I wanted to laugh. She probably packed gum beneath her shoe just to keep people away.
My eyes slid down her body once again, focused on those holey Chucks, and returned to her face, expressionless given how much I riled her up—and I knew I riled her up. “I have no doubt you’re the type with plenty of gum beneath your shoe.”
Her brows furrowed together before she relaxed and straightened her shoulders. “Well, this has been riveting,”—indeed, it had—“but I’m jet lagged. Bye.” She stepped forward before I could answer and bumped into my shoulder on her way out. A feisty princess, if I ever saw one.
It wasn’t till my eyes scanned the room for signs of foul play, I counted and recounted my cigars, my fingers traced the cigar seams for any tears, and I decided nothing looked out of place that I realized she’d stolen my phone.
The princess was a little thief.
I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The workers in the De Luca household liked to gossip in Spanish, which was close enough to my native Italian that I had an idea of what they said. Señor Damian, as the maids called him, came home more often than usual lately, and they blamed me.
I loathed the sense I saw in their logic.
If ever there was a cold war between two strangers, this was it. I’d stolen Damiano De Luca’s phone. That didn’t exactly set a remarkable first impression. He hadn’t confronted me about it, but I knew he knew.
After sending Maman an email and erasing my digital tracks, I slipped the phone on the floor by his bedroom door. Maybe he would think he had dropped it.
A girl could hope.
That had been three days ago. Days passed, and tense silence thickened each time I heard him walk by my door. Thing was, I knew the heavy footsteps held intent. Syndicate royalty didn’t make noise as they walked. Training took care of that.
But each firm step Damiano De Luca took was deliberate. Like a move made on a chessboard, thought ten steps ahead. In fact, life in the De Luca household felt exactly like a chess match, in which I held no control over the board.
Maman always had the Vienna match laid on the chessboard in her library. Every now and then, she’d move a piece. Sometimes, a week apart; sometimes, a year apart. The dark king never sees his demise coming, she’d tell me each time I noticed a moved piece.
But I’d spent enough time looking at that chessboard to see my demise coming. Heard the breaths of impending doom each time I left the confines of my room. Felt the ironclad fingers of vengeance wrap around my neck whenever I dared to sneak food from the kitchen. Smelled the metallic blood of ruin trickle down my body whenever I dodged across the hall to use the bathroom.
I sensed it now as I grabbed a change of clothes and darted to the bathroom I shared with Damian. Like the other houses in Devils Ridge, Texas, the De Luca household was antiquated. Built in the 18th century, the house had been renovated only twice—once during the Victorian era, so it matched the aesthetics of the other Victorian-style homes in town, and once again a few years ago when the contractors had decided that introducing anything more than the minimal number of modern amenities would jeopardize the historic integrity of the home.
Historic integrity, my ass.
The East Wing bathroom had three rooms—a toilet room, a vanity room, and a bathing room. The door to the bathroom led to the bathing room, where a small bathing pool laid in the center, like I was on the set of Game of Thrones.
It occurred to me what a waste of water filling and draining this pool was, but I wasn’t going to bathe in Damian’s soiled water. I slid my silk robe off my shoulders and hung it on the hook beside the door, along with my change of clothes.
One of the maids had warmed the pool and filled it with bubbles earlier, and I dipped a toe into the water, exploring the temperature. My waist barely kissed the water before the door swung open.
I moved quickly, covering my breasts with the bubbles as I plunged fully into the pool. My eyes met Angelo De Luca’s as he stepped past the threshold, busting every myth about evil being incapable of entering a room uninvited. Or was that vampires?
“Miss Vitali.” He took a step closer, and I forced myself not to move away from my spot against the closest pool edge to the door. How someone so slimy and decrepit could spawn someone who looked like Damiano De Luca was beyond me. “My sources tell me you turn seventeen years old today.” The gap between us lessened. “Another year closer.”
Another year closer to what?
Goosebumps traveled across my skin, and I forced myself not to eye the open door. It was late. The last of the East Wing staff had retreated to their quarters after drawing my bath. I trusted Angelo De Luca like I trusted a jock to do his own homework. I was alone with this sinister excuse of a man, and though calm had nestled itself inside my body from a young age, it burrowed deeper, hiding somewhere between apprehension and concern.
Still, I didn’t allow my anxiety to manifest. I ignored him, reached for the shampoo, and formed a lather in my hair. A gust of wind flew in from the open door, chilling the exposed skin on my neck. I wanted to dip lower into the water, but being vulnerable in front of a man who enjoyed feasting on prey wasn’t an option. Instead, I continued washing my hair.
His jaw ticked as I ignored him. “You are a guest in my household, Miss Vitali. You will not disrespect me.”
“You’re right.” I tapped my foot beneath the water, hoping to expend the energy of my anxiety and replace it with amusement. “A person’s a person, no matter how small.”
Pretty sure that wasn’t what Dr. Seuss had meant when he wrote that.
Oh, well.
Hard eyes burned my skin as some of the bubbles covering my breasts fizzled and died. “Careful, little girl.” He crouched and reached out. I forced myself to act aloof as he cupped the side of my face and shut his teeth with an audible snap! “I bite.”
During my boarding school’s unit on Irish literature, I’d come across a Laurence Sterne quote: “Respect for ourselves guides our morals; respect for others guides our manners.” Clearly, Angelo De Luca had neither, but it dawned on me that if I stayed here long, perhaps that would be my fate, too. I begged any higher power to not let me succumb to the De Luca madness.
Angelo's palm wandered down my cheek, past my collarbone, and toward my left breast. Goosebumps met his touch, and he cackled near my ear. “I scare you, don’t I?”
He did, in the same way I feared poisonous spiders and walking home alone late at night. Logically. Clinically. And entirely detached. These things could hurt me if I let them, but I wouldn’t let them.
“While we’re exchanging fears, yours is my family.” I stepped into his touch, enjoying the way his eyes flared in surprise. “I may fear you, Angelo, but I’ll still face you. The fears we don’t confront grow into limits, and I have no limits. But you?” I taunted him with my laughter. For a split second, I felt less like Harry Potter and more like Draco Malfoy. “You’re bound by them each time you move.”
“I could kill you right now, and we’d see just how scared I am of your family.” Angelo’s grip on my flesh became brutal, and his hand rested beneath the water, just short of reaching the top of my breast. Figured that’d be the time Damiano De Luca chose to enter the bathroom we shared.
His eyes took us in, narrowing on his dad’s hand beneath the water for a split second before a sneer twisted his lips. “I put up with you fucking the help, Angelo,” he spoke as if he owned the household, “but I will not put up with you further threatening the De Luca name by fucking the Vitali child.”
The Vitali child.
Good grief. I’d asked the housekeepers for Damian’s age. As of today, we were the same age, yet that was what I was to him. A child. Somehow, those words were all I could focus on. It wasn’t lost on me that he may very well have just saved me from his father, but something I would come to learn about Damiano De Luca was that his presence crippled my logic.
It didn’t just cripple it. It nuked it, then buried it six feet under until I wasn’t sure my logic had ever existed.
Angelo stood from his crouch, and I’d never seen so much hate a father held for his son as I saw in Angelo’s eyes. “Finally home, son?”
Damian leaned a shoulder against the doorframe, amusement radiating off of him in waves, but I saw past the show he put on for his father. He was taunting him, just like I had taunted Angelo earlier. A defense tactic that shouldn’t have built a connection between us—especially given the way he spoke of me as a child instead of an equal—but it did. “Obviously, if you’re looking at me and we’re in this house…”
Angelo met his son in three long strides until they stood mere inches apart. “One day, I will learn what it is that you do when you are gone, and I will destroy you.”
A smarter man would have tempered his anger and hid his weaknesses. Instead, Angelo had laid his cards bare for me. The friction between him and his son and the ensuing power struggle between them weren’t for outsider eyes and ears, but here I was, an unwilling voyeur with a front row seat. Who could blame me for pocketing the information?
Damian remained unfazed. “How can you destroy me when all you’re capable of is self-destruction?”
And that was when I knew he would win. That he would always win. Calm, cool, and collected, Damiano De Luca was everything his father should have been as the head of one of the five American syndicates.
Damian’s eyes shifted to me, reminding his father of the audience. Angelo pulled his shoulders back, standing taller than anyone in the room thought he was, and left.
My eyes met Damian’s, and I wore the calmest expression I could manage. “Those who plot the destruction of others often perish in the attempt.” I dipped my hair back into the water, rinsing the shampoo from my scalp. The tops of my breasts peeked out of the water at the movement, and I was painfully aware of my audience of one.
“Quoting Thomas Moore doesn’t make you smart.” His gaze swallowed mine as I lifted my head from the water, shock at his knowledge of the Irish poet driving my actions. “It makes you unoriginal.”
“Coming from the boy plotting to dethrone his father, I’m not so sure I trust your judgment on originality. Read too many Marvel comics?” I grabbed the soap bar and ran it across my skin. “Is it the Loki and Odin relationship or the Blade and Lucas Cross relationship that inspires your every move?” My words may have lashed, but as I dipped the bar of soap under the water and rubbed at my body, I couldn't shake the feeling that I’d never been this physically vulnerable in front of another human.
But Damian wasn’t his dad, and he didn’t seem the slightest bit interested in my body. “You should have stayed out of things that are none of your business, Princess.”
Excuse me?!
Being in Devils Ridge hadn’t been a choice and being in this home had been even less of one. His father was the one who barged into the bathroom, and now Damian had the gall to accuse me of imposing? So much for kindred spirits.
If I were the type to lash out, I would have. Instead, I remained composed as I rinsed the rest of the soap from my shoulders, ascended the steps out of the pool, and stood in front of him. “If your intent is to provoke me, it’s not working.”
Water dripped from my naked flesh, but his eyes never wavered from mine. “I have no intent when it comes to you. You are a pest. A flea. Nothing more than a common house fly. Something that is beneath me to swat at. The door will remain open, and you’ll eventually fly away. But until then, stay away from me and stay out of my business.” Condescension was an ugly look on anyone but him. He stepped closer. “I wouldn’t want to accidentally hurt you, Princess.”
The air chilled my wet skin as it brushed against me. Or maybe it was his words that chilled me. That lasted for about a second before his father’s voice boomed in the background as he yelled at one of the poor staff members in the opposite wing of the house.
Myriad emotions ran through Damian’s eyes before he filtered them out. It didn’t matter, though. The damage had been done. I’d seen the emotions, and rather than latching onto the moment of vulnerability like a vulture clutching onto a dead carcass, I saw a kindred spirit I wanted to help.
A damsel that needed saving.
I lifted my chin and measured my words. “I’m no princess.”
He laughed at me. “What else would you be?”
I thought of Maman’s chessboard and the never-ending Vienna game. I wasn’t the king, but I certainly wasn’t the pawn either. “I’d be the knight.”
“Fine, Knight.”
“Fine, Day.”
His eyes narrowed at the nickname. I didn’t wait for him to call me out on it as I reached for my robe, slipped it over my shoulders, and walked past him as collected as I could with a thin silk robe sticking to my wet skin.
Truth was, Day wasn’t short for Damiano.
It was a play on Damsel.
He didn’t know it yet, but that was exactly how I saw him.
It should have been a bad thing, but it wasn’t.
The world might not have seen him as one, but to me, Damiano De Luca was the damsel— trapped in this gilded tower, lashing out at his dad for an escape—and I was the stupid knight in shining armor who wanted to save him.
All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.
J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
Three Months Later
My favorite room in Angelo’s mansion was the one he never stepped foot in. The library had been my sanctuary since I learned to read at age three. Mama took me in here, introduced me to a world of words that felt more real than my own, and filled it with thousands of books. When she died, this room was all I had left of her. A coffin of worn spines, first editions, and Dalbergia wood shelves.
So, it should have bothered me that Renata tainted my sanctuary each night when she crawled out of bed at two in the morning, crept inside here, and read the books that had previously only been touched by myself and my mother. But it didn’t bother me. And that was dangerous.
For most of the summer, Renata locked herself in her room by day, the staff dropped food off to her room, and the only reprieve she had in this prison happened to be my reprieve, too. I understood that in ways I’d never tell anyone. It was why I left her to enjoy the library. Except today, when the lashing Angelo’s belt had given me earlier still burned my back and the idea of company enticed me. Sue me.
Tonight, she was quiet as she crept out of her room. Not a single step heard. I stared at the framed article on Great-great-grandfather Ludovico De Luca as I waited for her to pass the painting of Ludo in the hall. (Angelo had an obsession with him.)
She pushed the double doors open, not a hint of surprise on her face when she saw me, though I know I surprised her. She was good at hiding. I’d give her that. But not from me. Never from me.
With my legs propped on two accent pillows formerly owned by a European prince three centuries ago, I laid on one of two ebony velvet divans in the library. A first edition copy of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov rested between my palms. The same copy she’d been reading and left lying on the side table last night. I could still smell her vanilla scent on the cream pages.
She stood there for a moment, and I wondered how flustered I had her. I also wondered how smart she was. My contacts had informed me that she had the best education money could buy, and lust tempted me to test her.
“There are goosebumps rising along the length of your arms.” I didn’t once look up from the book. Even if I had, several feet separated us. I couldn’t actually see the goosebumps, though I had no doubt they existed.
“I don’t recall reading that line in the book.” She sat on the divan across from mine, probably deciding this was better than another minute in her room.
I turned the page, not looking up, and continued with my test. “They’re a physical manifestation of your attraction to me.” My tone left little for debate. Like my word
s were fact—they were—and trying to argue against me would be met with failure—it would be.
Her level voice impressed me. “So, my goosebumps, which don’t exist,”—bullshit—“are a physical manifestation of my attraction to you, which also doesn’t exist.” Bull fucking shit. “I take it the rumors of insanity running rampant in De Luca territory are true.”
“Those aren’t rumors. They’re facts.” I met her eyes and dared her to argue otherwise.
“Do you hate me?”
My eyes flicked back to the book, mostly to hide my surprise at her boldness. “Hate would require emotion, and I do not possess any of those where you are concerned.” I adjusted my body, doing my best to be sure she couldn’t see my pain. Angelo stopped hitting when welts began to form. His way of assuring no scars surfaced as evidence. It still hurt like a bitch.
“The hair on your forearms are raised.”
So, the princess played games.
My lips tilted upward. I let it settle for a second before I tampered the smile. “Is that so?”
“It’s a manifestation of your attraction to me.”
“Possibly,” I allowed, swallowing as I shoved down the thrill shooting through me. I didn’t know what souls were made of, but in this moment, I suspected ours were the same. “It’s certainly not natural.”
And there we had it. The truth of my attraction, spoken out loud. Would she say something? Admit she lusted for me, too? Or let the opportunity slip through her fingers. Rational Damian knew this had to stop. Fuck-All Damian, who rose each time Angelo whipped me, didn’t give a damn.
She didn’t admit her attraction to me. But didn’t stop this either. Her eyes traced the way my fingers caressed the Dostoevsky pages. “Do you really think neuroses can physically present themselves?”
Most high school curricula didn’t include Freud’s “Dostoevsky and Parricide,” so the fact that she recognized my references impressed me. Moreover, it built a bridge between us, and we stood at the center, wondering which side we’d walk to.
Renata Vitali Page 3