I didn't look.
“Just a little,” I lied, looking up at her and trying to read the expression on her face.
“That's … it's a beautiful language.” Edlyn took a long breath, nostrils flaring wide as she tried not to cry. I recognized that face; I'd seen it many times before during our long friendship. My instinct was to reach out and comfort her, but after what she'd done? I wasn't ready for that.
She'd had my boyfriend's baby for fuck's sake.
“I'm pregnant again,” Edlyn whispered after a long, quiet moment. The sounds of the city washed over us: the distant clatter of construction, the constant rush of cars, the chatter of hundreds passing by on the city streets. We were currently in Brooklyn—Williamsburg to be exact—so the place was packed with young hipsters and artist types.
Made for interesting people-watching.
“Congratulations?” I asked, because now Edlyn was sitting across from me, crying silent tears.
“It's Adam's this time.”
Oh.
Edlyn's life was a soap opera … and mine was like The Sopranos.
“I'd just told Adam about me and Bo … and Gad,” she said, whispering her son's name so quietly, I had to read it off her lips to understand what she was saying. “And then I found out I was pregnant. Based on where I'm at in the pregnancy, there's no way it's Bo's.”
“So now you're going to have Bo angry with you?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. Edlyn had thrown down the gauntlet and chosen Bo … now she was screwed on both fronts. Fuck. I really did feel bad for her, even considering the circumstances that'd gotten her into this position in the first place.
“I miss you, Adelasia, I really do,” she said, picking up the burgundy cloth napkin by her elbow and wiping at her weepy mascara with it. “I've never felt so alone in my whole life, the way I do right now.”
“Edlyn, you made the choices that got you here,” I said, but I could feel my resolve crumbling a little. Wow. I'd make a terrible don if I let my feelings get to me so easily.
“I know, but I regret everything, all of it. I regret you the most,” she told me, locking eyes hard and fast. I had no idea how to respond to that.
“I've got to go,” I said, standing up from the table and pursing my lips slightly. “The food,” I gestured at our table and then in the direction of Bo, “is on me.”
“Adelasia,” Edlyn whispered as I headed back inside, letting the heavy wood door swing shut behind me, cutting my friend's pleading off completely.
“Babe,” Bo said when I walked past, slid into the booth and turned to Fortunato Moretti.
“Kiss me,” I told him, and although he raised his blonde brows, he didn't hesitate to lean forward and take my face in one of his big, warm hands.
Lucky slid his tongue along my lower lip before crushing our mouths together.
My entire body responded, my chest lifting toward him, back arching. I felt like a flower leaning into the sun … or maybe a fern leaning toward the shadows? Because Lucky was fun and interesting, he reminded me of my childhood … but he'd also killed a man for making fun of his nickname.
My own hands curled around Lucky's shoulders, fingers digging into the gray and white plaid fabric of his suit. He smelled like lemons and soap, the faintest whiff of gunpowder and tobacco hiding underneath it all. And oh, he tasted like wine and hot, lazy days in the sun, like summers spent dancing in creeks and sprinting beneath the leafy limbs of sugar maples.
Lucky put his right hand on my waist and pulled me closer, dragging me into his lap.
I didn't fight the motion; I didn't want to.
“Fucking slut,” I heard Bo growl from behind me.
I hardly had time to react, breaking the kiss with Lucky to look over my shoulder just in time to see Caj duck underneath the table and push past Marcell's legs. He was out and over to Bo's chair before I could finish my blink of shock.
“A slut?” Caj asked, grabbing Bo's hair in a rough handful and yanking him out of his seat. He forced my ex of two years to his knees, the hard crack of his bones against the cement loud in the suddenly quiet restaurant. “If I were you, I'd retract my previous statement.”
Caj slid a knife from under his jacket, putting the blade against the vulnerable line of Bo's exposed throat.
“Dì alla gente che è per spettacolo,” I snapped, grabbing the nearest waiter and knowing he'd speak the language of my grandparents' homeland. Everyone that worked here was caught in the folds of the family. Tell the crowd this is a performance.
“Don't worry, ladies and gentlemen,” the man said, not looking the least bit bit phased by what was going on. “Just an impromptu performance, the likes of which would've been commonplace during the restaurant's early history when it was first established in 1923, as a front for the speakeasy upstairs—”
“Bo?!” I heard Edlyn scream from the front of the restaurant.
I wouldn't worry about her; one of the waiters would hold her back.
“Caj,” I warned as he lifted his head to look at me, raising one red brow and smiling in my direction with a face like a fox. He looked excited to be making trouble, the sound of Helen Kane's flapper era voice oozing through the speakers, the eeriness of hearing I Wanna Be Loved By You as a background to Caj's violence ridden expression giving me the chills.
“Don't tell me you wouldn't get some sick pleasure from this?” he whispered as he tapped the blade of the knife against Bo's throat. My ex had tears streaming down his face, pleading eyes turned my direction, begging with every blink for me to spare his life.
“I'm not saying he doesn't deserve to be punished,” I growled back, knowing that if I didn't get control of Caj Bellincioni right here and now, I never would. “But it isn't your place to do the punishing.”
Caj watched me with a shadowed gaze, closing his eyes for a moment as he listened to the song and the seemingly audible hush of the crowd. That's how quiet they were—it was almost loud.
“Hmm,” he said, releasing Bo's hair and putting his boot on his back. Shoving Bo to his hands and knees, Caj slipped the knife back in his jacket and I sucked in a sharp breath of relief. “Apologize to the lady,” he commanded, “and kiss her feet.”
Bo crawled forward, sniveling and whimpering, pressing his mouth to the toe of my black heeled sandals. I stood there in disturbed fascination as he quite literally kissed my feet, apologies falling from his lips as fast as the tears that stained the cement.
There was an acrid scent in the air that took me a long moment to place … Bo had pissed himself.
“I'll take my food to go,” I whispered to the same waiter, right after he finished his tale of the restaurant's sordid history and the audience broke into unsure applause. “Now.”
Pushing Bo aside with my foot, I stormed out of the restaurant, past a shaking and sobbing Edlyn, and into the cold New York City afternoon.
Time seemed to be moving both dizzyingly fast and achingly slow as I tried to adjust to the sudden shift in my existence.
Caj almost cut Bo's throat in the middle of a packed restaurant.
And that was hardly the most disturbing thing I'd have to deal with that weekend. No, as soon as I got home and found Carlo waiting in the living room for me, I knew I was in trouble.
“Ah, polpetta mia,” he said with a shark's smile, Vera sitting on his lap like a trophy cloaked in swathes of emerald satin. That's what I was supposed to be, some idol for Caj, Marcell, and Lucky to lust after, to crave, to want. My father in no way intended for me to take over his operation. No, that was a decision I'd come to on my own. “You're home.”
“I had a busy day today,” I told him, knowing both he and Vinny would already be aware of everything that'd happened in the family's restaurant.
“So I hear,” he continued, gesturing for me to come into the living room.
I walked in, my heels loud against the marble floor, and found myself shocked and surprised when I passed through the decorative archway. All three men were here wait
ing for me, each one positioned on a different piece of furniture. I'd made a quick stop at Central Park on my way home, just to take a walk and clear my head. It was such a long drive back here, I was surprised they'd come all the way out and waited for me.
Something must be up, something serious.
I froze in place, looking from one to the other of them. The way they were positioned, arranged on the furniture like statues, they reminded me of Vera. Beautiful, dangerous little trophies.
I wanted them to be mine.
“What's going on here?” I asked as Caj rose to his feet and tossed a black duffel bag onto the coffee table in the center of the room.
“Mr. Bellincioni here has come bearing gifts,” Carlo said, waving his hand at one of the spare men standing on the edges of the room. The smell of coffee wafted over to me, making my mouth water. God, I could go for a good cappuccino right about now. Just imagining the smooth, glossy surface of the beans was making my head hurt.
Yep, definitely time for a caffeine fix.
A woman that wasn't Renata moved into the room and offered us all cappuccinos from a tray she held in steady hands; I recognized her as Vinny's housekeeper.
So where the fuck was Renata?
A chill chased down my spine and turned my body to ice.
The man my father had gestured at unzipped the duffel and withdrew several folders worth of photos, spilling their contents onto the surface of the table. I noticed that someone had cleaned up my mother's water glass, moved the magazines she'd left on the coffee table, replaced the dead flowers. The way my father was clutching his mistress didn't make it hard for me to guess why it'd been done.
“Play the footage, please,” Carlo instructed and I watched in horror as the man set up a laptop on the sofa table and connected it to the big screen television hanging over the fireplace. It hadn't been there before. When mom was alive, she hadn't allowed TVs in the living room; she felt it was tacky. No, she'd had a glorious oil painting showcasing the fall colors of the New York countryside.
I missed it terribly.
I missed her terribly.
“Have a seat and enjoy your coffee, polpetta mia,” Carlo said as he gestured for me to sit on the couch with Lucky.
It wasn't a request.
Moving over to the white linen cushions, I lowered myself down carefully, knowing what was coming and wishing with all my heart that I could make it stop.
My father's lackey pressed play on the footage and I watched in horror as an image of Renata filled the screen, her sweet face and round cheeks easily recognizable, even standing in the shadows of a dark alley. I watched in horror as she met up with a group of men and disappeared into the door of a nearby building.
The footage shifted and there Renata was again, meeting a man outside a restaurant, sitting across from him at the table of this bakery I knew in New Jersey. She handed him an envelope—a perfect match to one that was sitting on the table—and then sat back to talk.
“This is Arturo Medina,” my father supplied for me. “He's pretty big news with the Villarreal Cartel. Isn't he, Vinny?”
My pseudo-uncle was standing to the left of Carlo's chair, watching the screen with pursed lips and a whole host of new wrinkles that I could've sworn weren't there before.
“As far as we can tell, he's in charge of the uh, acquisitions department, if you know what I mean,” Vincent said, rubbing at his chin. “Recruiting new members that are local to the areas the cartel's interested in getting a foothold in; we believe her son's involved, too.”
I leaned forward and grabbed one of the envelopes, the one that matched the video. Inside was a whole host of photos showing the Costello family manor, the grounds, the warehouses. Renata could not have been responsible for taking all of them.
“You know what a group of rats is called, Lazy?” my father asked as I sipped my cappuccino and tried not to let my emotions play across my face.
“A mischief,” I said and Carlo grinned.
“Yes, a mischief of rats,” he repeated and I felt my insides go cold. I couldn't even look at Vinny, at my suitors … “Play the rest of the footage.”
The image on the screen switched to a video of Renata, naked and bound at wrists and ankles, lying on her side in the middle of the woods.
“She spent her whole life feeding us,” Carlo said, one arm around Vera's waist, the other tapping a rhythm on the arm of his chair. “Now she'll end it starving.”
I looked our housekeeper in the face and I knew that what I was watching … was a live feed.
They were leaving her out there to starve to death.
And they planned to watch.
There's no room in the mafia for weak hearts.
But the thought of Renata lying cold and naked and alone in the forest …
I couldn't make myself okay with that.
And yet, I couldn't ask for help from anyone either. Not the men, not my father, not Vinny. Going after Renata would put everything on the line for me. Fuck, if I got caught I could be killed for it.
Besides, she was rat, a snitch, a spia, a traitor … the woman who made me special cheese danishes to take to school when I was too picky to eat anything else.
Sitting down hard on the edge of the bed, I dragged my hand down my face and tried to breathe. How was I going to find Renata by myself, even if I were so inclined? That bit of forest, it could've been anywhere.
“What has my life come to?” I whispered, wishing I had a cat or a dog, some nonjudgmental companion to guide me with silent strength. I couldn't trust anyone, and I had no one. Takia and Millie were still my friends, but there was no way in hell I'd drag them into this even if I thought I could.
I dropped my hands back into my lap and stared straight ahead at the wall, at paintings my mother had hung for me when I was a child. There was a ballerina, an ice skater, a movie star bathed in the lights of cameras. Every time I got a childish whim for my future career, she had one painted to match.
There certainly weren't any paintings of me, naked and dripping blood, lording over three powerful men who would be hard to contain—if they, in fact, could be contained at all. There was however, one I'd somehow missed before … a small painting sitting on my dresser, hidden behind old family photos and a box of my mother's jewelry.
I stood up, my heart racing, filling my throat with the rapid thumping beat of my pulse.
How … where the fuck had I been all this time that I'd missed this?! I had every inch of this room memorized, every nook and cranny, and here was a message from beyond the grave and I hadn't seen it?!
Snatching the small canvas—it couldn't have been more than three by five—I brought it close and ran my thumb over the rough texture of the oil paint. A woman stood dead center, her dark skirt suit, jacket, and briefcase implying that she was some sort of business professional … like a lawyer.
Her heart was bright red, a cartoon emblem tilting off her chest and onto her sleeve.
The metaphor was not subtle.
At her feet, a sea of animals rested, looking content and happy: a calico cat, a German shepherd dog, a brightly colored parakeet, several bunnies with white coats and black spots. Turning the small canvas over, I found a note scribbled on the back in my mother's handwriting.
Life isn't always black and white—Mom.
Sucking in a sharp breath, I turned the painting back over and studied it again, realizing as I took in all the details that the dog's collar, the cat's collar, the spots on the bunny, and the arrangement of the bird's feathers … they all mimicked a different plant in my mother's garden.
The dog's collar had actaea pachypoda berries—these strange white berries with black dots that made them look like eyes—on it. The cat's had orange Turk's cap lilies. Meanwhile, the white bunnies had spots that looked suspiciously like the leafy bits on the tips of Northern sea oats. And the bird? Now that I was looking, her feathers very clearly showed the shape of blue-stemmed goldenrod—this long, yellow spray of flowers t
hat was hard to miss.
My throat closed up in that moment and I very carefully set the painting back down.
Heading into the bathroom, I closed the door and tried not to panic, pushing hair off of my forehead and sitting down on the closed lid of the toilet. The painting could've meant nothing. But knowing my mother? It probably meant everything.
I stood up and turned to face the mirror, forcing myself to slow down and fix my makeup before I bothered to head downstairs.
Slipping out the back doors, I made my way to the garden, fully aware that there was a chance I was being watched.
With moonlight streaming down across the brick pathways, I meandered around the central fountain area three times, pretending to be in lost in thought as I surveyed the plants. One particular patch caught my attention.
Actaea pachypoda plants, Turk's cap lilies, Northern sea oats, and blue-stemmed goldenrods.
Fuck.
I'd wanted the painting to mean nothing, just a thoughtful remnant from my mother's last days. After all, she'd died sick and slow, right? I hadn't heard a damn thing about it until after it was over, but surely my estrangement from my family was explanation enough for that?
Bending low, I pretended to be interested in selecting several of the bushy gold flowers from the goldenrod bush as I peered carefully through the foliage. And there, a decorative statue of an angel, just like a good two dozen others sprinkled throughout the garden.
Being careful to check for prying eyes, I lifted the edge of the statue and found the note.
It's Carlo. I'm scared, Lazy.
That's it.
I didn't need anything else—I knew.
My mother didn't get sick; she was killed.
And it was my father who did it.
After I'd headed up to my room and sat on the toilet with my head between my knees, I dressed in a pair of comfortable jeans and a t-shirt, grabbed my coat, and headed downstairs.
“Call a car,” I told Vinny when I found him sitting in the living room reading a true crime thriller. How ironic. He must get a kick out those things considering the level of violence that permeated his everyday life. Those books must just seem like so much fluff.
Lavish: A Reverse Harem Miniseries (Mafia Queen Book 2) Page 5