I moved quickly, covering my breasts with the bubbles as I plunged fully into the pool. My eyes met Angelo De Luca’s as he stepped past the threshold, busting every myth about evil being incapable of entering a room uninvited. Or was that vampires?
“Miss Vitali.” He took a step closer, and I forced myself not to move away from my spot against the closest pool edge to the door. How someone so slimy and decrepit could spawn someone who looked like Damiano De Luca was beyond me. “My sources tell me you turn seventeen years old today.” The gap between us lessened. “Another year closer.”
Another year closer to what?
Goosebumps traveled across my skin, and I forced myself not to eye the open door. It was late. The last of the East Wing staff had retreated to their quarters after drawing my bath. I trusted Angelo De Luca like I trusted a jock to do his own homework. I was alone with this sinister excuse of a man, and though calm had nestled itself inside my body from a young age, it burrowed deeper, hiding somewhere between apprehension and concern.
Still, I didn’t allow my anxiety to manifest. I ignored him, reached for the shampoo, and formed a lather in my hair. A gust of wind flew in from the open door, chilling the exposed skin on my neck. I wanted to dip lower into the water, but being vulnerable in front of a man who enjoyed feasting on prey wasn’t an option. Instead, I continued washing my hair.
His jaw ticked as I ignored him. “You are a guest in my household, Miss Vitali. You will not disrespect me.”
“You’re right.” I tapped my foot beneath the water, hoping to expend the energy of my anxiety and replace it with amusement. “A person’s a person, no matter how small.”
Pretty sure that wasn’t what Dr. Seuss had meant when he wrote that.
Oh, well.
Hard eyes burned my skin as some of the bubbles covering my breasts fizzled and died. “Careful, little girl.” He crouched and reached out. I forced myself to act aloof as he cupped the side of my face and shut his teeth with an audible snap! “I bite.”
During my boarding school’s unit on Irish literature, I’d come across a Laurence Sterne quote: “Respect for ourselves guides our morals; respect for others guides our manners.” Clearly, Angelo De Luca had neither, but it dawned on me that if I stayed here long, perhaps that would be my fate, too. I begged any higher power to not let me succumb to the De Luca madness.
Angelo's palm wandered down my cheek, past my collarbone, and toward my left breast. Goosebumps met his touch, and he cackled near my ear. “I scare you, don’t I?”
He did, in the same way I feared poisonous spiders and walking home alone late at night. Logically. Clinically. And entirely detached. These things could hurt me if I let them, but I wouldn’t let them.
“While we’re exchanging fears, yours is my family.” I stepped into his touch, enjoying the way his eyes flared in surprise. “I may fear you, Angelo, but I’ll still face you. The fears we don’t confront grow into limits, and I have no limits. But you?” I taunted him with my laughter. For a split second, I felt less like Harry Potter and more like Draco Malfoy. “You’re bound by them each time you move.”
“I could kill you right now, and we’d see just how scared I am of your family.” Angelo’s grip on my flesh became brutal, and his hand rested beneath the water, just short of reaching the top of my breast. Figured that’d be the time Damiano De Luca chose to enter the bathroom we shared.
His eyes took us in, narrowing on his dad’s hand beneath the water for a split second before a sneer twisted his lips. “I put up with you fucking the help, Angelo,” he spoke as if he owned the household, “but I will not put up with you further threatening the De Luca name by fucking the Vitali child.”
The Vitali child.
Good grief. I’d asked the housekeepers for Damian’s age. As of today, we were the same age, yet that was what I was to him. A child. Somehow, those words were all I could focus on. It wasn’t lost on me that he may very well have just saved me from his father, but something I would come to learn about Damiano De Luca was, his presence crippled my logic. It didn’t just cripple it. It nuked it, then buried it six feet under until I wasn’t sure my logic had ever existed.
Angelo stood from his crouch, and I’d never seen so much hate a father held for his son as I saw in Angelo’s eyes. “Finally home, son?”
Damian leaned a shoulder against the doorframe, amusement radiating off of him in waves, but I saw past the show he put on for his father. He was taunting him, just like I had taunted Angelo earlier. A defense tactic that shouldn’t have built a connection between us—especially given the way he spoke of me as a child instead of an equal—but it did. “Obviously, if you’re looking at me and we’re in this house…”
Angelo met his son in three long strides until they stood mere inches apart. “One day, I will learn what it is that you do when you are gone, and I will destroy you.”
A smarter man would have tempered his anger and hid his weaknesses. Instead, Angelo had laid his cards bare for me. The friction between him and his son and the ensuing power struggle between them weren’t for outsider eyes and ears, but here I was, an unwilling voyeur with a front row seat. Who could blame me for pocketing the information?
Damian remained unfazed. “How can you destroy me when all you’re capable of is self-destruction?”
And that was when I knew he would win. That he would always win. Calm, cool, and collected, Damiano De Luca was everything his father should have been as the head of one of the five American syndicates.
Damian’s eyes shifted to me, reminding his father of the audience. Angelo pulled his shoulders back, standing taller than anyone in the room thought he was, and left.
My eyes met Damian’s, and I wore the calmest expression I could manage. “Those who plot the destruction of others often perish in the attempt.” I dipped my hair back into the water, rinsing the shampoo from my scalp. The tops of my breasts peeked out of the water at the movement, and I was painfully aware of my audience of one.
“Quoting Thomas Moore doesn’t make you smart.” His gaze swallowed mine as I lifted my head from the water, shock at his knowledge of the Irish poet driving my actions. “It makes you unoriginal.”
“Coming from the boy plotting to dethrone his father, I’m not so sure I trust your judgment on originality. Read too many Marvel comics?” I grabbed the soap bar and ran it across my skin. “Is it the Loki and Odin relationship or the Blade and Lucas Cross relationship that inspires your every move?” My words may have lashed, but as I dipped the bar of soap under the water and rubbed at my body, I couldn't shake the feeling that I’d never been this physically vulnerable in front of another human.
But Damian wasn’t his dad, and he didn’t seem the slightest bit interested in my body. “You should have stayed out of things that are none of your business, Princess.”
Excuse me?!
Being in Devils Ridge hadn’t been a choice and being in this home had been even less of one. His father was the one who barged into the bathroom, and now Damian had the gall to accuse me of imposing? So much for kindred spirits.
If I were the type to lash out, I would have. Instead, I remained composed as I rinsed the rest of the soap from my shoulders, ascended the steps out of the pool, and stood in front of him. “If your intent is to provoke me, it’s not working.”
Water dripped from my naked flesh, but his eyes never wavered from mine. “I have no intent when it comes to you. You are a pest. A flea. Nothing more than a common house fly. Something that is beneath me to swat at. The door will remain open, and you’ll eventually fly away. But until then, stay away from me and stay out of my business.” Condescension was an ugly look on anyone but him. He stepped closer. “I wouldn’t want to accidentally hurt you, Princess.”
The air chilled my wet skin as it brushed against me. Or maybe it was his words that chilled me. That lasted for about a second before his father’s voice boomed in the background as he yelled at one of the poor staff members in the op
posite wing of the house.
Myriad emotions ran through Damian’s eyes before he filtered them out. It didn’t matter, though. The damage had been done. I’d seen the emotions, and rather than latching onto the moment of vulnerability like a vulture clutching onto a dead carcass, I saw a kindred spirit I wanted to help.
A damsel that needed saving.
I lifted my chin and measured my words. “I’m no princess.”
He laughed at me. “What else would you be?”
I thought of Maman’s chessboard and the never-ending Vienna game. I wasn’t the king, but I certainly wasn’t the pawn either. “I’d be the knight.”
“Fine, Knight.”
“Fine, Day.”
His eyes narrowed at the nickname. I didn’t wait for him to call me out on it as I reached for my robe, slipped it over my shoulders, and walked past him as collected as I could with a thin silk robe sticking to my wet skin.
Truth was, Day wasn’t short for Damiano.
It was a play on Damsel.
He didn’t know it yet, but that was exactly how I saw him.
It should have been a bad thing, but it wasn’t.
The world might not have seen him as one, but to me, Damiano De Luca was the damsel— trapped in this gilded tower, lashing out at his dad for an escape—and I was the stupid knight in shining armor who wanted to save him.
He who tries to protect himself from deception is often cheated, even when most on his guard.
Plautus
The Present
“Have you seen him?”
“Maman!” My eyes darted around the cemetery for prying eyes, and I pressed my phone tighter against my ear. “This is hardly an appropriate time for this.”
“It’s always an appropriate time for a mother to ask her daughter whether or not she’s seen the boy she likes.” The laughter in her voice squeezed my heart.
I knew she was hurting over Vincent Romano’s death. I should give her this. I should play along. Then again, she had played her part in teaching me to build barriers around myself during my childhood. She could reap what she had sowed.
“In no world will Damian and I coexist peacefully. It’s just never going to happen.”
I regretted spilling to Maman after I had fled Texas. Fled Damian. At the time, I didn’t even have it in me to be angry at her for abandoning me in Devils Ridge. Never mind my unanswered hidden texts and emails to her, heartbreak took over. For the longest time, I couldn’t see past the pain.
Nearly ten years ago, Maman suggested I distance myself from Damian and recuperate, and I agreed. After all, why would I want to be near the boy I’d just run away from, tail tucked between my legs, knowing it was the wrong thing to do to someone who didn’t deserve disappointment from yet another person in his life?
Now, Maman wanted me to reacquaint myself with him, and neither I nor my ego understood it.
“You left for Texas, and when you came back, I didn’t recognize you. Your walls had been built higher than I’d ever seen them, and I thought you needed time. It’s been nearly ten years, Renata. Ten whole years, baby girl.” Her shaky inhale startled me, sucked the air out of the space, and made it impossible to breathe. “You need to learn to trust, my darling girl, or you will die alone. Neither of us want that, right?”
I begged to differ. My barriers protected me. Back then, the ugly clothes and unkempt appearance had caused many to underestimate me. The one time I had shed my walls had been for Damian, and look how that had turned out.
I’d since lost the frumpy clothes, but the walls around me never wavered. I rebuilt them, and then I built walls around those walls just because I liked to look at them. It was safer that way.
“I trust you, Maman. You are all I need. All I’ll ever need.” I also needed this conversation to end. “Maman, I’d love to talk more about this”—I approached the crowd, hoping she could hear their murmurs, think I was busy, and abandon the open-yourself-up spiel—“but everyone is at the cemetery already, and the burial is about to begin. It would be exceptionally rude to remain on the phone.”
“Ren—”
“—Bye! Love you, Maman.”
I hung up on her, feeling zero percent guilty and one-hundred percent sick of the emotions clogging my throat. I pushed them down, one by one.
Anger.
Frustration.
Betrayal.
Mistrust.
Love.
Lust.
Loneliness.
Sorrow.
Misery.
Fear.
Swallow. Swallow. Swallow. Swallow.
If emotions were sustenance, I would never have to eat again.
Don’t be weak.
You’re a Vitali.
Vitalis don’t feel fear.
I repeated the mantra Papà had forced on me since birth until my feelings slipped away, leaving an emotionless façade. I only ever had to try to remain aloof around Damian. Usually, emotional distance came naturally to me. With Damian nearby? Not so much.
My heels wobbled as they sunk into the plush grass as I walked past the rows of tombstones surrounding me. New York could be unpredictable in the summer, but the weather this year sweltered more than usual. Today, however, was nice enough. I didn’t know if that made me happy or sad. Vincent probably would’ve thought it was hilarious to be buried under the ground on the one nice summer day this year when he wasn’t around to even appreciate it. I, on the other hand, didn’t have Vincent’s humor.
I stood near the front, far enough away to be respectful of the Romano family and close enough to adhere to the Vitali’s place at the top of the hierarchy. The crowd for the burial ceremony outnumbered the closed casket viewing earlier. Vincent Romano clearly earned the respect of many, though that didn’t surprise me.
My eyes remained forward as Lucy Black sidled next to me, her husband Asher—the Romano’s former fixer—a couple rows ahead of us. I didn’t know her. She didn’t know me. Why was she next to me?
“Hey, I’m Lucy.” Her eyes shifted to me. “Are you a Romano? I’ve never seen you around.”
Oh.
She didn’t know who I was.
My brows furrowed until I realized she only asked because I stood in a row ordinarily reserved for the Romano family. “Vitali. Renata Vitali.” The instinct to flee settled deep in my legs. I had to force them to stay rooted to the ground.
“Oh.” She paused a beat, and we stood in silence as the crowd grew in size. Pretty soon, we’d exceed the maximum capacity of the private cemetery. “I like your hair.”
Were married people always this congenial? Couldn’t she be happy next to her husband?
“Thank you.”
She paused a beat. “He keeps staring at you.” She bit her bottom lip, like she was stopping herself from saying more.
I dug my nails into the sides of my thighs. My eyes begged me to turn and meet his gaze. Instead, I grit out, “Who?” I didn’t need to ask to know Damian stared at me from a few rows behind us, but not asking revealed more than I wanted to a stranger.
“Damiano De Luca.”
His name sounded wrong coming from her lips, like it wasn’t meant for her to say. It didn’t escape my notice that I didn’t hold any claim over him. Then again, it was me he stared at. Thousands of people gathered here today to mourn Vincent Romano’s life, and he’d been staring at me since I clocked him earlier.
The attraction we once had still persisted because all of me stood on alert, too close to breathless for comfort. I was used to attention. I never wanted it, yet I had attracted it all my life. But even though I’d spent fourteen months blossoming under Damian’s attention, I’d never gotten used to it.
I forced myself to speak. “You’ve met him?”
“Asher introduced us earlier.” She kept her eyes averted from Vincent’s casket up front, and it occurred to me that she might have started this conversation to distract herself. “He’s kind of intimidating. Actually, not just kind of. He’s
really intimating.”
I couldn’t imagine having the privilege of speaking so freely.
I felt Damian’s eyes as I shifted. “I’m sure there are women who think the same of your husband.”
“True. But my husband isn’t staring at me like that right now, and we’re newlyweds.”
Why was it so hard to breathe?
I forced myself not to adjust the collar of my dress. “Perhaps the De Lucas are still as ill-mannered as they used to be. We’re at a funeral after all, and it’s rude to stare.”
“I shouldn’t have brought it up.” Lucy giggled a little, which startled me given the setting. “Sorry, I’m a tad bit tipsy. Okay, I’m really tipsy, and I’m trying so hard not to talk a lot right now, but I really want to talk a lot. I don’t know why I had to drink so much today.”
Right.
Syndicate funerals involved an unreasonable amount of drinking. Shots with the immediate family before the viewing. Shots during the viewing. Shots before the burial. Shots after the burial. Shots at dinner. Shots at the remembrance party. Shots to close the funeral day. Lucy had no meat on her. She didn’t stand a chance.
“Eat a big meal before Vincent’s life remembrance party tonight.” I glanced at her, studied her glazed eyes, and ignored the way Damian’s attention made my skin itch. “And stop by Duane Read for charcoal or carbon capsules.”
Her eyes lit up. “To absorb the alcohol?”
Was he still staring at me? Why was he still staring at me?
“Yes.”
Look away, Damsel.
“I can’t imagine charcoal binding to alcohol well,”—my briefing had mentioned it, but with Damian so close, I’d forgotten that Lucy majored in some field of biology—“but I’d like to test it. Maybe on myself. Like a guinea pig. I’ve always had the spirit of a guinea pig. They’re soft and furry. I had one once.”
Her words slurred together a bit as she rambled on and on. “Well, a foster brother of mine had one. I think he ran away or something, because my foster dad—he was a total asshole, and I hated him so much, thank goodness I left—told me the guinea pig would never come back, short of an act of God, which was something he would never inspire.”
Dark Romance Collection: A Sexy, Dark Bundle Page 4