BEND ME: A Dark Romance

by Leah Wilde

  “Because if you don’t leave, I’ll make sure he gets hurt,” Mrs. Romano said, and now there was no disguise to her voice, only sheer contempt. Her eyes narrowed as she stared hard at Fiona, her gaze full of venom. “Trust me on that. I know how to get things done in this business. Why do you think we’re the number one family in this part of the country? Luck? Random chance? Or did you think it was Paulie running the show, calling the shots? No, dear. It was me. I made this business, and I can destroy it. Which I’ll gladly do if you don’t step out of the way and let me lead my son to where he needs to go.”

  Fiona scoffed and shook her head. “You’re bullshitting. You just hate me and want me out of the picture. Trust me, Vince won’t be happy if he hears about this.”

  “But he’s not going to,” Mrs. Romano said confidently. “You’re not going to mention it.”

  “Oh, I’m not?” Fiona said mockingly, rolling her eyes at the woman she used to respect.

  “No,” Mrs. Romano replied. “Because if you do, I’ll have you both killed. Along with your father. In fact, maybe I’ll keep you alive just so you know what it’s like to have the man you love ripped away from you.”

  Fiona fell silent, the fiery defiance she felt before fading away as the reality of the situation descended upon her. “That’s not true,” Fiona said, shaking her head as if she could physically force the threats to fade from her mind. “You’re lying. You just want to control everything.”

  “I already do,” Mrs. Romano said, rifling through her purse and pulling out a stack of one hundred dollar bills. She handed it forward for Fiona to take, but Fiona just stared down at it uncomprehendingly, refusing to touch it until she knew what was going on. Mrs. Romano rolled her eyes and placed the stack of bills down on the desk between them. “If you’re smart, and I think you are, you’ll take that money, leave her, and never come back. In return, I promise that Vincent will be safe. Your father will be safe. You will never hear from us again, assuming that we never hear from you.”

  Fiona sighed deeply and stared down at the stack of cash before her. “I don’t want your money,” she murmured. A pounding had started in her head, accompanied by image after image after image of her father, waiting for her at home, waiting to be taken care of, while men in black waited outside their apartment, ready to strike at the first signal from the mob matriarch.

  “Then don’t take it,” Mrs. Romano said with a shrug. “What’s it to me? All I care about is that you’re gone before tonight.”

  “I can’t,” she said, thinking back to the playroom, all the sensations and emotions she felt the night before. For once in her life, she felt strong…because she’d been allowed to be weak. To let go. To lose control. But of course, she would be punished for it. Of course, the fates would make this happen, would send this evil woman to tear her life apart. She was stupid for ever thinking otherwise.

  “You will,” Mrs. Romano said, closing her purse back up and heading for the door. “By tonight, Fiona. Or your dad goes first.”

  Mrs. Romano disappeared out into the hall but left the door open, her heels clicking loudly, echoing around in Fiona’s head like a bullet ricocheting inside her skull. Jesus Christ, Fiona thought, silently praying as hard as she could, feeling her stomach contract painfully as she reflected on the conversation that had just occurred. Jesus fucking Christ, please help me. What am I supposed to do? What the fuck am I supposed to do?

  Another set of footsteps replaced Mrs. Romano’s, harder and heavier. A man. Fiona didn’t look up, staring down at the money on her desk as if it held the answer to her dilemma. She didn’t notice who was standing before her until the new visitor spoke up.

  “Given any thought to what we discussed yesterday?” Guido asked.

  Fiona didn’t acknowledge him, reaching forward to snatch the cash off the desk before he could take it away from her. She was going to use it to help her dad no matter what she decided to do.

  “Come on, don’t be like that,” Guido said, each word sounding sickly sweet, as if he was talking to a toddler. “I know that my mother was just in here. Threatening you, I presume?”

  Again, Fiona elected to remain silent rather than dignify any statement or question of Guido’s with a response. He was still the slimiest, most disgusting person on the planet as far as Fiona was concerned, even if she did have bigger problems right now.

  “I can help you with that,” Guido said, finally making Fiona glance up at him before looking back down at the contents of the desk in front of her. “Really, I can. I know she wants you to leave, but if I convince her you’re useful, you can stay.”

  Fiona rolled her eyes, not buying his bullshit for a single microsecond. “Yeah, and how the hell are you going to do that?”

  “I have my ways,” Guido said. “She listens to me. I’m the favorite son, after all.”

  “Whatever,” Fiona grunted, about two seconds away from yelling at him to get out so she could think in peace.

  “If you fuck me,” Guido said, casually as ever, “I’ll make the problems go away. I’m about to be top guy, anyway.”

  “How do you know that?” Fiona asked, suddenly desperate to know what the plan was to overthrow Vince’s control. “What’s going to happen?”

  Guido just shrugged, looking like his mother in the process, cold and unfeeling. “Nothing that concerns you. But I’ll tell you what, if you agree to the terms I’ve laid out, I’ll make sure Vincent gets a good deal. Like a junior position, maybe some administrative work. Some stuff that’s more his speed. Otherwise…he might not fit into the organization anymore.”

  “What does that mean?” Fiona asked, the sense of urgency clutching her throat seeping into her voice. Guido smiled, his sharp teeth poking out from behind his lips, clearly pleased with the fear that he could detect in Fiona’s voice.

  “It means he’s not going to be around much longer, in one sense or another,” Guido said. “But if you sleep with me, make me a real happy boy…who knows? I could arrange something for him, like I said. Just let me know.”

  “Fuck you!” Fiona hissed, keeping her voice low so that others out in the hall wouldn’t hear her. “You can go fuck yourself because you’re never, ever, going to touch me.”

  Guido snarled, then, his face curling up in an ugly knot as he stared at Fiona for a few seconds before backing away. “Whatever. Don’t come crying to me when daddy has a little incident with his meds.” He left the room, stomping out angrily. She’d clearly pissed him off. Fiona didn’t know whether to feel proud or terrified because of that achievement.

  After another few seconds, she heard the distinctive clicking of Mrs. Romano’s heels, telling Fiona that she was still in the main area of the compound. Fiona’s entire body tensed up, anticipating another encounter with the older woman, but the clicking passed by, fading away as she disappeared from her side of the building.

  Fiona barely had a moment to collect her thoughts and calm down when she heard another set of footsteps, followed by the sound of the door shutting behind the person that walked into the room. What now?

  “All right,” the person started to say. Vince. It was Vince this time. But for some reason, that didn’t make Fiona feel at all relieved. Had he come to fire her? To carry out his mother’s will? Or was he walking in here totally blind, completely oblivious to the fact that his family members would gladly murder him for his disobedience?

  Fiona turned to look at him, staring at the back of his head for a moment as he moved a lock into place on the door. He was beautiful, really. A gorgeous specimen of a human being, the most handsome person that Fiona had ever touched. The most beautiful person that she’d never had the opportunity to really kiss. And now she never would, for she knew what she had to do. There was no other choice.

  She had to quit.

  # # #

  An hour later, Fiona was sitting on a park bench, across the street from her apartment complex, drinking from a bottle of wine that she’d bought on her way home. She
didn’t have a brown paper bag to cover it or anything, but at this point, she didn’t really care if she got ticketed or even arrested for public intoxication. Nothing really mattered anymore.

  She had money to carry her over for a few months, at least, covering the upcoming doctors’ appointments and medication for her father, but she’d need to find a new job. I’ll start looking in the morning, she thought to herself as she took another large gulp of bitter wine. Right now, I can’t do anything. Right now, I can’t even think.

  Fiona’s whole body felt numb, but underneath her skin, her blood buzzed with anxious energy. She couldn’t keep her eyes from bolting from one side of the park to the other, checking the dark corners around her apartment complex to see if there were any men waiting in the shadows to jump out at her. Mrs. Romano might have been bluffing, but there was just as much chance that there were hitmen waiting for an order to kill both Fiona and her father. She knew she was being paranoid, but there was nothing she could do right now to calm down, except maybe forcing her nerve endings to shut themselves off as a result of alcohol.

  As the sun slipped lower in the sky, eventually passing under the horizon, Fiona remembered with a wry, pained smile that she expected to be back in Vince’s playroom tonight, discovering another side to herself that she’d never known before.

  But she had to resign herself to reality. She’d lost that side of herself, just as she’d lost the job, just as she’d lost Vince. Her new hope was short-lived. She should have realized it would be that way. But no, she was stupid. She let herself believe. Sitting there on the bench, watching the darkness spread around her like a suffocating blanket, she made a promise herself never to make that mistake again.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Vince spent the rest of the day moping in his office, berating himself and staring off into empty space. This is why she doesn’t want you, he thought to himself as he lobbed another pencil across the room, smacking it in the middle of the previously pristinely painted wall. Because in a crisis, you fall apart. You crash down. You become weak. She wants a real man. A strong man. Maybe she did want my dad, even if they never hooked up.

  He knew he was being ridiculous, pitying himself into total inactivity, letting the sun sink down around him without ever accomplishing anything beyond losing his assistant. But he figured he deserved at least a few hours to himself, seeing as how everybody else was busy preparing for the funeral tomorrow. After enough hours passed by, Vince’s growling stomach finally convinced him to head home to his penthouse where he had Yuri bring him comfort food along with a ton of wine. He drank himself into a stupor and then collapsed onto his bed, memories of his time in the playroom with Fiona bouncing around in his head as he slipped off into dark, dreamless sleep.

  The next morning, he barely woke up in time to jump into his suit and tie and have his driver take him over to the cemetery, just in time for the priest to make a speech over his father’s dead body.

  Vince zoned out the whole time, staring off into the distance and ignoring the cracked, overdone sobs that emitted from his mother’s mouth. He knew she wasn’t really that upset. Especially now that Fiona was gone, she had nobody left to threaten her place as the woman in the family. He should have known better than to hope that it would ever be any different. His mother held the power, especially now that his father was gone. It was going to be this way until they all died, until there was nobody left in the world that obeyed the Romano family. Maybe it’d be better that way, Vince thought to himself as they lowered Paulie Romano into the dirt. Maybe we should all go this way, take our evil, fucked-up, twisted ways out of this world. Stay away from people like Fiona who deserve better.

  The family rode in limousines back to Mama Romano’s house while roughly half of the funeral’s attendees followed to partake in the “after-party in celebration of Paulie’s life.” Vince kept his sunglasses on the whole time, even as he stepped into his mother’s dimly lit house, just so people wouldn’t be able to tell how hungover he was. He didn’t need to make a bad impression on anybody. He still wanted to be the leader, even if he couldn’t dominate Fiona anymore. After all, he’d need to find some other way to exorcise his aggression, and he figured he might as well sublimate all his rage and loneliness into boardroom strategies.

  “Excuse me, excuse me!” his mother yelled about thirty minutes into the after-party, lightly tapping on a glass of champagne to get the attention of everyone in the crowded banquet hall. “Would all members of Romano Incorporated please follow me across the hall for a short discussion on business matters? It’ll only last a few minutes, and then we can get back to drinking and enjoying Paulie’s memory!” She smiled brightly, but Vince still felt his muscles tense up under his skin, his body preparing a fight-or-flight response as if a physical danger dropped into his path.

  Still, he forced himself to move to the room she pointed out, forcing his way through the crowd so that he was at the front of the group and going to stand by his mother when she moved to the center of the room. Guido was there, too, on the other side of Mama Romano. They had to show a united front, even if behind closed doors they were at each other’s throats, emotionally speaking.

  “I’m so happy you’re all here, celebrating the life of my late husband. It means so much to me,” Vince’s mother said, smiling warmly and turning to address a different man in the room on every other word. The crowd mumbled in response, all the enforcers and legal workers and administrative aids all smiling and nodding back at Mama Romano, encouraging her to go on. “We are at a crossroads. Not just the immediate family of Paulie Romano, but everybody in the larger, capital-F family, if you will. All of us here in this organization who have sacrificed so much time and energy and effort into making our business run smoothly. I want to thank you so much for all that you have done for us, and at the same time, I hope that you will join me in the effort to make sure that the organization continues to function as it has for the past twenty years.”

  Again, there was a low, awkward wave of mumbling in the room, signifying the general consensus that the crowd agreed with Mama Romano’s sentiment.

  “So, for that reason, I believe it’s crucial that we take a vote. Here. Now. Not wasting any more time. We need to vote for an executive officer of this company!” She grinned again, lifting her glass in the air before bending her head back to take a deep drink.

  “Wait, what?” Vince said as soon as he realized what his mother just said. “What are you talking about? We already have an executive officer.”

  “Hmm, what, dear?” Mama Romano said as she finished taking a sip of her champagne, looking like she was celebrating at a wedding rather than the aftermath of a funeral. “Oh, yes, we have an interim executive officer, and that’s you. You’ve done a fine job holding down the fort the last couple of days, but now the time has come to look to the future.”

  “Interim? That’s not what Dad wanted, Ma,” Vince protested, helplessly looking around the room in hopes of finding a friendly face. “He named me as his successor. Not the temporary one but the permanent one. So why are we even talking about this?”

  “Hmm,” Mama Romano murmured before handing her drink over to the nearest servant in the room. “I’d hoped we could avoid a public confrontation like this. But I’m afraid we have no choice. Honey, you’re a very smart man. So talented.” She paused, smiling at him in an unnatural, almost saccharine way that had him cringing back from her, almost stumbling into Guido by mistake. “But this job isn’t right for you. We need somebody who’s a thinker, not just a doer. We need to have strategies in place for the new age of the Romano Family, and the man who can form them is…well, he’s standing behind you.”

  “Hey, brother,” Guido whispered into Vince’s ear. Vince flinched back from him, but in between his mother and brother at the center of the crowd, there was nowhere he could go to escape. He had to face his little brother, who grinned at him as though he’d finally won. “I just want you to know that we’ve really enjo
yed having you around the past couple of days. Really. We want to see more of you. But…in a different position, maybe.”

  “Fuck you,” Vince spat out automatically, his anger getting the better of him.

  “All right, then, I guess we’ve got to take it to a vote!” Mama Romano announced, lifting her arms in the air until all the mumbling in the room came to a halt. “All in favor of displacing Vincent in favor of Guido for the head executive position of this organization, please say aye—”

  Several people lifted their arms in the air to vote, but Vince shook his head and yelled out, “Bullshit! This is fucking bullshit! You can’t conduct an official vote here. Half of the members of the board aren’t even here!”

  Mama Romano shrugged. “Well, dear, if they’ve chosen not to come to the funeral, doesn’t that say it all about their loyalty to this family and to this business?”

  Vince was stumped for an answer, his mind scrambling for an explanation as to why all the senior members who liked him were missing from the room. There had to be a reason. There just had to be. They wouldn’t all skip on the same day like this unless…