by Natalie Wrye
Where the hell am I? Del…
“She’s fine,” a voice says, and I balk, gaping in the direction of the brown eyes. They belong to a woman. She looks to be about middle-aged, but I can’t tell for sure. Her eyes dance with joviality and youth that contradicts the lines near her mouth and brow.
Her face is a reddish-brown shade and her nose is strong and aquiline. She’s more handsome than pretty, but her manner reveals an inherent softness that adds warmth to her chiseled face.
She’s careful not to touch me again, and I know that she understands how crazed I am at the moment. Could she hear my thoughts?
Intuitively, she says, “You’ve been saying her name in your sleep. We’ve had to force you to drink in between your sleeping spells. You were extremely dehydrated.” She cocks an eyebrow, flashing me an amused smile.
I sit up straighter, gingerly, trying to remember these things: anything… but my brain feels empty, and my subconscious finds no straws on which to grasp. All I know is that Del’s “fine.” But fine where?
“You’re in the hospital. You’ve been sleeping here all day,” the woman speaks, surprising me yet again. She smirks, shaking a head full of jet-black hair. “You had enough water in your system to drown a small animal. Maybe not in your case, though…” she pauses, prompting me to finish her sentence. I sit dumbfounded, until I realize what she wants.
“Uh, ma’am.” I stammer briefly. “I really appreciate this…”
“No ‘ma’am’ necessary,” she says, holding up a hand. “Just Caroline, please. I think it would be a really good idea to do away with formalities. Especially considering the circumstances...” Her nose twitches briefly.
She’s being nice. And yet, something feels off. There’s a chill beneath the hospital worker’s warmth, and I have yet to see Delilah’s face, a fact which worries me and makes me question the kind woman staring down at me at the same time.
Where is Del? And why am I strapped to the sheets on the bed as if I’m in a mental ward and hoping to escape? I’m not a run-risk. Or am I? I frown at Caroline who stands above me. My eyes sink into minus signs.
“What circumstances are you talking about… Caroline?”
I glance down at my twisted and tied body reluctantly, suddenly becoming very aware of the matted hair on my head and the blood and sweat on my arms. Caroline seems to become aware of them too, but her jovial expression turns into disgust, her face twisting as she scowls, one lip looped tellingly over the other.
I hear footsteps behind her and watch as she steps aside. Suddenly, the hard, permanent scowl appears and with the snap of a few fingers, it’s gone, a smug smile replacing the frown, a look of enlightenment lighting up his rugged face. He clears his throat.
“Looks like you’ve got yourself in a bit of a pickle there, Mondello.”
I look down at the brown belts holding me to the bed. “You don’t say.”
“Oh, no, not those things.” He motions to the straps. “Those are the least of your worries. You might want to concern yourself with restraints that are a little more permanent.” He holds up a pair of handcuffs I hadn’t seen. “Like these.” He dangles them from a chubby finger. “Because according to the Federal Bureau of Investigations of the United States of America… you’re under arrest, kid.” One eyebrow lifts. “For aiding and abetting a Federal fugitive.” He whispers the next words. “Marco Morelli.”
He throws the handcuffs on my body, shaking his head.
“I always knew you were a fatherless bastard, Mondello. Just never realized that the father you lost was the same one who belonged to Marco Morelli. The Gafanelli’s old Enforcer.” He leans closer, his voice lowering to a whisper. “And your piece-of-shit half-brother.”
Across the Room
DELILAH
Another hour passes by, maybe two. My sense of direction hasn’t failed me often, and I’m hoping it won’t now. I think I’m close. To what I don’t know, and I can’t even say for sure.
My legs are cramped. My calf muscles are in knots. The skin on my arms and legs is cool. In fact, it’s freezing.
Did the temperature drop? I can’t tell. My blood is running so hot beneath the surface.
My shoulder is starting to burn again, and my still damp clothes are like an anchor, tethering me to the ground. I slide my black blazer from my shoulders, tempted to let it slink its way into the earth. I ponder on whether or not I can leave it. I don’t want to, but the weight…
And suddenly the burden on my shoulders triples in intensity, the small black jacket feeling like the weight of another body bearing down on mine. I try to shrug it from my shoulders, but it is stuck, like glue.
I want to stop. I’m dying to. But the need to find Javi spurs me on, the need to figure out what happened to the man who risked his neck for me too many times to count is pushing me past boundaries I’ve never known.
I have to go on. I need to go on.
I try to smack my fading phone light, an attempt to jerk the broken device into shining again. The light is dimming on its screen, its formerly bright beam turning into an orange glow. Fainting, flickering: showing signs of its final breath.
Or maybe it’s just me…?
My vision is going in and out; the lines in front of me blur into a haze. The formerly firm ground now feels like quicksand, and I struggle to put one leg in front of the other.
Frantic, I grab for my blazer again, unbutton it, fumbling around inside of its coat pockets to reveal its contents. The handle… I can’t find the handle. Suddenly, I feel something cool and hard beneath my fingers. I grab it. The gun.
My fingers are shaking as I grip it; the sweat in my palm almost lets it slip from my grasp.
But I have no choice.
I raise my eyes to the sky, staring directly at the moon. I can see just enough of it through the trees to make out its crescent shape.
My arm is weak. It trembles like a leaf in the wind. My chest is constricting. My throat is closing. I can barely find the strength to inhale. I drag my blazer behind me, giving it a final thrust into the wet grass in front of me.
My knees buckle, and I feel of whoosh of wind pass my face as I crash towards its green surface.
And then, I feel nothing at all.
Hands. Fingers. Nails.
They were everywhere. Around me. Under me.
They were holding onto me. Some were digging into me.
Sweat drips over my head and down my brow. It lands on my bare shoulders, but I barely register it. I barely register anything… except for the cool hands that suddenly reach towards me. I jump sideways, grabbing the wrists that hang close. I glance up and see nothing but black.
Not the sky. So much darker than the night sky.
It’s those irises. Dark earthy irises, fraught with a wintry smoke. I can see every dimension in them, every facet of the unending black holes. The sight of them will never leave me; I don’t think it’s possible.
His face is an exact replica of his brother’s: dark and handsome.
But where Javi is like an angelic entity—a soldiering Gabriel of redemption, Marco is a gateway to Hell. His feet are adorned with dark black shoes, the leather on them shiny enough to see yourself in. The midnight suit on his shoulders is immaculate and it amazes how no matter what or where he is, he seems perfectly steam-pressed. Probably by the fires of Hades.
I’ve never hated a man and needed him so badly at once. I gaze up at him from the surprisingly luxurious bed on which I lay, my unassuming eyes taking in the penthouse around me.
Not bad… for a man wanted by several federal agencies. He glares down at me.
“Looks like you’ve run to the right place,” he says.
The sound of Marco’s voice makes the shock wear off. “You mean, kidnapped to the right place…”
“No,” he says, sitting near the edge of the bed where I’m perched. “I mean run. You’ve run away to here.” He grins then, one side of his face pulling upwards slightly into a lopsided sm
irk.
I almost can’t believe it. My mouth is moving, but it’s the only part of me that seems to be sane. It’s Marco’s voice; it’s Marco’s eyes; it’s Marco’s face. But the rest of me won’t let it sink in—that he’s sitting here… next to me… looking as devilishly handsome as ever. And just as diabolical.
“How are you doing?” he asks me, the stern expression on his face never moving.
I nod, trying to sit up. “Pretty well. Considering that I almost died not too long ago, that the man who kept me from dying is missing, and oh, yeah… My archnemesis is sitting here, calmly talking to me as if he’s not one of the most deadly men in the world. Nothing wrong there.”
“No, Delilah. It’s not nothing.” Marco inches closer. “Look, I’ve had some of my men follow your trail back to the bridge. We know at some point Javi got out of the water. He’s not in the ocean banks. He doesn’t seem to be in any nearby hospital. Maybe Javi doesn’t want to be found… He seems to have made it a point to disappear.”
The words cut into me, twisting deeply, but I recover rather quickly.
“He couldn’t have just upped and vanished into thin air. He had to have left a trail. We have to find him.” I point a finger into Marco’s chest, a move I never would have made in a million years until now, clomping my way back to the door. I know I’m being an arrogant ass, but I want answers. More than I want answers, I want Javi. I want him back. Where I can see him. Alive. Safe.
My life has been split down the middle. Or rather divided in some divine way. There’s my pre-Javi life and, of course, there is my “post”: the more difficult of the two.
I’d say it was God’s interference that brought the leather-clad bad boy into my life in that way. And it’s probably God’s interference that took him out. I don’t believe in coincidences. I never did. When circumstances start to feel a little too ironic, it appears that chance has taken a step out and something stronger has swept in.
And that’s what Javi was.
In the nearly three weeks since he showed up in my shop, frankly pissing me off, I have become someone else. Aunt Reba was right. I’m a changed woman. Because of him. The experience with him in the woods taught me compromise. It taught me sacrifice. It taught me commitment.
I’m more committed to my company than ever before. Even Carrie can see the change. I’m not a half-asser anymore. I give my all. I don’t let life happen. I make it happen, and every aspect of my life has held more hope because of it.
Well, except for one... but I’m learning to live with that.
I start to open the door, my arms still aching, but Marco shuts it, slamming the heavy wood back into place as he stares at me.
“Delilah… Leave this shit to me, alright. I’m a professional.”
“A professional what? Lunatic?” I scoff.
“Look who’s calling the kettle black here,” he implies, raising his eyebrows.
And in that instant that he drives his dark eyes into mine, I remember the moment he stepped into The Sweet Spot, sweeping in like a sudden storm. He closed the door behind him, shut the blinds. The staleness of the incessant rain drifted in behind him, and I can recall his voice as if it were still reaching across the white-and-black tiled floor. A disembodied sound that floats calmly to my ears.
The conversation between Carrie and me has just begun, but it ends unexpectedly. I am completely blindsided when Marco walks in, like any man off the street, living up to the boldness of his mafia-made name. His voice is deep, almost sexual, and I’m caught off-guard by the man’s latent charm.
His tone is unsuspecting and strangely convincing, soothing despite the terror it drags me under. It’s like listening to a sultry lullaby, and I’m the child being nursed to an early sleep. His voice is complimenting, oddly seductive. All the while, I feel as if some axe is sharpening, ready to cut through me to my core.
Carrie rushes by my side, grabbing utensils, ready to cut him into bits but I won’t let her. Not when I hear Penelope’s name.
Marco Morelli tells me a story that’s too strange to not be true, and I stumble out of my own shop afterwards like a war victim, my emotional wounds bleeding me out with every step. Several days later, the wounds are now infected. I wince in pain every time I think of Penelope.
And what her name has been used to do.
I’d been played.
I was suckered into fighting a crazy mission… by the one man who somehow knew me most. A man I’d once loved. A man I still loved. A man who’d partnered with a man I once helped put away.
Marco.
His skin is cool to the touch. His breath is fresh and minty against my face. But there is nothing breezy about him, nothing subdued or light about the fiery look in his black eyes, and when he stares at me—whenever he stares at me—I get the feeling that he’s capable of engulfing me whole in those endless depths that pass as his darkened irises. There was once a time where he did consume me… And my career.
The Gafanelli mafia’s old Enforcer. The quintessential bad guy.
And Javi’s brother.
It’s jarring—knowing that the surname Mondello was just a cover. That it had originally been Morelli.
Javi the bad boy had morphed into a good guy somewhere along the line, but his upbringing was rooted in darkness, a Bronx tale full of mayhem, murder and the mob.
And as much as I want to loathe him, I can’t. I love him too much. I look at Marco now, gazing at a face so much like his brother’s and realize why I hadn’t seen it. Noticed that familial resemblance.
Because Javi was a hero, trapped in a villain’s body. His courage, his heart, everything good in him shone through his eyes, revealing the impossibly compassionate interior beneath.
He wasn’t his brother. He never would be. And the guilt he’d carried all these years, the sordid self-perception of himself, had been wrong all along. No matter how similar the two Morellis might seem.
I step away from the door that Marco holds closed, walking back to the bed. Searching for my cell phone, I sweep my hands along the surface, tightening my fingers around the semi-cracked and waterlogged square when I discover it in the center of the sheets, hiding from me. Sitting on the edge of the mattress, I tap furiously on the screen to bring it to life. I open my e-mail app and before I can stop myself, I start typing the message that’s been a week in the making.
I write out the first words.
Peabody,
I don’t have the words to say… so maybe my fingers can do the talking this time.
I’m done with the pinky promises, the kisses, the letters that you’ll never read.
I need you.
(I know. Shocking that I’m saying this, isn’t it?)
Because I’ve never pretended to need anybody. I’ve pretended to be a pillar of strength. For you. For Aunt Reba. For Melanie.
I’ve been hard. Cold as ice. Because I thought I had to be.
This makes two hundred and three days. Two hundred and three days since I’ve seen your face. I won’t make it to two hundred and four. Even if I have to look at it from the after-life.
Your big sissy,
Del
I don’t look up until what feels like an eternity later. The shadow drowning me in darkness as I sit, reminds me that I’m not alone and I glance towards the ceiling only to find Marco towering over me, his handsomely dark form hovering. I don’t know how long he’s been here, standing like that. I don’t know how long I’ve been looking down at the email I’ve yet to send, my fingers hovering above the slightly smooth buttons. Marco’s black eyes bear down on me.
“Any news?” he asks.
“No, it’s not a message for me. I…” I hesitate. “I’m sending one of my own.”
“Interesting.” He arches one black brow. “Because I’ve got some.”
“You do?” My own brow furrows.
“Yes.” He almost smiles. “Looks like the villain and the hero have switched places.” He shakes his head. “You’ll never imagi
ne where Javi is now.”
Dusk till Dawn
JAVI
Orange has never been my color.
My feet, shackled at the ankle, shift across the floor as I move slowly over the puke-green floor, the shiny linoleum sliding underfoot. The cuffs are too tight across my wrists, making the bone beneath ache. The metal pinches into my skin.
My eyes are bleary, my muscles weary from sleeping on a goddamned cot in what has been the longest forty-eight hours of my life. But as soon as I see the glass barrier, as soon as I see the blonde hair beyond it, my body comes alive again, my back straightening as I take in the sight in front of me, the smile that widens as I come closer.
I sit at the seat offered to me, the officer at my side plunking me down in the metal chair and exiting with a gruff reply.
“You’ve got ten minutes, Mondello.”
I grunt in response and reach for the black phone at the side of the tiny booth provided for me. I pick it up, placing a hand on the see-through partition. Ang raises her own fingers, meeting mine across the barrier. She grins.
“Well, this is strange,” she sniffs, her brown eyes welling up with tears. They shimmer over her earthy irises but don’t fall.
“It is. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve put behind these bars. Just never thought I’d be one of them.”
“And have you met some of those people?” Angie’s eyes go wide.
“A few,” I comment, my stare unblinking at my assistant’s emotional face. “But you know me. Never been one to be fucked with. Not without a fight.”
Ang blows out a breath. “Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.” She glances down, her glare going to the table before bouncing back up to me. She bites her lip.
I look harder at her. “Where is she?”
Ang blinks once. Twice. Her gaze shifts back down, falling to the floor this time, and I swallow the ball of emotion that squeezes inside my throat, my pulse picking up as I wait for her answer.