Indiscretions of a God

by Sunniva Dee

  Dozens of boats filled with vengeance pull up on the south edge of Testaprati Island. The sky is black, the moon tipping in and out of the clouds for seconds at a time. We advance quickly. Every man focused on conquest and destruction, this peaceful night is about to be broken.

  Sebastian’s van secures the bridge; two muffled shots is all it takes, and then the gates slide open. For a full minute, they’re in plain view as they cross it, the low white railing no match for the scrutiny of potential spectators.

  We’re coming at the Santa Colombini headquarters from all sides. Adrenaline spikes in my blood while we run up from the beach, knowing Sebastian is about to break in from the front.

  A tall, black fence ending in jagged arrowheads guards the property. A few men scale the ten-foot construction, too hyped up to wait. At my right, ironworkers from the Terra family wrench the bars open, creating man-sized holes at ground level for the rest to move through. On command, the alarm blares from the front yard.

  A Nero man sends me a triumphant grin, and I grin back; perfect timing on the breach of Sebastian’s van, indeed. I duck through the hole.

  On instinct, I lift my eyes to a second-story window. It’s oval, broad, with red curtains stopping the light from sifting out. The silhouettes, plum-colored against the lighter fabric, are unmistakable; a large man has his hands on someone smaller, and the cowering I see makes my blood boil. Fuck me if that’s not stopping right now.

  We hack our way through a back entrance that turns out to be open. Talk about cocky. They’ve taken Gabriela hostage and they think they’re safe from me?

  I stalk up the grand staircase with Nascimbeni men on my heel. Downstairs, our loyals fight Colombinis: gunshots ring through the house, windows shatter, and China cabinets crash to the floor.

  I scan the surroundings. Doors parade down the corridor, one after the other, becoming smaller in what almost seems like a tunnel. So many fucking doors.

  Her turret. The door to the spiral staircase is open, tempting me, but that’s not where I saw them. They were on the east side.

  A choked scream a few doors up. Ariadna? Please, don’t let it be her.

  The sound drowns. I run, run down the hallway. Stop. Grab a handle and press down as tiny whimpers sieve through the wood. Locked! I ram my shoulder into it.

  “I don’t think so,” I hear behind me. Then, I’m ripped away. “Man to man, Nascimbeni. Defend yourself!” It’s Umberto’s son. Hate blazes in his eyes as I block his first punch.

  I knee him in the stomach, making him double over, but he straightens quickly and launches an elbow into my shoulder. For a second, my vision blackens from the pain. On autopilot, I keep fighting. The black dots retreat, and when I can see him again, I get him in a headlock.

  As if in slow motion, three stairways fill with people who aren’t mine. The hallway is a sea of Santa Colombini fighting Nascimbeni, Nero, and Casaconti. My men are strong. They’re brave, and they fight with every fiber in them, but we aren’t trecentouno against fifty Colombini. Fuck, no, that’s not how this is.

  “No! Pappa, per favore!” She yelps behind the door, and that voice is not Gabriela’s—No, no it isn’t.

  “Ma non mi ami più?” She screams it to her father in a voice that opens a gash no mobster could make bigger in my chest—“Daddy, don’t you love me anymore?”

  I wasn’t there for her nine years ago. I’m not there for her now. But goddamn, I am Isaias di Nascimbeni, and I’ll get in there. I’ll take that room by storm, because if it’s the last thing I do I’ll make a difference in my girl’s life.

  I ram Matteo’s skull into the doorframe, the crack audible as his eyes stop moving. For a second, their whites fester with fine, bloody veins.

  One after the other, doors spring open. This corridor is a nightmare, a horrific display of a deadly ambush. The Santa Colombini knew all along. They set us up—I know it now. They made us discover Gabriela in that farmhouse. They made us trace her here.

  The hallway teems with Colombinis pressing in on us, spreading my men flat on the floor, maiming and killing. We slaughter too, but when there’s three to one—four to one and they laugh and drop us like flies?

  For a fraction of a moment, my mind goes silent. In that moment, I realize it’s over. I’m Isaias di Nascimbeni, the man, not the god. I’m just a man whose love is locked away, in terror, being wiped off the face of the Earth because of me.

  I roar out my despair, while her pain bleeds through too-thick wood behind me. I push against the door with all my force. Unseeing, I kill a Colombini coming at me, grab his handgun, kill two more. They drop to the floor, but her door doesn’t budge. She’s in there—I’m sure she is—I throw my weight against the door, making the wood groan. Three new Colombinis come at me with death in their eyes.

  An explosion outside. More men running up the stairs. They’re not killing the few men I have left up here. They’re clipping Colombinis?

  I don’t know these people. Who are they?

  They wear jackets. Deep red jackets.

  Blood seeps into my eyes—makes sense that I’m hurt too.

  I freeze, recognizing Tatiana at the front of the red-jackets. Dressed in black from head to toe, she’s wearing an over-the-head face mask. Yes, her eyes give her away, but mostly, it’s the gold of her hair. Such a quirk of hers. Not in a nun habit, not in a spy’s disguise, does she manage to tuck her mane away.

  Fuck, she shouldn’t be here, such a small person in the midst of a whirlwind of assassins. She stalks forward, crystal-brights on me. Transfixed, I watch her wind closer. How is it so easy for her between dying soldiers and fresh corpses? I slam my body against the door. Again. Again. Again.

  The red-jackets. They’re hers. They follow her every step, guarding her, cutting people down, killing for her. Tatiana’s men pour up the backstairs, the main staircase, even the service elevator. They capture. Handcuff. Collect. Systematically, they’re taking over, eradicating the remnants of our war.

  Brass-colored coils eat their way down her shoulders, bouncing with each step toward me. The beautiful Tatiana of the Valley lifts a black handgun and aims it at me. It’s perfect in her hand, small, dainty but strong like she is. With my Glock clenched along my side, I slam my back against the door, slam it, slam it.

  “Pappa, per favore. No. No!”

  Tatiana squints, fringed lashes obscuring crystals I’ve drowned in.

  The bullet explodes out.

  I see it.

  I can see it.

  It moves so slowly, doesn’t it?

  My bulk crashes through the door. I fall inward, on my back, and a Colombini thuds to the ground in front of me, his head cleaved by the force of Tatiana’s bullet. I blink liquid from my eyes.

  “Focus,” she growls. “Go, Isaias. Time to save your fucking girlfriend.”

  “Figlio di puttana!” Amedeo whirls around, hands clutching his daughter’s neck. I scan the room, and my breath stops in my throat.

  “Let her go,” I grind out.

  Quickly, I take in the scene around me. Gabriela’s strung up, arms high, wrists tied together and looped over the neck of a wall sconce. Her chest heaves with fear, eyes pleading above her gag.

  On the couch, sits a little girl with long David-like locks the color of chocolate. She tightens thin arms around her knees, pulling them up so only her eyes can be seen. They’re big. Frightened. Much too green for a Colombini. Yesterday, she turned nine years old.

  “Oh, I need your permission to punish my daughter, now?” Amedeo laughs coldly. “Seems to me you should have asked my permission before you tainted her for her famiglia.”

  I swallow. This is the moment in time, that one moment when a man has the opportunity to rectify his mistakes. I can make the difference I couldn’t a decade ago, or I can blow it and be destroyed by history.

  “Signore,’” I mu
rmur quietly. “You love your family. They’ll all be fine, and we’ll spare you too if you surrender peacefully.” I take one step toward them at a time.

  “Oh no.” He shakes his head. “You, Isaias di Nascimbeni, have inflicted enough damage. The Santa Colombini will be the laughing stock of no one. Bet you thought you were clever, treating your enemy’s daughter like she was yours. What a perfect up-yours to the king of the mafia of the north, right?” He presses the gun to his daughter’s head, making her shiver.

  “The hallway is full of police,” Tatiana says. “You won’t get away with this.”

  “You don’t get it, do you? A man’s reputation is all that matters. I’m not afraid to die as long as my legend lives on.” He cocks his gun and flicks a look at Gabriela. “Thank you for being so helpful in clearing up the details.”

  “Wait! Wait, let’s talk,” I say. “We can find a solution to this. None of it happened out of disrespect for you or anyone else, and I don’t want this to become common knowledge any more than you do. We’ll keep it under wraps, the way we always have.”

  “The way you always have,” he snaps. “Your secret needs to die, as it would have, less painfully, if my daughter had confessed from the beginning. But it’s too late now. The Santa Colombini name won’t be dragged through the mud because of you. I’ll see to that. Stupid kids. Look what you’re forcing me to do.”

  Two red-jackets leap forward. Amedeo’s gun goes off, and all I can do is watch as Melania’s blood sprays from her temple, staining furniture, the floor, a fucking moron of a red-jacket. His daughter’s head tilts, fast, like there’s nothing left to hold her up. Brown eyes go dead, and—this is Melania! What have they done to us?

  “Are you insane?” I roar, to the red-jackets, to Amedeo. I leap forward because it can’t be too late. I land on top of her. I scoot her under me, small hands, legs, every little inch, and I do it in the most important seconds of my life.

  Amedeo’s shot hits my shoulder. Number two hits my back. I hear the air fizzle from my lungs, sieving out from a ruptured balloon.

  I have her. Even with my eyes closed, the certainty brands me while I lay down and rest, a human shield over Ariadna Santa Colombini di Nascimbeni.

  I was minding my own business as an undercover FBI agent and Interpol liaison when a man walked into my life. It’s a strange thing to look at someone and know you should never have met him.

  Isaias di Nascimbeni, son of a mobster. Beautiful, ruthless, passionate. He was the king of his world, the god of his existence. Or that’s what he believed. It took me a minute to see through him.

  My team and I were in the process of unraveling the entire Mobespierre Sanguine slavery ring when Isaias sauntered in. He had the air of someone entitled. He stepped on my business, tap-danced on my goals. Just by his presence, he jeopardized four years of undercover work put in by dozens of specialized agents in the U.S. and even more in Italy and India.

  At one point, my frustration ran so high, I was inches from arresting him to get him out of my hair. The only problem was I couldn’t get him out of my head.

  When the wellbeing of thousands of young women is at stake, intense fascination with a man is irrelevant: I woke up every morning telling myself this, until Love Child.

  Isaias, the expert manipulator. Even me, he got, despite my training in how to dodge psychological sinkholes. Sure, it didn’t take long before I learned Aurora was a setup. It didn’t take long before I learned the kitten trap wasn’t Isaias-approved either.

  I clear my throat of sadness as I pull the lipstick out of my purse and press it to my lips, a bright coral red that’s creamy enough to look glossy in my hand mirror. I want to look my best today.

  I stop in the hallway, waiting for a crying mother with a son under her arm to pass. White tiles disappear under my feet as I walk toward a steel elevator. I wait for it to arrive. Check for sleep at the corner of an eye though I haven’t had much of it since Isaias fell, two weeks ago, in what international news calls “the biggest blood bath in mafia history.”

  I press my finger against a tear so it doesn’t ruin my mascara. In the mirror, I watch it flow over the tip of my digit and drip to the floor. That’s better.

  They call it Il Palazzo Rosso now, in Italy. The Red Palace instead of the Pink Palace. When I gave the go-signal, I thought I knew what I needed to extract the innocent and arrest the Santa Colombini.

  Fifty men waiting for us inside Il Palazzo? Not exactly. The place swarmed with Colombini when we arrived, and Mobespierre Sanguine came out of the woodworks upstairs and in the attic. A survivor admitted in interrogations that the plan had been to wipe out as many of the Nascimbeni and their loyals as possible. Whoever got Isaias had been promised a big cash reward.

  The elevator arrives, gliding open with a slow creak. It’s older than it should be in such a well-kept, distinguished building.

  Isaias. He was in the way at the St. Tatiana, always there when the shipments arrived. The Nascimbeni’s involvement at the docks was another milestone leading up to us hitting the path of blood together. That path ended with hell on earth at a palace in Venice. I wish I’d known.

  I had to keep my cards hidden—confidentiality is part of my job—but by the time I was ready to leave Isaias behind, my boss took notice of him.

  It was when Isaias stole Rain from Mobespierre Sanguine that he became a puppet for the bigger cause. We let him pull strings inside his micro-cosmos, make rock stars act like porn stars, and while he did, we pulled his strings. Does a noble goal always justify the methods? My heart has been a stone for weeks.

  My Isaias never lost the edge of a hard-ass. For those he loved, he killed without hesitation. He claimed he left his father’s clan because he was sick of being under his thumb, but I’m damn sure that wasn’t the real reason.

  Isaias wanted to live a life as an honest citizen, a businessman like everyone else, someone who didn’t need a gun, who didn’t need to look over his shoulder. A man who, someday, could be worthy of his child.

  The elevator dings past the second floor. Then it slows on the third. I clutch my chest over my heart, because I’m not sure I’m ready for this. No one is outside when the door slides open. There’s an orange three-seater perpendicular with a two-seater in the same color. A utilitarian coffee table with a few stacks of flyers on top of the wooden surface. Birch? No. Most likely pine.

  Isaias. That burn he kept under wraps exploded with me. To him, making love meant showing love. Weeks later, if I close my eyes, I still feel his fingerprints where he last touched me. I wish I could have slowed time at the Palazzo Rosa and sunk inside his arms. Isaias was formidable back there, courage so utterly selfless.

  Ten years ago, an overly brave sixteen-year-old chose to have drunken sex with another. And when their one night created a new future, they both knew he couldn’t be his daughter’s father.

  I walk down the corridor slowly, at first. His whole family will be there, and I’ll be the only outsider, someone he’d found worthy of his love and protection.

  In the name of justice, my men got him shot. Shoulder. Back. Lung. A bullet grazed his head before we could incapacitate Amedeo.

  There is such a thing as soulmates, and Fate has a sense of humor. She aligned the stars so an undercover agent and a Mafioso crashed and melted together on the same course. Look what it led to.

  Law and Crime go hand in hand. They do—they really do. Just, have they ever shared such soul-shaking love before?

  My pace slows. I’m finally here. In front of me, a slight girl with long dark hair stands in the doorway. She slides her back against the frame on one side, gnawing on a small painted fingernail.

  She wears Minnie Mouse tights and pink little shoes with bows on them that match the color of Minnie’s ribbon. Her hair is meticulously braided, resting perfectly down her chest so it meets the bottom of her shirt. The shirt is pink to
o. It’s almost overly girly with lace and flowers in the exact color of her shoes.

  Her green eyes are tainted with grief. Ariadna has seen horrors no human being should be privy to. At nine, she has suffered unspeakable losses, watched her family kill and die in her own home.

  Those beautiful eyes, so much like Isaias’, light up as she sees me. I lower to my haunches and open my arms as if she were a small child. Ariadna emits a small giggle and runs to me. She folds her arms around my neck and tightens us together. There’s a lump in my throat, growing at her affection.

  “Zia Tatiana,” she whispers. Kisses both of my cheeks, once, twice. “Are you here for Daddy?”

  “Of course, I am.” I bob my head, feeling the tears finally come; Ariadna and I spent the first days together in hiding while the police tied up loose ends, making sure the threat to her little person was gone.

  It’s an understatement to say her paternal family was in shock when they learned of her existence. They never questioned whether she really was Isaias’ daughter. With those eyes, whose daughter could she possibly be?

  The matriarch—Isaias’ mother—was furious. She’d demanded to have her grandchild flown straight to her immediately, but Ariadna’s safety came first. We needed the Nascimbeni clan cleared before we could let her into the loving arms of her grandmother.

  “Ariadna, dove stai?” There she is now, Granma poking her head out of the room, staring in the wrong direction first, then toward us. “Ah, Tatiana.” She waves us toward her. We go, hand in hand.

  “Is he in there?” I whisper, forcing away the image of him prone, pale, frozen… and still so beautiful. Two weeks since Italy. Now, they’ve finally flown him back to Los Angeles.

  “Yes, he is.” His mother’s eyes fill with tears too, and she presses the child to her, whispering against her head in Italian. “You go in, Tatiana. We’ll give you some time alone.”

  “You’re the only ones here?”

  “Yes, the rest of the family will be by again later.” She sniffles and smiles a trembling smile. “Thank you, Tatiana.”