by Sonya Jesus
How does a loving father, who cares for a child, let them wait alone in a restaurant while he drank and ate with his friends?
Obviously, one who didn’t love his child, I think to myself as I watch Beppe talk to the designer, paying me and the seamstress no mind. She leads me into the dressing room again, where I can hear the men talking, discussing my wedding as if it didn’t belong to me.
Because it doesn’t.
“Vinnie,” Beppe says. “Have the arrangements been made for the extra men? I’ll need them here by Friday for the rehearsal dinner.”
“Actually, sir, they will be here earlier.”
My ears perk up at Vinnie’s comment. “I usually go with Tony on Tuesdays for the pickup, but with Isabella not confined to the house, someone needs to escort her everywhere, and Tony prefers I be the one doing it, Don.”
“I’ll go with Tony.” That’s new. “Has she gotten everything taken care of for Friday? The planes are scheduled to start flying in guests during the week. I’d like to have our men there to greet them.”
“Wednesday,” Vinnie points out the start day. “Tony’s grandparents are flying in first on Wednesday, along with his mother and three of his uncles. I’ll be with him, and Isabella is scheduled to be home all day. The extra men will help secure the mansion while we are gone.”
There’s some talk about the mother of the groom’s dress with Valerio. By the time they are done, I’m dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and back to my old self. The second I step outside the dressing room, my father’s beady eyes are on me.
“That’s what you are wearing to Cielo?” My father scoffs disapprovingly.
“I didn’t think I’d be going to Cielo,” I remind him. “I haven’t been there since…”
He waves his hand in the air and stands up. “It’s time for you to go there again, bambolina. That part of your life is behind you.” He laughs and tells the designer, “I was in a meeting when my boys were murdered, and my daughter was afraid to knock on the door and disturb me.”
My eyes jolt up to meet the Don’s. He challenges me to interrupt and correct him, but I don’t. Good daughters shut up.
“The coroner said her mother took a couple of hours to die. The bullet that quickly killed my youngest exited his abdomen and hit her in the spine. Her internal injuries caused her to bleed out. Had Isabella knocked or called the police, we might have saved my wife.”
He’s not wrong. That’s my guilt.
“That must have been horrible,” Voight says, as Beppe leads us out the door of the atelier.
I smile softly and nod my head, confirming Beppe’s story. “Still hurts to be there.” I hadn’t been allowed out of the house much, and when I did with Tony, I opted for anywhere away from Old Ridge. Everything here had awful memories associated with it. If I could, I’d light this whole town on fire.
Maybe I should add it to the list. One of my helpers enjoys playing with fire.
“Isabella blames herself.” My father walks forward, indicating we would be walking the couple blocks to the restaurant. Voight walks beside him, and the seamstress by my side.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Voight asks, much to the surprise of everyone, even the five guards with us.
“I was in shock,” I offer. “There was a lot of blood and I shut down.”
Which I did.
The whole walk over to Cielo, I remember the rest of the events of that day. When I get inside, it feels exactly as it did twelve years ago. Even my muscles recall the exhaustion, the panting, the state of confusion.
A hostess dressed in vintage Chanel escorts us to my father’s reserved room through a private section only used for special guests. I almost topple over when I see nothing has changed.
“You okay?” the seamstress says, as she holds my elbow up.
“Yeah,” I say softly and turn toward Vinnie. “Where’s Tony?”
“On his way,” he clips back. If he noticed my slip, he didn’t make a big deal of it.
“Is it okay if I wait out here for him?” I ask Vinnie, but it’s Beppe who answers with a quick nod.
“I’ll put your order in. The caterer already dropped off the food,” Beppe says.
Normally, I’d be starving by now, but being in this place fills me with sadness, and all I can think about is the family I lost twelve years ago.
“Vinnie, stay with her.” My father disappears inside. Two of the five guys follow Beppe; the other two take point at the window and in the hallway. Vinnie stays by the door, all three of them giving me space to mourn.
I drag my feet over to the same chair and sit on it, the moments erupting to the surface.
Twelve years ago, I sat in this long chair. Terrified, I waited and processed the murder scene.
The bodies. Their lack of words. Their faces. The blue of the water. The blood.
Events of that day loop in my mind until they make a consecutive string of words: Tree, screams, guns … run. Dead. Run.
Those six words take me back to that day. To twelve-year-old me.
Tree, screams, guns … run. Dead. Run.
Through my shock and fatigue, I cling to the string of words, so I don’t forget. The intense onslaught of exhaustion threatens to erase details; I ache everywhere: legs, knees, fingers, head, heart. They all throb until the pain spreads, and I can no longer pinpoint what hurts the most.
Eventually, I struggle to stay awake. I think of nothing but my little brother’s eyes, the ones I closed for him. Every time I shut mine, I see those scared irises, pleading with me. Inside my mind, I scream for help, for someone to hurry, but when I wake up, jolted in a panic attack, time stops mattering.
They were all dead anyway.
A second, a minute, not even a lifetime, would bring them back. I wait alone and terrified, and when the Don finally emerges with all his men by his side, I rush for him, blubbering out my six words, over and over again, until tears stream down my face and my knees go weak. The men disperse within seconds of my first sentence, all of them rushing to get to the mansion.
But Beppe stays.
He listens to my story, hidden between the gut-wrenching sobs, and when all I want is a hug from the man I call Daddy, he backhands me across my cheek so hard, I fall to my knees.
His expensive shoes don’t move an inch. He never reaches out to help me up; he doesn’t hold out a hand.
For what seems like forever, he yells at me, knocking whatever strength I have right out of me with his harsh words, calling me selfish and lazy, and so many other words that hurt more than a slap to the face. I’d rather have another beating, than hear how he wishes I were dead.
He leaves me with one word before vacating my life, abandoning me in my own personal hell, in a place named after heaven.
Fault.
For hours, I sit on the ground, facing the three leather chairs with long backrests and pinned-cushion designs, staring at the blood on the leather while cradling my knees and mourning the loss of my family—all of them.
My father too. He abandoned me.
He leaves me there until the daylight fades to darkness, and keeps getting darker. Robert, Uncle Veto’s son, picks me up at Cielo and sits with me for a long time at his father’s restaurant. He feeds me, though I don’t have much of an appetite. He makes me a bed in his father’s home and stays with me, protecting me. Since forever, we had pretended to be cousins, but tonight, he becomes my only surviving brother.
The very next year, on the anniversary of my family’s death, my father killed Robert in front of me. No remorse.
That time, I had no one to pick up the pieces.
“Tony will be here in ten minutes.” Vinnie strides toward me with a clear, tall glass of water. He holds it at my eye level, while I peer through the translucent liquid and see a sea of monsters.
“Thanks,” I say softly, as I wrap my fingers around the glass and rest it on the armrest. With my other hand, I rub at the center of my forehead before swiping my hand over my hair
, playing off the gesture as nothing important. This place was not where it all started, but it was where I realized the monster that lived inside my father didn’t just wade in the depths of inebriation, he was always on the surface.
Beppe had always been a mean drunk, waking us up at all hours of the night, forcing my mother to get dressed in beautiful gowns and dance for him, while we held candles or played in the pool.
Summer, spring, winter, or fall—temperature was not a concern—but of all my siblings, I always seemed to get the brunt of his anger, probably because I’d stomp my foot all the way down the stairs or blow out the candle on purpose, using the excuse I breathed on it.
But when he was sober, things were never so bad. Until the massacre. Until a very sober him transformed right before my eyes. That had been the start and the kindest of his punishments.
I sigh heavily when my phone buzzes with an incoming message, knocking me out of my flashback. I don’t check it because I need a minute to remind myself why I’m doing all of this. Why I’ve been holding my tongue and biding my time.
I needed out of this life.
Not just because it’s suffocating, but because it’s so easy to become like my father. I may not have his eyes or look like him, but I have his blood. The urge for revenge is ingrained in my DNA, and I can’t let it go. I can’t forgive my father, just like he didn’t forgive my mother for cheating on him.
I glance down at the message from Teagan. “Tuesday confirmed.”
I delete the message and count the days until I can be away from this place and in Luca’s arms.
Chapter Three
The Deal with Tony
Isabella Santini
“I have to pee,” I announce when the waitress opens the door to the reserved room. Two men with rolling carts full of food filter inside first before she enters and closes the door.
“There’s a restroom inside.” Vinnie points to the door.
“I don’t want to go inside without Tony.” Mostly because I’m pretty sure those bathrooms are monitored by Beppe’s men.
“Then wait.”
“Didn’t you hear my father?” My eyes widen as I vertically run my hands from head to toe. “He doesn’t approve.”
Vinnie scoffs. “And you have a change of outfit in that little purse?”
“You know I don’t,” I growl out. “But I can put some makeup on and fix my hair. The woman kept putting it up and down.”
“It does look a mess.”
Well, all right then.
“Fine, there’s one down here.” He cocks his head for me to follow him down the hall. “Wait a minute.”
On cue, the other man, previously positioned near the window, clears the bathroom and trades spots with Vinnie.
“Tony almost here?” I ask. His ten minutes ended ten minutes ago.
“He got held up.”
Literally. I know exactly what Tony was doing at Unita. Because he only did it when Beppe wasn’t in the club. At least his exploring gives me a bit more freedom. We have a deal. Since being reformed, my father isn’t a fan of me.
He can explore all his unique desires at Unita, as long as he keeps me out of them. At first, he didn’t want to, but then when he realized the consequences of our little adventures, for my sake, he agreed.
Sex in the car or at a bar while I sat on his lap thrilled me, but that ended once the reformation began. One time, someone saw us, and Beppe blindfolded me, had his men take me to Unita—the gentleman’s club—and put me in one of the glass tanks, so everyone could see my body.
No one saw my face, though.
But I had a tattoo. One right where by butt cheek ended.
The next time I rebelled and tried to escape through my secret passageway, I got all the way to the woods behind my house before Tony found me. Beppe forced Tony to hold me down while he doused the red Q and the red heart ink in liquor and lit it on fire. My screams did nothing to get them to stop, and when the tattoo was sufficiently distorted, the Don threw me in the pool to put out the fire.
I’d rather have my skin burned, than be in the fucking pool. They both knew my fear, and they used it against me. When I was shivering and in shock, Tony fished me out and took me to the room, completely satisfied he had burned Luca off my skin.
I don’t blame him for not standing up to Beppe. Back then, one year into my house arrest after the boarding school, Tony was still just a lackey. How he knew Luca had the matching K, I still didn’t know.
Opening my purse, I pull out a small makeup bag, letting Vinnie know I may take a while by waving it in the air. “Got to touch up.”
I barely have anything on, but Vinnie doesn’t really give a shit.
I enter the bathroom, locking the door behind me. It’s the only time they actually leave me alone, now at least. A few years ago, I was watched even in the shitter. Mostly by Tony.
When I get inside the large cubicle that is fitted with walls from the ceiling to the floor, I test the acoustics. “Vinnie?” I call out in a lower voice. When he doesn’t answer, I call out again in a louder voice. No answer.
As long as I talk normally, no one will hear me.
I pull up the internet message with the wedding favor vendor and hit the voice button. Though it says I’m talking to Paulo, it’s really Luca.
“Hey, baby.” God, it feels good to hear his voice.
“Hey.” I smile softly as I lean against the wall. The door is creaked open a smidge so I can see if anyone enters. Locks don’t keep these guys away.
“You alone?”
“For now. I’m in the bathroom.”
His cute, smooth chuckle soothes me. “You are always in the bathroom when you call me.”
“Truth… How are things going on your end?”
“Kind of hating that I’m an hour away and listening to your voice rather than feeling your lips on my—”
“Okay,” I cut him off. “I miss you too.”
“Well, you may have to prove it to me when you see me again.”
“Which will be soon.” I chance a peek out the door and hurry up. As much as I want to keep this conversation going, and tell Luca about where I am and how much I hate being here, it’s risky out here in the open. “Any updates?”
“We got someone on the inside of Veto’s home. Are you sure about this?”
“I’m positive, Luca. Do you remember the night at the chapel?”
He clears his throat. “Yeah? I remember a lot about that night.”
My cheeks blush, like they only ever do with him. The fire started way before it went up in flames. “After we got caught, and we ran to the pool house to hide…you put it on the news station.”
“Before you fell into the pool when we were running away from Mother Superior?”
“I fucking hate pools.”
“Running there to hide was also a stupid idea. It was all glass.”
Neither of us was smart back then. Just in love. “Do you remember the woman who was found murdered? There was a missing kid. They issued an Amber Alert and everything.” A missing five-year-old, with beautiful cerulean eyes that reminded me of my brother’s.
“I wasn’t listening to the TV, Bells. That night was crazy. When the crazy lady kicked me out, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. How much you shook and cried in my arms. The next morning, the fire was all over the news. I still can’t believe they thought I set it and framed you.”
At Charlotte’s wedding, when Luca told me he knew nothing about the fire, I started snooping around, looking for evidence that my father had been lying to me, and I found a black generic pen drive inside the cushion of his desk chair. I stole it and replaced it with a damaged one, so I wouldn’t get caught using my father’s computer.
The pen drive had seven sets of DNA results, along with my mother’s phone contacts, print outs of her phone records, and messages. It also had tons of images and files on some other people, but what shocked me the most? Only three of Beppe’s five children with my moth
er actually belonged to him. My eldest and youngest brother, and me.
The extra two sets were for someone named Jackson Romano. As opposed to the others that had all been done at the same time, his paternity results were dated a few years back. One of those two matches, Beppe, who was not the father, and the other was Veto Calgrone.
It took me a long time to realize where I had heard the name Romano before, but then I found a news article online with a picture of the murder victim. During the year I spent at home, Robert often took me to Veto’s restaurant, and a pretty woman named Antonia always hung around Uncle Veto. Both the mafiosos had been screwing her.
It took a bit of investigating and eavesdropping to find that while I was away at boarding school, Beppe had been searching for who he thought was his son.
When Beppe found out his kid was really Veto’s, I bet he put a hit on them. It wouldn’t be the first time he murdered a kid.
“Maybe the kid’s dead, Bells.”
“He’s alive,” I know he is, or Veto would have come after me. Maybe not to kill me, because he’s a much better man than Beppe, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t use me. “Maybe he’s in witness protection.”
“No, if he were in witness protection, we have people on payroll who would sniff out his location. My feelers came out numb.”
“Jackson’s his son. I’m sure Calgrone knows where he is.” I’m not a fan of using children to get what I need, but I won’t be a fan of anything I do this week. “And I’m also sure he wants to keep him hidden.”
“Okay. So, we threaten Veto and bluff our way through?”
He says it like Veto Calgrone isn’t dangerous. Then again, he manages crazy people on a daily basis. “Even if Gino doesn’t find anything. Veto will want to protect his son.”
