by Chloe Walsh
"I've been wherever the wind took me," Seth countered, entirely uninterested in entertaining my father's questions.
"What do you want?" I demanded, trembling. "You said you came here for something. What is it?"
"I can help you get her back," he replied, brown eyes locked on mine. "But only if you help me to kill my father first."
8
Presley
Okay, my mind was officially blown.
The boy who couldn't pass a basic calculus test at school was standing in front of me, holding a conversation in fluent Italian.
Now, I was anti-guns and even more anti-drugs, but right about now, I was seriously considering sitting my ass down with the grizzly gangster in the corner of the room and asking him to defile my nostrils with some of his white powder.
I was struggling to take all of this in, so I could only imagine what was running through Sketch's mind as he locked eyes with his girlfriend's secret twin.
Heck, screw being mind-blown; the big, blue ball we called the earth was officially spiraling out of control and I was an unwilling passenger.
For the briefest of moments, I thought about checking the warehouse for hidden cameras, thinking this would make for one hell of a YouTube video, but managed to refrain.
Sliding my phone out of my pocket, I quickly loaded the translator onto my internet browser and tapped in every word I could make out while Sketch, Seth, and Chris Sr. continued to converse in double freaking Dutch.
Tapping out word after random word, I discovered that Giacobbe was Italian for Jacob and the Italian word for revenge had definitely been thrown into the mix.
"I will help you, Giacobbe," Chris Sr. declared thickly, eyeing his surrogate son with more affection than I'd ever seen him offer Sketch in the past.
Sketch, who had been completely immersed in whatever Seth was saying to him, ignored his father, turning to me instead. "What do you think?"
"What do I think?" I repeated, eyeballing him. "Well, I think that I would love it if y'all could speak English – you know, the language we've conversed in every day since Pre-freaking-K." I shook my head, feeling flustered. "Trust you to know the one damn language I didn’t take at school."
"Am I really doing that?"
"What; terrifying me to my core by speaking in your apparent mother tongue?" I shot back. "Why, yes, Harry Potter. Yes, you are. But I'd be awful grateful if you, Professor Snape, and Tom freaking Riddle over there could help a guy out with a copy of your minutes. In English."
"Jesus Christ." Looking rattled, Sketch blew out a shaky breath. "He said she's not with Cal anymore." Pain flickered in his eyes. "He said that Romi's with my father, Pres." His voice cracked. "Cal gave her to him. She's on a fucking boat with him, man. In the middle of the goddamn Atlantic."
"Say what now?" My eyes widened in surprise. "Cal just gave Romi away? To your dad? As in your real dad? The mafia king?"
"Apparently." Looking sick, Sketch groaned like he was in physical pain. "Fuck, man, what am I going to do? This is my girl, Pres. My Romi. I need to get her back."
"Well hell in a handbasket," I gasped. "And creepy creeperson over there told you that? Because I don’t trust him, Sketch. Not one damn bit. Yeah, he's sexy as sin, but dammit, we don’t know a thing about him. And sure, there's a high probability that he's packing more than just attitude in those jeans – don’t pretend you haven't noticed that big damn dick bulge – but how can we trust a word he says –"
"I speak fluent English, pretty boy," Seth interrupted, sounding amused. "And I have had no complaints regarding the size of my cock." He arched a brow. "Or my ability to use it."
"Well… this is incredibly awkward." Red-faced, I cleared my throat. "I'm going to put your questionable cock comments on the backburner until I have time to scrutinize them in peace, but I appreciate the confirmation."
Smirking, Seth let out an air of cockiness, no pun intended, when he winked right freaking at me. "Anytime."
"My sincerest apologies, but if that was your attempt at batting your come-to-bed eyes at me, it's a hard pass." I pushed my glasses up my nose. "I'm a third date kind of guy."
"Too bad, because I am a find them and fuck them until they're broken kind of man," he countered, not missing a beat. "I would ruin you, pretty boy."
Well, hot damn…
"Well hell, you're a little forward, aren’t you?"
Seth shrugged. "Stop looking at me like you want to eat me and we won't have a problem."
Fuck.
My.
Life.
"Are they going to fuck?" Gonzalez asked, looking mildly amused, white powder still smudged on his nostril. "Is this how it is done?"
"Who the fuck knows with kids these days," Lucky chuckled from his perch against the door. "I'm out of touch with this millennial generation, man."
"I almost want him to follow through on his promise," Gonzalez half chuckled/half slurred. "I would enjoy watching your pet break, Bolillo."
In the midst of this unusually erotic conversation, no one was focusing on Sketch, who had made a beeline for Gonzalez's gun. Quick as a cat, he swiped the Glock off the table.
"Whoa, kid, are you sure you should be handling a man's toy?" Gonzalez laughed.
Looking entirely enraged, Sketch flicked off the safety, checked for amo, and then cocked the trigger with a level of speed and expertise that proved he was anything but a boy when it came to handling firearms.
"Aye, aye, aye." Gonzalez held his hands up. "Forget I said anything."
"Now, y'all can go back to making your pillow plans once this piece of shit starts talking." Sketch snarled, nostrils flaring, cheeks flushed with temper. "Where the fuck is my girl?"
"Well, aren’t you every inch your father's son?" Seth replied, tone laced with sarcasm. "Raffaele would be so proud to see what a big boy his precious heir grew into – if he knew that you were alive." He smirked. "Which he doesn't."
Aiming the barrel of the gun directly at Seth's head, my reckless pal didn’t hesitate when he pulled the trigger.
Bang!
"Whoa, motherfucker, that was hella close," Lucky grunted, stepping sideways to study the bullet imbedded in the door, looking more impressed than pissed off.
"You're not the only one with a good aim, fucker," Sketch growled, keeping his vexed stare locked on Seth, who was cupping his bleeding ear, expression laced with shock. "Fuck with me again and the next bullet I let loose is going straight between your eyes." He cocked the trigger again. "And here's a little friendly tip," he added in a deathly cold tone of voice. "I never miss my target."
Sensibly, Seth kept his mouth shut, realizing that poking this particular bear could be fatal.
Meanwhile, I did the opposite and tried to plead with his good-nature – or what was left of it. "Are you sure you should be aiming a gun at anyone?" I asked him. "I mean, you've had a harrowing few weeks. You're not in your right frame of mind here, Sketch –"
"Damn straight I'm not in my right frame of mind!" he roared, moving straight for Chris Sr. "I've been lied to and attacked, shot at and kidnapped. I have a hole in my chest and an asshole taunting me with my girl's whereabouts." Keeping his gun aimed at Seth, he one-handedly set to work on untying the restraints that bound the man who raised him. "I ain't playing these goddamn mind games anymore," he continued to rant, sounding a little irate and looking a lot deranged. "And I ain't interested in taking another damn trip down memory lane. It doesn’t matter to me. I don’t give two shits about mobs and mafias and Catalinian fucking anything! All I want is my girl and I want her now! That's it. That's all I fucking want. Just Romi. Everything else can go to hell and the rest of y'all can go there too if you even think about getting in my way."
"I told you I will help you get her back," Seth replied. "Once you help me first."
"By helping you kill your daddy?" Sketch sneered. "No fucking problem. I'll do it with my own bare hands, but I want my girl back first."
"No." Seth shook his hea
d. "That is not how this works, Giacobbe."
Sketch looked truly livid. "Who's the one with the gun here, asshole?"
"Kill me and her location dies with me." Seth shrugged. "Defeats the purpose, don’t you think?"
A shudder rolled through Sketch's huge frame, and just like that, all of the fight seemed to go clean out of him.
Lowering his gun, he released a pained sigh, shoulders slumping. "I won't be worth shit to anyone until I know she's still alive." He blew out a breath, looking more wounded and grief-stricken than any person I'd ever seen. "I just need her to be okay."
"There was a time when we would have been Capo dei capi and sotocapo of the Cosa Nostra," Seth urged, tone thick with emotion now. "It was our birth right, one that was snatched away from us. I know you do not like me, and I like you even less, but we need to help each other or neither one of us gets what we want. Return to Pocketful with me and help me take that bastard down. Help me to avenge my mother, and I will help you to find my sister. Decide now, Giacobbe Toretto," he added gruffly. "Because when it comes to our fathers, both yours and mine, time is of the essence."
"What do you want him to do?" the words were out of my mouth before I had a chance to think twice about it.
"You know the property better than anyone," Seth replied, speaking directly to Sketch. "I can only assume that you've scoped out his house a thousand times. I need you to get me in there undetected."
"And then what?" I asked, knowing there was more.
Because there was always more.
"Help me get to him," he replied simply, never once looking my way. "Be my second. Watch my back. I am not foolish enough to believe that a coward like my father lives unprotected."
"He doesn't," Sketch bit out.
"Exactly." He looked my friend dead in the eye. "Do this. Be my sotocapo, Giacobbe. Help me to destroy the monster that killed both of our mothers, and I will never stop searching until we find my sister."
9
Romi
Before my world imploded around me, when I thought of the word war, I would imagine guns, bomb shelters, explosions, and uniformed soldiers.
Now that I was living in the aftermath, I realized just how naïve and sheltered my life had been.
War came in lots of different shades and forms.
Evil didn't just come in the form of horrid dictators in foreign lands.
It was right under my nose.
It was in my blood.
Finding a way out of the revenge-fueled warzone I'd been thrust into and escaping the clutches of my strangely-charismatic captor should have been my one and only priority.
However, the recent discovery of the intruder making itself comfortable inside my uterus took precedent over the madness.
I was pregnant.
It wasn't a guess or a maybe.
Confirmed by the countless pregnancy tests I had been forced to pee on at the hands of said captor, and confirmed even further at the hospital I had been taken to in Italy, where no one spoke a word of English, I couldn’t deny what was coming down the tracks in a few short months.
Motherhood.
Sketch's baby…
If Presley were here, he would tell me that I was in a pickle.
He would say that I had the worst luck to get knocked up our very first time having sex and that Sketch had to possess some seriously overachieving super-sperm.
He would be so freaking right.
At least you're off the ship of horrors, I reminded myself, taking comfort in the knowledge that I was on dry land and far away from the ship my world collapsed in.
More than once.
Everything about the exquisite country estate Raffaele had taken me to screamed familiar.
Inside the mansion, I somehow knew every corridor I walked down. I knew exactly what to find behind each intricately carved oak door.
After everything I had learned this past year, I knew that my feelings of familiarity with this place couldn’t be passed off as coincidental.
Not when this felt like home.
I hadn't seen or spoken to my captor since our arrival at the estate some weeks back, but I had been given permission to roam the mansion and gardens to my heart's content.
It wasn’t like he had to worry about me breaking out and escaping. The property was heavily guarded twenty-four-seven. I couldn’t slip away if I wanted to and besides, everyone spoke Italian, something I regrettably did not.
I tried not to think about what was going to happen to me. I forced all thoughts of my future as far from my mind as possible, knowing in my heart that there was a very good chance I didn’t have one to look forward to.
I had no idea of what Raffaele intended to do with me, but I doubted it was good – or painless.
Not when my father had slaughtered his entire family.
"The stakes have changed. I can never let you go now…"
A horrible wave of impending doom washed through me whenever I thought about what Raffaele had said to me that night. That feeling of doom escalated even further when I thought about the growing swell of my stomach and the absence of Sketch.
Don’t think about it, Ro.
He's out there somewhere.
He's alive.
Just stay calm…
Determined not to allow my fear to take hold of my ability to function a minute longer than it already had, I forced my mind to go blank and wandered into the one room in this sprawling mansion of a home that was out of bounds to everyone. It also just so happened to be the one room where I found comfort.
Slipping inside the toy ordained bedroom I assumed had been occupied by Raffaele's late son, Giacobbe, the one my father had butchered and my former betrothed, I quietly closed the door behind me and moved straight for the impressive fort in the corner of the room.
I had been in this room before.
I had played with the toys it housed many times.
It had been another lifetime ago, but I most definitely remembered.
Lowering myself onto my knees, I crawled through the tent opening, careful not to disturb its tender foundations with my less-than-childlike frame.
The moment I was inside, I rolled onto my back and settled down on the dust-ridden cushions that carpeted the floor.
Like every day since I started sneaking in here, I reached for the weathered looking, half-torn woman's shawl strewn on the floor and brought it to my nose.
Inhaling deeply, I absorbed the smell of musk, dust, and smoke.
Ash and cinders.
Flesh and bones.
Raven hair.
Blue eyes.
No, Mama, no!
Giacobbe…
Forcing the unwanted images from my mind and refusing to delve any deeper into mental desertion, I draped the moth-eaten shawl around my body and sighed.
Closing my eyes, I rested my hands on my growing stomach and immersed myself in my happy memories. I immersed myself in Sketch, refusing to think about anything but the boy next door.
"…All you have to do is dream of us instead…"
Releasing a sigh of temporary contentment, I began to recite the lyrics of The Everly Brothers' All I Have to do is Dream in my mind over and over again, envisioning I was back in my bedroom in Pocketful and Sketch was singing me back to sleep after one of my awful nightmares.
Before I knew it, I was singing the words aloud, using my fired-up imagination to take me back home.
Back to Sketch.
We were together again.
Back in my bedroom.
I was his and he was mine…
"Hey, Ro…"
"Sketch, you're back."
"I never left, angel."
"I'm so scared."
"What did I tell you? All you have to do is –"
"This room is out of bounds to you!"
Raffaele's furious snarl reverberated through the room, causing me to snap out of my daydream. Those were the first words he had spoken to me in weeks. This was the first time he'
d come close enough to speak to me.
The watery mirage I had dreamt up of Sketch slipped away and I snapped my eyes open, feeling genuinely bereft.
Tearful and forlorn, I crawled out of the tent, not realizing that I was still clutching the shawl in my hand.
Raffaele was standing in the doorway when I climbed to my feet.
When his gaze landed on the shawl in my hand, his face took on a shade of anger I'd never seen him wear before. "Where did you get that?"
Confused, I glanced down at the tattered silk and shrugged. "It was in the tent."
His eyes were wild and full of undiluted hatred as he held his hand out. "Give it to me now."
I didn’t think twice about it. Stumbling towards him, I quickly thrust the old shawl into his hands, feeling more frightened of my captor in this moment than any other time I'd been in his company.
There was something very off about him now.
Something very dark.
"I'm sorry." I wasn't sure what I was apologizing for, but it felt like it needed to be said. "I didn’t mean to upset you."
Raffaele snatched the fabric up in his big hand and I watched as a deep shudder rolled through his body. Just like I had, he put it to his nose and inhaled deeply.
"It's gone," he said, voice deathly cold.
"Wh-what's gone?" I managed to whisper.
"Her scent." Fisting the fabric tightly in his hand, he glowered at me. "It's gone." His blue eyes flashed with temper. "It smells of you now."
Like a switch had flicked off in his brain, Raffaele lunged for me. Before this moment, he had never put a hand on me, not one finger in all of the weeks I had been at his mercy, but I knew my presence in this room had detonated whatever patience he had for me.
Terror coursed through my veins.
This was bad.
This was so fucking bad.
"It was not enough for your father to take her from me," he roared, gripping me by the scruff of the neck and steering me towards the doorway. "But you had to steal all I had left of her!" I could feel the tension emanating off him in waves as he marched me down the hallway. "That room is a shrine to my wife and son and you sullied it with your presence," he continued to snarl, tightening his grip on my neck. "You had no business stepping foot inside there, Ramona! You had no right to take that from me!"