Still, her beauty stunned me. The type of beauty that attracted the worst attention. The kind that saw this girl and thought nothing but the dirty things he wanted to do to her. And I could see why. She was suggestive. Risqué. Lips so full they were the first thing you saw. Demure eyes you wanted to taint. Skin so milky you wondered how red it’d look after you bit down on it.
With her head cocked to the side, her eyes crawled down my body, like she was trying to figure me out. Probably trying to decide why she’d never heard of me. My father didn’t want other syndicates to think there was a better alternative to him, and I didn’t want to draw attention before I seized power.
Yet, as Renata gawked at me, trying her damnedest to hide it, I knew I caught her attention. She looked her age—sixteen on the brink of seventeen. But normal sixteen-year-old girls didn’t stare at me like that. They stared at me with fear and lust, like they stared at a seven-figure handbag on the arm of today’s hottest starlet. Unattainable. Worth more than they’d ever see in their lifetime.
But her. She stared at me like I was a reflection, and she was a looking glass. Her eyes—a goldish-red color impossible to define—tangled with mine. They fought. She won. It took three seconds too long to rebuild my barriers, but I knew she’d already seen the toll this life had taken on me.
Hardened edges. Tired lines. Haunted depths. She bore witness to it all, and it was too much to expect me to be nice after I’d caught her snooping in my room and she’d caught too many secrets in my eyes.
I hardened my features and took her in, taking painstaking care to eviscerate her with my intrusive glare. The frumpy attire—a distraction. The shitty dye job. The un-plucked brows. The chipped nail polish on bitten nails. The giant holes in her Converse.
Distraction. Distraction. Distraction.
Lies. Lies. Lies.
My lips formed a sneer, and I eyed where her body pressed against my bed. “If you want to sleep with me, you’ll have to try harder, Princess.”
Not because she didn’t attract me. She did. More than anyone else I’d ever met. But because I’d have to be stupid to involve myself with a Vitali; she’d snooped in my goddamned room, where I concealed all my messages from The Benefactor; and the way she hid behind her clothes screamed liar, and I didn’t fuck liars. Hell, if my dick touched a liar, it’d probably confuse her for my own hand.
Her flash of anger speared me, but she reigned it in. The urge to whisper, Let loose, Princess. Fight me, beautiful, gripped my throat until I swallowed. Twice. My throat bobbed violently both times, my mouth drier than I remembered it being ten minutes ago. Her anger intrigued me, urged me to dive in, unravel her secrets one by one until they became mine, and I knew all of her.
I wasn’t a tyrant. I didn’t need to know everything about everyone in my territory. Or maybe I’d just never been confronted by someone in Devils Ridge I didn’t know. Either way, I found myself in a peculiar position—off balance, too interested for my own damned good, and a little pissed off because of it.
Renata rose off the bed, her movements as graceful as her mafia royalty pedigree suggested. “Just seeing what I’m dealing with here.”
My eyes tracked her body, tracing a path down the curves her baggy clothes hid until they returned to those amber orbs. She stared at me, her hand suspended in the air like she wanted to touch me. I cocked a brow, daring her to go for it, wondering what I’d do if she listened.
She took a small step backward, but I noticed it. My reflexes had my lips tilting upward, but I fought the urge to smile. This girl had fight. She had spine, and backbone, and all things I never knew I wanted in her.
“Have your fill yet? I may have to charge admission, and I guarantee you can’t afford the price.” My tone spoke of the boredom I didn’t feel.
She tilted her head up to meet my eyes. She was tall for her age, but I towered over her. “The most I’d part for you is the gum beneath my shoe.”
I wanted to laugh. She probably packed gum beneath her shoe just to keep people away.
My eyes slid down her body once again, focused on those holey Chucks, and returned to her face, expressionless given how much I riled her up—and I knew I riled her up. “I have no doubt you’re the type with plenty of gum beneath your shoe.”
Her brows furrowed together before she relaxed and straightened her shoulders. “Well, this has been riveting,”—Indeed, it had—“but I’m jet-lagged. Bye.” She stepped forward before I could answer and bumped into my shoulder on her way out. A feisty princess, if I ever saw one.
It wasn’t till my eyes scanned the room for signs of foul play, I counted and recounted my cigars, my fingers traced the cigar seams for any tears, and I decided nothing looked out of place that I realized she’d stolen my phone.
The princess was a little thief.
* * *
I’m not upset that you lied
to me, I’m upset that from
now on I can’t believe you.
Friedrich Nietzsche
* * *
The workers in the De Luca household liked to gossip in Spanish, which was close enough to my native Italian that I had an idea of what they said. Señor Damian, as the maids called him, came home more often than usual lately, and they blamed me.
I loathed the sense I saw in their logic.
If ever there was a cold war between two strangers, this was it. I’d stolen Damiano De Luca’s phone. That didn’t exactly set a remarkable first impression. He hadn’t confronted me about it, but I knew he knew.
After sending Maman an email and erasing my digital tracks, I slipped the phone on the floor by his bedroom door. Maybe he would think he had dropped it.
A girl could hope.
That had been three days ago. Days passed, and tense silence thickened each time I heard him walk by my door. Thing was, I knew the heavy footsteps held intent. Syndicate royalty didn’t make noise as they walked. Training took care of that.
But each firm step Damiano De Luca took was deliberate. Like a move made on a chessboard, thought ten steps ahead. In fact, life in the De Luca household felt exactly like a chess match, in which I held no control over the board.
Maman always had the Vienna match laid on the chessboard in her library. Every now and then, she’d move a piece. Sometimes, a week apart; sometimes, a year apart. The dark king never sees his demise coming, she’d tell me each time I noticed a moved piece.
But I’d spent enough time looking at that chessboard to see my demise coming. Heard the breaths of impending doom each time I left the confines of my room. Felt the ironclad fingers of vengeance wrap around my neck whenever I dared to sneak food from the kitchen. Smelled the metallic blood of ruin trickle down my body whenever I dodged across the hall to use the bathroom.
I sensed it now as I grabbed a change of clothes and darted to the bathroom I shared with Damian. Like the other houses in Devils Ridge, Texas, the De Luca household was antiquated. Built in the 18th century, the house had been renovated only twice—once during the Victorian era, so it matched the aesthetics of the other Victorian-style homes in town, and once again a few years ago when the contractors had decided that introducing anything more than the minimal amount of modern amenities would jeopardize the historic integrity of the home.
Historic integrity, my ass.
The East Wing bathroom had three rooms—a toilet room, a vanity room, and a bathing room. The door to the bathroom led to the bathing room, where a small bathing pool laid in the center, like I was on the set of Game of Thrones.
It occurred to me what a waste of water filling and draining this pool was, but I wasn’t going to bathe in Damian’s soiled water. I slid my silk robe off my shoulders and hung it on the hook beside the door, along with my change of clothes.
One of the maids had warmed the pool and filled it with bubbles earlier, and I dipped a toe into the water, exploring the temperature. My waist barely kissed the water before the door swung open.
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 opposite 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 escape—and I was the stupid knight in shining armor who wanted to save him.
* * *
All the world is made of faith,
and trust, and pixie dust.
J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
* * *
Three months later
My favorite room in Angelo’s mansion was the one he never stepped foot in. The library had been my sanctuary since I learned to read at age three. Mama took me in here, introduced me to a world of words that felt more real than my own, and filled it with thousands of books. When she died, this room was all I had left of her. A coffin of worn spines, first editions, and Dalbergia wood shelves.