Renata Vitali

by Huntington, Parker S.

  Weekends were the worst. I had no electronics, I saved reading for my library nights with Damian, and I could only sleep so much. There was nothing to do to pass time. Damian spent most of the weekends out of the house.

  But this week, Angelo left for Oklahoma to seal another oil deal, and I hadn’t heard Damian leave his room. The housekeepers even dropped off his breakfast and lunch to his door. Still, neither of us approached the other. I spent the day lying in bed, mostly staring at the ceiling. In silence. So much silence.

  In the jungle, silence is a sign of danger. Animals know to stay silent when a predator comes. The mafia world is a lot like the jungle, and I should have considered this with each passing second.

  And then I heard it.

  The first grunt.

  I thought I was hearing things at first, but then it happened again. The sound came from the wall Damian and I shared. I sprung out of bed and inched closer. Another grunt. Dragging the nightstand to the air vent, I stood on it.

  Angelo wasn’t here. This couldn’t be a beating. And when I peeked through the vent and caught a blurred image of Damian in bed, I knew it was definitely not Angelo. I couldn’t make out a clear image through the vent, so I scrambled off the nightstand and onto the bed.

  I pulled the covers over me as if they’d protect me from the image spearing my brain.

  Another grunt, but this time, he added, “Fuck, yes.”

  A feminine moan filled my room, and she panted out, “Yes, Daddy. Faster.”

  Damian groaned out, “Feels so good.”

  I ducked my hand beneath my sheets and toyed with the trim of my panties. I was going to Hell. Damian moaned again, and my fingers dipped below the fabric, teasing my clit. Listening to Damian with another woman shouldn’t have hurt me, but it did. It gutted me. Still, I couldn’t stop touching myself.

  “Yes, please. Faster. Faster. Faster. I’m so close.”

  Dear Lord, there were two of them.

  Two. Girls.

  That gut-punch feeling could go to Hell. I didn’t own Damian. No, I didn’t even want him. Right? But the sounds of his grunts hitched my breath, and driving away this lust seemed impossible. I tried to push it out of my head, wondering what the hell I was doing.

  “Harder,” one of the girls begged.

  I slid two fingers inside of me and pictured Damian above me. His hand was on my breast, my neck, my hair, his scent everywhere. I was close. I could hear him groaning from his room, too, and I came. Breathy. Moaning. Way too loud.

  Definitely going to Hell.

  My cheeks burned as I came down from the high, unable to believe what I’d just done. I made a mess on my hand, so I slid off the bed to sneak across the hall to the bathroom. Damian’s door opened the same time mine did.

  I considered pretending I hadn’t seen him before deciding that would be too obvious. I turned to face him and crossed my arms. “Your dad has a ban on guests, and I wouldn’t piss him off. Not that you’re around to see it, but he’s been on a rampage lately.”

  His eyes flattened, and he skimmed them over my body. “Has he hurt you?”

  “No.” I peeked around him, trying to peer into the room as subtly as I could.

  “There’s no one in the room, Princess.”

  “But I heard—” I faltered, not liking how pathetic I sounded. “There was a girl—”

  “Porn, Princess. It was porn. You’ve never watched it?” His amusement had me reconsidering the past twenty minutes. He knew I could hear him through the vent. Had he done this on purpose?

  I shook my head. “I heard—”

  A smirk lined his lips. “It’s called jacking off. You know, self-pleasure. Masturbating. Cleaning your rifle.”

  “Okay, I get it.”

  “Painting the ceiling. Playing the skin flute. Choking the cyclops.”

  “Damian.”

  “Milking the lizard. Dishonorable discharge. Croaking the frog.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “Firing the flesh musket. Giving a dirty handshake. Basting the ham.”

  “I swear to God—”

  “—Taking the sausage hostage. Emptying the cache. Clearing my browser history.”

  “You like to touch your penis. I get it.”

  If it were anyone else, they’d be laughing at his words. Neither of us laughed, even when we poked fun and prodded one another’s buttons. Damian sobered. The silence between us reminded me of the jungle. Except he was the predator, and he’d already come.

  “Angelo will return later today.” Damian’s eyes ran over me once more, methodical and almost detached in their perusal of my body. As if cleaning him in the bath had never happened. And then he said the most unexpected thing. “If my dad tries to hurt you, find me.”

  It was little things like this which told me he cared.

  And it was the pathetic pattering of my heart which told me I did, too.

  Love meant jumping off a cliff and trusting that a certain person would be there to catch you at the bottom.

  Jodi Picoult

  “I think it’s unrealistic. Impossible, even.”

  Who knew, between the two of us, Princess would be the pessimist and I, the idealist?

  I eyed the article of great-great-grandfather Ludovico on the wall, careful to keep my eyes off of Ren. I was well aware that I enjoyed our nightly literary debates way too much. “You don’t think people have the innate goodness in them to rally for a common goal?”

  The magazine felt heavy in my hand. Not because it was an issue of Playboy, nor because it was a limited edition 1984 run, but because it was the only thing keeping me from striding across the library’s timber floors and kissing Princess. Vitali blood or not, I wanted her. Craved her in ways I’d never allow myself to pursue. She was, after all, a Vitali. And I was, after all, a lowly De Luca prince.

  “Think about it like this. Decent people don’t commit hardcore crimes, nor do they always follow the rules. They sneak into the carpool lane or speed when they shouldn’t, but they’re not out there murdering people. They don’t go out of their way to donate all their non-basic essentials, but every once in a while, they’ll volunteer at the local animal shelter. They’re just… normal. Balanced. Trying to live their lives as best as they can, but sometimes their best isn’t the best.” She sat on the divan across from me and set her copy of The Toynbee Convector down.

  Her eyes darted to my Playboy, which held the original copy of the short story we were discussing. “Say there’s a normal distribution of goodness in the world, and the average person, at 50%, is a decent person. That would mean there are 34% of less-than-decent people, 13.5% of bad people, and 2.5% of awful people. That’s billions of people that aren’t even decent. You think they could muster up all that gushy goodness to create a utopia based on the crazy rantings of a self-proclaimed time traveler?”

  “Fucking hell.” I shook my head, ignoring how hot her arguing made me. I wanted to pry that paperback from her hands and replace it with my body. “Did you really just ruin Ray Bradbury for me?”

  “Maybe you should learn to debate better.”

  “Maybe you should learn to—”

  My dad’s voice rang in the hallway as he yelled at one of the maids. Ren’s disappointed eyes met mine before we both scanned the room. She scrambled upward and slipped behind the nearest floor-to-ceiling drape, hiding like we were doing something wrong by spending time with each other. Maybe we were, but it didn’t feel wrong until someone invaded our bubble.

  “Ah, there you are, my prodigious son.”

  I turned to Angelo as he swung the double doors open, and they struck the doorstoppers. “Obviously.” I paused a beat, a carefree smirk I didn’t feel curving my lips. “I didn’t think you knew what ‘prodigious’ meant, but hey, I didn’t think you could find the library either.”

  “Shut your fucking mouth or your biggest life accomplishment will be cleaning toilets at The Landing Strip.”

  My dad owned The Landing Strip,
the one and only strip club in Devils Ridge, but he didn’t know I frequented the place. Not for enjoyment, but to network. To show the De Luca soldiers and caporegimes how they could be treated if they supported me.

  And I had cleaned the toilets there. I helped the staff, got my fucking hands dirty, made jokes with them on their breaks, asked them about their sons and daughters, and showed them just how much more I cared for them than my father did. Just one of my many steps to dethroning Angelo.

  I dipped a hand into my pocket and leaned a hip on one of the divans. “What do you want?”

  “You see the Vitali girl lately?” He sneered and whistled at the same time, which was kind of impressive if you thought about it. “She’s growing.”

  I leaned further against the cushion and forced myself to remain impassive. “You’re sick.”

  Angelo took a seat on the divan closest to where Ren hid. “There’s an opening at The Landing Strip.”

  “And?”

  “And it’s time we made that Vitali girl earn her keep.” Behind my dad, the drape shifted. Ren must have been pissed, or creeped out, or both.

  “Earn her keep? You’ve been cooped up in this town too long, old man.” I eyed Ren’s copy of The Toynbee Collector beside him. “That idiom no longer refers to room and board.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” I ran a hand down my face and contemplated the millions of things that could be running through Ren’s mind right now. “Seriously, what do you want?”

  “The Vitali girl working at The Landing Strip.”

  I couldn’t be related to Angelo.

  Just fucking couldn’t be.

  He was the sperm that should have been swallowed.

  And I was his offspring.

  What did that make me?

  The muscles in my neck tightened. “She’s a minor, and she’s a Vitali. Either of those reasons alone should be enough to dissuade a rational person fit for the position of De Luca mafia boss.”

  He ignored my dig—just barely, I suspected. “The Vitali need to know their place.”

  “What do you think happens when a minnow picks a fight with sharks?”

  My dad stood up, his fists clenched at his sides. “Watch your mouth, son.”

  I had been.

  For eighteen fucking years, I had been.

  But I felt my plan coming to fruition, and I needed him to lose control for it to work. I needed him to take a swing at me and make contact. Somewhere visible, where the physical proof couldn’t be missed. A black eye, perhaps.

  “Oh, Angelo. You don’t get it, do you?” I shook my head and tsked. “You’re the minnow. The Vitali are the sharks. And they will eat you alive.” I rose from the divan until we stood eye-to-eye, arms width apart. “Feel free to facilitate your own death, but leave the De Luca name out of your mess.”

  “You will not disrespect me like this.”

  “I already have.” I’d always taken his abuse without a word, and maybe he’d gotten used to it because his eyes expanded before forming angry slits. Still, he needed more provocation. I let loose a deep, disrespectful chuckle. “Or what, Dad? You gonna kill me like Great-great-grandfather Ludo killed his son? I dare you to fucking try.”

  Hatred brimmed in me, such a contrast from my time spent with Ren, and with her mere feet away, I wanted to stand up for myself. I didn’t want her to see me like this. Didn’t want the patience I needed to take over the syndicate to coerce me into taking the emotional abuse my dad had been spewing my way since childhood. Didn’t want to wait for this damned plan to work before I destroyed him.

  But I needed him to punch me. I needed there to be physical proof of him losing control for the soldiers and capos to see. An inkling of doubt lurked in my conscience. Ren didn’t need to hear this.

  Too late.

  Dad swung at me, his form all brute and no finesse. I feigned a dodge to maintain appearances of a fight but let his fist connect with my face. It connected hard enough to leave a bruise. He adjusted his suit while I fell to the floor. As he towered over me, a sharp laugh struck the air before he walked away.

  I leaned my head back onto the floor, thinking about the million times he had dished a similar punishment to me. Usually with a belt on my back. This time around, the marks would be visible. This was what I wanted, wasn’t it?

  Self-pity clogged my throat, making the breaths I forced myself to take sluggish. A few seconds after the door clicked shut, Ren emerged from behind the drape and stared at me. She moved a step closer, and a lock of hair loosened from her bun and covered her right eye. Didn’t matter. I had the color memorized.

  She looked particularly angelic in that moment, though. The light blonde hair. Pale skin. Eyes an inhuman shade of amber. But I preferred her naughty side. The one that argued with me—all strength, backbone, and sass. I wondered which side she’d give me now.

  I waited for her to say something. The more time passed, the more I convinced myself she’d rub what had happened in my face. Self-pity didn’t flatter me, but I did nothing to stop it from building.

  I could have curled my lips up into a smirk. Made a witty remark. Told her how hot she looked from this angle. But that would make a mockery of our friendship—and we were friends, even if she didn’t know it yet. Hell, sometimes it was even hard to admit our friendship to myself.

  She opened her mouth, and I braced myself for her words. “Pick yourself up, Damsel.” My eyes hardened at the nickname, the context striking me harder than I would ever let on. I opened my mouth to retaliate, but she beat me to it. “Angelo De Luca is weak, and when you dwell on the punishment he dishes, so are you.” She brushed the hair out of her eyes, giving me half a second to absorb her words. “But that’s not who you are. Is it, Day?”

  One day, when I didn’t have my head so far up my ass, I would look back at this moment and realize it was precisely the moment I fell for Knight.

  After all, damn it, what does being in love mean if you can’t trust a person.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Girl power. Noun. Power exercised by girls, specifically in the context of supporting oneself and fellow women. Origin: coined by American punk band Bikini Kill. Alternative spelling: grrrl power.

  Antonym: Laura Willis.

  Laura had supporting herself down to a T. I would give her that. But when it came to empowering other women, she fell as flat as a slashed tire. It had taken me five seconds at Devils Ridge High to realize exactly the type of obstacle she would pose for me, and months later, I could confirm the accuracy of my initial assessment.

  Which was probably why pickpocketing her phone wasn’t the best idea I had ever had, but other than my nightly forays with Damian in his home library, boredom had become a sibling of mine. Plus, I needed a phone to contact Maman.

  Devils Ridge, like other small towns, possessed more gossip than a lifetime subscription of Us Weekly magazines. Only, nearly everyone in this town had mafia ties, turning it into an incestuous community of shared dirty little secrets.

  One of which was the ban that had been placed on phones for me.

  My teachers kept me away from tablets, phones, and laptops. No one would lend me anything, Angelo had cleared the household of stray electronics, and I’d never ask Damian for a phone because I didn’t want to break the tentative truce he and I shared by reminding him of how we’d met in the first place.

  I wasn’t normally a thief, though I happened to be good at it. The thin metal felt powerful in my hands as I leaned into my locker and typed out the password I’d seen Laura entering during AP English Lit the week before. It opened without trouble, and I pulled up her browser app and checked my emails.

  None from Maman.

  My head and hands buried in my locker, I drafted an email to my mom.

  From: Renata Vitali

  To: Margot Vitali

  Subject: Earth to Maman?!

  Hey Maman,

  I tried to reach you months ago on a phone. It wasn’t mine, and I no l
onger have access to it. I haven’t heard from you, and I’m worried about you. Are you okay? I’m sure Papà told you where I am and gave you orders not to contact me, but just know I’ll be looking out for word from you just in case.

  I’m staying with Angelo De Luca—he has a son!—at their mansion. Papà gave the order to remove communication privileges from me. Papà wants to silence me, Maman, because I saw him doing something he wouldn’t want you to know. Honestly, I would rather tell you what happened in person. I know you cannot defy Papà and move me back to Connecticut, but maybe you can visit. I can tell you in person.

  I miss you Maman. You’re probably worried about me, but don’t be. I’m fine. I’ll stay fine, too. I just needed to tell you that I’m safe, and I need to talk to you. I’ll find a way to get access to the internet again soon.

  Love You,

  Ta petite guerrière

  A hand gripped my scalp and yanked my hair back before I could press send. The phone clattered to the floor as my face left the locker. Laura’s eyes met mine. Crazed. So crazed I knew she’d forgotten her place below me in the mafia hierarchy. The hierarchy that was probably the only reason these kids had left me alone all these months.

  Damian emerged through the crowd, his eyes leaping from Laura to me. We’d been doing the secrecy thing, and this marked the first time he’d been near me at school. There was nothing to out. We weren’t in a relationship, but there would be implications to the complicated relationship we did have.

  Still, I wondered what he’d say or do, so I waited for his reaction instead of sending an elbow backward into Laura’s gut and taking care of this in my least preferred method of dealing with people—physical fights.