Hot Shade

by Tamara Lush

  Luca swore in Italian, his face getting red. He inhaled and took a step toward Annalisa.

  “I told you. Don’t do it, Luca. I’ll cut her. Anyway, after you broke my heart, I hacked into your computer. You thought I was stupid.” Annalisa turned her head to address Skylar. “Luca thinks women are stupid. I don’t know if you’ve discovered that. Anyway, Luca. I found all the notes on your book. Then, when you published, I told my cousin that you were the author. I didn’t think he would take it out on your parents, though. I’m truly sorry about that.”

  Skylar watched as Luca’s expression turned from anguish to rage. “I’m going to fucking kill you,” he whispered.

  “Wait. There’s more. Because of my issues, you know, my cutting, my self-destructive behavior as the doctors call it, my cousin sent me away to a very nice luxurious institution for a year. They thought I was all cured, and when I went to thank Bruno for his help, he told me that you were in Florida. Apparently they got into your Skype or something.”

  “You’re lying. You’re fucking insane. I got a letter from the Camorra that said you disappeared.”

  Annalisa sniffled. “That must have been Bruno, playing with your head. I’ve never lied to you, Luca.”

  He gulped in a few breaths, and Skylar wondered if he was about to shoot Annalisa. She squeezed her eyes shut, but then Luca spoke.

  “Did Bruno send you here?”

  Annalisa shook her head. “No. He’s under house arrest, as you’re probably aware. He’s trying to find you, though. I kind of screwed up, I guess. He knew that if he told me where you were, that I would be obsessed enough to find you. So I did. I want to be with you. I love you. But some things got in the way. Gianni got in the way.”

  Skylar raised her eyebrows. This was like some bad soap opera. “What the fuck?” she said. She couldn’t help herself.

  Annalisa started to cry. “It does sound insane when it’s told aloud, doesn’t it?” She shook Skylar’s arm, as if to demand a response. Skylar nodded weakly.

  “Gianni wanted to force Luca back to Italy to testify in court that his book was a lie. But I knew that Gianni and Bruno would kill Luca afterward. So, I eliminated Gianni. Luca, do you see how much I love you? I killed for you. I murdered a hit man for you. For us.”

  This woman was obsessed with Luca, and Skylar gasped. For a half-second she wondered if she would ever love Luca as much as this woman did; then she realized the thought was almost as insane as the situation they were all in.

  “You slit his throat. With this knife,” Skylar said, incredulous. And Annalisa was about to do the same thing to her. She took a deep breath and tried to conjure the mental calm and clarity she allegedly possessed in spades, but, nope. That Zen-like aura was nowhere to be found, and tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “Correct, Skylar. I did slit his throat. Don’t cry, bambina. I saw your story online about Gianni. Very nice, and on deadline, too. I used to be a journalist, so I know a good story. Yours is a perfect final article. I’m sure the paper will write a nice obit about you. I’ve been at your house all night and all day waiting, so I had lots of time to read your Twitter feed and look through your books and your photos.”

  Skylar’s mind went blank, unable to process that this awful person had poked around her condo. Probably looked at the photos of her mother. She was crying so hard now that her nose was snotty and clogged. Annalisa was crying, too, and shaking. The knife tickled Skylar’s throat.

  Again, Luca spoke in a soothing tone. “Annalisa. Let Skylar go and we’ll go away together. I promise.”

  “Please. I’m not that stupid, Luca. Skylar upset me by spilling coffee on me. Did she tell you that? No? I don’t want her around. She’s going to call the cops if we let her go, so we’re going to have to kill her.”

  “Okay, Annalisa. Just hand her over to me. I’ll do what you want. I’ll take you anywhere you want. Tell me. Tell me what you want to hear so you trust me.”

  His voice was seductive, and a sob wrenched from Annalisa’s mouth. “Tell me what you remember about the last time we made love. Or do you even remember?”

  Skylar watched Luca swallow hard then say something in Italian. She squeezed her eyes shut, not able to look at him. What was he going to reveal?

  “No, in English,” Annalisa said. “So your friend understands. Open your eyes, bambina, and look at your boyfriend. Tell her, Luca.”

  “We were at my parents’ house,” he said in a low voice.

  “And?” Annalisa demanded. “What did you have me do?”

  “You got on your knees and sucked me. And then I fucked you from behind.”

  “Then he texted me a week later to break up. Skylar, can you believe that? He broke up with me by text.”

  Skylar whimpered and shook her head. Luca hadn’t taken his eyes off Annalisa, and Skylar wondered for a brief moment if he was going to go along with this crazy witch. She was gorgeous and alluring, Skylar had to admit, and the confidence and coolness with which she laid out her plan was terrifying.

  The entire room took on a hyper-real state, the fluorescents of the bathroom suddenly harsh. Skylar stopped weeping, and her eyes went to the bathroom mirror to study the twisted scene. What the fuck was going on? Was she disassociating because of the insanity and trauma of it all?

  As Luca and Annalisa stared at each other, Skylar realized that she was bigger than Annalisa. Probably stronger. Definitely more muscular. The Italian woman was tiny and frail-looking.

  Still, she had killed Gianni.

  “Fine,” Luca said. “I’ll kill her. Just give her to me.”

  Skylar’s eyes went to Luca, wide and incredulous.

  Annalisa shook her head. “No. Not going to fall for that. We’ll have to kill her together, I suppose. I want to see her blood. She’s a sacrifice. She represents all of the women you’ve screwed, Luca, when you should have been with me. How many were there?”

  He shook his head, so Annalisa pressed the flat side of her knife blade harder into Skylar’s neck.

  “How many? Tell us both. Let your little American whore know the truth about you.”

  Luca said something in Italian, and Annalisa laughed. “I’ll translate. Skylar, he’s fucked about ten or so women since me. What, in two years? But he’s probably lost track of a few. How many of those women have you loved, Luca? I want you to include me and Skylar. Tell us.”

  He swallowed hard. Skylar bowed her head and sobbed. This was too much.

  “One,” he whispered, his eyes terrified.

  Annalisa shook Skylar’s arm. “Sorry, bambina. You’re just one of many. This is who you’re going to die for. How does that feel?”

  Searing rivulets of sweat streaked down the backs of Skylar’s legs, and her chest felt heavy, as if she couldn’t get enough air in her lungs. Trying to calm herself with breathing and the memory of her mother chanting “OM,” she inhaled long and pleaded silently for her heart to stop beating so fast. This woman was seriously going to kill her.

  Do something, or else you’ll die.

  “Amore mio,” Luca said in a buttery voice, and both Skylar and Annalisa looked to him. “Annalisa. Come here. Per favore. Vieni qui, amore mio.” Luca said more words in Italian, softer than Skylar had ever heard him speak. He stretched out his free arm, looking at Annalisa with the biggest, kindest, most puppy-dog loving eyes.

  Annalisa faltered in that moment, sniffling loudly, and Skylar felt the woman’s petite body melt a little. The knife shifted downward, hovering just above her left breast.

  Skylar clamped down on Annalisa’s forearm. Wrenching with all of her strength, she twisted her body, launching herself both from her captor and the knife. Panted for air. Writhed as Annalisa tried to recapture her. Skylar had never screamed so loud, but she did so then, a primitive sound that surprised something in her soul. She pushed Annalisa back toward the toilet, putting the full weight of her body into the shove.

  Annalisa staggered and reached for her. A searing heat blossome
d on Skylar’s chest, but she ignored the sensation. All she wanted was to get the fuck out. Annalisa’s knife, covered in someone’s blood, hit the tile.

  Skylar felt Luca grab her from behind. The next few seconds went by in a blur. His arm wrapped around her chest and pulled her toward him as he simultaneously stepped forward. Skylar steeled herself for the shot. It didn’t come, but she was equally horrified to hear the sound of metal crunching against Annalisa’s head. The woman crumpled to the floor.

  Luca released her, and Skylar, gasping, caught her reflection in the bathroom mirror. There was blood. Everywhere. Staining her white cotton dress. All over Luca’s bare arm and grey T-shirt. Dripping onto the floor. Coming from her skin. From her chest. Somewhere.

  A dull throb surfaced, and it quickly grew intense.

  “Luca,” she whispered. Her fingers went to her collarbone, which felt aflame. That’s where the cut was. Just above the right collarbone, stretching from almost her windpipe to her shoulder. It was big. Deep. Hot.

  Bloody.

  “I’m going to fucking kill her,” Luca shouted, releasing Skylar and standing over the unconscious Annalisa. He pointed his gun at her head, which lay near the base of the toilet. His eyes were crazy, and Skylar shook uncontrollably. She pawed in her purse, which she had left on the bathroom counter when Annalisa first ambushed her.

  There. Her phone.

  She stood in the doorway and quaked. She barely remembered the password to unlock her phone and tried twice, unsuccessfully, hitting the wrong numbers each time and leaving streaks of blood on the screen. She pawed for a towel on a nearby rack, pressing it to her throbbing, gushing wound. Then she remembered the phone. She let the towel fall, and on a third try she unlocked it.

  Luca screamed something in Italian, and she looked up.

  “Luca,” she said sharply, watching him tremble and glare at Annalisa. “I’m calling the police.”

  “Do what you want.”

  “Luca,” she screamed. “Stop. Look at me. Don’t. Don’t kill her.”

  Luca’s back was to Skylar, and despite wincing in pain she could see his hard profile in the mirror. He shook as he aimed the gun over and over again. “Why? She’s the reason my parents are dead. She’s turned you against me with my own words. She ruined my life.”

  Tears welled in Skylar’s eyes. Her voice took on a pleading tone, and she felt a little floaty, as if she were watching everything unfold from the corner of the bathroom, somewhere near the ceiling. “Luca, no. You’ll have so many problems if you shoot her. Please don’t. Let the police deal with her. Please? You’ll be in a world of shit if you kill her. You want justice for your parents. Not death. Choose life.”

  “I have no life, Skylar.”

  He moved a half step back but didn’t lower the gun, so she continued to plead. “She didn’t turn me against you. Choose the future, Luca. Choose me. Choose us.”

  She was shaking now, and an odd, cool feeling washed over her. Why was her mind foggy? She shook her head as if to clear it, and for the first time in many long seconds, Luca looked up, glancing into the mirror. Upon seeing Skylar, he gasped.

  “Oh fuck,” he whispered.

  He quickly stepped away from Annalisa and fumbled for the lock, letting them out. Closing the door, he guided Skylar away from the bathroom. She felt faint. Wobbly.

  “It hurts,” she whispered.

  “I’m here, amore mio. Just hang on for me, okay?”

  Luca put the gun in his waistband and took the phone from Skylar, tapping on the screen then wiping it on his shorts. He tapped again and put the phone between his ear and shoulder and held the towel to her torso. He let out a long string of Italian words.

  “Hello,” he said a moment later. “My name is Luca Rossi and I need help right now. Now. Someone broke into my girlfriend’s home and attacked her with a knife. She’s really hurt and bleeding bad. Address? Skylar? What’s the address?”

  She leaned against the wall and recited the words robotically. As she slid downward, Luca followed her to the floor, kneeling in front of her as she sat. He kissed her forehead.

  “Skylar. Stay with me, okay? Please, amore? Please? I love you.” He kissed her forehead again, talked into the phone, pressed the towel into her shoulder. She saw the bottom lids of his eyes well with moisture as he continued, “Please, we need an ambulance right away. As fast as you can. Now. She’s in shock, I think. She’s bleeding badly. Yes, we need police, too.”

  Luca stammered more words loudly into the phone, and Skylar saw tears streaming down his cheeks. An image of her mother, looking blissful in a meditation pose, soared into her mind.

  “Did you just say, ‘I love you’?” she asked Luca. She looked into his beautiful eyes, and they were the last thing she remembered.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  He sat in the too-small room, elbows propped on the table, head in his hands. If Skylar lived, if she still wanted him after this whole fucking mess, he would stay with her until his last breath. Just thinking about her alone and in the hospital made him almost hyperventilate with regret. She knew everything. About his book, his parents, and his morally questionable past with women. She’d never want him now.

  It was bad enough that the paramedics and cops wouldn’t let him go to the ER with her, but now he felt like a criminal here in the police station. And helpless, because he couldn’t just leave and be at her side. He had to wait until Federico arrived, and then God knew how long it would take to spring him. Would he have to spend the night in jail?

  Was Skylar okay? She’d been unconscious when the paramedics took her away, and no one at the police station would tell him how she was, regardless of how many times he demanded and pleaded. Instead, a detective had endless questions about why he’d struck Annalisa with the gun. How he knew her. Whose gun it was.

  She deserved to die, is what he wanted to say. But he didn’t. Instead he insisted on calling his uncle. Or father. Or whatever Federico was.

  Luca rolled his eyes and sighed into the empty room. He wasn’t about to tell the cops that Federico Rossi, the well-known attorney on the TV commercials, was his father and the person who had given him the gun. Probably illegally, he realized now. Thankfully, Federico had returned from his afternoon on the yacht and answered Luca’s call.

  “Don’t say a word to that detective,” he’d growled, hours ago, and Luca had stayed silent since. But being alone with his thoughts and his guilt in a sparse interview room at a police station was his personal hell.

  The door swung open. Federico stepped in, looking fresh and jaunty in a white polo shirt, khaki pants and tan boat shoes, followed by a man in a police uniform. Federico had a hand on the cop’s back.

  “Luca, I want you to meet someone. This is Chief Judson. We just had a nice talk, and you’re free to go. Come on.”

  Luca stood, incredulous. He shook the chief’s hand.

  “It turns out that girl you knocked unconscious with your gun was our suspect in that Palmira Preserve homicide,” the chief said. “We found the victim’s prints in her rental car, and we have video surveillance of them in the parking lot of the preserve. The two of them went into the preserve, but she was the only one who came out. Perfectly matches his time of death, too.”

  Luca swallowed. It was still difficult to believe that little Annalisa would slash the throat of a Mafia hit man. “She’s crazier than I thought,” he said sadly.

  “That’s for damned sure,” the chief said. “Anyway, you’re free to go. We’re not going to charge you. You hit her in self-defense. Hell, you would have been justified in shooting her. Stand Your Ground and all that.”

  Luca thanked him and shook his hand again. He wasn’t about to ask why he wasn’t being charged for possession of the weapon, or why he wasn’t being questioned about his potential ties to Gianni. Florida was such a strange place. And although part of him wanted Annalisa dead, he knew that Skylar was right. Retribution, violence, vigilante justice—they were all things th
at he abhorred. In his darkest moment, poised to kill another human being, Skylar had forced him to be a better man again. To stay true to what was in his heart.

  He loved her for that. And for a million other reasons. He needed to tell her. If she was well enough to listen. If she even wanted him anymore. All he could think of was the hurt in Skylar’s eyes when Annalisa forced him to reveal what a dick he’d been.

  Zombie-like, he followed Federico out of the police station and into the parking lot. Federico smiled grimly and clapped him on the back.

  “Did I ever mention that I donated bulletproof vests to the Palmira Police Department? I even donated vests for their police dogs.”

  Luca snorted a laugh as he opened the passenger door of his uncle’s Mercedes. While he had before suspected that his uncle’s business and political dealings danced on the razor-thin edge of unethical behavior, in that moment he was grateful for Federico’s savvy.

  His uncle climbed into the driver’s seat.

  “Federico, I owe you an apology. And a thank-you.”

  Luca’s eyes searched the older man’s face, looking for anger or annoyance. He didn’t find anything but kindness. Maybe Skylar was right. He should get to know this man. His father.

  “No, Luca, you don’t owe me anything. You’ve been through too much. It’s a fucked up situation, our family. As is this episode with the girl from Italy. We’ll talk about it later. Let’s just try to move forward, okay? Unless you’re going to leave, and then we can part as friends.”

  Luca shook his head. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to stay here on Palmira. At least until Bruno’s trial is over. Maybe longer. And I need to go to the hospital now.”

  * * *

  Skylar felt his kisses on her hand and arm before she opened her eyes. She stretched, hoping to wrap her arms around Luca, then felt stiff, achy and… Ow. Pain. In her shoulder and down her arm.