by Sonya Jesus
Isabella Santini
“Isabella?” The knock on the door startles me, and I drop my phone into the tub full of water. Luca’s face and the screen lights illuminate the damn bubbles.
“Shit,” I whisper while dipping my fingers into the water and rescuing my drenched phone, which to my surprise, still works. I fumble to end the call, but the water between the screen and my damp fingers renders the touch screen useless.
“Isabella, why is the door locked?” Vinnie’s full sounding timbre echoes through me, warning me to hurry up and delete any messages and calls. He’s listed as the vendor, but explaining why I’m talking to the vendor while in the bathroom, naked, will give it away.
Frantically, I wipe the phone against the towel and remember my headphones. Lifting the sweater from the floor, I pluck my earphones out of my hoodie pocket, and pop them in my ears.
No more warnings. The doorknob rattles. Behind it, a worried bodyguard stands ready to bust through.
Fuck me. Without even knowing if Luca hangs up, I do the only thing I can do: panic and slam my phone against the tile wall, cracking the screen in a lot of places, and when that’s not enough… I hit it again until the screen glitches and turns black.
“What the fuck was that, Isabella?” The door is thrown open, but not splintered.
A quick glance toward the door reveals a master key in the lock. One, I did not know existed. “Vinnie…” I make no move to hide my naked body. My arms glisten from the moisture, and the ends of my soaked hair drip water down my nipples.
He follows those drops for half a second before catching himself. As expected, Vinnie glances at the floor while demanding an explanation. “Didn’t you hear me knocking?”
I pluck my headphones out and drop my broken phone along with them on the stool near the tub before wrapping a towel around my body. “I was listening to War and Peace on audio.” I carefully step toward the cabinet to grab another towel and scatter it on the floor to soak the puddles of water. “Until you interrupted my relaxing time.”
“Relaxing?” At noting the full tub and bubbles, Vinnie glances around, assessing the situation. “In the tub?”
Maybe that wasn’t the right word choice. But correcting myself will bring more suspicion.
“What happened to your phone?”
“I dropped it when I slipped.”
“When did you slip?”
I didn’t, but the lie came out effortlessly. “When the chapter changed, and I heard you talking instead of the narrator.” I flip my long hair forward and towel dry it, leaving him to brood over his suspicions without my prying eyes.
“So, you got out of the tub, slipped, and cracked your phone, which is wet?”
“I was rushing to get out, so you wouldn’t bust down my door and see me naked.” I purposely flip my hair back to study his reaction. “Guess you like seeing me naked.”
Yep. That makes him uncomfortable. He shifts to the side, away from my phone and the bathtub. “Your father wants to talk to you.”
An invitation from my father is never good. All of those times Beppe came home drunk, started with a version of talking. Even with my coping mechanisms, terror is extremely hard to hide.
It’s innate, in my bones, ingrained in the atrocious memories of a child who sees the world in two colors: black and white. There’s no escaping the sequential flashes the mind conjures.
My heart aches for peace, desperately throbs to escape, and due to my silence, it summons a symphony of reactions with every pulse. Like a baton, commanding each individual organ, it moves through my system, molding muscle as if it were air, flooding my veins with heat, and slowly thumping caution through them.
Slow and steady, my body reacts to the commands.
A heavy gasp to saturate my lungs with oxygen.
Another to stave off the crippling thoughts.
And a final one to orchestrate the rapid beats of my heart.
“It’s two in the morning.” Nothing Beppe wants at this hour is good. “Can’t this wait until tomorrow?”
Beads of sweat form on the nape of my neck, camouflaging with the moisture of the humid room and my damp skin.
“He says it’s urgent.”
A ball forms in the back of my throat. Stilling the reflex to gulp it down, I nod curtly, only swallowing when ready to speak. “Let me get dressed. I’ll be right down.”
I hide my tension within a long sigh, meant to convey my slight annoyance. These guys sniff out fear like cadaver dogs; masking the scent has taken me a long time to master. Little things like making sure my back is covered by a wall, or something impenetrable, helps relax my anxiety.
“He’s in the kitchen.”
Kitchen is better than office, I rationalize in attempts to calm my prickling nerves. Office means business; kitchen means wedding things. Then again, it wouldn’t be the first time he killed someone in the kitchen.
Vinnie removes the key and hesitates before exiting the bathroom. It lasts all of a minute and suffices to peak the dread within me. Beppe is drunk.
I’m not going to like this. Not that I ever liked anything that has to do with him.
Tears prickle, and they burn, and they don’t lie, so I stop the translucent tattletales from coming. I pinch the tiny bumps in the corners, killing their passage, and remind myself that in a few days, Beppe will be gone.
I’ve reached out to Steele Dominico, one of the big names in the criminal underworld. He keeps to himself, mostly. If we don’t mess with him, he doesn’t mess with us, but he has the manpower and the ruthlessness it will take to kill Beppe. I’ll weaken his force by splitting up his men: finding me, protecting the wedding guests, securing the fortress, and chasing down the lost shipment should be enough.
But Steele isn’t a big fan of the idea, so I made backup plans. Risky backup plans. Giuseppe “Beppe” Santini, the Don, will not survive this week. Even if I have to kill him myself.
When I’m finally alone and Vinnie has left the bedroom, I drain the tub, watching the water disappear before I leave without my ability to call a lifeline. Not that it would help. Tony’s probably dick-deep in some random chick or vice versa, and I can’t contact Luca.
Squelching my nerves, I tiptoe out of the door and head straight for the veranda. The cement floor with the fake grass carpeting surrounded by opulent stone pillars reminds me of Romeo and Juliet’s iconic balcony scene, but it does little to inspire romance.
From here, I can see the roof of the Tree House, tucked between branches, obscured from everyone’s line of sight. It used to have a fullout staircase until one of my middle brothers pitched a fit about a rope ladder. Lucky for me, it made it harder to climb.
Eventually, when I freaked out about the swimming pool, my mom girlified the tree cabin. She had workers come in and add a curved veranda and switched out one of the walls for double window doors that swung back. She added lights that twinkled and a mini chandelier with tiny gold book charms hanging from it. To top it off, she accentuated the golden wooden tones with white carpet and pink curtains on the inside, along with a fancy mid-century tea table, complete with gold embellishment on the filigree carvings.
The feminine color horrified my brothers and scared them off, or maybe, they let me have my sanctuary.
Sometimes, Mom would go up there with me. Just us girls. She’d read me fairy tales and comb my hair. Sometimes my baby brother would sneak in; he didn’t much care if our other brothers ragged on him. He was so vibrant, so unafraid of the world, and he loved me the most. I’d sit with him in our big chairs, or he’d fall asleep next to me, twirling my hair between his finger as I read a story.
A pang of sadness rings through me, and when I shut my eyes, his eyes are glued to the back of my eyelids, the memories at the forefront of my mind. I cross my arms in front of my chest, hugging the little girl who misses her family while gazing at my desecrated sanctuary.
The Tree House held my best memories and my worst ones. Then again, this whole lavish place is nothing
more than a dollhouse, where Beppe stores his dolls. First, my mother, now me.
“Isabella?”
I glance down in direction of the noise, a bit flustered at having my memories interrupted. Vinnie’s standing there in his black suit, arms crossed in front of his chest. I’m standing outside in a towel, which would really annoy my father. “I’ll be right down.”
Right down to face the monster in my fairytale.
Within a few minutes, I’m dressed in a pair of shorts and a hoodie with a couple layers underneath. I’ve learned to be prepared. Downstairs, in the large open area, I spot my father, sitting with Vinnie at the long mahogany dining table. Two glasses of scotch sit between them, and a nearly empty bottle is off to the side.
Maybe this is business. I fool myself to make it through.
“Don.” I slink inside and grab a Coke from the fridge before leaning against it. I’ve felt the back of the Don’s hand against my cheek enough times to know Beppe’s unstable, and unfortunately, liquor makes him volatile.
Beppe twists his watch around his wrist, making a show of checking the time for Vinnie’s benefit. “It’s two-thirty. You kept me waiting thirty minutes.”
Two is not the time for leisurely things, and leisurely things don’t involve manila files. “I was getting dressed.” No apology, because he will never get one from me. Never. After everything I know about him, about what he did, I’d rather die than utter an ‘I’m sorry’ from my lips.
Beppe slides the manila folder over the table and taps on it with three fingers, his pudgy pinkie hovering in the air. “Vinnie tells me you were taking a bath.”
My eyes flicker over to Vinnie, but not out of anger. That’s his job.
“Did he tell you I cracked my phone too? Or did he leave that for his morning report?”
The corners of Beppe’s lips turn up. Deep down, I think he enjoys my backhanded remarks. It’s not easy to insult and appear indifferent all at the same time. “We can get you a new one tomorrow.”
“Great.” The feel of the hard, stainless metal on my back calms me.
“You’ve been taking a lot more baths lately.”
I’ve been feeling dirtier lately. That would probably be a bit too insolent for Beppe. “Tony wants to go to the beach for our honeymoon,” I explain. “I want to make him happy, so I’ve been forcing myself to stay in bodies of water.”
“How is that going for you?”
“I’m using the techniques I learned at St. Theresa’s, but good. I think the beach will be great for us.”
My father seems pleased with the answer. He plucks another manila folder from the pile and folds it open before sliding it across the table. It travels half-way before falling on to the expensive hand-embroidered Arraiolos rug. Neither Vinnie nor my father bother to pick it up, intentionally drawing me closer. I leave my safe spot near the fridge and come out in the open, near them. Bending down, I pick up the sheets and the picture that fell out.
The beautiful woman I had just been remembering stares back at me. “Mom?”
Vinnie grabs his tumbler and downs the contents before getting up. “I’ll grab us a fresh bottle.”
Beppe nods and temporarily dismisses him while I look through the other things in the folder. “Do you know who your mother was, Isabella? Before she married me.”
Vaguely. “I don’t really remember.” But in my hand, I have a background file.
“She was a whore.”
I hold my shock and my tongue. Beppe does this for effect. He’s testing me—to see if the girl he tortured out of me still lurks underneath my skin. He instigates and uses silence to assess my answer. Take too long, and it answers for me. If I negate it, I’ll be physically reprimanded. If I don’t answer, I’ll piss him off.
After tucking the contents and the photos back inside, I close the file and place it on the table. “She was my mother, Beppe.” I set myself up against the kitchen island. Not too far from the table, but just out of his reach. “That’s all I know about her. She was good to me.”
“She fled from the East Coast and was dancing at a place downtown.” He glides both hands over his man belly, rubbing the convex curvature, then slides them up to cup the air, as if holding a pair of imaginary bosoms. “Her tits were on display for every man to see. One day, I showed up and bought her.”
The caramel liquid gets stuck in my wind pipe; I nearly choke on my soda and cough to clear it. “Bought… like a lap dance?”
No child wants to hear about their parents’ sex lives.
“Bought, like I hired her for two months. She got triple the salary and didn’t have to deal with assholes.”
No, just him.
“I fell in love with her in those two months. She was refreshing and vibrant—made the darkness of my world seem a little less dull. She got pregnant, and I made an honest woman out of her.”
Until you killed her. “Why are you telling me all of this?”
“I remember you when you were my little bambolina. Always thinking about princes and princesses, innocent. Then you grew up and inherited your mother’s genes. Putana is in the blood.”
Bile rises to my throat, and I swear if the acid didn’t burn the words, I’d have said something worthy of his shitty comment—but it would also have been very stupid on my part.
He cocks his head to the side, lowering it to his rotund shoulder blade. “It’s okay. Because I fixed you.”
Only to leave me more broken.
He pulls another file from his stack. “Do you know these men?”
I stare down at the image, recognizing them instantly. “No. Who are they?”
“Friends of your mother’s, or rather, sons of her friends.” He shuts the file and neatly stacks them. “Her family reached out to me today.”
Oh, shit. My heart paces quickly, and it’s hard to settle my breaths. “What did they want?” I manage to ask without giving my fear away. I reached out to my mother’s family to help me, and it was my cousin, Teagan, who answered me. They’ll be intercepting the drugs tomorrow.
“They wanted to let me know they were coming this way on a motorcycle run, and they didn’t want any trouble.”
I remain silent. Anything could be used against me in the court of Beppe.
“So, you don’t know anything about this?”
“About what?”
“Did you invite them to the wedding, Isabella?”
“How could I invite them if I don’t even know them?”
He empties his glass, just as Vinnie returns with the fresh bottle. “Fill it up,” he orders, shoving his cup toward Vinnie, who unscrews the bottle. “Tonight is going to be a long night.”
Vinnie’s shoulders stiffen as he pours. “Why is that, sir?”
“Because my daughter, here, is lying to me about something.”
Panic sets in, or maybe it’s terror again. I can’t tell anymore. This whole day has been a flashback of memories. One time, maybe twice, I can manage to banish them back into the deep abyss of my mind before they surface enough to crumble me, but the constant onslaught has unlocked them, and everywhere I look, I see blood.
“Are you helping her lie to me, Vinnie?”
No. He’s using Vinnie.
There’s no gun in Beppe’s vicinity, but being in this room with Robert’s ghost unravels the tightly wound up memories. The screams and tears that exploded out of me at Robert’s death, ring in my ears, causing the sound of my thrashing heart to throb alongside them. I’m dizzy and unfocused, and unable to control my reactions. There are too many things flushing out my resolve.
What’s wrong with me?
Heat rises toward my cheeks, but stops at my hairline, flushing heat from shoulder to shoulder and crawling up my neck, no doubt leaving red splotches on my skin.
Breathing deeply, I remind myself that not only is Robert alive, but he is going to come for me. He has to.
Vinnie’s words come through, and I cling to them, letting them drag me out of my memory. �
�If she were lying, I’d be the first to know.”
Before I can blink, my eyes are on him. He knew I had been lying, I felt it in the bathroom, why is he covering for me?
“Well, maybe she’s lying to you too, Vincent.” Beppe slowly curls his finger. “Come here, Isabella.”
No.
Tree, screams, guns … run. Dead. Run, I chant to myself, but my feet know better than to run.
“About the beach, sir?” Vinnie flicks his eyes in my direction, catching me as I step toward the fridge to cool my skin. “Bermuda. I think that’s where they are going on their honeymoon.”
It’s true, but Vinnie didn’t have to say it. With my face in the chill of the freezer, I grab an ice pop the chef makes out of left over smoothies and abandon the can on the island. I’m not hungry or thirsty, but the low temperature will help stave off the heat. Fear will give me away, and flight is not an option.
Neither is fight.
Just survive.
“Let’s go outside.” Beppe doesn’t wait for anyone; he slides open the patio door and steps out into the night air. With no other choice, I follow them out to the patio, stopping at the wicker lawn chair, at a distance from the pool. I’m not even free to be scared.
Beppe, who is carrying the new bottle with him, hits the patio table and nearly topples to the ground, spilling half the alcohol onto the beige stone. I watch as it seeps into the exterior grout. Just a few steps ahead, my brother’s blood had once done the same.
I hold my blink for an extra second and glance up at the ceiling fan. The wooden blades whirl around in a frenzy, making me dizzy. The fan had been on the day of the massacre.
What a stupid thought, I think to myself, as I stare at the light cream-colored ice pop with chunks of mashed red strawberries that reminded me of the bits of brain, visible through the bloody bullet hole. I nearly puke my brains out.
Vinnie narrows his eyes in my direction while attending to Beppe. I swallow down the pieces of food and pop the freezing stick into my mouth, to numb my taste buds and block the passageway. I focus on Vinnie and Beppe, so I don’t think of brains and blood.
“Isabella?” Beppe leans back on the large chair, his ankles crossed as he balances the open bottle on the armrest of the chair. With his other hand, he gestures for me to come forth.
