Six Deadly Steps

by Sonya Jesus

  “Some days I exist, most days I survive, but I never live … That I only ever did with you.”

  My chest clenches at her words. Isabella’s never been the most talkative girl, at least not about anything related to her, but I could spend hours on the phone with her, reminiscing about the things we did and still feeling them in my bones. We connected in ways only teenagers talk about. Back then, it had been selfish and exhilarating, and we loved each other for the wrong reasons, but we loved each other nonetheless. Together, we escaped. With her in my life, my world expanded. She got me to step out of the careful confines being a twin had created.

  In the year since Charlotte’s wedding, I connected with her in every way possible, except physical. Well… after we connected a few times that night. The distance between us drew us closer. We could share with each other, things no one knew about. This is how I know that despite her telling me otherwise, she cares for Tony. And from what she tells me, Tony cares about her, in a really messed-up way. She’s his soft spot. Not enough to keep his dick inside his jeans, but enough to know she hates Cielo.

  At eighteen, we were too young to know the truth, and he swept right in and took my place. Now, I’m taking it back. “You don’t live with Tony?”

  The idea of her screwing him nurtures the asshole inside me.

  She laughs softly because she thinks I’m joking. When I don’t find it funny, she sighs and whispers, “I have to play the part.” Again, the distance. Even on the phone, I can hear her cutting the water stream with her fingers, creating a rhythm with the interruptions. An S.O.S. of sorts.

  “What happened, Bells?”

  “Nothing.” There’s a lot of power in her words, but not enough strength in her voice.

  “Did Tony do something to you?”

  She sighs, giving it away. But the fact she won’t tell me means she’s ashamed of it. I don’t think I can get through the rest of the night with details, so I save my comments and ask, “Did he hurt you?”

  “No.”

  “You’re okay?”

  “Just anxious…” she offers. “We always end up talking about this.”

  “It’s not easy.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you?”

  “It’s not easy pretending to be happy, to be content with expensive dresses and hand-painted portraits as favors for guests. A lot of girls want to be a princess, I don’t. I just want the ability to be me. I hate all of this.”

  Maybe it’s jealousy, or maybe it’s survival, but I confess, “There are a lot of things I hate…” I run my hands through my hair and close my eyes, remembering the night of Charlotte’s wedding. How perfect Bells felt, even after all those years. I lean back on the headrest and stare at the interior roof of the rental car, running my fingers over the material, like I had traced my name on her skin that night.

  “I hate that he touches you. That he kisses you.”

  I imagine her biting down on her lip, something she never does in public, and picture the curve at the dip of her back, leading to her perfect ass. “I hate that he gets to see you naked and run his fingers along the length of your spine.” I’m turned on and revolted by the fact that he’s been where I have, but I had gone there first. “That he gets to fist your hair while he’s inside you.”

  “Luca… Soon...” she offers, and hits the video button.

  I almost don’t switch over. I miss her too much to see her and just hearing her voice reminds me of the distance, of the perfect lips—the sharp tongue, the feel of her skin on my fingers, the silkiness of her hair as it brushed against my cheeks, the soft amber scent of her shampoo as she nestled in close to me—and makes being here without her so much harder.

  Until this day, I’ve never had anyone I wanted to hold more than her.

  I slide the video on to find her naked from head to toe, her teeth gently clamping down on the inside of her lip. Her dark hair falls in soft, sparse ringlets over her shoulders. She’s sitting on the edge of the tub with a cigarette between her fingers and an arm down the center, covering her core. The angle of the video captures the bathtub and the faucet, along with the window behind her. It’s dark outside, just like it is here, but the light in the bathroom hits the diamonds on her finger, reminding me to speak.

  “Do you do that with him?” I ask, needing to cling onto something because the sight of her skin untouched by clothing, has me wishing I wasn’t in a fucking alley. I run my fingers over my lips, drawing attention to them in order to clarify what I meant.

  “No,” she says softly, her lip popping out as if she hadn’t even realized it. “I’ve only ever felt vulnerable with you.” Her hand is still covering some of her breasts and the place I’ve been craving since the last time I buried myself there.

  “I like when you answer the phone like this.”

  “Yeah?” She adjusts the phone, angling it so I don’t see as much of the bathroom and see most of her. The full view of every devious curve and of those perfect round tits of hers stirs my dick. I love that she’s not a size two; she never has been. She’s not afraid to eat, and she’s very naked… really hot.

  “A lot.” I clear my throat when she moves her hand. I run down the alphabet, starting with the M at the dip of her collar bone, pausing at the T between her breasts, and the J-shaped arc extending from her sternum to the curve of her tit, and dotting the tip with a hardened nipple.

  “What about like this?” she teases softly, removing her hand and spreading her legs apart slightly.

  “Even better.” Her boldness has always turned me one, and the fact that the fucker is probably in the next room makes me want more. “Wider.”

  She smirks and takes a drag of her cigarette, drawing attention to her plump, moist lips. Then her legs part, slowly. All my attention is focused on her core. “I miss the way you feel inside me.”

  “Bells…” I hiss and run my hands down my pants, adjusting to make room for a piece of me that really agrees with her statement. “I haven’t wanted to be inside of someone as much as I want to be inside you.”

  This is not the right place to do this… The thought floats up and is lost the second she slides her fingers down her slit, not separating the gates but definitely showing me the way to heaven. Flashes of us together, of her body tight against mine, suffuse my thoughts.

  She moans softly and strokes my ego with her words. “I can still feel you inside me…”

  I trace the O-shape of my lips with my thumb and forefinger and glance out the window. “Not Tony?” I’m not sure if it’s fucked up that I wasn’t the last one inside her, or if it turns me on that she thinks of me when he is.

  “He’s not you.” Rendered speechless, I listen as she dips into her folds. “He’s never been you, Luca.”

  It’s not the place, but I tell her. “It’s hard when it’s his ring on your finger.” We’ve been talking almost every day since Charlotte’s wedding, and every day, I hate we’ve had to wait.

  She stops and brings her hand forward, removing the engagement ring and placing it on something in front of her. “Better?”

  “A whole lot better.” It’s still there in my head. I’ve never hated the idea of putting a ring on a woman’s finger until I realized what it meant. For some, it’s a symbol of love, but it’s also a collar. Instead of wrapping it around the woman’s neck and chaining her to a house, a man’s adding an expensive band and using society to chain her to him until he’s ready to profess his love publically.

  “Stop thinking about Tony,” she urges, as her fingers return to her center. “He’s never been able to get me this wet without touching me.”

  There’s a wrongness to her proclamation that my excitement won’t let me wade through. The lines are blurry, and all I can see is the ease of her fingers, slipping in and out, hypnotizing me. Her demand is in the silence around us, in the angle of the camera, in the urgency of her movement.

  Want me, she begs. Despite who I am.

  Despite who I have to be
.

  Through her heavy breaths, she leaves me senseless. I don’t know if it’s the steam from the hot water behind her that heats up the space around me, or if it’s the warmth spreading through my chest, but my lips move of their own free will. “I love you, Isabella.”

  It’s not enough. She’s afraid to lose me.

  Convince me, she says with the hollowness of her breath.

  Before I know it, I’m unzipping my pants and pulling myself free for her to see. To ease the pain from my bruised ribs, I lean the chair back slightly, hiding the wince from the girl I want to marry someday.

  At the sight of my erection, a satisfied moan escapes her. I angle my phone, so she only sees my dick, twitching his hello.

  Her fucked up always leaves me messed up. And I don’t know how to convince her my heart is hers, so I start with convincing her my body is. That my thoughts are.

  She dips. I glide.

  She thrusts. I pump.

  She moans. I grunt, and when I’m about to come, I focus on her voice. She coaxes my orgasm out with her words. Even if they are wrong and out of place, for her, they are everything. “Don’t hate me, Luca.”

  With a wad of tissues spread over my dick and my eyes pointed at the ceiling, I answer, “I love you too much to hate you, Bells.”

  “About what you said before.” Her sexy mood disappears a lot faster than mine. “I tried to break up with Tony right after the wedding.” Her voice grows distant as she stands up, inserts the stopper in the tub, and gets in while it fills up. “Beppe said he’d kill Pix.”

  The sadness in her voice gets me and blatantly points out that I’m an asshole. This is a hard situation for both of us, but I’m not the one stuck between two guys who’d kill to make her obey. I can’t blame her for her relationship with Tony. Despite his infidelity, he’s better than Beppe, who’s a mean fucker and an even worse drunk.

  “I understand, Bells.” But I don’t. My father is an ass, but he has morals. He owns a string of fertility clinics that aide the Beneventis. He helps vet the families before they do the secret adoptions. Granted, it‘s illegal, and though the babies are treated with care, the mothers are a different story.

  But he never hit me or Magdalena. He is mean and callous, and power-driven, but he’s a good father.

  “He said he’d tie me up to a chair and throw me in the pool, so I could watch him put a bullet through her head, and every time I’d try to scream, I’d drown a little.”

  “That’s fucked up, baby.” I’ve wanted to kill him myself since the day she told me about the Tree House.

  Beppe had come home one day after finding out his wife had been cheating on him. According to Isabella, he was drunk off his ass and couldn’t even think straight. Bells had always been scared of him, but she said that day, his blue eyes looked almost like blue fire. She ran from him and hid in the Tree House.

  At this point, he didn’t know the length of his wife’s infidelity, but he suspected. And since Isabella had brown eyes, or maybe just because she defied him, he decided to target her. He forced all his children out of bed to have a pool party at two in the morning. Isabella was a few months shy of eleven years old and feared the pool. She wouldn’t get in and cried her eyes out, screaming so hard she woke up his wife, who intervened. That was the first time he hit the woman he claimed to love. Isabella fled to the Tree House, and since he couldn’t climb up there without breaking it, he waited for her to come down.

  Then, held her underwater until she nearly drowned.

  Since then, Isabella’s deathly afraid of large pools of water, including bathtubs.

  “I hate him,” she says. “If it weren’t for Pix, I would have run away a long time ago.”

  “We both know he’d find you.” Pix was a friend of mine too, she still is, but there is no way I can protect her twenty-four-seven, deal with my family drama, and still help Isabella. “Or Tony.”

  “That’s why this has to work, Luca.”

  She’s going to take down the Santini family and start a war they may not recover from. “If it doesn’t?”

  The heat from the hot water steams up the room as it fills the tub. “This is the only way I know how. So, if it doesn’t go according to plan, then I may not be alive to care.”

  “I would never let that happen.”

  “That’s cute.” She bends her knees and tucks them to her chest. “But you can’t get in here without being recognized.”

  “Don’t tempt me, Bells.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Luca.” She rests her head on her knees. “I’m guarded all the time. I have to sneak in here to talk to you. If I did get away, they’d find me within minutes. There are cameras everywhere.”

  “Not everywhere.”

  “You’re right, but unless I dig a hole under my bed and somehow learn to fly across the foyer, under an invisible cloak, then I’m kind of stuck.”

  “You could get away if you wanted to.” The tunnel didn’t have cameras.

  “I’d never make it out of the city… Trust me, I tried the first year I was back, and since then, my protective detail has increased.”

  “I can ask my dad.” Though, that would be a horrible idea. I’d rather ask the Beneventis for another favor. I’m sure they’re keeping a tally on what I owe them.

  “Pff.” She looks up at me and shakes her head. “Who do you think helped my father keep us apart?” She slides forward to shut off the water.

  Some days, when she’s feeling more in control, she fills it all the way to the top, but those days are scarce lately. She stops when it covers her ankles. She really hates when it reaches her calves.

  “If you mention it, he will ruin everything, Luca. If there was a feud between our families, then why only tell me after we were together? Why did your father tell you Santini wanted to kill you? They are liars.”

  “So no to coming over for some Italian at Veto’s?”

  Her nose wrinkles. “Not when the marina sauce will remind me of blood.”

  “Hey, you’re the one who sacrificed a guy.”

  She shrugs. “I’m Chucky.”

  “What?” I snort out mid-laugh. “That’s not even a little bit hot.”

  “Killer dolls … not your thing?”

  “I don’t know how to answer that.” If I say no, then considering she’s a soon-to-be killer, it will insult her. And if I say yes, I’d be lying. “You’re my thing.”

  She rolls her eyes and starts the water again, this time putting it on low stream. “Right now, too many eyes are on me. It only works if there’s a distraction.” She takes a moment and repeats her plan to me, “One, distract. Two, liberate. Three, eliminate. Four, escort—”

  “Five, war. Six, love,” I finish for her. “I know, baby. I’ve been helping you get to number six.”

  She smirks softly, absentmindedly playing with her hair. “You’re my favorite part of the plan.”

  “Did you get the confirmation for Tuesday?” To be honest, I’m not a fan of her reaching out to different organized crime syndicates to escape, but it is what it is.

  “Yes, Teagan sent me a message saying they accepted the offer.”

  “It’s over five million dollars in drugs. Plus, a million-dollar payday. Who wouldn’t take the offer?”

  “They’re worried about backlash, but they’ve got the numbers to back it up.”

  Step one and three are her job. Step two and four are mine. Five and six depend on the other four running smoothly.

  “I’m at Veto’s place. Oh, I almost forgot…” I hold up a picture of the photograph Gino sent me, I had printed it out at the photo store on my way down here, so I didn’t send it to her. Pictures always get stored in backup drives. “Do you know who this is?”

  She abruptly drops her legs, submerging them underwater without even so much as a trembled lip—all thoughts of the water gone as she whispers, “Robert Calgrone. Where did you find that?”

  “That’s what I thought.” I fold the paper up, grab my ligh
ter from the dashboard, and drop it into the ashtray before lighting it on fire. “You’re sure?”

  “He’s older, but I’d recognize him anywhere. He has Jackson?”

  I shake my head as I watch the flames. “I don’t know... But he’s alive.”

  “Change of plans.” She gets up and grabs the towel, wrapping it around herself.

  Her tits distract me until they are completely out of sight. “What?” I rub my forehead and look over my shoulder.

  “With Veto.”

  “Isabella, I’m about to walk in there and ask Calgrone for help, basically blackmail. Telling him I know his son, Jackson, is alive may get a bullet through my leg, and you want to change the plan?” Not through the head because of who my father is. Maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

  “Ask him for Robert.”

  “Why?”

  “Because instead of blackmailing Calgrone into helping us, there’s a better way. Robert worked for my father before my father shot him. He’ll want revenge, and he knows the house better than Veto, or anyone Veto can get.”

  “What makes you think Robert will risk coming back to help you?”

  “Because I know the men around me, and there’s a reason why Beppe shot Robert in front of me.”

  I grunt at the idea of another man in her life. “Fucking great. How old is this guy?”

  “Five, six years older.”

  “Can’t we leave him where he is? Dealing with Tony is enough.”

  She laughs. “It’s not like that. Robert was like my brother. He protected me and listened. If it weren’t for him, I don’t know how I would have gotten through my family’s death and the year I spent at home.”

  Fine. “Calgrone’s not going to give his son up, not for a million dollars. Neither of them.”

  “I’ll talk to him. We just need him to get us Robert.”

  “You’re so sure he’ll help?”

  “One-hundred percent.”

  “What about Tony?”

  “I’m working on it. Tomorrow.”

  Chapter Five

  Krakatoa.