“Are you going to kill me, too?” I asked her. She walked towards me. She looked too calm, like a sociopath.
“Maybe.”
“Why are you doing this, Alana?”
“Don’t you see? This is all your fault.”
“What did I do? We don’t even know each other.”
“That’s right, we don’t. And you didn’t even know Marcelo three months ago when the two of you got married.”
That was what this was about. Shit. Hell really has no fury.
“Our marriage was arranged. There was nothing either of us could have done.”
“Yes, there was. What the hell kind of woman allows herself to be married off like that? What kind of man lets his father pick his woman for him? You could have said no. Both of you. You should have said no, but you didn’t.”
“Why does that make you so angry?”
“Because you ruined everything,” she said. “You think this is something special between you and Marcelo? Do you think that in these three months you’ve captured his heart and transformed him?”
I was silent. Honestly, I was scared of what she would say.
“Three months Sophia. A lot of things can happen in three months but nothing meaningful. Nothing real. Has Marcelo ever told you how far he and I go back?”
“I know you two used to be in a relationship.”
“We dated for years and knew each other even longer than that. Years, Sophie. That is what Marcelo and I have. Years and a history. You saw the pictures,” she said, smiling. “The two of you have three months and a late abortion.”
My hands balled into fists. I wanted to lunge at her and kick her in the mouth. I had never been violent in my life—and this was not a good time to start—but she was getting one more chance.
“Why didn’t you two get back together?” I asked through gritted teeth.
“We did. Every time that we broke up, we got back together again. Sometimes it was after a few weeks. Sometimes months went by before we would reconcile. But we always got back together. Always… until you showed up.”
She fixed her glare on me and used the gun to point in my direction.
“Suddenly, he can’t see me anymore because he’s making preparations for the wedding. He’s getting married to some woman he’s hardly spoken to for ten minutes, and even better, I’m invited to the wedding if I want to come. By the way, that gown did nothing for you. You aren’t tall or thin enough to really do it justice.”
I bristled. If she wanted the gown, it was right upstairs. She could try it on and see if it looked better on her bony body than it had on mine.
“You think it would have been you if it wasn’t me?”
“Of course. Who else was there who could be Marcelo’s wife? I was the one he kept coming back to… you know what that means Sophie? It means that despite everything, he loved me. He would play around, let his eye wander, but he always knew where I was and always came back to find me.”
Wow.
The woman had barged into my home and held me at gunpoint. She had called me fat and short; she had slandered my unborn child; and she had told me that my marriage was a joke, but now, now I just felt sorry for her. How could she not have seen what she was to Marcelo? He didn’t keep going back to her. She was just the one who was always available so he kept her in rotation. He could rely on her desperation for him, and he had exploited her for it. I wasn’t going to excuse his behavior—it was awful that he had strung her along—but it was incredible that she hadn’t realized it.
“You really love him, don’t you?” I said gently.
She barked out a derisive laugh.
“I don’t love him, Sophia. He’s my soulmate. He’s the only person for me, and I’m the only one for him. We were meant to be together, and there is nothing that is going to stand in our way.”
“Alana, we’re married and expecting a baby.”
“I realize. God, do you know how many years I have been trying to tell Marcelo that this is what is right for us. Our destiny? He’s so stubborn. You know that I suppose. If you hadn’t come along, we would be together again and it would just be a matter of time before I was Mrs. Orsini.”
“I’m sorry that it didn’t work out for you, Alana, I really am, but this, killing him isn’t going to solve the problem.”
“The problem is you. If he’s gone, then you won’t be married to him anymore. Simple.”
“If I’m the problem, then why do you want to kill Marcelo?”
“Because you left me no fucking choice,” she said sharply. “You… you are a hard egg to crack Sophia Dandolo,” she said, pointing the gun at me and purposefully calling me by my maiden name. “Nothing rattles you, does it?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I thought the pictures would do it. I thought that you wouldn’t believe Marcelo if he told you that they were old because, hey, what reason did you have to trust the guy? You barely knew him. But no. You stayed. That was when I knew I had to do something drastic.”
“What did you do?” I asked her.
“Your little show at your dad’s funeral, sitting when everyone else was standing and hanging onto Marcelo like that was frankly embarrassing,” she snapped.
“You were there?”
“You can thank me for the chance to wear that black Diane von Furstenberg. I know Marcelo got it for you, he has great taste, even if he doesn’t have the greatest model to dress up.”
I felt like the pit of my stomach was being consumed by its own acid.
“You didn’t.”
“I did. Your daddy was a sitting duck, Sophia. He didn’t even try and defend himself.”
I felt tears squeeze out of the corners of my eyes. It was her. What kind of sick human being would target and kill an old man…for nothing?
“Why?” I asked her, crying.
“Because I knew it would ruin you. I knew it would send you on a downward spiral. What I didn’t know was that Marcelo would stick it out. He was supposed to get rid of you. He was supposed to become frustrated and want more for himself. That was the time that he would come back to me because you would be too grief stricken to offer him anything as a wife anymore.”
She was crazy. She was nuts. I knew what it was like to love Marcelo, but this was something else. How could she act this way about a man who had used her like she was a piece of Kleenex and then go on to marry somebody else? Hadn’t he said it enough times and clearly enough for her to understand? What the hell was wrong with her?
I was scared before, but now I was terrified. She had killed my father…and she was here to kill my husband. She had a gun in her hand and she was crazy. If I said the wrong thing or did the wrong thing, I would be next.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Marcelo
There was a time in my life that seeing Alana’s car excited me.
If her car was somewhere, it meant she was there. The more I thought about it, there were not very many encounters that I had had with Alana that were not sexual. We were not friends. We used to fuck and that was about it. We tried a few times to date, but it never ended up working because again, we weren’t friends. We didn’t like each other like that—and there weren’t enough things we wanted to discuss with each other for any sort of real friendship to be able to develop. Was she interesting as a person? Perhaps. But I had never really seen that side of her. It just wasn’t right. It wasn’t her fault—and it wasn’t my fault. It was just the truth. There was no use trying to force something when it was literally being rejected by both parties.
She had used to do this shit where she would wait for me in my house and she would leave her clothes in a trail, leading to wherever it was that she was waiting for me, naked. She used to have a key, but she didn’t anymore. I had asked for it back and had the locks changed since Sophie and I had gotten together. We had had some fun together in the past, but it was over now. The sight of Alana’s very expensive silver Mercedes outside my house right then,
sent a shiver up my spine. She was at the house—and she was not alone. She was there with Sophia. The two of them were not friends. They were not anything; there was no way that the woman had come over to see my wife. If she had, it was definitely not because she wanted to congratulate her on the baby.
Something was not right.
I circled the block and parked a few houses down. I stepped out of the car and called Sophia’s phone. Nothing. I tried again. She wasn’t ignoring the calls, but she was not answering the phone. There was no way that she couldn’t have torn herself from Alana, even for a second to answer a phone call? Something was wrong.
Walking up to the house, I stayed low. There were two ground-floor windows that I would have been able to see the women through if they were downstairs. I held my breath, peering through the window. I saw Sophia, she was sitting in a chair. Alana was stalking around the room with a gun in her hand.
Oh shit.
I ducked down before she had a chance to see me. I had to do something. How long had she been here? Was she waiting for me? Was she trying to hold Sophia hostage in order to get to me? What was happening?
My mind raced and I felt fear, true fear, sit in the pit of my stomach. Sophia was in trouble. She was in trouble and it was my crazy ex who was responsible for it. She was talking, a lot of what she was saying was muffled, but I caught some of it. She was talking about Sophie’s dad. I didn’t want to believe it, but it was hard to deny something that you are hearing with your own two ears.
I had known this woman for years. I would go as far as to say that we were friendly, not friends but definitely not enemies. This changed everything. The moment she first opened her mouth to disrespect my wife had changed everything. Maybe she didn’t think it was that serious, but I had a feeling she wasn’t in her right mind at the moment. I had to stop her.
I decided to go around back.
Going in through the front door would either startle her and make her pull that trigger, or it would just be me playing right into her trap, whatever that might be. I needed to get a jump on her so that she couldn’t ambush me and so she couldn’t do anything rash.
I had my gun with me so that was good. I didn’t want to shoot Alana, but I would if she forced me to do that. Why did she have to go and do all this? Why was ‘no’ such a bitter pill for her to swallow? If Sophia got hurt or was already hurt, I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself. There was no way this was going to end in casualties. The back door led into the kitchen. I could go in and slide into the great room where they both were unnoticed if I watched where she was in the room and was careful.
From inside the house, I heard the conversation they were having a lot more clearly. Alana was shouting while Sophia’s voice was calm and measured. I felt the powerful urge to take my gun out and just stop Alana right there. I was a good shot, but shooting at Alana was not an option when Sophia was so close to her. She sounded crazy, who knew what she would do if she heard the gun but I ended up missing. Sophia hung in the balance and she was absolutely not going to suffer because of this. Because of me.
If Alana was a guy, I would have killed her already, no question. If she was a man, she would have been history the first time she decided to try my wife and me. I watched Alana circle around the room like she was a vulture, waiting to pick the meat off Sophia’s bones. How was I ever attracted to her?
I sighed. We all make mistakes. I put my gun back in its holster and moved towards the great room. I was going to get her. I just hoped she wouldn’t get Sophia first.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sophia
There was no possible resolution to this that was positive.
I had lost track of time and Alana was beginning to get impatient. She kept looking up at the clock that was mounted on the wall and the Cartier timepiece on her wrist, pacing up and down the room with increased agitation.
“Where is he?” she said out loud. She was clearly stressed and annoyed, and it made me more worried that the gun was still in her hand as she moved her arms around. “Did you tell him I was here?”
“No, how could I? I've been sitting here this entire time,” I told her. She looked at me suspiciously and swore under her breath. Whatever patience she had had coming into this was wearing thin—and now she was just mad. She was mad and I was most likely the person that she was going to take her anger out on.
“You know, he never liked girls who looked like you,” she said, stopping and looking at me. Now, that just wasn’t fair. She caught me at a bad time. I was pregnant and recovering from the death of my father. Excuse me if I didn’t think taking a straightener to my hair or putting makeup on was one of my priorities at the moment. She was in designer clothes from head to toe and didn’t have a human being growing inside of her. I wanted to roll my eyes at her. There were more than a few physical differences between us, but that didn’t matter. I saw the way that Marcelo looked at me. The way he put his hands on me and the way we made love. It didn’t matter whether he liked girls that looked like me because he liked me and that was the only person he had any business liking anyway. I knew she was full of shit, but I wasn’t going to say anything that would make her madder than she already was.
“What do you mean?” I asked her, playing along.
“You’re way too big for him. He likes skinny girls. Taller too. Girls that look like models, you know?” she said, stroking her own hair and then flipping it over her shoulder.
“I had no idea,” I said, tired.
“I figured. You don’t know a lot of things about him. I mean, it’s not your fault. You wouldn’t, you know, because your marriage is fake and all.”
God, she was unbearable. No wonder Marcelo only kept her around to fuck her.
“He liked to watch me with other girls,” she said. I wanted to check out then. I didn’t need to hear the dirty details of Marcelo’s past sex life with other women, but I couldn’t provoke her, not when she was the one with her finger on the trigger.
“Watch you do what?” I asked innocently.
“Have sex, obviously,” she spat before laughing. “He’s never asked you to bring anyone to bed? Don’t worry, he will. It’s what he likes. I can’t believe you didn’t know that. His dad made a horrible selection. Really.”
I was weary at this point. I didn’t want her words to get to me, but to be frank, they were. I knew, cognitively that they meant nothing, that her word was garbage against Marcelo’s, but I was getting tired. I wouldn’t be able to take too much more of her jabs when I was this emotionally drained. Was she trying to provoke me so she could get me to attack her first, shoot me, and then plead self-defense? At one point I would have thought she was above that but not anymore.
“Alana, what do you want with me? If you’re mad at Marcelo, be mad at Marcelo. Tell him how you feel so you can resolve this. It doesn’t have to be this messy, and it doesn’t have to be a fight. All of this is unnecessary.”
“No. Don’t you see this is all your fault! This is because of you. It had to come to this because of you. Before you came along, he was mine! He was mine and you ruined it!” she screamed. I grimaced a little because she was getting louder and louder. Her arms were flailing around and the gun was too. “If I can’t have him, neither can you. I’m not going to let you take him from me.”
This was hopeless. I had thought initially that if she wanted me dead, then I would already be dead. She had been stalling, saying she was waiting for Marcelo, but she was growing more erratic by the minute. Who knew what she would do next? Especially when she was this keyed up. It was no use. She brought a gun with her—and whether it went off on purpose or by mistake, someone was getting shot today—and it was not going to be me.
She was increasingly distracted and she was getting madder by the second. She was taller than I was, but she was on those heels, her center was off. I could rush her and take her down. There was no way she was stronger than me, pregnant or not. I could get the gun out of her hands.
; I watched her make a revolution around the room, passing behind me. I reached for my phone in my waistband and stopped the recording, taking the phone out and carefully placing it on the seat next to me. I peered over my shoulder and saw her with her back to me. It was my chance. Just as she turned to head towards me again, I saw Marcelo come up quietly behind her and pin her arms to her sides so she couldn’t raise them to point the gun. She screamed and tried to spin around and see who it was. I ran up and took the gun from her.
“Call the police,” he said to me. He held Alana’s hands behind her back. She flailed and struggled to get free. I dialed 9-1-1 and hurriedly told them the address and what was happening.
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