s consciousness to some other plane of existence, that was not the case. Giorno had taken one look at them with Gold Experience and had quickly surmised that both of their souls were still within the body as completely separate entities. So Giorno had made sure that Coco Jumbo had as much enrichment as the Hermann’s Tortoise that had often acted as their safe haven deserved. Meanwhile, Polnareff kept his actual office within the land turtle’s stand. It worked out. They each had their own space and both seemed happy. Or at least, as happy as a reptile and a dead man could be.
“Where the hell is he?” Mista mumbled as he walked past Giorno to get further into the room. He squatted down and began lifting and looking into the various rocks and decaying logs that were strewn throughout the room.
Giorno glanced down at his golden wrist watch. It was just about 3:30, which meant…
He walked across the room, carefully sidestepping the clumps of flowers growing out of the ground as he headed towards one of the many open windows. Sure enough, CoCo Jumbo was laid out on his favorite rock. The sun shone down onto his outstretched limbs. The tortoise seemed to hear the other’s approach, as he turned his head and blinked his beady little eyes up at him.
“There you are.” Giorno smiled as he bent down towards him. He reached into his pocket with his free hand to pull out a single Euro coin, transforming it into a dandelion which he held out towards the creature. Coco Jumbo’s attention immediately caught on the weed. He reached his neck out and quickly took it from Giorno’s grip. Satisfied at the tithe brought to him, the tortoise turned away from the human, happily chewing away at the snack as he continued to bathe in the sun.
“I swear you were a Disney Princess in your last life or something,” Mista chuckled as he walked up behind Giorno. “You kinda look like that one… Oh shit, what’s the name? Sleeping Beauty! That’s it!”
“I think I’d be Snow White actually,” Giorno replied, looking up at Mista with a small grin.
“Does that make us your dwarves?” Mista asked, returning his grin. “Fugo would definitely be Grumpy.”
Giorno couldn’t help but laugh at that. He shook his head. They had work to do. Giorno turned his attention back towards CoCo Jumbo.
“Polnareff,” he called out, trying to change his tone to be more serious. “Can we come inside?”
There was no response from within the key. No sign whatsoever that they had even been heard.
“Polnareff?”
Still, no response.
“He’s probably playing that stupid online game of his again,” Mista groaned. “Let’s just go in. It’s not like we’d be interrupting something important.”
Giorno let out a sigh and agreed. While he usually tried to respect the Frenchmen’s privacy, he might need to make an exception. They both reached forward together and allowed themselves to enter into Mr. President’s room.
A lot had changed in the space inside the tortoise over the past thirteen or so years. The structure of the room itself might have remained the same but almost all of the furniture had been switched out for things more suited to Polnareff’s tastes. Sometimes, Giorno missed the old look of the room. He had so many memories of the short time he had spent with everyone all those years ago inside the space. But he had to admit it had more of a ‘lived in’ feel to it now. It no longer looked like a generic hotel room. Polnareff had filled it up with various nicknacks and his very expensive, top of the line gaming PC. It wasn’t like he had much else to spend his money on.
The walls were now adorned with posters from old movies and his favorite football teams as well as photographs from over the years. Some of the photos were of them as well as other members of Passione, but he had others posted around from his life before he joined up with them. There were several that featured a much younger Polnareff with his late sister who he had told them all about. There was also that one from that trip he always talked about when he went to Egypt all those years ago. The one with those other four men and the dog. Polnareff spent a lot of time looking at that one, especially as more time passed.
As Mista had suspected, they found the man at his computer desk tapping away at his keyboard. The sunlight streaming through the ruby red roof illuminating his gaming desk like a spotlight. Giorno recognized the game on the monitor as one of the many online games Polnareff seemed to always be playing. He couldn’t remember the name of it. World of… something. He had never understood the appeal of playing video games, looking at a screen for too long hurt his eyes, but he could understand the appeal of them to someone like Polnareff. After all, it’s not like he could go outside and socialize.
“Hey!” Mista shouted, trying to get their Consigliere’s attention. “Polnareff!”
There was no response. Polnareff’s face didn’t move from where it was glued to one of the three monitors he had mounted on the wall. Giorno could see the headphones over the older man’s ears, the strap of which left a dent in his usually perfectly styled hair. Did he even need headphones? How did they even stay on his head? They had never truly figured out how Polnareff’s ghostliness worked.
“Polnareff!” Mista yelled again. He marched up to the back of the chair and grabbed a hold of it, flinging him away from the desk. His headphones went flying off his head, hitting the ground with a loud smack.
“Merde!” Polnareff yelled out in French as he was wrenched away from his desk. He stood up, looking furious. “What the hell? When did the two get in here?”
“We tried knocking, to be fair,” Giorno mumbled under his breath.
“You could have broken my headset!” Polnareff complained reaching down to cradle them. “They’re noise canceling.”
“We could tell,” Mista said, crossing his arms across his chest.
“And very expensive!” Polnareff added, still looking upset. He dusted himself off and pulled his chair back towards his desk. He tapped a few buttons on his keyboard, minimizing his game before turning his attention back to the two of them. “What is it? I didn’t think we had any meetings scheduled for today.”
“Who is Joseph Joestar?” Giorno cut right to the chase. His eyes and tone turned serious and he straightened out his back. His arms folded themselves before him as he carefully watched the other man.
“Wh- What?” Polnareff genuinely looked surprised to hear that name come out of Giorno’s mouth. “I-” Polnareff paused for a moment, looking Giorno over. “What did you say?”
Mista glanced between the two of them, his own eyes growing darker and more serious. He shifted and moved himself to stand beside Giorno, watching Polnareff carefully.
“I think you heard me,” Giorno replied. “Who is Joseph Joestar, and why does he know my birth name?”
Part of Giorno felt bad, watching Polnareff squirm like that. Especially in a place filled with their memories together. The chances of Polnareff actually betraying him were low, and he wouldn’t even know what he would do if he did. Still, he needed to be careful. That’s just how his life was now.
“I… I don’t know how he would know your birth name,” Polnareff began carefully, keeping his voice clear and even. “But I do know Joseph Joestar. He and I used to be close friends before… Well everything that happened with us back in Rome.”
“Used to be?” Giorno asked. “You’re not friends anymore?”
“I mean, it’s not really like that,” Polnareff replied, shifting his eyes down to the floor. “More like we haven’t talked in maybe… fifteen or sixteen years. Wow, yeah it probably has been that long. We just kind of lost contact, I guess. You remember that trip to Egypt I told you about? He was one of the people there with me.” Polnareff nodded towards the photograph he kept framed on the wall. “He’s the old man in that photo. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure if he was still kicking. He’s gotta be about ninety two or ninety three about now.”
“So you haven’t told him where you are and what you’re doing now?” Giorno asked, narrowing his eyes.
“No,” Polnareff replied, shaking his head. “Like I said, we haven’t talked in over a decade. But- okay, maybe I tried to reach out to his grandson once about ten years ago. But he never even responded to me!”
“Then how is it,” Giorno’s words were clipped, almost harsh. “That he knows that you’re here and that you’re connected to me?”
“What?” Polnareff still looked confused, and he appeared to be genuine. “How did-”
“That’s what he’s been asking,” Mista interrupted him. “You really have no idea?”
Polnareff was quiet for a moment, before recognition lit up behind his eyes.
“Oh, the Speedwagon Foundation!”
“What about them?” Giorno asked.
They had worked with the Speedwagon Foundation several times throughout the years. Polnareff had connections with them, and despite being only a medical research and environmental conservationist group on the outside, they had their hands in all sorts of things. They shared Giorno’s wish to clean up the streets of Italy, and had been quite helpful in campaigning with him and helping them undertake jobs such as that mess with the narcotics division all of those years ago. Giorno knew that both Fugo and Polnareff still dealt with them on a fairly regular basis, but he failed to see how they could be involved in this.
“Joseph Joestar has close connections to the Speedwagon Foundation. Way closer than me. The founder, Robert Speedwagon, was basically his father or something growing up,” Polnareff explained. “He’s the whole reason I have contacts with the Foundation in the first place. He probably found out about you and me through them. They would have our contact information and they know we’re both part of Passione. Knowing Joseph he probably was able to get access to all that stuff.”
Giorno remained silent for a moment, mulling over those words.
“I promise- Giorno, I promise I would never betray you.” Polnareff looked at him with pleading eyes. “You’re special to me, you know that. I have no idea why Joseph would be reaching out to you now, and I have no idea why he would be using that name. I didn’t think the Foundation even knew it, but considering the sort of resources they have, they were probably just able to find it. I know you don’t know him, but Joseph Joestar isn’t a bad man. I can’t think of any reason he would ever have to try to hurt you. I’m sure whatever this is, it’s gotta be a huge misunderstanding. You have to believe me, please.”
Giorno saw Mista glance at him out of the corner of his eye, his brow raised.
“Of course I do,” Giorno eventually replied, a cheery smile breaking out onto his face. “I believe you.”
Polnareff let out a sigh of relief. “You can’t do that to me! Your Don Giovanna face is so scary. Show a dead man some pity.”
“Here,” Giorno held out the invitation in front of himself, offering it to Polnareff. “Read this.”
Polnareff reached out and grabbed a hold of the paper, looking it over carefully. “This is…”
“It came in the mail today,” Giorno replied. “From an address in New York. It looks like it got sent from a Real Estate Company.”
“Yeah, that would be Joseph’s company probably. That old man was so rich he didn’t know what to do with all that money. Did you know he bought us a submarine and then almost immediately trashed it? And I mean a fully functioning, state of the art submarine that must have cost thousands, if not a million dollars?” A nostalgic smile broke out on Polnareff’s face as he continued to look over the letter. “Unbelievable.”
He pulled the invitation away from his face, his grin growing. He pointed down at the hand written note in the corner. “Yeah, that’s definitely Joseph’s handwriting. You can tell the poor bastards getting old though… He was never this shaky back then.”
“If the two of you were so close back in the day, I can understand why he might invite you to something like this,” Giorno thought aloud. “But why send the invitation to me and ask me to just bring you along? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”
“I- Don’t know actually,” Polnareff replied. “That family is pretty welcoming, but if you’ve never met them before… I have no idea why they would send it to you.”
Silence stretched out before the three of them for a moment.
“What about your dad?” Mista suddenly spoke up.
Giorno blinked. He hadn’t considered that.
“Your father?” Polnareff looked between the two of them, confused. “Now that I think about it, you’ve never told me anything about your father.”
“There’s really nothing to tell,” Giorno replied with a shrug. “I don’t even know his name.”
Giorno didn’t talk much about his family, largely due to the fact that there really wasn’t much to talk about. His mother was neglectful, his step-father abusive. He hadn’t contacted either of them since he had taken over Passione and he had no interest in doing so. As for his biological father… Giorno had tried to find him. Mista had even tried to help him over the years, but they had always run into dead ends. All he had was the photograph and the uncomfortable trips down memory lane his mother would often have while she was far too drunk to go off of.
The concept that he might have more family out there that he didn’t know about was strange. He wasn’t sure how to feel about it.
“Maybe this Joestar guy knows something about your dad,” Mista suggested again with a shrug. “That would make the most sense to me.”
“That’s possible,” Polnareff said. He paused for a moment, and then let out an awkward chuckle. “Actually… You’re half Japanese right?”
“Yes?”
“Well, I do know the old man had an affair with this lady from Japan and had a bastard son with her…” Polnareff trailed off for a moment. “You would be a similar age now that I think about it. But I think that kid would be just a little bit older. Plus the last time I talked to Jotaro he told me he had found the kid, so that’s probably not you. Also, I don’t know where the blonde hair would’ve come from. Holly got hers from Suzie from what I remember.”
“I highly doubt that would be the case,” Giorno replied. “I have a photograph of my father, and he certainly doesn’t look anything like the man you have up on your wall.”
“Oh you have a photo? Well why didn’t you just say so?” Polnareff grinned. “Let’s have a look, maybe he’ll look familiar.”
As embarrassing as it was and as much as Giorno disliked keeping obvious objects of clear sentimental value on him, Giorno had moved the photograph of his father from his wallet into a locket he kept around his neck. Even if he had never met the man, young Giorno had always taken comfort thinking about what kind of man his biological father could be. Surely he was a kind man, who wouldn’t leave him to shake in the dark like his mother or beat him with a belt like his step-father. He had been so happy when his hair color changed because it meant he looked less like his mother and more like the mysterious father who maybe would one day save him. Of course, that hadn’t been the case. Giorno had saved himself with the help of that gangster he had helped all of those years ago. He still felt a sense of affection for the idea of his father that he had created in his head.
Giorno pulled the locket out from its place under his high collared shirt. It was in the shape of a ladybug surrounded by little roses and made of pure gold. He had it commissioned by one of the local shops there in Naples about five years before. It was lovely but he rarely wore it above his clothes, preferring to keep it hidden and close to his heart.
He ran his thumb over the face of it, holding his breath for a moment. Mista had been the only other person in Passione he had ever shared the photograph with. It was almost frightening to expose his little secret with someone else. But he trusted Polnareff. He held out the locket for the older man to see and moved his thumb to the latch on the side. He clicked it open, pushing the cover open and exposing the photograph to the room.
“This,” Giorno said. “is my father.”
Polnareff, who was standing directly beside Giorno, screamed.
“Anyway,” Mista continued, his mouth full of food. “I don’t think Julia Roberts gets enough respect in this day of age. I mean, sure, she’s no Audrey Hepburn. But her acting alone carries pretty much anything she’s in. And yet I don’t see anyone talking about her anymore. These modern day ‘romcoms’ that Hollywood keeps slopping out just don’t get it anymore. Y’know?”
Giorno made a humming noise as he picked at his plate of eggplant parmesan.
“There’s no real art. Most of them are just- Hey! Share with Number 5! I’m serious guys!” Mista paused to pull Number 3 away from Number 5’s cupcake. “Most of them are just trashy at this point. Just an excuse to put two hot actors with no chemistry into a movie together. Like Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds? What the hell are those two doing in a movie together?”
“I thought you liked the Proposal,” Giorno mumbled, finally taking a bite of his food. It was already cold. That’s what they got for getting takeaway.
“Oh please,” Mista scoffed. “It was mediocre at best.”
Mista began to launch into a full blown review of the movie while Giorno turned his attention back towards his phone. He still had three tabs opened up from earlier. Something he rarely did as he made a habit of closing them as soon as he was done with them. One, was the Speedwagon Foundation’s official website. The second, was the home page of the Joestar Realtor Company website. The third, was the address that had been listed on the invitation typed into a search bar. His thumb hovered over that one. He had yet to actually hit the search button.
After Polnareff had lost his mind for several minutes, he had managed to calm himself down and tell Giorno everything. And Giorno was… still processing most of it. To learn that the answers to what he had been chasing after for most of his life were held by someone who had been right next to him almost the whole time, was a lot. Not only was it a lot, it felt far too easy. Of course, Polnareff hadn’t had the answer to all of his questions, but he had a lot of them.
He finally knew his father’s name. After twenty nine years, he had found out his father’s name. Dio Brando. He had then, not even a full minute after having that revealed to him, learned that his father was dead. Which wasn’t a terrible shock. Giorno had considered that possibility when all of their searching came up with nothing. What had been a bit of a shock were some of the things Polnareff had had to say about his father and the things he had done.
According to Polnareff, his father had been a terrible man. The worst, actually. Murdering and hurting hundreds if not thousands of people from all over the world. The sort of supervillain persona Polnareff had painted while telling his story was almost unbelievable. And not only had he claimed that his father was a mass murderer, he also claimed that he hadn’t even been human. Apparently he had been an immortal vampire who had been born all the way back in the late 1800s. Had Giorno not seen the things he had, he likely wouldn’t have believed a word Polnareff had said.
But he did, and he wasn’t sure how to feel about all of it.
“You really should eat something,” Mista’s voice cut through his thoughts. “You usually love Tulia’s.”
“Sorry,” Giorno sighed. “My head’s a mess.”
“I can tell,” Mista said. “If you don’t want the eggplant, I think you still have some of your birthday cake frozen from last month in your freezer. There was a lot of it.”
“You can have some of my cupcake Giorno.” Number 5’s voice called up to him from the table. Giorno looked down to see the Pistols all looking up at him with concern in their little eyes.
“I appreciate it.” He reached out a finger and patted them each on their little heads. “Keep your cupcake. You were so patient waiting for it while we were dealing with things today.”
Number 5 giggled happily before it and the fellow Pistols returned their attention to their cupcakes.
By the time Giorno had finished exhausting all of the questions he had had for Polnareff, it had already been way past both his and Mista’s usual dinner time. Giorno had felt mentally drained and was dreading having to go home and cook. Not that he was much of a cook in the first place, he usually ended up just getting take out most days. Mista had been the one to suggest they just grab food nearby and head back to Giorno’s condo which was only a ten minute walk away. The Pistols had apparently been craving food from Giorno’s favorite restaurant, which was quite the coincidence. Giorno was grateful for it though. Part of him would’ve preferred to be alone with his thoughts but having a distraction was nice too.
“So, you’re seriously thinking about going?” Mista asked.
Giorno glanced back over at him. He was now picking at his own food, pushing his pasta around his plate with his fork while pointedly not looking back up at him.
“I’m considering it, yes,” Giorno replied.
Even after Polnareff had revealed everything he knew about Giorno’s father, none of them could still figure out why the Joestar patriarch had specifically invited Giorno. They had been the ones to kill his father. Mista had thought that perhaps it was some sort of strange ploy to kill Dio’s son as well, but Polnareff had vehemently disagreed with that idea. That wasn’t something the Joestars he knew would do. While Polnareff wasn’t sure what his old friend’s plan was, he was certain the man wouldn’t want to bring any harm towards Giorno.
“I still think it’s a bad idea,” Mista said. “Maybe Polnareff trusts these people, but I don’t. We don’t even know who else was invited to this ‘reunion.’”
“They know something.” Giorno shook his head. “Guido, I need to talk with them.”
“I know you want more information, but we have more to go off of now. We can probably find out everything you want without these people’s help.”
“According to Polnareff, the man that killed my father might be there. I-”
“That’s exactly why you shouldn’t go!” Mista exclaimed. “Am I the crazy one here?”
“Polnareff was also part of the group that killed my father,” Giorno pointed out. “And from what he said, it sounds like he might have deserved it.”
“And they might think you deserve it just for being related to him,” Mista groaned. “Again, we don’t know these people. This is way too dangerous. I’m supposed to just be fine with you flying off to England into a trap like this?”
“Then come with me.”
“Huh?” Mista’s fork paused, halfway to his mouth.
“Come with me,” Giorno repeated. “If you’re so worried about my safety, you can come too. Joseph did write in the invitation that I could bring someone else besides Polnareff.”
“I don’t-”
“Also, you haven’t had a vacation in years at this point, have you? I think the last one was when we went to one of Trish’s performances in Rabat. That must have been three years ago now.” Giorno continued.
“I take vacations!” Mista lied. Neither of them took vacations. “We were just in Florida two-”
“Florida didn’t count and you know it.” Giorno shook his head. “Besides, I want you to come with me. Not just as a bodyguard, but as a friend.”
Mista made a face. “Are you trying to guilt me into this?”
“No,” Giorno lied. “You and Polnareff are probably the two people I trust more than anyone at this point. I want both of you by my side. And if this really is a trap, at least we can protect each other.”
“And who is supposed to run things while we're gone?” Mista asked. Giorno could tell he was starting to wear him down. “We’re the top three members of Passione. We can’t just leave it unattended.”
“Fugo is more than capable of running things while we’re gone,” Giorno countered. “He practically runs this place for me anyway these days. It would only be for a week. Surely you don’t think this place will burn down without us for a week?”
Mista opened his mouth, trying to come up with some kind of rebuke to that. In the end he just closed his mouth with a sigh.
“You really want to do this, huh?” He asked, sounding defeated.
“I do,” Giorno replied. “I know it might seem silly, but I really do.”
“Fine.” Mista relented. “Then we should probably send some kinda RSVP.”