by Leah Wilde
“It’s just that he seems so insistent on seeing you,” her dad said, fidgeting a little with his hands as he looked at Fiona with concern evident in his eyes. “Are you--?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Fiona said quickly, cutting him off before he could even get the question out. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stretched her way to her feet, making her muscles strain uncomfortably as she put them into motion for the first time in hours. Her mind felt oddly clear, devoid of coherent thoughts as she stumbled into motion, checking her reflection in the mirror against her wall to make sure she didn’t look like a complete disaster.
She almost froze in place when she exited her room and saw Vince standing in the front doorway. She didn’t realize until just then that she’d expected to see Guido there, coming to make good on his promise to coerce her into sex she didn’t want. She felt relief wash over her, followed by a numbing, bone-chilling fear. What could Vince want from her? She’d already given up her job just to protect him from his mother, and it wasn’t like she could even talk to anyone about it. If her dad knew about the danger they were in, he’d insist that they’d skip town, but Fiona knew they couldn’t do that. Not with the pending surgeries her dad had coming up at the local hospital. And of course, she couldn’t tell Vince about it. Knowing his stupid, thoughtless self, he’d immediately try to get revenge or do something equally dumb. Fiona couldn’t live with Vince’s death on her shoulders, which made things particularly inconvenient for her since he was standing on her doorstep with a look of determination on his face. Oh, fuck, Fiona thought as she slowly walked forward, keeping the screen door shut so that there was a shield in between her and the man who had the power to bring her to her knees.
“Hey, Fiona,” Vince said, his voice coming out a little awkwardly, while his eyes were glued to hers, following her every movement so that they never stopped staring at each other.
“Hi,” Fiona said stiffly, waving her hand in greeting before letting it fall limply to her side.
“I found out what happened,” Vince said, clearing his throat as he stepped forward until he was practically pressed against the screen door that separated them. “With my mother. Guido told me.”
Fiona scoffed and rolled her eyes up to the ceiling, escaping the magnetic pull of Vince’s penetrating gaze. “Oh, he did, did he? Tell me, what did your precious brother have to say?”
“Well, not a lot,” Vince said, a dry, bitter edge to his voice. When Fiona looked back at him, he was staring at the ground, as if he was ashamed of something. “They ousted me.”
“What?” Fiona asked.
“My mother and Guido. They pulled a vote at my father’s funeral. For some reason, half of the board wasn’t there, and the ones who were there voted for Guido to replace me at the head of the family. It’s over.”
Fiona struggled to come up with anything to say right away. On one hand, she felt a little underwhelmed by the news. After dealing with Mama Romano’s death threats on top of Guido’s intimidation tactics, she just felt relieved that Vince was still alive. Honestly, things were probably safer for him if he wasn’t in control. But at the same time, she could see how crushed he was, the pain that he was carrying around as a result of the board’s rejection. “You wanted to lead the family,” she said, phrasing it like a statement and not a question, even though she’d had no idea until right then.
“Yeah, I guess I did,” Vince admitted, rolling his eyes at himself. “Guido said he’d let you come back, if you wanted to. But I wouldn’t want you to work under him.”
Fiona nodded and clicked her tongue behind her teeth. “Yeah, no, especially not after yesterday and the day before,” she said without thinking.
Vince’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What happened yesterday and the day before?” he asked, clearly ignorant of what Fiona was referring to.
Fiona stared at Vince for a minute, trying to read his features for any sign of deception. “I thought you said you heard what happened,” she said slowly.
“I thought I did,” Vince said. “But clearly I missed something. Did Guido…do something?”
Fiona huffed out a humorless laugh and shrugged. “I don’t know. Does threatening to kill you unless I let him rape me count as ‘something?’” She didn’t know why the words left her mouth, but they just spilled out, like her body was taking control, finally standing up for itself after a year of Guido’s unwanted harassment.
Vince’s face crumpled, his mouth falling open in shock as his eyes widened, staring at her fearfully. He was frozen like that for several seconds, maybe even a full minute before he stumbled forward, pulling the screen door away so that he could step into the apartment and grab Fiona by the chin. “Did he…hurt you? Has he touched you? Fiona, tell me. Has he fucking touched you?”
Fiona tore herself out of Vince’s grasp, stumbling backward until they were no longer touching at all, breathing hard as her body prickled in protest. She couldn’t handle being touched right now. She couldn’t handle any Romano doing anything to her without her consent, not after the terror she’d felt for the past few days. But still, she could see the horror written on Vince’s face, the concern for her etched into every one of his features. “No,” she answered. “I didn’t let it get that far. That’s why I quit.” She cleared her throat before resigning herself to speaking around the lump that had formed there instead of trying to dislodge it. “I did it to protect you,” she whispered, not looking at Vince as she forced the words out.
She almost hated herself for saying it, for being that vulnerable in front of a Romano man, someone who still had power to crush her underfoot, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that he deserved to know the truth. He had to know that she didn’t willfully abandon him.
“Jesus Christ,” Vince muttered, pushing some of the hair off his own forehead and shaking his head in disbelief. “Jesus fucking Christ in hell.”
“It was your mother, too,” Fiona said, suddenly spilling out all the truth at once. What was the point in holding back anymore? Vince had already been deposed. They’d already dealt with him, and now that they were in control, Vince needed to know how ruthless they really were. “Both of them threatened to kill you unless I did what they wanted me to. Threatened my dad, too.”
Vince was quiet a long moment, staring down at the ground beneath Fiona’s feet. “I’m sorry,” he finally murmured, still focusing on the floor as he spoke softly. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”
“Why are you sorry?” Fiona said, an accusatory edge to her voice. “You’re the one whose family is a piece of shit, not mine.”
“Yeah, but they scared you,” Vince said, opening his mouth to launch into a longer statement, but Fiona cut him off.
“Well, I’m glad they did. I should be scared. You should be, too. Vince, I know you know more than you did a couple of days ago, but the reach of the Romano business…it goes farther than you think.” She stepped a little closer to Vince, still taking care that they weren’t touching, and dropped her voice as she resumed speaking. “They could have people anywhere. Everywhere. They could have people watching us right now. There are so many foot-soldiers in the organization. They could have us killed in a second, and we wouldn’t even know what happened before we hit the floor.”
Vince shook his head. “No. They don’t have the whole organization under their thumb. Just half of it.”
Fiona laughed, not because anything was funny, but because she couldn’t find another way to react to the absurdity of what he’d just said. “So what? Half is more than enough to kill us both, plus my dad for good measure. Face it, Vince. We’re fucked.”
Vince furrowed his brow again, his forehead wrinkling up as he concentrated on whatever he was thinking for several long seconds, while Fiona just waited in silence. Finally, he cleared his throat and spoke up. “We could get away, you know. Go somewhere they’d never find us. Your dad could come, too.”
“My dad’s sick,” Fiona said curtly.
“We can’t go anywhere.”
“Oh,” Vince said, looking a little taken-aback. “I’m sorry to hear that. But I’m sure we could find your dad good doctors somewhere else. I have enough money saved up that I can get us anywhere in the world…”
“You’re not getting it!” Fiona cut in, forcing Vince to let his sentence trail off into nothingness. “They’ll never be satisfied. They hate me—Mrs. Romano because she thinks I fucked her husband and Guido because he knows I’d never fuck him willingly. They hate me, and there’s no way they’ll rest if you disappear with me in tow. They’ll hunt us down. Cut us up, even. Make it so that no one will ever find us. They have that kind of power.”
Vince was quiet, shadows passing over his face that prevented Fiona from reading his thoughts from his expression. For a moment, she expected him to turn on his heel and disappear into the night, accepting defeat.
But he stepped forward again, stopping short when Fiona flinched and said, “Tangerine.”
“Your safe word?” Vince whispered, keeping his voice low in case Fiona’s dad was listening in on their conversation.
“I just…I can’t be touched right now,” Fiona said, hugging her arms close to her body as she backed away a little more, deeper into her apartment. “Okay? Just please understand that.” It wasn’t just the rape threats from Guido that had her shaken up. She knew that if Vince touched her, all of her defenses would crumble, and she’d just let herself sink into him. She’d let herself be weak. But she couldn’t allow herself to do that, not here, not when her dad still needed her to be strong.
“All right. I respect that you used your safe word. I won’t touch you,” Vince promised, holding his hands up in the air and backing away one pace so that there was more distance between them. “But I just want to say something. Can I say just one thing, and then you can kick me out if you want?”
“Go ahead,” Fiona said, biting the inside of her lip, punishing herself with pain for being so weak. If she was strong, as strong as she pretended to be, she would have kicked him out as soon as he showed up, just to keep both herself and her father safe. But she wasn’t tough. She was soft and vulnerable and needy, and she was desperate to prolong this last encounter for as long as it could last, just so she had a few more precious seconds with Vince Romano.
“You said they were powerful. But so are you, Fiona,” Vince said, sounding confident and authoritative. Just like he did in the playroom.
Fiona scoffed, fighting off the tingling shivers that ran down her spine in response to Vince’s commanding, certain tone. “What? No, I’m not.”
“You are,” Vince protested. “You really, really are. I promise that you are. Please, just hear me out.”
Fiona sighed and nodded her consent, and even though her mind was screaming at her that she was an idiot for prolonging this encounter, her body stopped trembling. For the first time in over a day, she felt calm, reassured by the certainty in Vince’s voice.
“You know more about this business than anyone. More than me, for sure, but also more than my mother. And more than Guido. You could destroy us all if you wanted to.”
Fiona scoffed and shook her head. “Yeah, I could leak stuff to the FBI and then enjoy my precious two seconds of victory before Guido or your mother gives the signal to have me killed. Face it, there’s no way out of this. I’m fucked.”
“That won’t happen,” Vince said, his eyes shining with urgency. “I won’t let it happen, I swear.”
Fiona clicked her tongue from behind her teeth, reaching a peak in her frustration. “You don’t get it. They won’t hesitate to kill me because they don’t care about you, Vince. They’ll kill you in a heartbeat if it meant—”
Vince cut her off. “No, no, they were just bluffing about that. They wouldn’t actually hurt me.”
Fiona scoffed, turning her head to the side to avoid Vince’s earnest, hopeful gaze. It was too painful to look at, not while the truth she’d been suppressing finally emerged, fully-formed, spilling out of her mouth before she could stop it. “Yeah, that’s what Paulie thought, too,” she murmured.
“What?” Vince asked, sounding utterly dumbfounded.
Fiona sighed raggedly and gestured for Vince to follow her into her bedroom. “Come on, I don’t want to talk about this here.” She waited until they were safely behind her bedroom door, then dropped her voice to a lower volume as she said, “I don’t want my dad to hear us talking about this. He doesn’t need anything else on his plate.”
“Why? What’s wrong with him?” Vince asked, thankfully dropping his voice to match her tone.
“Heart problems,” Fiona said. “But, look, really think about this. If there was a chance that your dad didn’t die of natural causes…would you really want to know?”
In the darkness of Fiona’s room, she couldn’t quite make out Vince’s eyes but she saw his Adam’s apple bob nervously in his throat as he considered her question.
“Look. You don’t have to know,” Fiona whispered. “I’m sure your mother will take care of you, as long as you keep your mouth shut and let Guido rule. You can probably have a really nice life, with the penthouse and the servants and the girls in New York.”
She saw Vince shake his head, right before he stepped a little closer to her. This time, Fiona didn’t move away, letting Vince get an arm’s length away from her. With the shorter distance, she could make out the torn, pained expression on his face, his eyes wide and desperate as he stared into Fiona’s. “You think that’s what I want?” Vince asked, his voice cutting through the dark silence that stretched between them.
“I don’t know what you want,” Fiona said as confidently as she could, even though at some point she’d realized that she no longer knew what they were talking about.
“Yes, you do,” Vince said, reaching forward to brush his hand against Fiona’s cheek, making a thousand nerve endings spring to life on her face, but then his touch fell away, leaving Fiona feeling cold and empty.
Fiona swallowed hard to brace herself, tearing her eyes away from Vince so she could gather the strength to tell the truth. “Your mother and your brother killed your father. I’m almost certain of it.”
“How do you know?”
“I…. you don’t want to know, Vince. Really. Trust me. It’ll be easier if you don’t,” she said, rubbing her own shoulders to combat the shiver that tried to slink down into her bones. She wasn’t trying to be purposely evasive. She didn’t want Vince to have an image in his head of his mother killing Paulie. She didn’t want him to have to bear that burden.
“It doesn’t matter if I want to,” Vince said. “I need to know what you’re talking about. Please. Fiona…”
His pleading voice was killing her, pressing on her from all sides, making her feel like she was utterly trapped. If she said it out loud, it would be real. Really real. She wouldn’t be able to run from it anymore. She’d have to do something about it.
“Okay,” Fiona said softly. “Okay, I’ll tell you.”
Chapter Nineteen
Fiona hesitated, as Vince seemed to go tense, the shadows of his shoulders stiffening as he straightened up to listen. But then she forced the words out anyway.
“I wasn’t sure about it right away. It wasn’t until hours after he died, when you were in your dad’s office, that I noticed it. I didn’t allow myself to think about it, not until yesterday. What I noticed.”
“Noticed what?” Vince prompted her as soon as she paused to take a breath.
“A coffee cup. It was there on the desk, your father’s desk. It was overturned. Empty, but it had a brown ring at the bottom, you know? Like it had clearly been used. It wasn’t there the next morning. The maid or someone must have taken it away. But I just thought...that wasn’t right. The night before, when I was helping your dad finish up his work, I asked him if he wanted some coffee to push past the last hurdle. It was like 5pm.” Fiona paused again, smiling sadly to herself as she reflected on the memory of her last conversation with
Paulie. “He said to me, ‘Come on, Fiona, you know better than that. I never drink coffee after noon. Bad for my sleep.’ Do you see?”
“No, I don’t,” Vince admitted, shaking his head. He sighed deeply and sat down on Fiona’s bed, looking up at her with wide, pleading eyes for a moment until she finally sat down next to him, side by side.
“Somebody was there in that office after everybody left the compound that night, Vince,” Fiona said softly. “Somebody saw him die.”
“So…what does that really mean?” Vince asked. “That doesn’t mean they killed him.”
Fiona shrugged. “I just know what I feel. Guido’s been pushing for months to get into bigger, more dangerous deals. Bringing really hard drugs into the country, you know, stuff like that. Paulie always said no. I could just see Guido get angrier and angrier as time went on. Plus, with the way she thinks of me and my relationship with Paulie, your mother had more than enough reason, at least in her own mind, to get rid of him.”
