The Dirty Dozen: Damsel Edition

by Kay Maree

  “Jennifer DeLuca,” I enunciate her name like it’s both a treasure and a curse. “The next time you want to touch me, just say that. I don’t want you to offer me your body unless you’re out of your mind with desire for me… and only me. I don’t need your thanks. Making sure you leave here for somewhere that’s safe will be thanks enough for me.”

  Her slim throat works, and she audibly swallows. “I understand.”

  “Good. Because I’m not interested in a repeat of this clumsy scene. Especially now I know you’re a virgin. Respect yourself. If I wanted easy pussy, I know where to find it. You are not an easy lay to me, so keep that in mind and we won’t have any more problems.”

  She nods. I bang on the door above her head. Two knocks, pause, three knocks. The sound of the lock disengaging is like a gunshot in the quiet room. Jennifer steps out of my way and I walk out into the hallway.

  “I’ll be back soon. I have a couple things to do before I speak to the Don again about you.”

  “Okay.”

  She pushes the door shut, but I stop it with my hand.

  “Jen,” I say.

  “Angelo,” she mocks me.

  “I like you, too.”

  Her innocent smile lights up her entire face. I remove my hand and she closes the door. The guard locks it and pockets the key. He gives me a look that lets me know he’s got the wrong end of the stick, so I step up into his face and snarl.

  “Go anywhere near her, fucker, and I’ll make sure it’s the last thing you do.”

  “No worries, Boss.”

  His immediate capitulation gives me a glimpse of the power my grandfather must feel every day. While it’s not something I’ve ever sought for myself, I have to admit that it could become addictive if I let it.

  I ignore his grovelling look and saunter around the corner. Once I’m alone, I lean back against the wall and adjust the front of my suddenly tight trousers. I might be twenty-one, but I feel like a teenage boy in the first flush of puberty. The reaction I’m having to Jennifer is a first for me.

  She might be a little ashamed of her virginity, however, to me, it’s like finding a unicorn in real life.

  I’ve been so busy fighting to keep mine and Maria’s heads above water that I missed the whole first love thing that most kids experience in high school before they realise that casual sex is even better. Plenty of girl’s have offered themselves to me and I’ve shared a few kisses and received my fair share of blow jobs. Especially after a fight when I’m too keyed up to go home to the mania that lives inside its walls.

  But I’ve never crossed the final frontier into manhood.

  Until this moment, it never bothered me.

  Now, I’m left wondering if my own inexperience is going to leave me floundering like a fool in front of the first girl I can picture myself going all the way with.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jennifer

  I lean against the door and slide to the floor. Once my butt is touching the thick carpet, I let my head fall back against the dark wood and I stare at the vaulted ceiling. Tracing the strong lines with my eyes, I try to forget how idiotic I just acted while hanging onto the feelings Angelo sets free within me.

  Blaming Desmond for my behaviour would make sense. He has spent the past week reminding me how abhorrent he finds my virginity, yet I know that’s not the whole story. Within my friendship group—my wider circle of family and friends even—a girl’s virtue has been seen as a reward for the man whom she eventually ends up with. I had always wanted to buck convention by giving my virginity to someone before I was forced into an arranged marriage.

  Offering myself to Angelo was my final stand.

  I don’t regret it as much as I’m embarrassed by the way I handled it.

  Who knew that the boy from the wrong side of the tracks has more respect for me than the men in my lives?

  Angelo is quite literally from the wrong family, yet he’s treated me better in one long day than anyone from my family ever has.

  “Holy shit,” I mutter to myself. “An Imbruglia admiring a Carlucci… whatever is the world coming to?”

  Soft scratching near the windows grabs my attention. I crawl along the floor into the sitting room, hiding from view as I approach the bay window to see what’s causing the noise outside. Part of me wonders if my grandfather has already sent men to find me, although I dismiss that thought when a raging torrent of sadness pulses through me when I think of never seeing Angelo again. I don’t want to leave.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Maybe not even for a week or more.

  Or ever…

  It’s silly, but he’s under my skin. Infecting me. Holding me hostage. Making me think about someone other than myself for once.

  I can close my eyes and picture his face.

  I can barely picture myself in my own mind’s eye.

  What could all this possibly mean?

  I read a lot of books. Romance is my favourite, by far. A girl in a life like mine needs some sort of escape from the harsh, unromantic worldview that dominates our lives. So, I use words to take me to a different place, although I always remain steadfast in my belief that the overdramatisation of love that I find on the pages I turn could never translate into the real world.

  I need someone to knock some sense into me because I’m thinking about Angelo Carlucci in the same ways the heroines in my favourite books think of their new beaus.

  “Hello?” I startle at the greeting that is accompanied by a knock from the outside of the window. An older lady, with beautiful white hair and a serene smile, looks at me worriedly through the glass. “Are you okay, sweetheart?”

  Slinking across the floor on my stomach, I hide at the side of the window. Hopefully, I am out of sight. My heart pounds in my chest, the furious beats all but deafening me to everything else. I ball my hands into fists and mouth a quick prayer that the woman is gone.

  The last thing I need is for a servant or someone to work out who I am and get word out to media… or worse my grandfather. My mother’s version of charity work is hardly lowkey, and I’ve featured in more magazine and newspaper pages about the Sydney social scene than I care to admit.

  It’s not an idle worry. Overexposure could be my middle name since I was old enough to be pimped out as my parent’s surrogate.

  Opting to bite the bullet, I twist and strain forward so I can see through the window.

  “Open up,” the older lady says. She makes a winding motion with the hand not holding the garden shears. “Use the winder. These windows open.”

  I shouldn’t listen to her. It could cause more problems in this already complicated situation. If she didn’t remind me so much of my recently deceased maternal grandmother, I would be strong enough to ignore her, but she is almost the spitting image of my Nonna.

  Once the window is open, she drops the rose stems she’s been cutting onto a pile behind her and settles on the oversized, smoothly rendered windowsill. I make myself comfortable on the floor.

  We stare at each other with incredibly similar dark eyes. I try to imagine her with dark, almost black hair like mine, and picture what her delicately wrinkled skin would look like forty years ago. I swear I could be looking at an older version of myself.

  It’s unnerving yet comforting at the same time.

  “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

  “Jennifer,” I reply.

  “Such a classic name for this day and age. My older sister was a Jennifer, too.”

  The sadness in her voice makes me want to hug her. “It’s a family name so I don’t mind it.”

  “Lovely.” She looks around us, then scoots closer to the screen that separates us. “Can I ask what you’re doing in my grandson’s bedroom?”

  “Um, I—” Since this was the last question, I expected, I’m left momentarily stunned. I’d assumed this lady, while beautifully dressed, was part of the staff. Now that I find myself inadvertently meet
ing Angelo’s Nonna, I want to make a good impression. “Well, it’s a long story and I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say…”

  “Oh,” she infuses so much disappointment in that single word. “I thought he was different. I mustn’t forget that boys are much more open about their needs these days. Silly me.”

  “Oh, no,” I exclaim. Placing my hand on my heart, I continue in a rush. “It’s not like that. He’s helping me. He’s a good boy, um, man. We barely know each other… I do like him, though.”

  My spluttering explanation makes her smile. “I like long stories.”

  Gathering my wits, I try to explain what’s happened in the past week that’s led me here without alerting her to the fact an Imbruglia is under her roof. My grandpa was always careful to keep his business out of his personal life and I imagine the Don is much the same with his wife. When I was little and didn’t understand who my mother’s family was, I wished for a love like my grandparents. Now that I’m older, I don’t think I could love a man who kept me sheltered from such a large part of his world.

  Luckily, I never expected to marry for love, so it wasn’t something that bothered me too much.

  “What did you say your whole name is?” she asks when I finish my halting retelling on the last five days.

  “I didn’t say.” The searching look of mild reproach she gives me revives the need to please that I used to have around my Nonna. “But I guess it can’t hurt. My full name is Jennifer Grace DeLuca.”

  Using my father’s last name is normally a good enough shield to hide my maternal family. I should have guessed that Angelo’s grandmother would know that my mother, the only child of the Imbruglia Boss and his beloved wife, married a DeLuca.

  All colour drains from her face. She glances around her like she expects men with guns to converge on her for simply talking to me, then she shuffles impossibly closer to the window and whispers, “My name is Grace. My eldest sister was Jennifer Genova Romano. Does that mean anything to you?”

  Her question stuns me into silence and before I can regain my wits enough to answer, someone calls for her, “Mrs. Carlucci. Ma’am. The Don has requested your immediate presence in his personal library.”

  Grace regards me with shiny eyes. “Stay with Angelo. He isn’t like the rest of his family. I believe from the bottom of my heart that he knows nothing of what’s at play here. If I’m wrong, though, I want you to find me. My wing has the pale blue door. I’ll either be there or out in the garden.”

  “O-kay.” None of this makes sense, although her mounting anxiety is becoming hard to ignore.

  “Ma’am?” the voice gets significantly louder. “Are you all right?”

  “Just remember, Jennifer. The blue door or the garden… and the alarm for this window has been disarmed. It was the first thing my grandson did when he arrived.”

  She hurries away, quickly turning the corner and dropping from sight. Belatedly, I hold my hand up to stop her, but I’m too late. She’s gone and I’m left with more questions than answers once more.

  The biggest one, the question that screaming for escape in my brain, is the one with the clearest answer. Unfortunately, it’s an answer I can’t bring myself to acknowledge. Instead, I wind the window shut and curl into a ball in the middle of the bed that smells like Angelo.

  I try to fight away the response that’s vying for recognition in my mind, but it comes anyway.

  Grace Carlucci is my great-aunt. My Nonna’s little sister. The girl whose name is whispered reverently whenever she’s mentioned.

  The woman I have been told my entire life died when she was eighteen at the hand of the Carlucci Clan and ignited a way that has raged for four decades between old allies who had become enemies of the highest order.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Angelo

  “Come with me,” my grandfather snaps. He presses a button under his desk and a bookcase to his right begins to swing open like a door. Once it’s ready, he walks into the gaping hole and starts down a flight of stairs. “Come now, Angelo. It’s time you met someone.”

  I follow him. It’s a reluctant adherence to his order and if I wasn’t so consumed with the need to find out what he wants with Jennifer, it’s an obedience that I wouldn’t concede without a better explanation.

  The steps are steep, angling down into the basement floor, yet my grandfather takes them with the speed and agility of a man half his age. He hurries around a corner, stopping to murmur something to the man guarding the door that seems to lead outside. The bright strip of sunlight around it is stark compared to the darkness of the tunnel. The guard heads outside and I continue following the Don until we reach what looks like a small library.

  He pours himself a drink, then offers me one. I wave him away, but he passes me a glass anyhow.

  “Drink up,” he instructs in the same terse tone he’s been using since I entered his office to question him about his plans from Jennifer. “You’re going to need it.”

  Rolling my eyes, I drain the glass and slam it back on the sideboard. He does the same. After he refills them both, my grandfather motions for me to clink my cup against his. I do. Then we empty our glasses once more.

  “Santino.” I spin around to face the woman who’s entered the library. She is tall with white hair and a familiar way to her that sets the hair on the back of my neck standing on end. “It’s about time you allowed me to meet my grandson.”

  My grandfather blushes. “I understand your impatience, my lovely, and I beg for your forgiveness. There were things I had to make sure of before I brought you two together.”

  “Was one of those things having my great-niece kidnapped?” My grandmother pulls herself to her full height and sneers at her husband. “Or was that a happy coincidence you thought to hide from me?”

  Everything clicks into place.

  The Don’s assurance that Jennifer would not be hurt.

  His refusal to allow me to meet my grandmother when I first arrived.

  And, now, his rush to bring Maria to the mansion by nightfall.

  “You’re about to declare war on the Imbruglia’s,” I state with the clarity of a man who’s finally had the wool lifted from him eyes. “This is about payback.”

  “No,” my grandmother reaches for me. She pulls me into her embrace, laying a hand on the back of my head and kissing my cheek. “This is healing. He’s trying to mend fences. He’s going to give me my family back because I’m about to lose him.”

  Sorrow fills the room. My grandparents move together, holding each other close, and sealing their seemingly mutual understanding with a chaste kiss. I stare at them, mouth open, needing answers. Her explanation doesn’t make sense. Questions that require immediate response begin to assemble in my head when the most obvious fact pops to the surface and falls out my mouth instead, “Jennifer is my cousin, isn’t she? I kissed my fucking cousin.”

  In unison, they turn to me. I am struggling to read the look that flits across their faces when a cacophony of alarms sound at once. The wall behind them explodes and we’re all pelted with chunks of concrete that knock us to the floor and pin us under its dusty weight.

  “Clear.” Someone yells.

  “Try upstairs,” another person commands. “The tip says she’s here.”

  I’m wrenched to my feet by my arm. I grunt when pain shoots up my limb to my shoulder, but quickly shut my mouth when I spot my grandfather lying on facedown on the floor. He’s covered my grandmother with his body and neither of them are moving.

  Rage surges within me and time slows to a near standstill.

  “Who are you?” one of the masked men demands.

  On autopilot, I punch him in the face and take control of the semi-automatic weapon he wears on a strap across his body. Even with my broken arm screaming, I spray the intruders with bullets until they’re all lying on the floor and silence has filled what’s left of the library. In my experienced hands, I’ve sprayed every inch o
f the room with hot lead. It’s amazing I haven’t shot myself or my grandparents in the frenzy that overtook me.

  Seconds after the bullets stop flying, a body rolls down the stairs. It lands on the mess of concrete on the floor with a thud. The idiot I knocked unconscious rouses, and I twist the strap around his neck, choking him until he drops to his knees. I snap the weapon clear of his body. Nudging the Don with my foot, relief courses through me when he rolls onto his back and his eyes open. My Nonna shifts as well, the small whimper she makes brings a heat to the back of my eyes that makes me blink flat out to dissipate it.

  “You did good, son. Now go get her. I’ll take care of your Nonna and call for reinforcements.”

  My head and heart are torn. Part of me wants to leave them all to their own demise and drive out of here to collect Maria so we can run far away from the carnage the Carlucci name causes. Another part—the part I’m ashamed to say is a tiny sliver bigger—begs me to find Jennifer. For the first time in my life, my allegiance is torn between two women.

  “Go, Angelo. Maria is safe. I had her and your trainer and his wife picked up an hour ago. My gut said something like this might happen. Don’t worry, son, everyone will be okay once we’ve taken back the perimeter of the grounds.”

  His words calm my shame to a manageable level.

  “Thank you, Nonno,” I choke out past the emotion that’s clogging my throat.

  He nods, pride in his gaze, then goes back to fussing over my grandmother. I sprint up the stairs. A Carlucci guard meets me in the Don’s office.

  “Is he…?”

  “They’re hurt, but he’s alive,” I answer his unfinished question.

  Unadulterated relief covers his face. It makes me envious. One day, I want to inspire that kind of loyalty in the people I lead. Until then, I have a lot to learn, and gigantic fucking mess to help clean up.

  When he passes me to head to the basement floor, I run down the hallway and bust through the door to my bedroom. The lock gives which calms me a little. If the door is still locked, then maybe they didn’t make it here.