by Chloe Walsh
"I'm sorry," I strangled out, scrambling to keep up with him. "I didn’t mean to… Please don’t hurt me."
"Why do you think I have stayed away all this time?" he demanded, furious, as he kicked a door at the end of the hallway open and marched me inside. "I didn’t want to hurt you." We were in his bedroom, I realized. Oh no. My body coiled tight with terror. "I was trying to be a fair man. I was trying to separate the hatred I feel for your father from my lack of hatred for you." Dragging me further into the room, he kept a death grip on my neck. "I tried to show you the mercy I wish had been shown to my boy, but I cannot do it. My hatred is too strong."
"I’m sorry," I cried, falling to my knees when he roughly shoved me to the floor. Gasping for air, I watched him turn back to lock the door before storming into the adjoining bathroom.
Moments later, the sound of running water filled my ears.
On my hands and knees, I scrambled to my feet, knocking several picture frames off a dressing table as I went.
Ignoring the sound of glass shattering against the marble floor, I rushed for the bedroom door, knowing I could never escape this man, but needing to try anyway.
For Sketch.
For our baby.
"I didn’t want to do this, not to you, never to you, but maybe it will give me some semblance of peace," he called out from the bathroom, sounding maniacal. "Maybe when Cal loses his child and grandchild, some of my pain will be taken away."
"Please don’t," I cried out, yanking fruitlessly on the locked door. "I didn’t hurt your wife." Fear clawed at my throat, making it hard to breathe. "I'm so sorry he did this to you." Frantic, I looked around for an exit and spied the double glass doors that led onto what I presumed was his and his late wife's private balcony. "I hate him, too, but killing me won't bring your wife and son back."
Racing across the bedroom floor, I lunged for the balcony doors only to release a choked sob when I found them both locked.
No.
No.
No, dammit, no!
A pained cry escaped my lips and I crumpled to the floor in defeat.
"I will not torture you, but I cannot make it painless. Not when my wife and son did not receive the same mercy," Raffaele announced, returning to the room with the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to his elbows. " It will only take a few minutes for the water to overtake you. You'll lose consciousness quickly. It will be over before you know it."
"You're going to drown me?" I squeezed out, shaking violently now. "What about my baby –"
"It does not matter to me," he quickly interrupted, looking both wholly enraged and completely grief-stricken. "Not anymore."
"I know you're a good man, Raffaele," I tried to reason. "Better than my father will ever be. You didn’t hurt me on the ship when you so easily could have, so don’t do it now. Please." Tears trickled down my cheeks and I fought to catch my breath. "My father took your child from you. You know how that feels. Please don’t take mine from me!"
With blank eyes, he looked straight through me, not hearing a word of my pleas, and I knew it was over.
He was going to end my life.
He was going to drown me in a bathtub.
I would never meet the baby I was growing in my womb.
I would never see Sketch again.
"Be glad I didn’t allow my men to rape you like your father did to my wife," Raffaele declared heatedly. "Be glad I spared you that much."
When he grabbed my arm and began to drag me towards the bathroom, my flight or fight instincts kicked in, and, for the first time in my life, I chose to fight.
Reaching wildly for anything I could use as a weapon, I latched onto one of the picture frames I had knocked to the ground in my rush to escape earlier.
"No!" Clutching it tightly in my hand, I swung the wooden frame at his legs, hitting him as hard as I could. "Let me go!"
Ripping the frame out of my hands, he tossed it on the floor beside the tub. Crying hard and ugly, I clutched the sides of the tub and clenched my eyes shut, praying for an intervention that I knew would never come.
"…Whenever you're scared, all you have to do is think of this song, Ro. Even if I'm not around, just sing the words and I'll hear it and protect you..."
Like a deranged lunatic, I started to sing at the top of my lungs as I desperately fought against the pressure of Raffaele's hand until he managed to shove my head under the frigid water.
Clawing at the porcelain rim of the tub, I held my breath as I struggled to free myself, fighting for a life I wasn’t sure I could survive without Sketch.
Finally breaking the surface once more, I coughed and spluttered mouthfuls of water out before dragging precious air back into my lungs and continuing to scream the words of the song.
Water quickly replaced the air in my lungs as my head was forcefully shoved back into the water without warning. My chest threatened to explode between my burning lungs and the side of the tub digging into my breast bone.
It's okay, Ro.
I'm here.
Keep on singing, baby.
I'll chase your demons away…
The hand forcing me down suddenly vanished, and I didn’t waste a second of precious time. Ripping my face out of the water, I scrambled away from the tub, slipping on puddles, as I frantically made my way to the corner of the bathroom where I proceeded to vomit out the water I had swallowed.
Once I had expelled all of the fluid I had unintentionally inhaled, not to mention any food I had eaten, from my body and collapsed on the floor, I realized Raffaele never tried to stop me or pull me back to the water.
In fact, he didn’t move at all.
He remained completely motionless his knees beside the bathtub, staring down at his hands like he had seen a ghost.
"You d-don’t have to do th-this," I managed to croak out, shivering violently. Teeth chattering, I once again grabbed the picture frame and wielded it like a weapon that could somehow protect me from the man determined to take my life. "Y-you're a g-good m-man."
"That song," he whispered, gaze still locked on his wet hands. "That was Giacobbe's favorite song. His mama sang it to him at bedtime every night." He shook his head as if snapping out of a daze and looked at me. "It is an old song for a young girl. Why would you know it?"
"S-sketch," I strangled out, throat still on fire, body still racking with shudders. "Used to s-sing it to me when I h-had a bad d-dream."
Pain flickered in his eyes and his big shoulders sagged in defeat. "I fear I am losing my mind."
"It's okay. I lost mine a long time ago," I whispered, feeling a strange swell of sympathy for the man who had just tried to take my life. "Sometimes a person's mind comes back to them."
"Has yours?"
I expelled a pained breath. "When I'm with him, sometimes I think it has."
"The boyfriend?"
"Yes." I nodded, feeling weak. "You're not the only person whose life my father destroyed, Raffaele." Drenched to the skin and with my blonde hair matted to my face, I stared at the broken man before me. "He has done terrible things to a lot of people."
"As have I."
"But you're a better man than him."
He shook his head. "I am no better or worse."
"You stopped," I croaked out. "You didn't go through with it."
"Only because I heard you sing that song."
"Whatever your reasons, you still stopped," I urged, still keeping a death grip on the picture frame. "My father could never stop." Pain flickered through me. "Look at what he did to Chris. Mr. Capaldi is supposed to be his best friend, and he still did that to his son."
Confusion filled his blue eyes. "What did he do to his son?"
He didn’t know? "He had him killed."
Now, Raffaele couldn't mask his surprise. "When was this?"
"A year ago last Christmas." Another shiver racked through me and Raffaele tossed me towel. "He tried to have Sketch killed, too."
Confusion laced his eyes. "The boyfriend?"
>
"Yeah, Sketch is Mr. Capaldi's other son." I replied with a small nod of my head.
"I was not aware that my cousin had another son," he replied quietly, looking lost and sad.
"He doesn’t – well, not biologically at least. Sketch was raised as his son." I expelled a pained breath. "It's a really weird and complicated, not to mention messed up, story."
"Weird and complicated," Raffaele repeated quietly.
"Maybe I can tell you about it sometime?" I dared to offer, watching him like an anxious gazelle stares down a hungry lion. "If you plan on letting me live, that is..."
Raffaele held my gaze for so long that it made me feel unnerved.
Finally, he spoke. "I will let you live, Ramona Dillon." He slowly stood, drawing himself to his full height and towering over me. "For now, at least."
"I'll take for now." Sagging in relief, I quickly moved out of his way of the door. "Thank you."
"I will send for a doctor," he added. "To check on your baby."
Mentally reeling by the strange turn of events, I nodded in response and let my attention shift to the picture frame I was still holding.
"Raffaele?" I breathed, heart thumping wildly in my chest. "Can I ask you a question?"
"Yes?" he replied, pausing in the doorway to look back at me.
Holding up the picture so that he could see, I whispered, "Why do you have a picture of Sketch?"
10
Romi
Raffaele's attempt at taking my life in his bathtub felt like a distant memory, even though only a handful of minutes ago.
It didn’t matter anymore.
Not to him and not to me.
Too stunned to feel anything other than shock and surprise at the sight of seeing Sketch's picture, I let the feeling of resentment go.
"Giacobbe," Raffaele whispered over and over. Sinking to the bathroom floor, he snatched the picture out of my hand and clutched it to his chest. "My baby. This is my Giacobbe."
"No." I shook my head and snatched the picture right back from him and cuddled it close. "This is my Sketch."
We both stared at each other, neither one of us daring to breathe too loudly, while awareness came crashing down on both of us.
"You say this boy is Sketch." A pained groan slipped from his lips. "But how can that be when this boy is my son?"
"I don’t know," I finally breathed, too scared to voice the unbelievable. "But I know that boy on your shoulders in that photograph is Sketch." A shiver rolled through me. "I would know that face anywhere, I could pick it out of a crowd of thousands in the pitch dark, and I'm telling you that boy in your picture is the boy I've spent my life adoring. That boy is my best friend." My hand slipped to my stomach. "He's the one whose baby is growing inside of me."
"It cannot be," Raffaele choked out, chest heaving. "He died… He was murdered, dammit! Killed for the sins of his father." His eyes flashed with fury. "For the greed of your father."
"Sketch was raised with the Capaldis in the house right next door to mine," I declared, as a desperate urge to explain everything overtook me. "When I was little, I used to have these awful dreams, about a little boy trapped behind a locked door. It was always the same dream. The same boy. The same locked door." Shivering at the thought of those horrible nightmares, I forced myself to continue. "Sketch had the same dreams. But his were about a little girl. Locked behind the same locked door. I never knew what any of it meant until recently. I never knew that the dreams we shared weren't dreams at all, but memories." I blew out a shaky breath. "Right up until the night Sketch was shot and I was taken, we believed that he was Chris's twin brother, but it was a lie. It was all a cover up that Chris was killed to keep hidden. Sketch was never Mr. and Mrs. Capaldi's son, and his name has never been Holden Capaldi."
"Ramona –"
"My father admitted it before he took me away that night," I hurried to tell him. "He told me to wake up. He called me a little fool. He said that I needed to look around me. I told him that I knew the boy from my dreams was Sketch." I shook my head, thinking back to that night. "I told my father that I knew they weren't dreams, but he said that I was wrong." Trembling, I tucked my tangled hair behind my ears and whispered, "He told me that the boy was Jacob Toretto."
Raffaele's face had turned a deathly shade of white.
"And this woman," I added, pointing to the woman in the picture. "Your wife? I remember her." It was all coming back to me. Like a dam had been broken inside of my mind. I forced myself to feel everything, to remember everything I had so fought so hard to forget. "I was there the night she died… the night they burned her in the courtyard of this very estate."
Raffaele dropped his head in hands. "Giacobbe."
"Sketch was there, too," I strangled out, breathing hard and fast. "I remember. I remember!" Frantic, I tried to explain my tangled thoughts. "He was holding that shawl, wasn't he?" I didn’t need anyone to confirm what I knew to be true. "He was crying for his papa –" A sob escaped my trembling lips. "He was so scared. I tried to comfort him – tried to make it better, but she was screaming so loud and it made him worse –"
"Enough," Raffaele groaned, sounding like my words were physically wounding him. "I cannot hear this…"
"They took him away after that," I choked out, tangling my fingers in my knotted hair. "Put him on the ship. I was with him, but they wouldn't let me see him, so I would sneak out… bring him cookies. Try to make him feel better so he would stop crying, but then they burned him really badly and those men started coming into my room at night to scare me –" I stopped short and felt every ounce of air leave my lungs. "The men."
Catochi.
Pretty little princess.
Catochi.
One little taste.
"It wasn’t a dream."
No.
No.
No, no, no…
"I wasn't dreaming," I repeated, feeling numb to the bone. "Every bit of it was real." Tears filled my eyes and I looked at him. "He used to sing to me when the dreams scared me." I sniffled and wiped my cheeks. "The Everly Brothers. All You Have to do is Dream? Sketch would sneak in my window every night, and if I was having a bad dream, he would sing it to me." I let my shoulders droop in defeat. "It always helped."
"My son is still alive," was all Raffaele said in response.
Sniffling, I whispered, "I hope so."
11
Presley
Since my arrival in Boulder, Colorado, I found myself growing oddly accustomed to the beautiful city. It was a world apart from the small-town of Pocketful I'd grown up in, and in all honesty, I was sold.
If it wasn't for the fact that Cal the freak-show Dillon was still on the loose, Romi was still on the missing list, Sketch was on the rampage, and nowhere in the whole city of Boulder had I found a restaurant that served a decent bowl of gumbo, I would've been securing a swanky penthouse apartment in the suburbs of the city and getting ready to sink my teeth into the psychology undergraduate program at the University of Colorado in the fall.
Of course, there was also the small matter that I had yet to finish high school, but I deemed that a minor technicality considering I had already earned enough credits to graduate three semesters ago.
"You okay there, Cowboy?" Lucky asked from the passenger seat of his truck. We were on the way back from his father in law's hotel where good ole' Lucky boy had a few whiskeys too many to get behind the wheel. Hence my promotion to designated driver of the hitman. "You're being freakishly quiet tonight."
"Yeah." I sighed heavily. "I'm just thinking."
He snorted. "When aren't you thinking?"
"I'm worried about him," I blurted out.
"Fullback?"
Nodding, I gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. Twelve days ago, when we blew his world apart with some serious debased home truths, a still-wounded Sketch had bolted from the warehouse and hadn't been seen since. "What if something bad is happening to him?"
"Don’t take his silence personal
ly, kid. Fullback's dealing with some pretty heavy shit," Lucky replied, sparking up a cigarette. "You know G has eyes on him. Kid's safe. He's just out there trying to find his girl."
"Yeah, but it's not exactly safe for him to be out there in the world. Not now that we know who he really is, and certainly not with Cal Dillon out for his blood," I replied, worrying myself to death at the thought. "And it's not like he's going to be able to find Romi on his own. She's not in Pocketful. She's not with Cal. Y'all checked. It's like she fell off the map. He's a teenage boy. How the hell can he find her if y'all can't?" I blew out a frustrated breath. "I just need him back, Luck," I admitted quietly. "I just…I need my friend, you know?"
"He'll be back," he replied, fiddling around with the truck stereo and settling on one his daughter's Disney songs. "When the time is right and he's ready to accept his future."
"And that rat bastard surrogate father of his," I growled, jaw clenching at the thought of Christopher Capaldi Sr. Before Sketch bounced, he had demanded his pathetic excuse for a father be set free. "Any update on his whereabouts?"
"Boarded a flight out of JFK to Heathrow, London the morning after he let him go," Lucky replied. "Could be anywhere in Europe by now, and my jurisdiction doesn’t stretch that far, kid."
"So, you're a continental US only kind of killer?" I shot back sarcastically.
He smirked. "Something like that."
Jesus. "And what the hell is up with the freakishly beautiful brother just showing up here?" I grumbled, eyes narrowing at the thought of Romi's identical twin.
I knew why I was still lurking around Boulder – hell0, creepy killer by the name of Cal Dillon on the loose in my hometown – but that didn’t explain why Seth Dillon was still here.