“Don’t tell him,” I whisper. “Please.”
He doesn’t react, not for a long time, but then he nods once. “Go back to Sergio’s room and wait for him there.”
“I really wasn’t—”
“Natalie.” He squeezes my arms, dips his head low, eyes bore into mine from behind thick lashes. “You shouldn’t be here. You need to go. Now.”
I blink, but as much as I want to run right away from here, I’m unable to move. I’m on the verge of tears, and I don’t want to cry in front of him. But I don’t move. I can’t. Not until the study door opens behind me. Not until Salvatore has looked away, freeing me from the trap of his gaze. And the instant he releases me, I slip away, as fast as I can, back the way I came, my heels clicking as I go, as I miraculously don’t trip and fall, and stumble back into Sergio’s bedroom, like I was told.
Because I don’t want to see Sergio. I don’t want to see his father. I don’t want them to know I’ve heard. To know I know. Because if I had any doubt, any delusions about anything related to the Benedetti mafia family, Franco Benedetti’s brutal words obliterated them.
They showed me exactly the life I’ll be walking into by being with Sergio.
19
Sergio
“I think I should go home,” Natalie says to me when I get up to my room. She’s dressed and throwing things into her bag.
And I know she was standing just outside the study. I know what she overheard.
“I don’t feel great,” she adds on.
I don’t bring up the fact that I saw her run up the stairs. Don’t mention that the look I exchanged with Salvatore pretty much confirmed my thinking. I could kill my father. We’ve discussed this a thousand times. He knows where I stand. I’m not changing my mind. He knows me well enough to know he can’t make me.
“I’m sorry,” Natalie is saying when I tune back in.
She’s not sick. She looks fine. A little paler than usual, but that’s not flu. That’s what she overheard.
“I’ll take you home,” I say.
She shakes her head. “No. You should stay with your mom. I can take a train.”
“You’re not taking a train. I’ll take you home.”
She stops, her back stiffening as she sucks in a deep breath, zips her bag and picks it up off the bed before facing me square on.
“Sergio, you need to stay here with your mom. I think you’re right. I don’t think you can take time with her for granted right now.”
She’s choosing her words carefully. Neither of us want to say out loud what we know she means.
“I’ll be fine, and besides,” she clears her throat, doesn’t quite meet my gaze when she says the next part: “I don’t want to get her sick.”
That’s the first lie Natalie has told me. She isn’t sick—at least not with the flu. I study her, and she can’t meet my eyes. I nod. “Okay.”
“Okay?” She’s surprised by my response.
“With conditions.”
She exhales, waits, looks like she’s on the verge of tears all of a sudden.
I go to her. “Are you all right? Really?”
She nods, but her eyes glisten.
I wrap my hands around her arms and rub them before pulling her into my chest. She sniffles, and I don’t say anything when I feel the warmth of tears seep through my shirt.
“Remember what I said last night?” I ask.
She nods, keeps her forehead pressed to my chest. I weave my fingers gently into her hair, cup the back of her head, hold her.
“Mine. No matter what.”
I hear her suck in a deep breath. Feel her shudder with it.
She pulls away, wipes the back of her hand across her eyes, her nose. She doesn’t comment on what I’ve just said. “Conditions,” she says instead with an attempt at a smile. “I would be surprised if you didn’t have any.”
“You know me well. One of our drivers will take you to my house.”
She shakes her head. “I want to go home. To my house. It’s easier with school work and all my things, and Pepper’s more comfortable.”
“That last part is bullshit but fine, your house with a guard. Ricco.”
“Not in the house.”
“I wasn’t going to station him inside, but he will do a sweep.”
She nods. “Okay.”
“I’ll drive back early. Come to your place—”
“Sergio,” she cuts me off. I know what she’s going to say. I see it in her eyes. “I need time.”
I don’t speak.
“I,” she pauses, rubs her face. “I need to think.”
“I know you overheard.”
She looks down at her feet.
“Natalie, what you—”
“Please don’t.”
She turns away, puts on her coat. I bite my lip, forcing myself to remain silent as I watch her. When she’s ready, I take her downstairs where I arrange for one of my father’s men to drive her home and walk her outside. She turns to me, wraps her arms tight around me, tighter than I expect. For a long moment, she’s clinging to me.
“I love you, you know. I do,” she whispers.
There’s a sadness in her words, a sort of finality. But when I draw back, she pulls away and slips into the backseat of the sedan. I close the door, tap on the front window and watch the car drive away, down the driveway and out the gates, disappearing from view.
20
Natalie
The drive back home is long and I’m grateful to be alone. I’m thinking. Counting. Over and over again, I count days. And like an echo, Sergio’s father’s words keep repeating in the backdrop. I’m not paying attention to the scenery, the other cars on the highway. The man driving is stone-faced and the few times I catch his eyes in the rear-view mirror, I see a hardness inside them, and I know he’s more than a driver.
“Accident up ahead. We’ll have to take a different exit.”
They’re the only words he speaks to me. I’m startled by the intrusion and confused for a moment. But as the car slows and veers off toward an exit, I nod.
“That’s fine. Thanks.”
The sky is strange. Heavy clouds drop rain then briefly allow the sun to shine through spectacularly only to turn over another bucketful moments later. I turn on my cell phone—I’d kept it off on purpose—but Sergio hasn’t called. I scroll to Drew’s number, almost hit the button to call him, but change my mind and switch it off again. Tuck it back into my purse.
First thing I need to do is pick up a test. Confirm one way or another because maybe I’m not pregnant. Maybe I’m just late. Why am I letting Dominic’s strange poke at my belly upset me so much? How would he know before me? He’s just a jerk, like Sergio said.
“I don’t give a fuck if you have that whore lick your floors clean day in and day fucking out. You do what you need to do with Natalie, but this is my final word.”
Shit.
The way Franco Benedetti talks about Lucia DeMarco, the way he talks about me, what does he think? What does he envision for his son? That he’d be with me and have her too? In what capacity? And how firm is his word? Is Sergio bound by it?
We slow to a stop at a red light. There are no other cars around and the traffic light is useless. I don’t know this part of the city at all. It’s run down. Somewhere I wouldn’t want to be alone at night or in the day.
There’s a gas station on the corner. I glance into the main building. A man is standing behind the register, his attention on whatever is flashing on the little TV on the counter. A row of houses stands vacant across the street, graffiti on its walls, boards on its windows and doors. Black marks the upstairs walls and part of the roof is missing. Must have been a fire.
I wonder how much longer the traffic light will be red. It’s a strange place, this.
A car pulls into the gas station on the other side of the pumps. It’s old and the back door is dented. Something that fits here, but would stand out anywhere else. Both driver and passenger glance
our way and even through the closed windows, I smell the cigarette smoke. When he kills the engine, the music abruptly stops.
Our light turns green, but we don’t move. I notice my driver’s eyes in the mirror. See him stiffen, reach into his jacket. I wonder if he’s armed. He must be.
It’s just when I’m thinking this that a car pulls up, speeds up, slams into ours. I’m wearing my seatbelt but I’m jolted. My heart is racing. Alarm bells go off in my head. We need to drive, but I don’t think we can.
It’s a black sedan with heavily tinted windows. I’m thinking how it stands out here when three doors open, the passenger side and the two back doors, and men exit the sedan. One is wearing a black suit. He’s the one who catches my eye. The others are more casually dressed and before I can think, before I register what’s happening, the one in the suit is pulling my door open and his hand is wrapped around my arm like a vice. He drags me out of the car and my purse falls off my lap, the contents spilling onto the floor.
My driver is scooting across the front seat, reaching for the passenger door because the driver’s side door is jammed. He’s got blood on his face. He must have slammed it against the steering wheel when the car hit us.
I scream and try to grab onto the back of the driver’s seat, but I’m out of the car, falling to the ground. Pavement scrapes the skin of my knees open. Tires screech as a car speeds away. It’s the old vehicle with the couple inside. They’re hauling ass out of here, the gas tank still open, the hose ripping away, the scent of gasoline all I can smell.
The trunk pops open on the car that slammed into ours as the man in the suit drags me toward it. I’m fighting, one of my shoes is off my foot as I try to get a hold of something, anything, to stop him from taking me. The last thing I see before he hauls me up and drops me into the trunk is my driver finally stepping out, drawing a gun. But the others, they’re ready for him, and one of them raises his weapon. He takes aim. Fires.
I scream again, watch as my driver hits the ground.
The man in the suit shoves me back down when I sit up and when I try to fight him off, he slaps me so hard, my head hits the edge of the trunk. I’m dazed, something warm slides over my temple, down my cheek. It takes a minute for him to come back into focus and when he does, he’s grinning, and raising his fist and this time when he hits me, I don’t open my eyes. I don’t feel anything after the crushing pain on the side of my head. And all I smell is gasoline as he slams the trunk closed and I feel the car begin to move before I lose consciousness.
21
Natalie
My head is throbbing and my eyes feel like they’re glued shut. I can’t move right away and I’m not sure where I am. I’m lying on my side, I know that because I feel a rough fabric on my cheek. It stinks and I want to vomit, I feel like I might. And maybe I already have. Maybe that’s one of the scents I’m smelling. That and unclean bodies. Sex. The stench of it, of cigarettes and sweat and sex.
I turn my head, moan with the pain over my eye. Try to reach to touch it, but I can’t. Something cold circles my wrists and they’re bound up over my head. I force my eyes open and for a moment, the room spins. The threadbare blanket I’m lying on is a 1970’s orange/brown combination. The walls are yellow but I think they used to be white. On top of a beat-up desk is an old-fashioned box TV and there’s a jacket hanging over the back of the chair. It’s the only nice thing in here. There’s a can of Coke beside the TV and an ashtray full of cigarette butts. I roll onto my back and look up at the blobs of stains on the ceiling, then toward the large window with its curtains drawn shut. They match the blanket I’m lying on.
Footsteps outside, heavy ones, have me turning toward the door. My head throbs with the effort. It opens and a man I don’t recognize comes inside. He’s talking into a cell phone.
“Yeah. Got it.” He gives me a grin and sits on the edge of the bed. “I’m not fucking stupid,” he says and disconnects the phone, sets it on the nightstand. He never stops looking at me.
He’s not the one in the suit. The one who grabbed me. Punched me. He’s wearing a yellow T-shirt stretched too tight over his beer belly. It’s got a stain on it. Tomato sauce I think. Or blood. Mine, maybe.
When he leans in toward me, I press my back into the mattress.
“You up, pretty girl?” he asks.
I don’t react and try to pull away when he reaches out a hand and presses a fat finger into my temple. I suck in a breath and he smiles, digging deeper. Warm blood slides over my ear. He’s opened a cut. I guess it happened when the suited man punched me.
“That’s for puking on me,” he says.
He rubs his finger on his shirt and my first guess was right. The stain I saw was tomato sauce because blood is much darker.
I look up at my hands, tug at my arms to test the handcuffs that are linked through the headboard.
“You ain’t goin’ nowhere,” the man says, standing. He’s tall. Really tall. And the way he looks, the way his eyes travel over my chest, my belly, my legs, it scares me.
“What do you want with me?” I croak. My voice isn’t working, my throat is dry and I know I did vomit on him. I taste it.
He shrugs a shoulder, turns his attention to the TV and switches it on.
“Nothin’ much,” he mutters. “You ain’t my type.” He sits back down on the bed and is wholly engrossed in the channels he’s flipping through. A pistol is tucked into the back of his jeans. “I like tits,” he adds on, picking up his coke and slurping loudly.
I try to pull myself up to a seat, but my head throbs with the effort and when he turns and grabs hold of my ankle, I freeze.
“Where you goin’? Ain’t nowhere you need to be.”
I guess he’s not as inattentive as I assumed.
“Where am I?”
He releases my leg, returns to flipping TV channels. Settles on a black and white cartoon. I feel like I’m caught in some time warp. Like this place is stuck in the past. A glance at the window tells me it must be nighttime, or I’d see sunshine coming around the curtains, I think. I listen, but either the room is soundproof, which I doubt, or there’s absolutely no traffic outside.
“Where am I?” I ask again, a little louder this time as I manage to sit up a little, drawing my bound hands in front of me.
“Quiet.”
“Can’t follow the cartoon?” I ask.
He mutes the TV and turns to me and I realize how stupid that was.
“Want me to shut you up, pretty girl? I can do that right good and I’d like it,” he says, getting up, walking around to my side. I cringe when he grabs my ankle and tugs me so I’m lying back down.
“I told you you ain’t goin’ nowhere, didn’t I?”
I stare up at him, unable to answer.
“I asked you a question,” he says, leaning his big face close, his stale breath on me.
“Yes,” I say. “I just wanted—”
“Don’t matter what you want. It matters what I want and I want you to shut the fuck up. Understand, cunt?”
I swallow. Nod my head.
He nods his, straightens, looks at me again, his eyes moving from head to toe. I watch his hand move toward me, toward that sliver of naked belly where my sweater has risen up. I make a sound when his fingers touch my skin, and when his hand fists the waistband of my jeans, I scream.
The door opens, slams against the wall and lets in a gust of cold wind. We both turn. Suit man is standing there minus his jacket. He looks pissed. Two others, these from the back of the car, flank him.
“Don’t fucking touch her, fucking imbecile. You know the rules.”
The man curls his hand tighter around the handful of material, lifting my hips off the bed. Although he’s bigger than the man at the door, when the one at the door takes a step into the room, he backs off, releasing me.
“I just want her to shut the fuck up so I can watch TV.”
The leaner man looks at me. “You think you can shut the fuck up so he can watch his cartoon?
”
I nod.
“There,” he says to the big guy. “She says she’ll shut up.”
“What if she don’t?”
The man cocks his head to the side, looks at me. “I’ll let you stick your dick in her big mouth. That’d shut her up, wouldn’t it?”
I feel the blood drain from my face.
When I shift my gaze away from him, I see the swell at the crotch of the fat one’s pants.
“Yeah. That’d shut her up good,” he says, rubbing his stiffening dick.
“Fuckin’ idiot,” the man mumbles with a chuckle, picking up the jacket hanging over the back of the chair. He turns to the two men who are younger than the big one. “Remember the rules or the boss will have our heads,” he reminds them.
“No problem.”
Suit man heads back to the door but one of the guys stops him.
“When do we get the money?”
Suit man pauses and I see evil in his eyes. He’s smarter than the others. He’s manipulating them. “Tomorrow morning when I come back to pick her up.”
The guy nods and suit man heads out the door, closing it behind him. I hear a car start and when I know he’s gone, I look back at the three men I’m left with. The two younger ones walk through a door that I notice leads to an adjoining room. Fat guy picks up the remote and gives me a disgusting grin, his hand in his pants now, rubbing his erection.
I turn away and I shut up.
22
Sergio
I know something’s wrong when Ricco calls me at nine o’clock to tell me she’s still not there. He’s been waiting at Natalie’s house and she should have been home hours ago. The driver hasn’t picked up a single call and I feel like a fucking idiot for letting her go alone.
“Relax. We’ll find her,” Salvatore says. He’s sitting beside me as we take the exit where the tracker equipped in the car that took Natalie says it’s parked. Two soldiers ride in the car behind ours.
Sergio: a Dark Mafia Romance Page 13