by Sunniva Dee
He’s too close. My mind goes amok, until all there is, is panic. I feel dirty. He’s tainting me! I can’t have him touch me anymore, not under the eye of the truest, only love.
“Stop!” I shout.
Why did I ever deny us? Such a petty, tiny problem. I’ve been so stupid. Who cares about right and wrong when there’s only right?
Oh, fuck, John’s hands on me. It’s over, never again. I’d rather die. I press my hands against his side, ridding me of him. I try!
The slap he sears across my face numbs me, and my eyes rush out tears. I yelp. Cry. Sob. I do everything wrong, and I know it like crazy when Gioele explodes.
“You asshole!” he shouts. “Let my girl go right the fuck now!”
“Your girl?” With a hand clutched around my neck, John lets out an eerily bright laughter. “You mean, ‘your cousin.’ After your little fit at the club the other night, I did some research. Turns out you’ve had the hots for pretty Silvina for a lo-o-ong time, and your family doesn’t approve. Strange that. Then again, you don’t get any closer to siblings than two sisters marrying two brothers and having children who then sleep with each other. That’s you, isn’t it? Talk about incestuous.”
My cousin shoots toward us, his frame widening with fisted hands. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, you son of a bitch. Let her go!” He punches the wall, roaring, his stare blistering with hate, love, pain.
My heart constricts. Such everything he is. Everything I could dream of, adore, work like crazy to avoid… and never, ever forget.
“Yeah? Or else?” John’s voice is smooth as balm.
“I’m going to rip you apart limb by limb and feed you to the fucking dogs!”
I suck my lips in between my teeth to rein in my emotions. Gioele doesn’t know that he’s feeding the beast with his frustration. My face doesn’t respond to my nerve endings, and suddenly my own feelings give way to Gioele’s.
The man next to Gioele must be in cahoots with John to be on the other end of this video call, but he’s patting my cousin’s shoulder, and compassion colors his features.
“All righty. Good talk, good talk.” John sits up in his seat and claps his hands together. “Keegan, we gotta split, man. Same time tomorrow?”
“All right.”
“What the fuck?” Gioele shouts.
“Bye, Cuz.” Calmly, John points his silver remote at the screen and makes Gioele disappear.
22. MAMA’S BOY
GIOELE
“Calm. The hell. Down.”
“Easy for you to say. I’m completely at that asshole’s mercy! Do I have to wait twenty-four hours, only to go back to that place and watch him run his hands all over her on live video?” I ram my foot into a branch on the ground, but it’s too big to even budge. “If that was Tatiana, you wouldn’t just have sat around.”
After John dismissed me, there was no way I could go back to the apartment, so I sped down to Golden Gate Park. Paradoxically, it’s a beautiful, sunny day. I’m pacing the lawn, not giving a crap about blue skies, the intensely red bridge in my periphery, and the people strolling around, chatting, and fucking enjoying themselves.
“Right, and we are doing something. You can’t think clearly right now, and we need you to be able to do that.” My brother’s voice is a growl.
“Gioele. I’m sorry. This is so twisted. We’re going to fix it, okay?” Tatiana’s pitch holds a concern that stirs and soothes at once.
My voice cracks on a laugh. “I wish it were that easy.”
“I know. Of course, you’re going crazy right now. I get it. But we need to talk through what we have and see what we can do with it.”
I purse my lips, breathing out hard. I should tell them that I went with the opposite of our plan. I raged on that video call, and the bastard loved it—he was goading me.
“Main priority is to find his location. We’re working on it, but anything you see or hear that could provide us with clues, cough it up,” Isaias adds.
“He wants a rise out of me. He gets off on people’s emotions—negative emotions—and Silvina and I are his targets. They were in a planetarium.”
“A planetarium? The Morrison?”
“No, definitely not. It was small. It had only a few rows of seats, like some rich guy’s private thing.”
“Are we sure they’re still in San Francisco?”
A short silence.
“As of last night, yes,” Tatiana replies. “We’ve been tracking his regular phone line. He’s not using it much, but last night, we got a match in the Bay Area. He wasn’t on long enough for Ryker to nail the address, though.”
“Ryker?”
“One of your brother’s genius friends. He’s a hacker. Crazy eyes,” Tatiana says, voice going soft.
“Never mind her. She’s got the hots for Ryker. He’s got tiger eyes, is what he has. Head over heels for his lady, though, so sorry, Ice Queen,” Isaias says way too intimately for this conversation.
“Oh, baby love. I’ve already got my hottie with arresting eyes,” my soon-to-be sister-in-law purrs, and I swear I’ll be chucking my cell into the sea any time now.
“Cool. I’ll go door to door in the Bay Area.” My reply snaps Isaias out of his lovey-dovey.
“What? No, you won’t. You’re video-meeting them again tomorrow, right?”
“Yes, but there’s no way I’m waiting until then.”
“Fratello, let me do my thing. I’ll be tracking down a private planetarium in San Francisco in the meantime. We’ll do this the safe way.”
“Yeah, right,” I huff out, frustration swelling in my throat again. “How can you get anything done from your goddamn sick bed?”
“Gioele! You’re losing it. We really fucking need you to focus,” he barks.
“You’re not helping,” Tatiana snaps to him. “Use. Your. Skills!”
We’re both quiet after that. Me trying to reel myself in enough to concentrate, my brother considering the lapse in his brainy negotiator gift, I hope.
“A private planetarium needs a dome-shaped roof,” he mutters while I’m still hyperventilating with rage.
“Dude, how many houses are there in San Francisco? And what if he’s not here after all?”
“Gioele?” Addressing me, Tatiana’s voice changes from whip to silk.
“Yeah.”
“Do what your brother tried to ask of you. We don’t have a lot of time to fix this, and we all have to be at our best even when we feel like falling apart. It’s mayhem everywhere right now. And yes, there’s a chance they’re no longer in San Francisco, but there’s a much bigger chance they are.
“Isaias and I will start on the search for an under-the-radar San Franciscan planetarium as soon as we hang up. We’ll look for companies that build the equipment needed for such a thing, and we’ll track down their deliveries to the Bay Area.”
“Fritz and Bully just got to your apartment,” Isaias says. “You’re not there.”
“Dude, I know.”
“Go to them.”
My groan has so much friction, it’s a growl, cusswords sitting loose on my tongue. I still force out, “D’accordo.”
“And fratello.”
“Sì.”
“I’ll be there with you soon.”
SILVINA
He was elated when I last saw him, before he repositioned my blindfold, before he led me down the planetarium stairs with a hard-gentle grip on my arm.
But we’re back in his bedroom now, and he’s not elated anymore. One of his leeches, Mazzi or Zetticci, has removed the fabric from my eyes, and the first thing I see is John Ulrich Himmel pacing a stormy circle on the floor.
“There you are,” he says as if I’d been gone, as if he’d let me be gone. His stare runs from my face to my arms. Since the planetarium, they’ve been tied
behind my hips. I hoped he’d free me as soon as we got back. What harm could I do anyway with steel bars on the windows and leech eyes following me when his are not? I close my mouth against the thunder of his stare.
His focus runs over my face and halts on my lips. They throb under his scrutiny, the metallic taste of blood hitting my palate. My lip is swollen. All I can think of is how nothing good will come of Gioele noticing that I’m hurt.
John’s gaze brightens. “I got you good, didn’t I?”
I nod. Silvina di Nascimbeni. Mafia princess. Accidental victim.
He wiggles his pinkie and the silver band hugging it. “My ring’s so powerful. Isn’t it amazing how sharp it is? Just one little”—he punches the air with his fist—“and there we go. Stitches next, right?” Eyes alight, his smile grows more genuine.
“I need stitches?” It’s a new level of fucked-up if some thug’s supposed to pierce a needle into my face.
With long, abrupt steps, John stalks to the bed where they’ve put me. Instinctively, I cower, and it morphs his smile into a grin.
“You’re so jumpy. I’m only checking on your lip.” He grabs my chin and twists it to one side, then the other. My breath catches against the heat of him. I can’t stand his scent, can’t stand his touch.
His lack of body odor is eerie. All he ever exudes is a nonstop reek of the same expensive pine-scented cologne. I never thought of it in class, but if I survive this, if I don’t end up as a casualty in the Santa Colombini vendetta, I’ll make sure that stinging freshness never enters my nostrils again.
“You’re fine,” he tells me in a purr that glorifies the illusion of a bond between us. “I’ll try not to smack you in the mouth, at least not until you’ve healed.”
Such disturbing words, and a sigh of relief still expels from me, like I believe in them, like he can be held accountable.
John’s hold on my chin tightens, his stare turning steely as he locks me with it. “Silvina.”
I bob my head, swallowing.
“You know what I didn’t like very much today?”
“That I cried?” Sarcasm won’t get me far, and I’m not surprised when he squeezes my chin harder, so hard it’s a promise of more violence.
“You cringed. You tried to get away from me even though I’m your soulmate. You looked at him like he was supposed to save you, and you know what? That put me in a bad, bad mood, and I don’t like to be in a bad mood. You made me that way.”
John shoves me onto the bed and climbs over me until he has me straddled. Pinning me to the mattress, he glares at me, and instinctively, I know I can’t afford to look away. “If you just behaved, we’d be okay. That’s all you have to do, you know, but you don’t, do you? You fail every test I put you on.”
He shouldn’t have my fear. John shouldn’t have anything mine. He snickers darkly when I can’t suppress my whimper.
“All I wanted was for you to react like a lady when you saw Gioele. But no. You went all out, didn’t you, shouting like a low-class slut. You didn’t want me near you!”
“You like that,” I whisper. “You like it.”
For one stunned second, he considers my words. During that second, confusion colors his expression. His uncertainty perplexes me; he loves my suffering. Why—why does he not see that in this moment?
A click of the door opening.
“Mr. Himmel. Sir.” One of the leeches.
John jerks his head back, looking at them. “What?”
“Your mother, sir. She has a ‘luncheon’ ready for you. She wants you to come while it’s hot.”
The pressure of him lightens, and my heart skips through double beats. Slowly, he crawls off me. He slides from the bed and stands, raking hesitant fingers through his hair. “Right. Did she say what she’s making?”
Air returns to my lungs.
“Fonduta, sir. With Fontina cheese.”
“And her homemade ciabatta.” Pleased, John swipes his tongue over his lower lip, Adam’s apple rolling with his imagination. “I’ll be back, Silvina. You want something to sleep on while I’m gone?”
“No!”
“No?” His smile widens. “You don’t like to sleep?”
I shake my head fervently, unable to tamper my response to mollify him.
“Well, then. Ta-dah.” He lifts a little finger and waves it at me. “Guys, wait outside the door. We’re going to let the pretty Silvina rest. I have another step for her to go through this afternoon.”
He exits quietly while my heart stampedes in my chest.
I need to get out of here. My hands are still tied behind my back, but I’m not tied to the bed. I get up and stalk around the room. Pictures on the dresser, the shelves, all with a blond boy in them. In one, he’s on a stern-looking man’s arm. The same boy is held in a woman’s arms in another. She’s Italian, for sure, generously made, and they’re both grinning at the camera. The boy’s eyes. This is John in a good moment, in a moment when his mental issues didn’t have a grip on him.
He’s sick. That much is clear. Not just a little sick either, the way he bounces from one extreme to the other, how he can’t decide if he wants to hurt me or nurture me. I wish his obsession bounced away from me.
With my back to the window, I dig at its seams. Nails deep, I gouge them one after the other, but they’re all painted shut. I hike up on my toes and look out. I’m on the second floor, and there’s a narrow street down there. A car goes by, then another. A moment of detached incredulity hits me as I consider how they’re driving off to wherever, unaware that I’m locked up, yards away, with no human rights to my name.
I could open these windows. Just one little razor blade and I’d cut through the decades of paint. I almost smirk; like I’d ever find a razor blade in this place. Like two inches of a window crack would be of any help with those bars on the outside.
GIOELE
“He’s a mama’s boy,” Isaias tells me.
My knees are shaking with impatience. I’m on the couch in the Vernal Heights apartment, waving away the bag of peanuts Bully’s offering me. “Whatever. I thought you were calling to tell me where that goddamn planetarium is.”
“We’re working on it. They won’t be there until tomorrow morning anyway.”
“He could be keeping her there full-time for all we know!”
“Right, but what if he isn’t and they get you when she’s not even there?”
I fume silently.
“Gioele. Brother. All we know is it’s tomorrow at ten a.m. He never said where he’d call from.”
I hate that I hadn’t even considered that. “This is so fucked up.”
“It’s the Santa Colombini. Of course, it’s fucked up. Just know that Felix’ guys are in town. He’ll keep his distance until we have a time and place, all right? Has the Santa Colombini found the apartment yet?”
“Don’t know, dude. Don’t give a shit,” I mutter though that’s not exactly true. Obviously, if they decide to track me, I’ve got a whole different game on my hands.
Fritz has overheard Isaias’ question and is shaking his head. “No one around, not since Bully and I arrived, at least.” Once he’s done saying that in a deep, objective-sounding voice, he returns to his post by the window, bodyguard-style. I’m not sure of his background. Definitely a pro, though. I know Isaias has used him before.
“Cool,” my brother continues, “now, you need to hear this about Himmel. The more you know about your enemy—”
“—the easier it is to destroy them. Yeah, yeah. Give it to me.” I slouch back into the couch, jutting my lip out. Bully cracks open a beer and offers it to me. I grab it. Take an impatient sip while Isaias talks.
“Like us, he spent half his time in Italy and half here when he was little. He’s an only child. Father from Germany. Dad started working for Amedeo Santa Colombini as soon as he married
his daughter. They lived at the Palazzo Rosa, until the happy little family moved to the U.S. to become a part of Randolfo’s operations here. The dad’s always been in the background, carrying out orders. Damn ruthless ones too.”
“All right, and when does the son come into the picture?”
“Around the time he turned fourteen. There’s an incident where he was found innocent of manslaughter, a girl his age ‘falling out’ of a window. Servants claimed they saw him do it.”
“And he was found innocent?”
“Yep. The two witnesses disappeared and their statements were suppressed. He was seen by a few psychiatrists, and later, he too vanished for eighteen months, no records of him anywhere. Our guess is he wasn’t doing well mentally after the third incident.”
I press my thumb against the bunch between my brows. “What do you mean third incident?”
“Second one was a teacher. They home-schooled John after the window incident. I guess all went well until he was fifteen and beat her up. They saved her life, though.”
“Where do you get this shit from?” I ask, my stomach churning. Ina mia is at the mercy of an unstable assassin. When I get a hold of John Ulrich Himmel, he’s going to regret he was ever born.
“She survived. It’s harder to hide records when they do.”
“And the third one?” I have a bad feeling about this.
“Isaias.” Tatiana’s voice is quiet in the background.
“Trust me. I know my brother, and he needs this.”
“Are you sure?”
Their low breathing drives me insane. “Fucking tell me. No matter what, I’m going to need to find him and make him suffer, so give it to me. Light my fucking fire, fratello.”
Everything inside me is scorching with the possibility of what he’s about to tell me. I want to—I really do want to keep my brain cool enough to calculate my strategy based on what he tells me. Until he goes and chuckles at me? Goddamn!
“What?” I grit out between my teeth.
“Oh, nothing. I just don’t think you need anyone to light your fire. You’ve got a fucking bonfire blazing on kerosene already.”