Footsteps

by Susan Fanetti

  “You ask a great deal, nephew. We do business with her husband. You know this. He is a man of great influence and power. You know this as well. You risk much—and not only for yourself—to take him on, even through us. You know that asking us to take such a risk on your behalf will come with a high price. For a woman you barely know. Are you sure?”

  “Uncle, he hurts her.” He had nothing else to say, and he hoped it would be enough. He thought it might. Uncle Ben’s firstborn daughter, Lita, had been terribly abused by her college boyfriend. Horribly. When she’d come home, weeping and broken inside and out, Ben had rained fire over an entire fraternity house. And what he’d wrought on the boyfriend himself had been medieval.

  Men who hurt women had a special place in Ben Pagano’s hell.

  “You know this to be true?”

  “Yes. I’ve seen the marks. And I saw it happen. He hurt her in public, and people just watched. They let him.”

  “Did you watch?”

  “No. I stopped it. Then, at least.”

  Uncle Ben cocked his head and looked hard at Carlo. Finally, he nodded. “I understand your terms. You understand mine. You pay the price I assign, when I assign it.”

  “Yes. I ask that if this arrangement helps the family, you take that into consideration when assigning the price.”

  Ben’s face split into a broad, proud smile—Carlo had made a shrewd amendment. “Good. Yes, I agree.” The smile disappeared. “And if it hurts the family—business or personal—I will take that into consideration as well. You understand that the latter is more likely?”

  “Yes.”

  Uncle Ben stood and stretched his hand across his desk. “Then we make this agreement.”

  Carlo stood and shook his uncle’s gnarled, spotted, but still strong hand. The deal had been struck.

  ~oOo~

  Before Carlo could close the heavy front door, Trey barreled into the entry from the kitchen and straight into his legs. “Daddy! Daddy I want to go sailing and look for sharks!”

  The family had a little twenty-foot sloop docked in the harbor. It got a lot of use in the summer. But Carlo wasn’t in the mood to go sailing. He needed some time to think and come to terms with what he’d done, and he wanted to figure out a way to contact Bina. He’d checked the call log on the phone last night, but her number had come up blocked.

  Maybe, though, what he needed was something else to think about. He felt exhausted. He picked his son up. “You do? I think we could do that—but after lunch and nap.”

  Trey pursed his lips, more contemplative than pouting. “Aunt Rosie said she’d make us a sea picnic. And I’m a big boy. I don’t need a nap.”

  Carlo was getting the continual impression that his baby sister was trying to get in his business. Keeping him busy. Now, she came in from the kitchen, looking cute and fresh in white shorts and a blue and white striped bikini top. Her streaked hair was up in a high ponytail, making her look like Helen of Troy—in a tiny bikini. “I put a nice meal together. And if Trey crashes, he can sleep on the boat. I thought I’d go with.”

  He shook his head and smiled. “I think you’re scheming, Peanut.”

  “What? It’s a nice day. Trey and I are bored. You’re the best sailor in the house. Entertain us.”

  Yeah, this was a better idea. He needed to find a way not to obsess. Bina didn’t want that, and he didn’t, either. It wasn’t healthy. So, he packed up his little sister, his son, the dog, and a picnic lunch and drove them all back down to the harbor from which he’d just come.

  They spent a few hours on the water. Elsa was great on the boat, having been seaworthy since she was a pup. She had a life vest of her own, and she knew to find her spot and stay there. A naturally calm dog, it wasn’t unusual for her not to move anything more than her head for the entire time they were out.

  They had lunch, and Trey had a short nap. While they were at anchor, a pod of dolphins swam by, and Carlo tried to convince Trey that they were sharks. He’d gotten a very condescending look from his child, and then a patient lecture about the difference between dolphin fins—which were ‘bendy in the back’—and shark fins, which were ‘like triangles.’ It was a good afternoon, and Carlo found his center. The sea always helped him find his center.

  Carlo had figured Trey for a quiet afternoon after the excitement of a sail, but he was very well rested after his sea snooze, and on their way back to the harbor, Carlo had seen a cluster of people at Carmen’s beach. After they docked and stored the sails, Carlo asked, and Trey was enthusiastic about the idea of finding the rest of the family. Rosa was, too, so they drove to Carmen’s and pulled their beach gear from the back of Carlo’s Macan. Impromptu beach parties—happened all the time.

  Trey tore on ahead, Elsa loping after him. Rosa, on her phone with a college friend, lingered roadside, sitting on the hood of Carlo’s car. If she scratched his paint with the rivets on her shorts, Carlo would have a serious talk with her. He said as much, and she stuck her tongue out at him.

  Just before Carlo came to the beachside corner of Carmen’s little cottage, Luca met him and handed him a beer.

  “Gotta tell you, man,” Luca smirked. “I get it now, and I’d better say this before you’re in a position to take offense. I’d seriously consider blowing up the whole family, too, for just one chance to get my hands on that.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Luca nodded at the beer in Carlo’s hand. “Drink that. You need it. You got company.”

  As his heart picked up its pace, Carlo’s feet did the same. He turned the corner and saw Bina, sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs around the fire ring, her long, dark hair loose and tossed by the breeze, her golden legs crossed. She was wearing a black bikini that left virtually nothing to the imagination and chatting amicably with, of all people, Carmen.

  He opened the beer and drank it down.

  When Carmen saw him, she stood and came over, her smirk not much different from Luca’s. It was like his siblings were all in on a joke together—one at his expense. “Okay, big brother. I’m your cover. Sabina is my new bestie. She came down the beach a couple of hours ago, looking all lost. So I made nice, and she’s ‘visiting me’.” She made the air quotes. “You’re lucky—I actually like her. Come sit with us, and try to pretend you don’t want to pork her on sight, okay?”

  Struck dumb, Carlo nodded and let Carmen lead him to the fire ring. All the siblings were present. Even their father was there, down the dune, bending over so that Trey could tell him a story, probably about sailing. And there was Bina, in the bosom of his family. The thought was exhilarating and terrifying all at once.

  ~ 8 ~

  He was wearing long, faded red shorts, slung low on his hips, and nothing else, and he was beautiful. His chest. Mother Mary, his chest. Long and muscular, the chiseled space between his shoulders lightly covered with dark curls, a long, thin line of hair bisecting his sculpted belly. Sabina lost her breath.

  He was staring at her as breathlessly, and she indulged a little vanity. She was wearing her Keds to protect her wounded foot, and she’d been worried that they ruined the look of her bathing suit—and then she’d felt silly for being worried. But seeing the hungry way his eyes took her in, lingering over her chest and belly as she’d lingered over his, she’d known that she looked fine.

  She’d worn the black two-piece with the fuchsia embroidered trim because she knew that it worked for her—the top had the right support without being bulky, and the bottom had enough coverage not to be indecent but no more than that. It was James’s favorite, but she set that thought aside.

  She’d wanted Carlo to see her. Like a schoolgirl, she’d wanted him to find her beautiful. And now he was coming toward her, his light brown eyes fixed on her, devouring her, and she felt pride and hope. And fear.

  “Bina.”

  “Carlo.” She started to rise, but he held his hand out, stopping her.

  “No, sit.” He sat in the chair on her other side; Carme
n returned to her seat. “I’m glad to see you. Are you all right?”

  “Yes. You?” It was a silly thing to ask.

  But he answered in a way that surprised her and made her heart speed even more. Leaning toward her, his voice low, he murmured for her alone, “Missed you.”

  “Carlo.” She turned and looked into his eyes. What she saw there was heat and need and care. Glad as she was to see it all, she blinked and turned away. She didn’t like this fear she felt with her hope. Things felt like they were moving too quickly, out of control.

  Luca sat down across the fire pit. Sabina wasn’t sure what to make of this brother. In the time she’d been here, she’d caught him several times leering at her, but he never seemed sorry or ashamed to be caught. He simply smiled, every time, taking the wind out of her irritation. He was built in a way she thought of as ‘thuggish’—like the men James hired to protect him for some of his business. Like all the men here except their father, Luca was shirtless, wearing long shorts. He had more hair than Carlo on his chest, in a lighter shade of brown. He also had tattoos on both biceps and across his belly. His brown hair and beard were close-cropped. He looked like the kind of man she should be afraid of.

  But he had that disarming smile. So he unsettled her. But Carlo’s ease with him told her that he was a decent man.

  He smiled at her now, his eyes on hers—they were light, perhaps blue or green—as he spoke to his brother. “We were just telling Sabina about the killer whale that beached a couple of years back. Remember that?”

  Sabina turned back to Carlo and saw him nodding, still looking at her. “Yeah. That was pretty cool,” he answered.

  “Luca said you saved it. All of you.”

  “Yeah. The whole town, really. We kept him wet, dumping buckets of sea water on him, and then the fish and wildlife people came and we helped ‘em dig a trench. When the tide came in, we floated Shamu right back out. It felt good to see him swim away.”

  “Scary though, that such a fish would swim so close to people.”

  “Not a fish,” Luca jumped in. “Whales are mammals.”

  Sabina felt herself blush a little at her mistake; she knew better. But Luca’s correction had felt condescending. She lifted an eyebrow at him. “Thank you for the biology lesson. Will there be an exam?”

  A wide smile evolved across Luca’s face, and Sabina could read surprise, then humor, then appreciation in the movement of his mouth. Instead of answering her, he turned to Carlo. “Nice. I might have to turn on the charm, brother. Take you on.”

  She cocked her head at that. “You think you have so much charm?”

  Luca’s response was a full-body laugh and then a nod of surrender.

  She spent most of her days making small talk with other society people, and she excelled at party chat. She was known for it, known to be a sparkling party guest, because she knew the right mood to strike, with whomever she spoke, whether she’d just met them or not. She could read people well—a skill she’d honed of necessity, married to James and needing to read him quickly and accurately and to make decisions about her own responses.

  But she’d rarely indulged in the kind of barbed banter she’d just started with Luca. It was too much like flirting, and James would have ‘corrected’ her for it. When she cast a quick eye to Carlo now, feeling almost guilty, Sabina understood for a final certainty that she was putting Carlo in James’s place, gauging his responses as if she were accountable to him. It frightened her. And it made her furious with herself.

  But he was laughing, shooting his brother a look that said he was enjoying their exchange, and she was so relieved and enchanted by his carefree enjoyment that she set aside her worries about becoming attached. Right now, she wanted to be attached. She was already.

  And wasn’t that why she was sitting here, on his sister’s beach, surrounded by his family? Because she’d missed him?

  The Escalade had followed her back to the house after her trip to Quinn’s the previous evening. She’d noticed that it had tailed her more closely than before, and she decided it meant that James was becoming impatient that she had not yet, as far as he knew, noticed her stalker. It had made her smile. Moreover, still feeling the heady pleasure of Carlo’s lips on hers, and the warm way his large body had enveloped her, she felt a kind of vituperative aggravation at her husband and his petty, vicious games. For all his vast wealth, his power and influence, for all the ways he had her under his thumb, he was at his core nothing more than a cruel little boy.

  So she continued to ignore the Escalade and its wide-bodied operator. James’s latest innocuous text, that evening, had read: Checking in, Bina. All well? Miss you. He had never expressed those last two words in any way in fifteen years of marriage. She’d responded, All is well. Getting the house ready.

  Since their marriage, excepting public expressions made for the benefit of an audience, he’d never told her that he loved her or that he missed her, and he’d never demanded those words of her, either. It was not love he required, but submission. She had no idea how he’d now take the fact that she had not reciprocated his faux sentiment. She assumed it would provoke him, somehow, and that thought gave her a perverse and reckless sense of pleasure.

  Sitting on the veranda late that night, eating leftover Chinese and watching night waves bringing the tide in, Sabina had realized that she had lost her fatalistic acceptance of James’s plan for her. She was not willing to die, not even for freedom. She wanted freedom, and she felt a seedling of hope, as yet a frail tendril only, that she might have it and live.

  Whether that hope would whither and die remained to be seen. But if James succeeded in killing her, it would only be after a fight.

  She’d woken this morning still suffused with the same strength of purpose. She would fight James. She would not simply let him kill her; neither would she go back, not willingly, and not cowed. One way or another, she would make her stand here.

  Perhaps it was Carlo’s concern for her, his desire to help her, which had planted the seed, but she would not sit back and wait to be saved. Without yet knowing how she would accomplish it, Sabina knew that she had to save herself—not alone, she was no idiot and knew that she would need help, and she was happy that Carlo had offered his, but she would be active and present in her freedom.

  It was with those thoughts making her muscles thrum that she’d decided to drive to Quiet Cove’s public beach. She’d known that the man in the Escalade would follow her, and she’d known that she might very well, therefore, be declaring herself by action. But Carlo had told her he was going to seek help for her. She was not alone. Even if he came away without the help of his family, he was with her. She had tried to dissuade him, and he had knocked her discouragement away. He was with her. For the first time since she was eighteen years old, there was someone in her corner.

  She felt strong. She even felt as if she had a little bit of power. Not much, but enough to make her stand. Let Mr. Escalade see her with the Paganos—let him even see her with Carlo. Let him report back to his master. Let James come.

  Let him come.

  When she’d gotten to the beach, packed with people on this Memorial Day afternoon, she’d wavered a little. Her fight was no longer her own. Because she could not fight alone, she had, albeit inadvertently, brought others into the line of fire. Carlo, yes. But also his family. Perhaps even his young son. James loathed children and would not hesitate to hurt a child if he thought to do so would be the most expedient path to his victory.

  That thought of Trey had stilled her progress toward Carmen’s cottage, where she could see several of the Pagano family—the brothers she’d met, Carmen, their father, and another man Sabina assumed was the other brother—milling about, doing various beach-y things. Neither Carlo nor Trey was there—nor the younger sister, Rosa. Sabina had been standing there, losing her fight, deciding to turn back but unable to make her feet move her away from that pleasant family scene, when Carmen had spotted her and recognized her. She’
d stood for a moment, facing Sabina, her hands on her hips, looking both elegant and wild in a red two-piece with gold rings at the hips and cleavage, and her long, black hair wet and madly tousled, and then she’d strode over, moving smoothly even through the thick sand.