A Promise of Ruin

by Cuyler Overholt

  “But why would Rosa’s father wish to hurt me?”

  “You told me yourself, Un-Occhio is using you to get revenge on Antonio for something that happened in their past. If Velloca is in fact Un-Occhio, he’d jump at the chance to hurt Antonio by stealing his bride.”

  “But…what reason do you have to believe that it is him?”

  “I went to Rosa’s house two days ago to see if she recognized a valise the police had found with your initials on it. Mr. Velloca came home for lunch while we were there. His mother filled a lard tin full of soup for him to take when he left. He called it his supper pail, but it was awfully large for one person. It looked exactly like the tin on the table downstairs. And Rosa’s brother complained that the soup was too salty. That soup tonight was so salty, it was almost inedible.”

  “And because of this, you accuse him?” she asked with a frown.

  “And the fact that he looks exactly as you described. Right down to the silver ring on the little finger of his right hand.”

  She digested this, her brow puckering.

  “Did you tell Rosa about Antonio’s special name for you?”

  Her eyes widened. “Dio mio,” she whispered.

  I nodded. “It all adds up.”

  “But if he knows that you are aware of his true identity…”

  We stared at each other, contemplating what a man like Un-Occhio might do to a woman in a position to give him away.

  I swallowed down a brick of fear. “Do you think he’ll come tonight? Before they move us?”

  She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. He comes most nights, but everything is different today.”

  My terror must have been plain on my face, for she reached out her hand in sympathy. I grabbed onto it, holding on as if to a lifeline.

  The sounds of scraping and sanding had been wafting up for some time from the floor below. Now I heard stall doors creak open and shut in the corridor outside, followed by the nickers and snorts of horses. “What are they doing?”

  “The vans and horses are all stolen,” she explained. “They repaint the vans and cover the horses’…” She hesitated, circling her free palm over her forehead.

  “Markings?”

  “Yes, cover them with shoe polish. Then they take the girls away in the vans. All of them except me.”

  “How many times have you seen this happen?”

  “Just once, a week after they brought me here. There were different girls here then.”

  I rubbed my hand over my eyes. So Un-Occhio traded not only in human flesh, but in horse flesh and stolen vehicles as well. Perhaps he even used the same distribution routes, selling the girls, horses, and vehicles to established customers in each location. I supposed to him it was all of a piece. Like a true psychopathic personality, he would see only the advantages in diversifying his offerings.

  As darkness gradually descended outside the crack in the boards, one of the girls lit a candle. I followed her example, lighting the candle next to my own cot with shaking fingers and watching the shadows jump over the bare walls. Most of the other girls were lying curled on their sides or hunched on the ends of their cots. Even Teresa had fallen silent.

  Every time I heard footsteps on the ramps, my lungs forgot how to breathe. How was it possible I had come to this? I thought of Simon and my heart seized with regret. I should have remembered that life could change in the blink of an eye, and accepted his proposal on the spot. How petty my reasons for waiting seemed now.

  The world out there, my old world, felt like another universe, and the woman I once was, a stranger. As one moment bled into the next, I could almost feel my old self leaking away, leaving nothing to fill the shell of my body but fear. Perhaps, though, there was only so much fear a person could take. Because as I thought about what these men were stealing from me, and had already stolen from so many others, something else began to flicker to life inside of me. I consciously fanned the ember of anger, feeling it grow hotter and brighter until it burst into welcome flame.

  I wasn’t going to be like those sheep on the street, going meekly to slaughter, I decided. I would at least put up a fight, in whatever way I could. Yes, they would hurt me if I resisted, but they were going to hurt me anyway—and possibly worse.

  I rose stiffly to my feet. Crossing to the window on shaky legs, I slid my fingers into the crack and pulled on the bottom board. It was nailed on tight. I put my foot on the sill and threw all my weight into my next try, but it still wouldn’t budge. I looked around for something to lever or break it with, but our captors had been careful to remove anything so useful.

  Putting my eye to the crack, I saw tenement fronts directly across the street, their windows lit dimly from within. Looking to the left, I was surprised to see a brightly lit pier jutting into a river, with a ferry docked on one side. Sliding my eye further along the crack, I recognized the lights of the House of Refuge on Randall’s Island. I felt a quiver of excitement, knowing at last where I was: at the foot of 116th Street, less than a block from the Randall’s Island ferry. Lucia Siavo had fled down this very same street on the night she drowned. The hairs on the back of my neck bristled at the thought. Had she once stood where I stood now, staring at the river and dreaming of a watery end to her misery?

  Two women in black shawls suddenly came into view on the sidewalk below. They were walking arm in arm, their heads bent in conversation. This was my chance. I put my mouth to the crack and shouted, “Help! I’m being held prisoner! Call the police!”

  They continued up the sidewalk without pausing.

  Teresa pulled on my arm. “No, you mustn’t! They will punish you!”

  I shook her off. Putting my mouth back to the crack, I tried again in Italian. “Aiutami, per favore!”

  One of the women stopped and glanced over her shoulder, forcing the other to stop as well.

  “Aiutami! Help! I’m up here!” I cried.

  Her gaze swept across the building facade and continued past it.

  I heard footsteps thundering up the stairs. “Qui! Qui!” I screamed. “Polizia! Fai presto!”

  I heard cursing as someone fumbled with the bolt. The door opened, and Claudia burst in. She ran across the room and spun me around, slapping me hard across the face. “You want the police?” she asked, her chest heaving. “I’d be happy to bring them here and introduce them to you. I know one in particular who likes his girls pale and skinny, just like you.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I spat back at her.

  She brought her face within inches of mine. “Scream again, and I’ll prove it.”

  Nucci and Gallo ran in behind her, paintbrushes in hand.

  “Get some rags,” she ordered, her face flushed beneath its powder.

  Gallo hurried out of the room.

  I swiveled back toward the crack in the boards, praying I would see the women running for help. But they were ambling on up the street, heads bent again in conversation, my cries already forgotten.

  Nucci grabbed me by the waist and swung me around, holding me in a stinking embrace in front of Claudia. She clucked at me and shook her head. “Oh, you’re a frisky one. Un-Occhio is going to like you.”

  Gallo ran back in with a fistful of rags. He tied my wrists at Claudia’s direction, then pushed me to my knees and secured my wrists to the side of the radiator beneath the window. Meanwhile, Nucci wrapped one of the wider strips around my mouth and nose, pulling it tight with a vicious tug. The fabric obstructed my nostrils, making it difficult to breathe. I started to panic, making it even harder to draw a full breath. I grunted in protest, working my jaw to try to free my nose, assuming he’d adjust it if he realized it was suffocating me—but he only watched me struggle with a smirk.

  Claudia swept her arm around the room, pointing at each girl in turn. “No one helps her, capite?” With that she left the room, taking the men with
her.

  As soon as the bolt had slid into the lock, Teresa scuttled over and pulled the rag down to my chin. “You mustn’t give them reason to hurt you!”

  I sucked in a deep breath. “And you mustn’t help me,” I wheezed, “or they’ll hurt you too.”

  “I’ll put it back when they return.”

  I wasn’t sorry for what I had done, even though I was even more helpless now than before. If things went the worst for me, at least I’d know that I had tried. “Was there a girl here before named Lucia?” I asked her.

  She sat back on her heels. “Yes, there was a Lucia here when I arrived. How do you know of her?”

  “Her body was found in the East River last week. She drowned herself.”

  She frowned. “But I thought…”

  “What?”

  “When Un-Occhio couldn’t capture Antonio he was very angry. I was sure he was going to hurt me, but he didn’t. Instead, he hurt Lucia.” She shook her head. “I think he must have still been hoping to make Antonio watch, the first time he took me. I know he sent his men to try to capture Antonio at least one other time.”

  “Why did he choose Lucia, do you suppose?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps because she looked a little like me? But there were other times he hurt her that had nothing to do with Antonio. The last time, he took her into an empty stall down the hall. He had her there for a long time. We could hear her cries, but there was nothing we could do. And then suddenly, the cries stopped. I thought he must have killed her, because we never saw her again.”

  “No, he didn’t kill her,” I said, remembering the bruises on the girl’s throat, “but he may have choked her badly enough to render her unconscious. She must have recovered after he left and managed to get out somehow.”

  We fell silent, Teresa staying beside me, keeping me company on the floor as we strained to interpret the sounds and smells from below. The scraping and sanding had stopped and the smell of paint was now strong in the air. We heard a stall door creak open again down the corridor, followed by the sound of hooves clopping down a ramp. “What time do you think it is?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I didn’t hear the bell from the last ferry yet. But if they are bringing the horses down, they must be planning to leave soon.”

  Time stretched interminably as I waited for the sound of approaching footsteps. I had been reduced to a creature of instinct, my senses hyperalert, my energy focused solely on anticipating and repelling the next attack. Indeed, so attuned had I become to the pattern of sounds from downstairs that I was instantly aware when something changed. It started with a thump and a scuffling noise. Then a man shouted, followed by footsteps moving quickly up the ramp. There were more shouts, and the sound of something heavy falling somewhere nearby.

  I sat up, my ears twitching and my eyes straining in the candlelight. “What’s happening?”

  Teresa’s hand was gripping my arm. “I don’t know.”

  “Pull up my gag.”

  No sooner had she done so than the footsteps thundered up the hallway and stopped outside the door. “Genna! Are you in there?” The bolt rattled in its slide, and the door swung open.

  Simon stood on the threshold, his chest heaving and his shirt askew. His gaze took in the cots on the left, swept past me to the cots on the right, then snapped back to me in the middle.

  I blinked hard, unable to believe what I was seeing. But yes, it really was Simon, looking like an avenging warrior with his hair disheveled and a lethal blackjack in his raised fist.

  “Simom!” I cried into my gag, straining toward him against my bonds.

  He stood oddly transfixed, his gaze fastened on my gaping chemise.

  I heard more footsteps racing up the ramp. “Simom, hully!”

  Finally, like a man coming out of a trance, he started toward me. But it was too late; before he’d completed a single step, Nucci rushed up behind him and smashed him over the head with a board. He collapsed into a heap on the floor.

  “No!” I wailed as Nucci grabbed him by the ankles and dragged him out of sight.

  I stared in horror at the empty doorframe.

  Teresa tugged down my gag. “Who was that?”

  I shook my head, unable to speak.

  “He is your man?” she guessed. “Your adorato?”

  I turned to her in a daze. “Yes,” I said faintly, “my adorato.” And now, I thought as my eyes brimmed with tears, he was either dead or soon would be.

  I had barely grasped the enormity of what had just occurred when there were more footsteps in the hallway, and Donato strode through the door.

  “Everybody up,” he ordered.

  The girls began pushing themselves up and straggling toward the door. Donato’s gaze turned to Teresa, who was still crouched by my side. “Quickly,” he ordered, jerking his head toward the door.

  She rose reluctantly and joined the others.

  Drawing a knife from his waistband, he pulled the cork off the tip and strode toward me, bending to cut my wrists free. I scrambled to my feet and sidled away from him.

  “Come,” he barked, reaching for my arm.

  In a moment of utter clarity, I realized that I would rather die than get into one of the vans downstairs. I punched his chest as he closed in on me and kicked blindly at his shins—but it was like attacking an ancient redwood, my blows as effective as the flapping of gnat wings against his unyielding bulk. He spun me around and pushed me ahead of him toward the door.

  The board that had felled Simon lay just beyond the threshold. With a surge of desperate energy, I lunged toward it and lifted it from the floor. Before Donato had time to react, I turned and swung it at his head, seeing him blink in surprise the second before it made contact. I held my breath, waiting for him to drop to the floor.

  He shook his head with a grunt and started after me.

  I turned to run but immediately tripped over a body that was splayed across the hall. It was Gallo, I saw as I fell to my knees, and his head was bleeding. Simon must have knocked him out with the blackjack on his way to me. I started pushing myself up, and was almost back on my feet when Donato reached around from behind me and pressed a damp cloth to my face. Despair washed through me when I smelled the familiar scent. I clawed futilely at his hand as my eyes began to tear and my ears to thrum. I couldn’t go yet, I thought, not before I knew if Simon was dead or alive. It was the last thought I would have for some time.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I came slowly to consciousness, holding on to the tail of a dream unlike any I’d had before. A delicious dream, in which Simon and I were together at last, lost in the delectable pleasure of each other’s bodies. The images were rich and detailed, the sensations so intense that they still pulsed in the deepest parts of me, leaving me in a state of languorous desire. I opened my eyes reluctantly, loath to leave the blissful cocoon behind.

  I blinked at the ceiling above me. This was not my bedroom. Reality suddenly came flooding back, swamping the lingering images from my dream. I felt a fresh, stabbing sense of loss at the memory of Simon’s capture and my own inability to escape the monstrous Donato. It must have been the anesthetic, I realized, that had produced my erotic dream—a dream of a future now forever out of reach.

  I pushed myself up on rubbery elbows and looked around me. What I saw didn’t make sense. I was lying on the sofa in the Fabronis’ parlor, covered by a large, fringed shawl. Mrs. Fabroni was sitting in a wing chair on the opposite side of the room, watching me.

  “You’re awake,” she said in perfectly adequate English.

  I struggled to sit up, my mind and body still sluggish from the drug. “What am I doing here?”

  “It’s all right. You are safe now.”

  I pulled the shawl around my shoulders, clutching it in front of my torn chemise. “Where’s Simon?”

  “He’s fine
. You’ll see him shortly. He wanted to be here when you woke up, but I asked to see you alone first.”

  “He’s here?”

  “He was here. He went back to the stable with Antonio and Donato to help the police bring in Carulo’s men.”

  I dropped my head to my knees. I didn’t understand half of what she was saying, but all that mattered was that Simon was safe. “And Teresa?”

  “She and the other girls are with Felisa, in the flat at the end of the hall.” Pushing herself to her feet, she walked to a table behind the sofa and filled a small glass from a bottle containing an amber liquid. “Here,” she said, holding it out to me. “Drink this. It will make you feel stronger.”

  I eyed it suspiciously.

  “I am not your enemy, Miss Summerford.”

  “Until I understand what’s going on, everyone’s my enemy.”

  “Of course, you are confused,” she said, setting the glass on the table beside me. “Please allow me to explain.” Pouring herself a glass, she returned to the wing chair and sat down. “I was seventeen when I married,” she began, her back straight and her voice devoid of emotion. “Ten years younger than my husband, who was already the capo paranza—the chief—of the Camorra in our quarter. At that time, my husband’s main interests were money lending, gambling, and fixing elections. Like the capo before him, he was known as Il Ragno, the Spider, and was one of the most respected men in Napoli. But he wanted more.”

  She paused, taking a sip from her glass. “A few years after we married, my husband decided to enter the prostitution business to increase his profits. It sickened me to see him making money off the poor young girls in our quarter, but I had no say in his affairs. By this time, I had given him two children: Antonio, who you know, and a daughter, named Bianca. A short time after my husband starting selling women, my daughter became gravely ill. Fearing God was punishing us for my husband’s deeds, I promised Him I would persuade my husband to stop the terrible business if only He would save my daughter’s life. Miraculously, Bianca recovered. But my husband would not stop, no matter how much I begged him, and I was unable to keep my promise. Two months later my daughter’s illness returned, and this time, she died.”