by K. J. Dahlen
This time, I struggle to fit this room into what happened last night. I’ve woken up and fallen asleep too many times. Did I go home from the bar with someone? Did Portia and I meet a pair of guys? I strain my ears, waiting for the sound of her voice, but all I hear is a low hum.
It comes back to me again. Gio. The car. The gun.
He’s not standing over me with it now, so I get up and pad across the room.
The hallway is half-lit. It’s still too early for full sunrise, but it’s flickering with something else.
In the living room, Gio sits on the couch, still wearing the same clothes from last night. I can’t tell if he’s slept, but my heart picks up at the sight of him. I can’t tell if it’s from attraction or fear. I can’t tell why in the fuck I’d ever be attracted to a man who wanted to kill me. And yet, underneath all of it, curiosity burns. Why? Why would Gio Moretto want to kill me? He knows me. We were friends. I never did anything to hurt him. I never dumped him, I never ridiculed him, I was his friend.
Fear sweeps over me and dissipates, my head foggy from the sleep, from not enough sleep. To be so afraid like this feels like another well of exhaustion. I have to work to stay upright. I am in a strange dream, I decide, but only for a moment. No, I am here. I’m alive, and there is Gio, on the couch.
“Gio,” I say, and he turns his head. He doesn’t look at me fully. “Don’t do it.”
He turns away again, back to the television, the news on low volume. “Go back to bed,” he says.
13
Gio
I left her sleeping in my apartment.
I sure as hell couldn’t sleep, and by nine o’clock, my nerves are on fire with dread. In the guest bedroom, Sia sleeps soundly, her lips slightly parted, her blonde hair feathered out over the pillow. I keep my footsteps soft while I leave the townhouse, keys in my pocket. Clean shirt, dirty soul.
For good measure, I deadbolt the front door from the outside, then do the same at the garage. I installed both of them when I moved in because my father always says that a man should keep his options open.
Well, my options are wide fucking open, because Alessia Ricci is sleeping in my guest bedroom and I haven’t killed her yet.
Meanwhile, across the city, my father is waiting for proof. He’ll accept a picture. He’s not a barbarian. But I only have a picture, taken from the doorway, of her sleeping in my bed. Nothing else. I couldn’t bring myself to photograph anything else.
It’s a clear day, the very beginning of May, and the sky is an effortless blue.
I need more time.
The girl who walked barefoot through my house last night to ask me not to kill her—she’s not someone I can murder in cold blood. In the daylight, I know it as surely as I know that I have to do what’s right by my family. My father—he’s always been the guiding force in my life. In everyone’s life.
But then there was Sia, swimming in my t-shirt and sweatpants, her hair rumpled from sleep. Her eyes were wide in the pre-dawn gray, almost as if she was still dreaming. She wasn’t fucking part of what happened to my mother. How old could she have been? One?
I understand more than most people how your family determines who you are and what you do. I’m proud as hell to be a Moretto, proud as hell of my father’s legacy, and proud to step into line.
Just not this way.
Not until I’m sure.
At my father’s house, everything is still and quiet, the front lawn still covered in morning dew. It’s older than my townhouse, one of the first houses to go up in this suburb, but he’s kept it meticulously maintained. If my townhouse sat next to it now, the newer development would look cheap, soulless. Not my father’s house. The two-story structure is hand-painted, no vinyl bullshit, and the flowers in the flower boxes are carefully chosen and tended. It’s not a hedge some developer chose for its long-lived qualities.
This house has been like this for as long as I can remember.
Would my mother have liked it?
I think about her while I walk up the sidewalk, to this conversation that I don’t want to be having, but I have very few memories of her. I half-remember her scent, a floral spritz with a powdery undertone that smelled like getting tucked into bed at night. Her hand on my collar as I tried to run out into the street together. The hint of a laugh, low and melodic. The way she said my name. Everything else is pictures.
It’s Saturday, but the front door is already unlocked. I go in without knocking. He’s expecting me.
My father’s office door is open, and he sits behind a desk more covered than usual. He is, as always, impeccably dressed. I can see the edges of gray slacks beneath the desk, and the button-down shirt he wears, neatly pressed, is only slightly more comfortable than the suit he wears to make his rounds to the laundromats. The surface of the desk is taken up with a breakfast plate, the morning newspaper, and a cup of coffee. His hand is curled around the cup of coffee. It’ll be black. That’s how he takes it.
He doesn’t look at me when I come into the room—not at first. No, not Marco Moretto, not even for his youngest boy. He finishes the story he’s reading in the newspaper first, then flips it neatly down to the surface. When he does look at me, my gut curdles at the anticipation in his dark eyes.
But he waits.
If there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s waiting, silent and fucking stoic until you break in front of him.
He doesn’t say a word.
I summon all the necessary rage, let it thin out the line of my lips. That’s when I see it—the whiskey. Expensive. A man’s drink. The bottle sits next to two tumblers on his desk. This is a man’s drink. A celebratory thing.
Fuck.
“She went home with a friend last night,” I say, the anger not quite sharp enough in my voice. It rings hollow, but hopefully he doesn’t hear that. “Slipped through my fingers. I’m tracking her.”
The corners of my father’s mouth turn down and his eyes narrow. It’s as if my words have deadened the air in the room, leaching the excitement out of it. He doesn’t as much as glance at the whiskey. He only takes a breath in through his nose and lets it out, measured and steady.
“Gio.” My name in his mouth is a question, a warning. “Tracking her?”
All the things he doesn’t say swim in the air between us, as palpable as a third person in the room. If she gets out of the country, I’m fucked.
“I haven’t slept. It’s only a matter of time.” I promise it to him fervently, but I can’t hide the truth from myself—it’s a lie. It’s a lie. I can’t kill Alessia Ricci, that innocent in my bed at home. No. I can’t do it.
He drums his fingers on the surface of his desk, but it’s not an impatient gesture, and when he speaks again his voice is measured. “I don’t have to tell you—”
“You don’t,” I tell him. “I’ve got to go.”
“Godspeed, Gio,” my father says to my back.
The moment I step onto the sidewalk, a weight lifts from my shoulders. I’ve bought some time, but I don’t have much of it.
I might not even have a choice.
14
Sia
Gio’s gone.
I wake up to a house that’s too quiet—not a footstep on the floorboards, not a breath in the air, and I come alive slowly. It’d be delicious if he’d taken me home from the bar. I stretch under the covers, waiting.
Nothing.
He doesn’t appear in the doorway, and after several minutes, I have to pee.
Gio’s bathroom is as meticulous as his garage. No stubble in the sink, clean towels on the rack. There’s no sign of the one I used last night. He must’ve taken care of it while I slept. I wash my hands and dry it on a hand towel folded over a silver towel rack.
Then I wander.
It’s true, he’s not here. I put a hand on the doorknob of his bedroom and crack the door. The bed is made, the comforter pin-straight. I want to snoop. I want to snoop so fucking badly, but the memory of the gun in his glovebox makes me t
hink twice. He’s given me another night to live. I don’t want to screw that up by having my hands in his underwear drawer when he gets home.
Upstairs, there are three rooms—the master suite, the guest room, and another full bathroom. I’ve seen all of it already, so I go downstairs.
In the entryway, I try the front door.
No surprises—it’s locked from the outside. No matter how I latch and unlatch the inner lock, it doesn’t budge.
Should I scream?
It’s a townhouse. If there are other people on either side, one of them would surely hear me.
Or Gio could hear me on his way back in and silence me the best way he knows how.
So, I don’t scream.
I’ll say this much: Europe seems like a fucking fantastic idea right now. I was so stupid, throwing a fit like that, planning my revenge on my uncle. I should have been paying closer attention to my surroundings, like my mother warned me to do.
The central air kicks in, humming in the quiet of the house, the air stirring dust specks in the sun from the windows, and I do another lap. There’s the living room, neat, a pile of business-ish magazines on the side table. A dining room that’s been converted into an office. Gio keeps everything in desk organizers. There are no papers scattered around the desk, which makes me crack a smile. That’s still the same. In school, he never spread his papers out over his desk like an asshole. Even in the privacy of his own home, he doesn’t do it.
I wonder if his murders are this neat and clean. The thought disgusts me. I don’t like picturing him as a killer, but what else could he be? What else could he possibly be, if I’m here, wearing his clothes, trapped in his house?
Tucked behind the kitchen is a small laundry room. My dress from last night hangs on a hanger sticking out from the dryer next to my bra, already dried through, and my panties are folded neatly on the folding table.
What the fuck?
He did my laundry, but he’s going to kill me?
It’s beyond understanding.
I take off Gio’s clothes and put my panties and bra on, which makes me feel slightly more human, but there’s nothing else to wear so I end up back in the sweatpants.
The garage door opens.
I hear the creak and groan and jump into the air, scurrying out of the laundry room, heart in my throat. What’s my plan? What’s my plan? I run into the kitchen. Jesus, all this time, and I haven’t looked for a weapon? I’m so stupid. There are no knives out on the counter. I try one drawer and it’s full of cutlery, dull butter knives.
The second drawer is locked.
Locked.
A violent shiver moves through me. How many women has he brought here? How many women have gone rifling through his drawers? Why the hell would he need a lock?
I get two more drawers open fast, one after the other. One has dish towels. The other has pieces to kitchen appliances. The beaters for a mixer gleam at the top. I slam it shut a heartbeat before I hear the snick of a deadbolt and a key in the door.
He opens the door and looks straight at me.
This is it.
Gio and I face off across the kitchen, and my heart beats painfully hard. Be brave, I tell myself. Be brave. But my hands shake at the hard look on his face. Oh, God, he’s made up his mind. He’s going to kill me.
I have one option left.
Gio steps into the kitchen and closes the door behind him.
I fall to my knees, hands clasped in front of me, almost a prayer. “Please,” I say, my voice ragged. “Please don’t kill me, Gio. I didn’t think any of it was true, I swear.” I stumble over the word swear and pray silently and fervently that he won’t take it as a lie. “I didn’t know any of it was true.”
The hard look on his face softens. He drops his keys onto the counter and steps closer, into the light streaming in from the kitchen window. It catches the line of his face, and even begging for my life, I’m struck by how fucking gorgeous he is.
He parts his lips and speaks. “I like you on your knees.”
Relief, hot and pure, cracks at the top of my head and streams down every inch of me. “I’ll stay on them forever if you let me live.”
God help me, God help me, there is heat in his eyes, and it matches the heat between my legs. God help me.
His eyes are a dark inferno and beneath my bra, my nipples rise against the lacy fabric.
Gio steps closer. “I don’t have a choice about that.”
15
Gio
She’s confused—I can see it in her eyes.
But that’s not all I see.
I see desire there, and hope. I didn’t bring a gun into my home with me, not this time, because I spent the entire drive here wrestling with the question of what to do. Push my thoughts away and do my father’s bidding, or do the opposite and keep Alessia Ricci as my own?
Now that she’s on her knees, with those eyes, with those lips—it’s no contest. My family has meant everything to me, but Sia—my same Sia from all those years ago—could mean more.
Her hair is tousled from sleep, blonde and bright in the sunshine, and I’m so taken with the blue of her eyes that it takes me a few moments to register what she said.
I didn’t know any of it was true.
I cannot control the urge to touch her, so I close the distance and take her chin in my hand, tilting her face toward mine. I want those lips wrapped around my cock. That’s what I want. But it’ll have to wait.
“What did you say?” Her chest is rising quickly with every breath, so quickly I think she might faint. “Take a deep breath, Sia, and tell me again.”
She obeys me without a moment of hesitation, drawing a long, shuddering breath into her lungs and letting it back out. “I didn’t know any of it was true,” she repeats, voice steadier.
A Ricci, not knowing her own identity? This makes almost no sense.
“Stand up.” I offer her my hand and she takes it, rising to her feet. “What was it exactly you thought was a fairy tale?”
A smile quirks the edges of her mouth. “A horror story, more like it. My mother, when she died, was so afraid.”
“That’s not unusual,” I offer, forgetting for a moment the weight of the conversation.
“Not of dying,” she says, and it’s like we’re back there under the bleachers, talking about everything under the sun. “She was so afraid someone might find out who I really was. She was afraid of someone learning my real name.”
“Alessia Ricci,” I supply.
“Yes.” She wrinkles her nose. “But it never seemed real to me. By then, I’d gone by Sia for so long that it sounded strange for her to say it. It sounds weird as hell for you to say it. And I never knew why she was so scared. She never told me before she died, and neither did my uncle.”
I gape at her. “They never told you the reason you’d be a target for as long as you lived?”
Sia runs a hand through her hair, tousling it even more, and somehow it still looks incredible. “I didn’t think I was a target. I thought they were being paranoid adults. Why would anyone come after me? What did I ever do to anyone?”
It takes me a beat to realize it’s not a rhetorical question, and the answer I have tastes bitter in my mouth. “You, personally?” I can’t help the truth. “I don’t think you have done anything to deserve this.”
“Then why—”
A hint of the old anger blooms in my chest. “You know that my mother is dead,” I say flatly.
“Yes,” she says, eyebrows rising in concern. “I do know that. I’ve known that for a long time, but I don’t know what it has to do with me.”
“It had to do with your father, Lorenzo Ricci.”
She shakes her head. “My father’s never been around. He left before I had a chance to know him.”
“Yes,” I say impatiently, regretting my tone immediately. “He left because he hired a thug off the street to kill my mother. He slit her throat while she was walking back from the grocery store.”
“He would have, and he did,” I tell her. This story, to me, is an old one. It’s not a shocking twist. “He didn’t like the way my family was taking over his territory. The Riccis—” I look at her, but I can’t place her among them. “They’ve always been our rival. That’s what my father says. But it was more or less all right until they came after my mother.”
“But why would he have done that?” Sia chews at her bottom lip. “I don’t understand. My mother wasn’t some criminal. She only ever worked and hid, but I never knew from what.”
“From me,” I tell her. “From us. She was hiding from the Morettos.”
Understanding dawns on her face. “Your mother...your family wanted revenge.”
“And we got it.” Pride swells in my chest, though I had no hand in picking off any of the Riccis. Those victories are all stories told and retold late at night, when the dinner dishes have been cleared and the coffee is gone and all there’s left to do is talk. “We got every one of them—”
Sia’s lip quivers, and my stomach sinks like a stone. What the fuck is wrong with me? The villains in my family’s legends were her family. And she is innocent. I know it with everything in my being. She’s innocent.
I reach out and fold her into my arms.
I don’t think, I only act, and she tenses against me for an instant before her body relaxes.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur into her hair. “I should have thought more carefully—”
Sia lets out a bitter laugh. “Why are you worried about insulting me? You took me from my house to kill me, right? Insults are the least of my worries.”
I push her back so I can look into her eyes. “Sia, I’m not going to kill you.”