I steel my spine and force myself to my feet. I’m trembling. My knees are weak, my hand sweaty around the strap of my backpack.
Never let the kidnapper get you into his car. Isn’t that something they try to teach you? That once you’re in, your chances of escape decline sharply.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I force the words out. I’m not only scared. I am terrified of this man. And I know if I leave with him, I will have no chance.
He smiles, a quick, short smile accompanied by an audible exhale. Like he’s put out. Inconvenienced.
“It’s 12:01, Cristina. Happy birthday, by the way,” he says the last part like it’s an afterthought. “You’re mine. Now, we’re on a tight schedule. Are you walking to the door, or am I carrying you?”
My heart pounds and my stomach flutters. He is so calm, so in charge, and so completely unflustered. Exactly the opposite of me.
“You should know that I’m not a very patient man. This will go easier for you if you do as you’re told.”
“I’m sorry if my not waiting for you to kidnap me in my own home has inconvenienced you,” I challenge with strength, or stupidity, I didn’t know I had. “And I don’t know what century you grew up in, but women don’t do as they’re told anymore.”
He smiles, and this time, it remains on his face.
“Cute,” he says.
I want to tell him to go fuck himself, but something tells me to hold my tongue.
“You’ve wasted everyone’s time, including mine. Look at all those poor people having to wait out in the cold and rain for you to do as you’re told.”
“I don’t know what you think this is, but we live in a civilized society. That contract you had my father sign before you put that rope around his neck wouldn’t stand in any court of law. So just get away from me. Get off this train and let us go.”
“You make quite the accusation. I believe you were safely tucked into your bed the night your father hanged himself. In fact, I tucked you in myself and even tried to comfort you when you were frightened.”
“Comfort me?”
“Tell me something,” he starts, cocking his head to the side. “Are you still afraid of the dark?”
Something in his eyes fills me with dread.
It’s a question. Just a stupid question. He’s trying to scare me. Threaten me. And probably embarrass me while he’s at it.
“Because if you don’t walk off this train by the time I finish my sentence, I have a very special place in mind to put you once we’re home.”
Home?
He leans toward me, and I lean backward. “No nightlight, Cristina.”
My heart is beating so fast, I feel the flutters of each pulse at my chest, my neck. The hand that’s not clutching the backpack is tightly fisted.
He pulls his hands out of his pants’ pockets and reaches into his jacket to take something out of the breast pocket.
It takes me a moment to process that it’s a syringe. It’s just all so strange. So unreal. This is stuff you read about. Not reality.
“I brought this for you. In case you decided to do something stupid rather than going quietly,” he says. I swallow as his eyes move to it and mine follow. “But you know what?” He tucks the needle back into his pocket. “I don’t think I want you to go quietly.”
He reaches out to caress my hair and when I try to pull away, he fists a handful of it. We didn’t cut it short enough.
His expression changes, hardens, and I should scream for help. They’d come, wouldn’t they, all those people outside?
Damian tugs me close so our foreheads are almost touching. “When you run, I will come after you. I will always come after you. You belong to me now, Cristina. For better or for worse.”
“Let me go,” I say, the strap of my backpack slipping out of my hand.
Seemingly without any effort at all, he forces me to walk ahead of him, my head tilted at a painful angle, his fist too tight in my hair.
“Get away from me!”
“You’ll be punished when we’re home,” he promises as the automatic door swooshes open, and cold, wet air slaps my face.
We’re not on any platform, and the step down is too far so when we reach it, he shifts our positions. He goes ahead of me, releasing my hair. But instead of helping me out, he wraps an arm around the backs of my knees and hauls me over his shoulder.
“Let me go!” I shout, seeing one of his men follow with my backpack in his hand. I’m watching as the passengers who were on the train with me stand there, mouths agape, eyes wide at what they’re witnessing. Yet no one moves to do a thing. No one helps me. Not even the conductor who shifts his gaze away from mine when I catch his eye.
“Help me!” I cry out, struggling against Damian’s grip, which is like a band of steel around the backs of my legs. His shoulder is as hard and unyielding as a brick wall.
We’re moving toward one of three SUVs, all of which have windows tinted black.
I fight. I fight with all I have because I know once I’m in one of those SUVs, it’s over. It’ll be that much harder, if not impossible, to escape.
But it’s already impossible. He has a half dozen men with him, at least of those I see. And they all stand so casually by, some even smoking while Damian Di Santo kidnaps me right under everyone’s noses.
“Please help me!” I pound against his back, wriggling in every direction. He just keeps on walking, never increasing his pace because he’s casual too. Not worried that someone might call the police. Not worried that someone might try to stop him.
I crane my neck to see we’ve reached one of the SUVs. One of his men opens the back door. Damian shifts his grip and I’m lowered toward the back seat. The back of my head hits the frame of the door.
“Careful,” he says with a chuckle.
Once I’m in, I hear the conductor give the order for the other passengers to board the train again. Damian climbs into the back seat beside me and closes the door.
I scoot away to the opposite side, frantically trying the locked door as the vehicles begin to move in a row, one ahead of and one behind ours. I turn to him and for as panicked as I am, as I frantically, fruitlessly search for a way out, he just grins. He takes out his phone as he reclines in his seat and clicks on something.
It’s when I hear the music of a game—a fucking game—that I lose my shit.
Jerk. Fucking jerk.
“You can’t do this,” I yell, seething as the train grows smaller and smaller, and we drive over a bump and onto the road.
“I just did. Put your seat belt on. It’s a dangerous world.” He makes eye contact briefly before shifting his attention back to his phone.
I lunge for him, wanting to smash his phone to bits, wanting to scratch my nails across his perfect, smug face.
But he’s too fast.
The phone’s gone in an instant, and he seizes my wrists hard, hurting me as he tugs me close. He shifts his grip so he’s holding both wrists in one hand.
“Don’t make me hurt you,” he warns.
“Fuck. You.”
Slate eyes darken to coal black. He reaches into his jacket pocket and I watch in horror as he takes that syringe out. He shifts my arms, trapping them between his thighs and grips my hair to force me down onto his lap, turning my head so I can see him.
“No!” I try to pull my arms free, but it’s impossible.
Keeping hold of my hair, he uncaps the syringe with his teeth, and spits the lid away.
“What did I just say?”
“Let go!”
“No, that’s not it, sweetheart,” he says.
He pushes air out of the needle, and I feel a few drops of whatever’s inside hit my cheek.
I try to move my head, to get away as he brings the tip of the needle toward me.
“I told you not to make me hurt you, but you aren’t yet ready to do as you’re told.”
“Please don’t,” I try. He pushes my hair off my neck and turns my face slightl
y, so my nose and mouth are pressed against his thigh.
For a moment, I’m not sure what he’s doing and everything goes out the window when I try to take a breath and can’t. I struggle to pull my arms out from between his legs, try to turn my head to no avail. Just when I think I’m going to smother to death, I feel the needle in my vein. Feel him empty the contents into me, painful and cold and final.
I can breathe again after that. And he’s petting my hair, my cheek resting on his lap. He’s not holding me down because he doesn’t have to.
I can’t move.
He turns my head so I can see him through heavy lidded eyes.
“What…” I trail off.
“Next time, do as you’re told.”
My eyes close and I can’t open them anymore. I feel his fingers on me, gentle as they brush hair from my cheek. And as much as I try to fight it, try to stay awake, I can’t.
6
Damian
Recapping the empty syringe, I tuck it back into my pocket.
“Thirty minutes, sir,” says the driver.
“Is my nephew settled?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And my sister?”
“Still at the hotel, sir.”
“Good.” I glance out the window.
Thirty minutes to the airport. Another hour in the air, followed by a half-hour drive home.
Home.
The thought sours my mood.
I brush the hair back from Cristina’s face. It’s still to her shoulders at least, although I liked it longer. Something to wrap my fist around. But I suppose I’ll manage.
I want to see her. I want to look at her face, study it, this girl, this symbol of our hate. This vessel to absorb our rage.
I’ve seen pictures over the years. Memorized images as she grew from that barefoot little girl into the beauty asleep on my lap.
Well. Not quite asleep. Drugged.
I knew I’d use the needle when I brought it and I don’t have any qualms about that. I expected her to disobey and I know she will again. It’s in her to fight.
And it’s in me to win.
Her skin feels soft beneath my fingertips, warm. Flawless but for the scar that runs from her mouth down over her cheek, neck, and disappears inside her sweater. It’s faded now. I wonder how deep it runs. What I’ll find when I undress her to see all of her.
My cock stirs at the thought.
Even though she doesn’t know it, a portion of the last almost decade of my life has been devoted to Cristina Valentina. After the accident, and especially after my sister Annabel’s passing, she became a focal point. Something to distract us from the loss, perhaps.
I think of my sister. She should have died the night of the accident. We should have let her go. But this is one of the few instances where I understand my father.
It was too much. Too much loss to contend with. My mother. The unborn baby inside Annabel. My brother who lived but maybe should have died. Who walked away, turning his back on the family.
The brother my father cannot let go of. The one whose shoes I will never fill.
Michela’s words repeat in my mind. She’s right. If he comes back, my father will want to give him everything.
And that’s why I need to secure it all now. Cristina will be that final piece. It’s ironic how integral a role she’ll play in my family. My whipping girl and my saving grace in one.
Of course, it’s not all to benefit me. My proposition will save her life.
I look down at my sleeping beauty and remember that second bed in her room from when she was little. Her brother’s bed. I know what it’s like to lose someone close to you. Annabel and I were close.
I run a knuckle over her cheekbone. Brush the pad of my thumb over her lips.
She stirs, her forehead wrinkling as she struggles to open her eyes. She mutters something, heavy lashes fluttering as she tries to fight off this sleep.
She should give in to it. It’ll be easier for her.
Just like she should give in to me. That, too, will be easier for her, but I don’t think she’ll do that. And a part of me doesn’t want her to.
When we reach the private airport, I carry Cristina out of the car and onto the plane. We could drive, but this is faster.
The staff stands by and watches. No one stops me. No one questions why I’m carrying an unconscious girl onto the plane. No one will. Because in that decade that I watched her, I’ve also rebuilt the Di Santo shipping empire, and I mean what I told Michela. I am the Di Santo family now. And if we were powerful then, well, now we are formidable. I am a force to be reckoned with.
Once we’re on board, I set Cristina into a seat, recline it, and strap her in.
“Put a blanket over her and get a pillow under her head,” I tell the flight attendant, whose expression momentarily makes me wonder if I’m wrong. If she’ll question this.
But she’s quick to school her features and fall in line.
“Yes, sir.”
Most people don’t have a backbone. This flight attendant is no exception. She scrambles to do as she’s told, and I pour myself a whiskey before taking a seat at the back. I look out the window into the dark night. The rain’s picked up again. It’s been dreary in Upstate New York, too.
I drink my whiskey and lean my head back in the darkened cabin. The doors are closed, and the captain announces travel conditions and arrival time as we make our way down the runway.
The jet picks up speed, and I close my eyes, giving myself over to the sensation of liftoff. In my mind’s eye, I see Cristina’s face. See her violet eyes. For the duration of the flight, that purple haze puts me under its spell, and I can rest.
Because once we arrive at our destination, there will be no rest for me.
The storm in the city is nothing compared to this.
Cristina is still passed out. She will likely remain so for a little while longer when she’ll wake up with the mother of all headaches.
The Range Rovers wind along the dark, single-lane road toward the house. I look up at it, at the mountain surrounding the family home. This stretch of forest and mountain has belonged to the Di Santo family for almost four-hundred years. When my ancestor, Benjamin Di Santo, first built the house, it was a much humbler home. Every head of the family since him has added on to it, made it bigger, stronger, made our family more powerful.
The peaks of the chimneys come into view beneath the low-hanging clouds. Surrounded by acres of dense forest and steep mountains, there isn’t a neighbor for miles. It’s the perfect place to keep her.
Strangely, our family’s tragedy is what began the rise of the Di Santo dynasty. Benjamin’s sister, Alessandra, was killed in an accident in the mountains surrounding the home. Although I’m not sure I believe it was an accident at all. She fell to her death during a hike when she was only sixteen. Benjamin witnessed her death. The two were rumored to be very close and losing her impacted him for the rest of his life.
To the Di Santo family, the ties that bind some choke the others.
It’s all so enmeshed, but we’re all bound in some way. Michela tried to escape it, escape us, but here she is, back again. Lucas is gone, and for as much as I hope he stays away, a part of me knows it’s only a matter of time until he’s back.
As we turn onto the unpaved road and drive along the twelve-foot wall that will lead to the gates of the house, I can see that the lights are on in my father’s rooms. I’m sure he’s been awaiting our procession, but he won’t greet us at the door. He’ll wait. Calculate his first meeting with her. When it comes to her, his mind is still sharp. Focused.
He was much older than my mother when he married her, and now, at ninety-two, he’s a frail old man. Between his age and the cancer, his body should have given out years ago, but every night when I see him at the dinner table, I wonder if he won’t outlive us all.
Hate can do that to a person, I think. Become the poison inside your veins that fuels your heart to keep beating long after it s
hould have stopped.
The imposing gates slide open as we turn the final corner. As if I need another warning, dark clouds obscure the upper levels of the house. It’s another mile before we reach the circular drive to the front entrance.
The SUVs come to a stop before stairs that lead to the eight-foot-tall double doors. Those doors are a part of my legacy, my fingerprint on the Di Santo home. A scene from Dante’s Inferno carved from wood and installed two years ago.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
I stopped short of inscribing that along the arch. I didn’t want to be predictable. I figure the carving itself pretty much tells that story. And besides, hadn’t we all abandoned our hope long ago?
Cristina stirs then, making a sound.
“Shh.” I touch her pretty face. “Sleep a little while longer before it begins.”
My door is opened, and I step out, collecting Cristina in my arms. One of the soldiers is holding a large umbrella over us, but it doesn’t help much with the wind. It doesn’t matter, though, we’re quickly through those terrible doors and inside the dimly lit foyer. It’s always dark inside the house. Even at the brightest time on the sunniest summer day, this dreary place seems to repel light.
“Sir,” Elise, the old housekeeper, greets me. She’s been with my family long enough that she doesn’t even blink at me carrying the unconscious girl into the house. “Ms. Valentina’s room is ready.”
I nod and follow her, our steps echoing as we head toward the wide stone staircase that serves as the centerpiece of the imposing entrance. It’s still magnificent. Something to behold.
After the accident, my father stopped all work on the house. I guess he couldn’t bear the thought of beauty around him when the only things he valued, the people for whom he would create beauty, were taken so cruelly from him.
I guess that’s another way I understand my father.
Although quite frankly, I’m also tired of it. His despair nearly cost our family everything. I’m the only reason we’re back on top of our world, powerful and feared.
Unholy Union Page 6
