by Lisa Cardiff
“Yeah. Dominick would rip Sal a new asshole if he found out he touched you, and it’s probably for the best. I know Sal seems like a nice guy, but he’s got a dark side like the rest of the men associated with this family. And trust me, the dark side always comes out when you least expect it.”
My eyes widened, and I grabbed her hand, squeezing it. “Oh crap, Lettie. Did Pietro hit you again?”
I had no clue how often Pietro roughed her up. I’d seen finger-shaped bruises on her upper arms once about a year ago, and a split lip six months before that. She didn’t elaborate other than to say she and Pietro had a disagreement.
She blinked rapidly, then pushed her envy-inducing silky hair away from her face. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You need to tell someone. You can’t keep living like this.”
She covered her face with her hands. “You’re right. I know I should do something, but I can’t. I don’t have a job, I don’t have any money, and my family won’t help me. My parents think I’m lucky to have him after everything that happened before…you know.”
She’d never clarified how she wound up married to Pietro, but I heard plenty of rumors. Apparently, she was dating some guy she went to NYU with, and she got pregnant. He freaked out and forced her to get an abortion. Somehow her parents found out and made her drop all of her classes and marry Pietro.
“We’ll figure this out.”
“No. No.” She dropped her hands to her sides and backpedaled a few steps. “I don’t want you to get involved. I’ll take care of it. I’m working on something.”
“Oh. Okay. That’s good.”
“Yeah, so anyway, enough of my baggage.” She pulled me into a hug, and her spicy cinnamon smell enveloped me. “Happy birthday, Emilia.”
“Thanks for coming, Lettie.”
“Where else would I be? You’re the only thing resembling a friend I have these days. None of the other wives like me.”
I stepped out of her embrace and gave her a halfhearted smile. “Yeah, well, it’s their loss.” I knew what she meant. The other wives shot her glares when no one was looking. I didn’t get it, and I didn’t expect to. Without a mother, I wasn’t privy to the gossip of the women in the family.
“So what’d Sal get you?”
“Oh.” I chuckled sheepishly. “Binoculars.”
“Binoculars? What’s that about?”
“I guess it’s kind of an inside joke.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“Not really.” I lifted one shoulder. “It’s just me being a dork, that’s all. Nothing exciting.”
“Right, well…” She glanced at her silver wristwatch with diamonds lining the face. As much as she claimed to hate Pietro, he showered her with expensive gifts. Designer clothes, jewelry dripping with precious stones, and expensive purses that would pay most people’s rent for a month or two. “I should get home. You know how Pietro is. He’ll have a list of accusations to throw in my face if I stay much longer. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s not a big deal. I’m going to sneak up to my room now anyway.”
She snorted. “That’s a good idea. The wives have quarantined themselves in the living room to gossip about everyone who isn’t here, and the men are doing their thing in the study.”
“What about Gian and Carmela? Are they still here?” They were the only people who might notice my absence.
“No. They took off about a half an hour ago.”
“Then I’ve done my duty.”
She tugged on the pink boa around my neck. “By the way, I like this look on you. With the black shift dress, your hair pulled back, and the boa, you remind me of a flapper girl. It’s cute, but you always look so cute.”
I rolled my eyes and pulled her in for another hug. “Yeah, whatever. Being cute is overrated. I wish I looked more like you. I’m pretty sure the wives are all jealous. That’s why they act so cold toward you.”
“It’s a lot more complicated than that. See you later, Emmie.”
CHAPTER SIX
I paused mid-descent of the front steps from my piano teacher’s brownstone. The balmy spring day air embraced me, reminding me summer was right around the corner. Closing my eyes, I raised my face to the sky, letting the sunshine warm my face.
“Emilia.”
I opened my eyes, and my stomach clenched. “What are you doing here?”
Sal pushed away from the iron railing, his arms folded across his navy suit jacket and dark aviator glasses shielding his eyes. “Gian had some stuff to take care of so I volunteered to pick you up.”
“Um, yeah, no thanks. I’ll pass.”
He opened up the back passenger door of a black sedan with dark tinted windows. “Come on. Get in the car. I don’t have time to dick around right now.”
“Then don’t. I’ll find my way home.”
I skirted around the open car door and trotted the down the sidewalk, my black lace-up boots clipping a panicky metronome over the concrete. Nearly two and a half months had elapsed since he kissed me on my birthday, and every day my anger grew and grew both at him and myself. The five or six times I saw him he looked right through me like I didn’t exist. An invisible nobody. Someone completely beneath his notice.
The first encounter felt like he plunged a dagger into my chest. I’d spent the ten days between my birthday and that moment dreaming up all these scenarios where we’d start dating, he’d profess his undying love for me, and we’d live happily ever after.
When I recognized his voice in my father’s study, I lingered outside the wood and glass double doors, drinking in the chiseled angles of his face and the way his shoulders filled out his suit. By the time he emerged from the room, my face was heated from waxing poetic about his masculine beauty. To my horror, he sauntered right by me, offering nothing more than a frown and slight pursing of his lips.
I still didn’t give up hope. Nope, I rationalized his behavior a million different ways all of which fed my unhealthy infatuation. After five more weeks and a handful of meetings where he couldn’t be bothered to mumble a greeting, I got his message loud and clear. He didn’t want anything to do with me, and I had experienced enough rejection in my life without willingly inviting more.
The chance run-in outside the office of my father’s bar completed my trifecta of humiliation. He had his arm around some blonde woman who was my complete antithesis. Curvy to my petite frame, colorful dress to my drab black t-shirt and boyfriend jeans, light to my dark, sexy to my cute, carefree to my moodiness.
And like magic, the final remnants of my obsession with him died a hard, cold death. Summoning my best poker face, I looked right through him like I didn’t know who he was. Like he never meant anything to me. I’d worked hard to keep him from intruding in my thoughts since then, which underscored why I needed to get the hell away from him before I relapsed like the Sal junkie I was. While I could delude myself with the best of them, the way my heart leaped and my nerve endings tingled when I heard his voice told me all I needed to know. Despite all my efforts, my fascination with him was alive and well.
“Godammit,” he grumbled from behind me, the car door slamming with a loud thud. “I don’t have time for this shit.”
“Good, then we’re on the same page. Do what you need to do and leave me alone.”
His hand clamped like a vise on my shoulder, and he spun me around. “The fuck, Emilia?”
“Don’t touch me!”
He raised his hands in the air next to his head. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Why are you here?”
“I told you already. Gian needed—”
“No. The real reason. Gian could’ve called Carmela, my Aunt Helena, anybody really. You’d be the absolute last person he’d send to pick me up, which means you offered. I know that doesn’t make any sense considering how cold you’ve been since my birthday. That’s the only reason I can think of.”
He ripped his sunglasses from his face and hung
them from the collar of his shirt. He tipped his head to the brilliant blue sky, his hands buried deep in his pockets. I drank in the clean lines of his face and exaggerated pout of his lower lip like I was dying.
Evidently, his physical and mental distance made it easy to forget how attractive he was, which made it even more imperative to get the hell away from him. Nothing and no one could convince me to risk a thirty-minute drive home in close quarters with him where I’d further commit his smell and the unique color of his eyes to memory.
“Look, Em, I—”
“Emilia,” I growled, hating how much I liked the nickname on his lips.
“Fine. Emilia. Is that better?” I nodded, and he blew out a breath. “Kissing you was a mistake. You’re eighteen, and I’m twenty-one. If your dad found out I took advantage of you, he would fit me with a pair of cement boots.”
I ground my teeth together until I could suppress my hurt and anger enough to reply. “I agree. It was a mistake.”
“You agree?” He sounded confused, as if he couldn’t believe I would have given up on him so easily.
Well, he underestimated me, because I would rather stomp on a bed of hot coals than beg for scraps of attention or affection from him or anyone else. It was one of the few lessons my father taught me that I took to heart. Love not given freely wasn’t worth my time. I wholeheartedly agreed.
“Yep, especially since you seemed to read a lot more into it than I did. What’d you think? One kiss and I’d demand a marriage proposal?”
“Well, you fooled me because you seemed pretty into me that night.”
With hooded eyes, his gaze slowly dragged up and down my body, and some mixture of a shiver and a thrill arrowed through me. Well, that settled it. I couldn’t trust myself not to do something stupid like ask him to kiss me again, or worse, plead with him for a morsel of affection.
I ripped my phone from my pocket and summoned the closest car. Lucky for me, one was less than a minute away.
“I must be a good actress because I haven’t thought about the kiss or you since that night.”
“Is that a fact?” He inched closer to me until the tips of his black loafers brushed against the toes of my boots.
“Yes.” My voice wavered, and I wanted to slap myself across the face.
“Now you’ve got me curious.”
His body pitched toward me, and I smelled his minty breath. I saw each sooty blade of his lashes and the forest green rim around his otherwise golden brown eyes. My knees wobbled, and the corners of his mouth twitched, drawing my gaze to that cute dent in the center of his lower lip.
“Oh, yeah? What about?”
“Your lips.”
“My lips?” I parroted. My voice sounded rusty, and I clamped my mouth shut with the sole goal of circumventing my traitorous body’s urge to betray me more than it already had.
He glanced at my lips. “I remember them being so soft.”
My heart nearly flew out of my chest, and I couldn’t think of a single think to say in response. He shifted, his lips only a centimeter from mine, maybe less. Giddy with anticipation, my blood hummed, and all of my self-righteous rage evaporated like a tendril of smoke. There I stood like a lamb being led to slaughter, my eyes fluttering and my chin lifted invitingly.
Do it.
Sal pulled back. “That’s what I thought.” He enunciated each word like a master of ceremonies announcing the winner of a boxing match. Maybe he was, and I definitely came out as the loser.
My eyes popped open, and I blinked. Humiliation rushed fast and hard through my veins, multiplying my barely suppressed anger tenfold. A choking sound erupted from my mouth, and I felt sick deep down in the pit of my stomach. The fact that any two-timing molecule of my body craved a kiss from him pissed me off. I was full-on stupid. There was no other explanation.
“Now get in the car, and I’ll take you home. As fun as this has been, I don’t have any more time to play games with you.”
Not a second too soon the car I summoned pulled to the curb and the driver rolled down the window. “Emilia?”
“Todd?” I said, recalling the name of the driver from the app on my phone.
“That’s me.”
I glanced at Sal as I climbed in the car. “Well, I’ll hopefully see you again, um, never.” Smirking, I slammed the door closed. Sal took a step forward, his eyebrows plaited together and his lips curled over his teeth. Oh shit, he was mad.
“Can we go please? This guy is harassing me,” I said, my voice breathy and rushed.
“You got it.”
A chorus of honks and crude hand gestures accompanied the driver’s sharp swerve into oncoming traffic. I slumped down in my seat and covered my face with my hands.
What the hell was that about?
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I can’t believe your dad actually let you out of the house.”
I set my cappuccino on the round table and pulled out a metal chair across from Lettie. “He lets me go places.”
“Oh please. You can’t even take a stroll around the block without a guard. He must really want you to learn how to play the piano if he’s allowing you out of the family compound twice a week.”
I glanced nervously at the door. Tony, or Tony Red as everyone called him, sat at an empty table with his back to the wall. Lately, he’d become my official babysitter. I guess Gian was too busy to be bothered with me now that he was officially a made man. Apparently, they were grooming Gian for bigger and better things, whereas Tony didn’t have the aptitude to be anything other than a soldier. While he made a decent enforcer, he didn’t have much earning potential. I could see their point. He gave the impression of being short on independent thought and dimmer than a burnt out light bulb.
I hitched my thumb over my shoulder in Tony’s general direction. “Well, you’re right about that. I definitely have a babysitter today. That’s the only reason I’m here.”
Lettie leaned forward conspiratorially, lowering her voice a notch and hiding one side of her mouth with a perfectly manicured hand. “Too bad, your dad didn’t pick Sal. That would’ve been much more entertaining. Tony is such a dud.”
Bitterness bubbled up my throat at her reference to Sal. I hadn’t seen him since he toyed with me after my piano lesson, which was all right with me. I’d be perfectly content to avoid him for the rest of my life. It still irked me that he had to get in that last dig instead of allowing me to walk away with my dignity intact.
“Tony’s not so bad,” I answered, not wasting any brainpower on Sal. As far as I knew, no one except Lettie witnessed our kiss during my birthday party, and I wanted to keep it that way. Eventually, the whole debacle would be relegated to the dustbin of irrelevant events.
“Maybe you’re right. I don’t know Tony that well. He works with your uncle most of the time, not Pietro.” She took a sip of her coffee, her eyes glued to me. “So what’s the deal with you and Sal? You haven’t mentioned him since your birthday, and I gotta admit I’m kind of surprised. You looked all excited when you came inside after sucking face with him.”
Cringing, I glanced over my shoulder making sure Tony wasn’t listening to our conversation. I didn’t want word to get back to my dad. He’d have ten people following me around if he got a whiff of anything remotely improper happening between Sal and me. Even worse, he’d punish Sal, and although I considered him a giant asshole, I didn’t want to sic my dad on him. Luckily, Tony was absorbed in a phone conversation.
“I already told you, the thing with Sal wasn’t a big deal. He kissed me. We haven’t talked much since, and I don’t expect anything to happen between us. I want to make a break from the family, and he’s busy building a life as one of my dad’s minions. End of story.”
“I know, but you wouldn’t be the first girl to get sidetracked by a pretty face, and Sal has one helluva face.”
“Eh, he’s okay,” I lied, internally lamenting that God wasted such good looks on a conceited prick like Sal.
“Oh shut up.” She shoved me in the arm. “You can’t deny he’s one fine specimen even if you don’t like him. If I weren’t married to Pietro the Warden I’d be interested.”
“Don’t call your husband that. Tony might hear you. Then they’ll know you know.”
“I don’t care. The guys call him that, why can’t I? After all, it’s true. He kept that man chained up in our basement and—”
I slapped my hand over her mouth. “Stop talking about that. You know nothing good will come of bringing that up. You’ll be considered an accessory because you didn’t do anything about it.”
She dragged my hand from her mouth. “I didn’t have a choice, obviously, and I wasn’t supposed to know about it. I never would’ve if I didn’t stumble onto that surveillance video.” She raised her eyebrows. “And don’t forget, you’re the one who suggested I snoop around the house, so I hold you partially responsible.”
“I was joking. I didn’t think you’d actually do it.” I leaned forward. “By the way, did you keep a copy of it?”
“Fuck no. I didn’t want anything like that in my possession. It’d be like signing my death warrant. Besides, those videos automatically delete every twenty-four hours.”
“Did you ever find out who he was?”
She trailed her finger along the rim of the white coffee mug, her eyes downcast. “No. I didn’t even try. More than likely he was some shmuck who owed Pietro money. A nobody who gambled away his family’s future.”
“Probably. You can’t be right in the head if you go to Pietro or my dad looking for a loan.”
“That or you’re incredibly desperate.”
Uncomfortable with the turn of our conversation, a lump threatened to clog up my throat. I agreed to meet Lettie to take my mind off all the bad shit in my life. Yet, somehow my dad’s extracurricular activities always managed to irrevocably shape every facet of my life. Permanently severing ties to the Trassatos was the only way to get out from under his shadow.
