by K. J. Dahlen
The sight of it doesn’t make me flinch away.
That blood—that is the old me.
“Shower?” He says, pressing a kiss to my temple.
“Yes.”
We step under the hot stream together, my body aching from being so well fucked, and I am made new.
No matter what happens now, I belong to him. And he is mine.
Til death do us part.
33
Gio
It’s a risk, but it doesn’t seem like one.
Going outside the hotel, I mean. Fucking Sia might be a risk in that my heart will never recover. She’ll always be walking around with it attached to her sleeve. In the shower, I take her again, up against the wall, gasping and coming around my cock. After that, she’s too sore to play. And besides, it’s our wedding day.
Afternoon is fading into evening when I lead her onto the sidewalk that goes into the heart of downtown Verona. At the next corner, a woman with bright auburn hair burning in the sunlight turns and goes the other direction, disappearing behind a building.
“Reminds me of Portia,” Sia says quietly at the empty space up ahead. “My best friend.” Her voice is quiet, but her joy isn’t dimmed at all.
It’s achingly gorgeous here, not least because Sia’s wearing a pink skirt and a black top. There’s a little swing in her step, in the way she holds herself, that makes my heart swell with pride. We did that together.
The sunlight catches in her hair while we walk, her fingers wrapped through mine. She’s beaming with so much happiness that I don’t care that here, of all places, is a dangerous one.
We could be recognized.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been to Verona. No. My brothers and sister and I were all baptized here. But Father Lawrence is a man of god—he won’t have alerted my father, not now that he knows the danger, and Sia and I will move on in the morning. I still have that sanctuary feeling from the monastery.
It settles over me when we step into a tiny Italian restaurant a block in from Main Street.
“Oh, my god,” Sia says. “Look at this place.”
It’s what you’d find if you looked up Italian restaurant in the dictionary. Dark wood tables dressed in white linen tablecloths. Walls painted to look like Venetian plaster. We’re seated by a mural of an archway that’s so well done that if you’re only glancing, you could be looking out a canal in Venice. The candles on the table reflect in that dark painted water.
Sia can’t stop grinning.
“This is amazing.”
“This is Verona,” I tell her, and hand over the basket of bread. It’s warm and fluffy and with a pat of butter melted in I’m halfway to heaven.
“How have I never heard of this place?”
“Most people haven’t.” I always thought, as a child, that we were driving somewhere magical, and we spend the next dinner talking about it. It’s an abstraction, like my father isn’t the living human who ordered her killed, and somehow by the time I pay the check we’re both laughing.
The breeze is warm when we step back out onto the street.
“Should we walk by the shops?”
A tiny prickle in the back of my neck serves as a warning. No, we shouldn’t walk by the shops. We should step into the shadows and creep around in the hidden parts of town until we’re safe in our room. But I can’t say no to those blue eyes.
Around the corner from the restaurant, Sia slows down outside a jewelry shop.
The inside pours light onto the sidewalk and with a twist of my heart I see it—how Sia pours light into my life. She looks inside, a cursory glance, and tugs at my arm to keep walking.
I stop her.
“Do you want to look inside?” I take her hand in mine, lifting our naked fingers into view. There’s something missing, and that something is a ring for my bride. There was no time, in our midnight flight, to shop for jewelry. “There’s something you need.”
Sia blushes. “Oh, Gio, no.” She squeezes my hand, a gentle pressure. “I have all I need right here.”
Jesus, she’s so fucking sweet. And to think—I narrowly avoided a tragedy.
I have enough money in my pocket to buy her a ring. Maybe not the fanciest ring in the store, but one that will sit proudly on her finger.
I kiss her knuckles. “Not a chance of that.”
There’s a flurry of excitement when we walk into the shop from the man and the woman behind the counters and I hear a whispered “—stay open this late. Finally!”
Sia doesn’t stop at the front cases, glittering with diamonds. She glances over them, the corners of her mouth turning down. It’s not that I wouldn’t move heaven and earth for one of those diamonds, but that’s not what she’s looking for.
At the very back of the store, there’s a single case by itself, and this is where Sia stops.
The rings inside are only metal, but none of them are plain. They’re designed. Braided metal, delicate loops. Sia’s eyes glow in the case’s light. “They remind me of something ancient,” she says, and then she sees it. I know the moment because her eyebrows rise, just a little.
“Something I can take out for you to look at, miss?” The woman approaches with a calm smile.
“That one,” says Sia.
It’s gold, and the top is wrought with three delicate leaves, like ivy. Her hand trembles as the woman slips it on. It’s a perfect fit.
Sia’s pulse flutters in her neck. She can’t stop looking at her hand.
“I’ll give you two a moment,” says the woman.
“Wait.” I’ve seen the counterpart, on the other side of the case. Hammered gold, the same color as hers, a thicker band. “This one as well.”
It takes a little adjusting, finding one that’s bigger, but Sia’s face is pink with joy by the time we’re done. The weight of our love is around our fingers. I pay the woman in cash and add a tip big enough for the both of them.
There. Now everything is perfect.
I love her enough to light up the city when we leave the jewelry store and stroll down the street, my hand relearning how to hold hers with the ring between our skin.
We’ve just stepped out of the jewelry store’s light and into a shadow on the sidewalk when Sia gasps.
34
Sia
It’s pure instinct that makes me lock my hand around Gio’s arm and pull him into a narrow alley. It’s a shitty place to be, really, because it’s not so much an alley as a forgotten space between two buildings, with nowhere to go on the other side.
But my heart is in my throat.
I press my back against the wall.
Gio does the same.
He doesn’t let go of my hand.
“Sia,” he says, low and even. “What the hell is going on?”
“I saw him.” I swallow the cold fear settling in my throat. My skin crawls. We have to get out of here, but we have to stay off the sidewalk. What are we going to do?
“Who?”
“My uncle.”
Gio shakes his head, a quick little movement of disbleief. “Your uncle?”
“Yes. My uncle David.”
My mind races. How could he be here, in Verona? There’s no way he’s here by coincidence. I can’t put the pieces together. I can’t make it all work.
“Are you sure?”
I squeeze my eyes closed. “Yes.” He was in a car. His face was lit from the side, by a streetlamp. “I don’t know if he saw us or not.”
“Sia, it’s dark. Could it have been—I don’t know, a trick of the light?”
“It was him. I know it was him.” Shivers race up my spine to the base of my neck. “We have to go. Oh, shit—”
There are no doorways in the alley. No side-entrances to stores. Nothing. It’s a dead end.
“Okay.” Gio takes one breath and turns his face back toward the road. “Say the word, and we’ll go.”
The pressure descends like an icy cloth over the back of my neck. “You’re the mafia prince. You decide
when we go.”
Gio laughs, and the ice melts into warmth, even with our backs up against a literal wall. “You’re the one who dragged us in here. I thought you had a plan.”
“I’ve never had a plan,” I grouse. “I’m only along for the ride.”
“One, two, three,” he says, and then he’s putting my hand in the crook of his elbow and marching us back onto the sidewalk.
I feel exposed. That’s saying something, coming from a person who lost her virginity this afternoon. Still, I couldn’t feel anymore awfully naked then I do in this instant, with Gio tugging on my arm. “Slow down,” he murmurs into my ear. “Slow down. Lean into me. Laugh.”
I laugh, but it sounds fake as fuck.
“He’s not going to be looking for a couple,” he reassures me at the next block.
“No, of course not.” Gio’s right. I should feel relieved, because my gut twisted at the sight of my uncle. It did not feel like being saved. But I don’t feel relieved. I feel guilty. I’m okay, and he should know that. I should tell him that I’m going to be fine. But there’s a drumbeat in the back of my head that’s saying no, no, no. Do not go to him. Do not talk to him. Get out of here.
I need a minute to think. I need to a minute to figure out why I’m suddenly afraid to come face to face with the one man who’s raised me all these years.
It doesn’t make any sense.
But the slap slap slap of my shoes on the sidewalk drowns out my thoughts. They spiral out of control no matter how I try to shove them into orderly lines. What is he doing here? What is he doing here?
Every inch of me rings with tension. It’s a few blocks to the hotel’s wide front lawn, but it feels like miles. My breath is harsh in my throat. What has happened to me? Why am I so desperate to get away from my own uncle? Is the fact that he’s out of place for Verona enough to send my body into a vicious fit of nerves?
Fuck.
It makes no sense.
We burst through the front door of the hotel in slow motion. My teeth are gritted in a fake smile, but nobody’s behind the front desk. It seems ominous. What if my uncle is already here? What if he’s waiting for us?
“We shouldn’t be here.” I grip Gio’s arms with my fingernails, aware that I’m digging in but unable ot stop. “We should go. Right now.”
“The room,” he says gently, lifting my hand away from his arm. “The room, and then we’ll go.”
We see no one on the way to the room, but my heart hammers in my ears as he slips the key into the clock, the click and whirr of it releasing as loud as a drumbeat.
Gio strides into the room, fast, as if to catch anyone inside off guard. “Good. It’s good,” he says. He throws the curtains shut over the window, and then everything is a flurry of movement. My hands shake while I put my shopping backs together, cramming them all inside the biggest one, as much as I can. Gio’s packed in an instant, strong hands shoving clothes into his suitcase and zipping it shut. I can hardly see to make sure we haven’t left anything. I want to be gone.
He makes me walk slowly down to the exit, which is torture.
I want to run.
He makes me stop while we check the lobby.
Nobody.
In the strip of parking lot, I feel like screaming while we throw our things into the car. We just did this. I want to be done with this. I want the pressure in my head to release me.
He starts the car while I fumble for my seatbelt, struggling for control.
“Drive, Gio. Jesus. Drive.”
“Wait.” There’s no malice in his voice, only a deadly calm.
It settles me.
For a moment.
“Do you see anyone?”
I raise my head and force myself to look out into the night. First one direction, then another.
“No.”
He puts the car in reverse and backs out of the spot.
My heart beats harder.
We’re past the row of cars, almost home free, when the headlights bounce into view at the end of the drive.
“Shit, shit, shit.” I grab the door handle, bracing myself.
“We don’t know it’s him.”
Gio’s right. We can’t see who’s driving the car.
It stops.
The driver’s door opens.
A man gets out.
A moment later our headlights illuminate him, and there he is, my uncle David, here in Verona, why is he here, why is he here?
Gio steps on the gas.
“Don’t hit him!” I yell. This is when he’ll leap out of the way of the car, this is when—
David stalks toward us.
Gio grits his teeth.
“Gio—”
At the last possible moment my uncle takes a single big step and we whoosh by him. I swear his jacket catches on the mirror. Gio looks once to the left and guns it out onto Main Street.
He doesn’t look back.
I do.
The last I see of my uncle, he’s reaching into his jacket, as if to get a gun.
35
Gio
I always thought my father was all-powerful.
As a child, I thought he ran the entire world, had everything under his thumb.
It’s so much worse than that.
If he could control everything, none of this would be happening.
How long can we keep running?
I’m numb as I drive toward the freeway entrance. It seems like we’ve been doing this forever, this running—checking the rearview mirror, gripping the handles tight, knuckles white on the wheel.
It’s so much worse than an all-powerful father.
We’ve got people coming at us from both sides, and Sia is caught in the middle.
I accelerate onto the freeway and we disappear into the traffic.
Again.
I can’t keep running like this. It’s fucking exhausting, for one thing. I can’t do it, but I will. If this is what it takes to keep her safe, that’s what I’ll do. There’s no choice in the matter.
I have to keep her safe from her uncle.
Sia is silent as we cruise away from Verona at eighty miles an hour. Silent, with one bright tear making a track down her cheek. This is wearing on her. How could it not be?
She reaches forward and turns the music up loud.
I don’t say anything.
There’s something I have to tell her, but I don’t say anything. Not to the woman with my ring glinting gold on her finger, even in the darkest light.
Part of me is torn in two. Should I have let her go to him? He’s her only family left in the world, other than me. Maybe I should have stopped. Maybe I should have let her go back to him. But that wasn’t really a choice, was it? She’s the one who wanted to go. She’s the one who pushed me off that sidewalk. I felt her fear coming off of her in jagged waves all the way back to the hotel, and I don’t even think she realizes what she saw.
What she must have seen.
I saw it, too.
Maybe she’s blinded by love, by old affection, but I saw that man’s face as he came toward the car. It only took a split second in the headlights, but I saw the look on his face.
It was not the expression of a frantic uncle who has finally found his niece. It wasn’t even the grim determination of a hero coming to rescue a damsel in distress, no matter the cost.
No.
His face was flat, expressionless, eyes narrow.
It was the face of a killer.
Sia reaches up and wipes at her cheek. “Fuck,” she says, then turns her face to the window.
I take a deep breath.
A tiny kernel of doubt takes root in my gut.
Maybe I mistook his expression.
I don’t think I did, but it wouldn’t be the first time I miscalculated, misjudged. Always leave room for the possibility that you could be wrong, my father always says. I kick down the door to that room and leave it wide open. Was I wrong? Was I wrong?
Sia leans back in her seat and p
resses her lips together.
It’s not just me, anymore. We have to make these decisions together if we’re going to survive this. It hits me with a hollow thud, that this isn’t a game of running to and fro, a hide and seek for children. It’s survival. Real survival. The good parts of today blinded me to that.
“Do you want to go back?” I ask her.
She takes long breath before she answers.
“No.”
36
Sia
Gio drives us back into the city.
Maybe it’s a bad idea. Maybe it’s the worst idea we’ve ever had. But where else are we going to go, right now, in this moment? My brain is a whirling mess of contradictions. I don’t know which thoughts to follow and which to let go.
“It’s the one place nobody will expect,” says Gio, turning onto the Loop. The heart of downtown Chicago is bustling. Traffic everywhere. “We can blend into the crowd.”
He picks the cheapest hotel, a Travelodge that looks like it hasn’t been updated ever, and tests the lock too many times.
I’m exhausted.
I’m exhausted and sore and still, the sight of him stretched out on the bed fills me with the kind of heat that’s hard to contain.
I press myself against him. I’ll only close my eyes for a few minutes. Gather my strength. And then...
It’s late in the night when I wake up, the city glow coming through a thin curtain. Where the hell are we? Someone in the next room drops something onto the floor. The Travelodge.
It’s like this all night. Restless, broken sleep, but I can’t pull myself out of it long enough to get up, to make plans. Eventually, toward dawn, I give in.
When I wake up for good, Gio is in the shower.
I climb in after him, rubbing sleep from my eyes.
“Wife,” he says, and gathers me into his arms.
I can’t help it, the way all the worry seeps out of me and rushes down the drain.
He kisses me under the hot stream of water. “Gio, I’m so tired.”