Love's Shadow (Brothers Maledetti Book 2)

by Nichole Van

  But it just made me wonder even more about my brother. If I had a touch of Tennyson’s empath abilities, had he started to manifest hints of my clairaudience? Possibly even Dante’s clairvoyance?

  There was no manual for our GUTs—nothing saying that they had to be logical or rational or, heaven forbid, static.

  Again, not that any of us talked about it. For being so close, we brothers were experts at erecting walls between ourselves.

  “No. Something happen?” I asked.

  A sigh. “You might say that.”

  His pain flickered through me. Longing. Heartache.

  I imagined Tennyson running a hand through his short hair. A twist of his mouth. Face turned toward a window, looking out over the Tuscan countryside—the view from the family villa near Volterra—the place Tennyson lived away from people and their emotions.

  This wasn’t a taste of clairvoyance, per se. More like a solid understanding of my brother’s location and physical tics. We were womb-mates after all.

  “Lucy . . . she’s here in Italy—” His voice hitched, pained. “There’s been an . . . incident.”

  My lungs stopped, every molecule in my body coming to attention.

  Lucy . . . my Lucia . . . fear whispered through me.

  Fear for her. For me. For Tennyson.

  Instantly, emotional walls flared into place around my mind. Instinctual. Born of long habit.

  Tennyson could never know how I felt about Lucy. It was my biggest secret. My personal hell.

  I visualized bricking my love for her behind enormous castle walls. Tennyson could ‘feel’ Dante and me over a distance. Would he sense this too?

  “She is?” I sat down, proud that my voice didn’t sound as breathless as I felt. “Lucy’s here? Is she okay?”

  I focused on the shocked/surprised portion of my emotions—the ones that Tennyson would expect me to have, forcing down my own longing and heartache.

  “Physically, she’s safe, I think,” Tennyson said.

  I couldn’t control the relief that pounded through me.

  It had been too long since Tennyson and I played this familiar dance. The one where he was Lucy’s boyfriend and talked about her all the time, and I turned myself into an emotional pretzel and pretended—somehow, someway—that I didn’t love his girlfriend too.

  “Apparently Jeff got a job with some company outside Florence—you remember her brother?”

  The image of a stocky, ginger man with kind eyes floated through my memory. “We met a couple times. He’s the oldest brother, right?”

  “Yeah. Number two.”

  Lucy was number six of nine. Children, that is.

  “Anyway, Jeff and his wife left on a trip, and Lucy is here watching their daughter. The little girl disappeared yesterday morning. Just vanished out of her bedroom sometime right after sunrise.”

  “Crap.” Horror washed over me. Mostly mine, I was sure, but I still sensed that ‘outside-ness’ of Tennyson’s emotions in the mix.

  “My thoughts exactly. Normally, a child wandering off wouldn’t be such news, but the only clue is a bloody handprint on her dresser. The police suspect foul play.”

  I closed my eyes, swallowing hard. Knowing what Tennyson was going to say next. No clairvoyance needed.

  “As the last person who saw the girl and the only one in the supposedly locked apartment, Lucy’s a suspect in her disappearance.”

  Oh, Lucy.

  “She would never hurt that little girl.” My voice emphatic.

  “Exactly. You and I know that, but the rest of the world doesn’t. And my Lucy is in a foreign country dealing with this awful thing on her own.”

  My Lucy . . . his possessive adjective wasn’t lost on me.

  “She wouldn’t call me,” he continued. “Not after how everything ended.”

  “No. She wouldn’t. None of us are on her speed dial.”

  A pause. Tennyson was apprehensive about something. No . . . shame. He was ashamed.

  What—?!

  “I . . . I can’t help her, Bran,” he whispered. “I’ve sat here for the last two hours since I heard the news . . . trying to find the courage to just call her or reach out or something—”

  I closed my eyes, that sense of shame deepening. Of failing those who relied on him yet one more time.

  Oh, Tenn . . .

  A hefty sigh. “I’m not strong enough right now,” he continued. “I’m not in a good place. I can barely keep myself together . . .”

  Preaching to the choir, brother.

  “Lucy needs help, not my scarred, crippled . . . lameness,” he said.

  I winced, the self-loathing in Tennyson’s words stinging. I could imagine him rubbing the stub just below his hip. The place where his left leg had been before Afghanistan and a roadside bomb.

  “Dealing with this, Branwell . . . it’s more than I can emotionally handle. A wise man knows when to fold his cards. So I did the one thing I can do. I called you.”

  Despair filtered through. Blackness. A desire for oblivion . . . anything to stop the pain.

  That razor thin line that Tennyson always walked between coping and . . . not. Memories crowded in.

  Tennyson curled on his bed. The sheet unnaturally flat where his left leg should have been.

  “You going to get up today?” I asked from the doorway.

  A shake of his head.

  “Tomorrow?”

  Another shake.

  “You can’t mourn Lucy forever.”

  Silence.

  And then so softly, I barely heard . . .

  “Watch me.”

  Another memory flitted . . .

  Blood. So much blood. On the bathroom floor. Pooling in the bathtub around him.

  “Dammit, Tenn . . . What have you done?”

  I scrambled for a towel, anything to stop the bleeding from his slit wrists.

  “You have to let Lucy go,” I said. “This isn’t worth your life.”

  “Can’t,” he whispered back. “Can’t let her go. Have to cut myself free.”

  Viciously, I pushed the memories back.

  Enough.

  Tennyson was healing, moving on. He was better than he had been. Not whole. Not quite to the point of functional, but definitely into the coping stage.

  We had all worked so hard to help him climb out of this pit. I refused to allow anything to push him back in.

  “Will you?” Tennyson asked. “Will you help her? You and Dante? My gift is not that useful in this sort of situation anyway. I only feel emotions a few minutes into the future. Great for detecting a possible roadside bomb but not as useful when trying to find a missing child. Dante might be of some help, but he only sees dead people. Besides, he’s still leaving tomorrow to join Claire in Boston with her mom going through cancer treatments and all. You, on the other hand . . .”

  “Of course.” No hesitation.

  I would do anything for him, including cutting out my own heart. Which . . . been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.

  And now I was going to do it all over again.

  “Thanks, man. I owe you . . . big time.” Tennyson’s relief washed over me. “I can’t let Lucy deal with this alone. She was never the bad guy here, just the one who was strong enough to walk away.”

  And there it was. The heart of the problem—pun intended. He wasn’t over Lucy.

  Join the club.

  “I’ll get Chiara to help,” I said.

  “Great idea. She has the right connections and loves this stuff.”

  Chiara, our younger sister—dark, petite and one hundred and ten percent Italian, our American mother’s genes having passed her over. Chiara did enjoy a good mystery and had friends in the police community.

  We talked for a moment longer and hung up. The entire time, I ruthlessly pushed aside thoughts of Lucy.

  Bury her. Tamp her down. Lock your emotions in a bomb-proof bunker.

  Tennyson could never know.

  I called Chiara and chatted
logistics. She promised to track down Lucy’s contact info for me. (Translation—she was going to wait an hour and then send me the information she already had to make it look like she wasn’t keeping tabs on Lucy.)

  Next, I texted Dante. He was in an early morning meeting with that client about the how-to enchiridion but, assuming Chiara located Lucy for us, he would join me as soon as he could get away. Reminding me, yet again, that Dante’s eagerness was a two-edged sword: he could be nosy and pushy, but he would also drop everything to help.

  I climbed the three flights of stairs from the basement pool to my apartment where I showered and prepped for the day. And each time Lucy’s blue-green eyes blasted through my defenses, I pushed her away.

  Each remembered breathy laugh. Each bounce of excitement. Her endless cheery bubbly-ness.

  I stuffed them all deep down.

  A blessed numbness settled over me. Detached. Unfeeling.

  The necessary state I habitually sought when anything Lucy-oriented reared its head.

  It was only as I finished dressing that something slipped through the cracks.

  I pulled open my dresser drawer, digging for a pair of socks, when my gloved hand brushed against a lacquered box. Inlaid with wood, it was one of the pretty boxes tourists buy in the markets around San Lorenzo in downtown Florence.

  I hesitated only a second before raising the lid, absorbing everything that lay inside.

  At the very top was a blank piece of paper, the edges ripped into a ragged heart shape.

  I stared at it for a moment. Undecided. And then lifted it out, touching the paper heart to my bare forehead.

  Paper tearing.

  “Branwell, this is for you. A message for your ears only.” Her voice. Soft. Giggly. “Happy birthday, big guy. I hope you have a day free of non-vegetal green things and full of choosing fun. Know that you’ll always have a friend in me.”

  I allowed myself fifteen seconds of weakness. Fifteen seconds of watching her wild mass of hair spin around as she laughingly pulled me away from my schoolwork to go out with her and Tennyson. Waiting for her as she stopped to photograph another heart-shaped leaf, Tennyson chuckling at my elbow. Seeing her tear-streaked cheeks as she walked out of our apartment for the last time.

  I tucked those memories and a thousand more back inside with her note, shutting the drawer with a firm click.

  Long ago I had chosen my side, my team.

  And it was firmly beside my brother. Not the woman we had both loved . . . and lost.

  Seven

  Portland, Oregon

  Six years earlier

  Branwell

  Hey, Branwell. Do you have a second?” Lucy’s chipper voice breezed through the phone connection.

  “Sure.” I ran a hand over my face. Just the sound of her voice sent my stupid heart to thumping—an eager puppy straining at its leash, tail frenzied.

  Down, boy.

  “Tennyson is in the middle of taking that forestry test, so he’s too far away to feel anything from me. Which is a good thing right now,” she said. A murmur of voices. The sound of screeching metal. “I need someone to help me take my mind off things.”

  “Of course, Lucy. What’s going on?”

  She laughed, breathy. And then grunted. More metal scraping.

  “Lucy? What’s up?” My heart pounded harder.

  “Some stoned idiot ran a red light and t-boned my car.”

  “What?! Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I think I’m okay. I can wiggle my feet, so that’s good.” She laughed again. Was that a gasp of pain? “But talk to me, Branwell. Distract me from thinking about the Jaws of Life.”

  As if on cue, metal squealed.

  A voice drifted through. “Stay with us, ma’am.”

  Panic choked me.

  “Lucy, are you still in the car?” I grabbed my own car keys and raced out of the apartment.

  “Uhm, yeah. But Clint and Joe here say they should have me out in about fifteen minutes.” Her voice slipped away. Muffled. “You guys said fifteen minutes, right?”

  “Yeah. Hang in there,” a man shouted. “We’re going to cut you free.”

  Terror washed me. I pushed back a vision of Lucy, bleeding and battered, trapped in a mangled vehicle.

  “I’m coming, Lucy.” I slid into my own car and maneuvered out of the parking lot. Hands shaking. “Keep talking to me. Are you in pain?”

  “Some. My head hurts and I taste blood in my mouth, but I don’t think I broke anything.”

  A tense pause.

  “You’re way too calm.” Anxiety fluttered against my sternum. “I think you’re going into shock.”

  “No, I tend to get like this in a crisis. My mom once accused me of being the person who would scream ‘Weeeee’ in a plane crash.” She snorted. “It wasn’t a compliment.”

  “Well, safe to say we found your superpower.”

  “What? Pathological cheerfulness?”

  I chuckled. That was why I loved this girl . . . that right there.

  “I would have gone with ‘perpetual optimism’,” I said.

  “Eh, it’s overrated.” Another screech of metal. “I’ll probably fall apart later, but for right now, I’m holding it together.”

  That’s my girl.

  “You just keep doing that, Lucy.” I shook my head. “Keep doing that.”

  Eight

  Prato, Italy

  2016

  Lucy

  I have your passport. You will not leave the country.” Inspector Silvia Paola, the lead investigator in charge of Grace’s case, fixed me with her dark eyes.

  “Okay,” I nodded, blinking back tears yet again, my eyes scratchy and throat swollen.

  We stood in the central hallway of Jeff and Jen’s apartment, morning sunlight bouncing cheerfully through the windows. Officers had been in and out for the last few hours, asking me questions, dusting for fingerprints, asking me more questions, taking items as evidence, snapping photographs and then asking even more questions.

  But so far, there had been no answers. Grace was just . . . gone. Vanished.

  Worse, we hadn’t been able to reach Jeff and Jen, as they were in a remote part of Africa without connectivity. They were blissfully enjoying their safari, unaware their child had disappeared into thin air.

  “You may travel anywhere in Italy, as long as you let us know where you are,” Paola continued in her heavily accented English.

  Paola was an odd mix of femininity and cool reserve. Petite and attractive with expertly applied makeup and a sleek, bobbed haircut, she wore her police uniform like armor. No-nonsense to her core, Paola gave monosyllabic answers and employed a ruthlessly effective glare.

  “This is my card.” She handed me a business card, all in Italian, of course. “You are to call every morning and check in. We are allowing you to be free for now, but that can change if you are not cooperative. You will also immediately call if you remember anything else.”

  It wasn’t a request.

  Because there was only one prime suspect in Gracie’s disappearance, and I had two thumbs pointed firmly at my own chest.

  How could I be living this nightmare?

  Numbly, I swallowed and took the card from her. “Thank you,” I whispered and tucked the card into the pocket of my sweatpants.

  Grace. My little Gracie . . . gone. So utterly, inexplicably vanished.

  The first hours after realizing she was missing, I had assumed I would find her quickly. That she had slipped out somehow and would come bouncing back up the stairs with stories about chasing a pigeon across the cathedral piazza. I would scold her for giving me a good scare, hug her and then go get some gelato to celebrate her being alive.

  But each hour that passed without any sign of Grace, I became more and more frantic. I had finally called the police yesterday afternoon, which quickly escalated from two officers on my doorstep to an entire investigative team headed by Paola. They had arrived again this morning in force, grilling me ag
ain and combing the apartment thoroughly.

  Over twenty-four hours of no answers or signs or real clues had left me bereft. I had worked enough with wilderness survival and trauma to understand how important the first twenty-four hours were to any missing child situation. Nausea cramped my stomach when I thought about time slipping away.

  Why, why, why had I gone back to sleep? Grace was my responsibility, and I slept through her abduction. I should have been awake. I should have been guarding over her, protecting her.

  I had one job.

  How could I ever forgive myself?

  Paola turned as an officer stepped out of Grace’s room, holding a crate in his hands and asking her something in rapid Italian. Paola responded. The officer shrugged and held out the crate allowing Paola, and by extension me, to see its contents—some clothes, a tissue carton, Grace’s beloved stuffed elephant and her Little Mermaid music box.

  More things to add to their investigation.

  Paola waved the officer through and out the front door.

  This continued for another hour, the officers and Paola talking back and forth.

  I was counting the minutes until they left, until the apartment was mine alone. I had been able to keep myself more or less in Coping Mode—the one where I functioned and dealt with a crisis. But after nearly a day of interrogation and accusation, I was nearing nuclear meltdown stage.

  “We are leaving,” Paola finally announced, the last of her officers disappearing out the door. “We have a mid-morning press conference at the police station in ten minutes. Any paparazzi who remain here have been told they are not allowed in the palazzo without specific permission. I recommend you do not talk with them, as doing so could harm this investigation. Besides, the press can get . . . aggressivo. We will talk tomorrow. In the meantime, I suggest you do nothing.” She swiveled to leave and then turned her head back to me. “I watch your American television, all those shows with the detectives and police. Do not play the hero and try to solve this case. Allow us to do our job.”