“No, it’s clean.”
The package was heavy because it was filled with textbooks. Six thicker than oatmeal textbooks for an ivory-skinned princess who hadn’t come to the library for six days now. Fuck. Where was this guilt coming from?
I toyed with the cigar case in my hand and nodded to Cristian. “I’ll pick it up tomorrow before school.”
He cocked a brow. “And you’re going to school, right?” When I nodded, he shook his head and grinned. “Just tell me who you’re banging, dude. You know I’ll pry it out of you. No one’s interesting in this town, but it can’t be the Vitali chick. She’s hot, but she’s a sloppy mess, and she never misses a class.”
Renata was more than hot. She was fresh air slapping me in the face, better company than I knew was possible, and the goddamned cure to loneliness. She was also off limits, which I reminded Cris. “Renata is a Vitali, and Vitalis are off limits.”
“If it’s not the Vitali…” He tilted his head, narrowed his eyes, and grimaced. “Please, tell me it’s not Laura.”
“Hell, no.” I wasn’t banging anyone. I ditched a few classes and stayed out late most days to follow the instructions on the cigars, but again, I couldn’t tell Cris. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
He nodded, accepted the dismissal with ease, and stood. At the doorway, he turned and faced me. “Why are people sending shit to you through me?”
I did it because he lived alone. His dad was currently serving two life sentences in a supermax prison. I suspected The Benefactor had the same reasons. I just didn’t know how he knew this much about my life.
“Because you’re so popular.”
Cris barked out a laugh, shook his head, and left. When the door shut, I plucked the first cigar from the case, unraveled it, and read the message, my mind reeling.
Look after the mafia princess.
I sent her to you for a reason.
Another secret revealed. Another secret to keep. I collected more secrets than a priest in a confessional.
To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim, you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do, you will sink and drown. Instead, you relax and float.
Alan Wilson Watts
There’s an island far off the coast of India, where a tribe of people live isolated. For thousands of years, they’ve lived with minimal contact with the outside world. They still practice hunting and gathering, make Stone Age weapons out of loose metals, and greet outsiders with arrows. Years of isolation bred distrust, and the sight of visitors is met with violence and hostility.
The De Luca syndicate reminded me of the Sentinelese. After Ludovico De Luca killed his son, the Vitali and other syndicates wrote them off as crazy. Since then, they’ve lived isolated in their small territory of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma. No outside deals. No cross-territory agreements.
Hell, they’re the only syndicate to never fight a war—and not because they aren’t interested. No, because no one considers them worth it. And so, isolation bred distrust, and distrust turned into hostility and violence when it came to the Romano; Andretti; Rossi; Camerino; and most of all, the governing Vitali.
So, I wasn’t surprised when I spent the first month of school without a single textbook. I squeezed by fine based on past knowledge, but it got exceedingly difficult the more assignments my teachers gave out of textbooks. In fact, I suspected some of them began giving book assignments to spite me.
Because like the Sentinelese, they treated me with hostility merely because I was a foreigner. They didn’t trust me, and they certainly didn’t trust the Vitali, which Damian outright admitted before he said he couldn’t be seen with me.
So, I suffered. Assignment after assignment. Grade after grade. The library had magically run out of stock of every textbook I needed, I knew no one would lend me theirs, and I had no way of purchasing textbooks without access to the internet.
About a week after Damian told me we couldn’t be seen together in person, I opened my locker to six brand new textbooks. One for each class I was taking. I stared at them, traced my finger along their spines, and wondered what the catch was. I’d move it, and a trip wire would cause a cascade of pig’s blood to gush onto my head, à la Carrie. Or maybe I’d open one of them, and a horde of spiders would crawl out and attack me.
Either way, I didn’t dare move them. At least not until the bell rung for first period, and the hallway cleared. The students scattered like ashes in the wind until only I remained in the hallway.
I reached into my pocket and pulled a pen out. Angling myself sideways in case something shot out of me, I stuck the pen in the locker and poked one of the books.
Nothing.
Another poke.
Still nothing.
“What are you doing?” The amusement in Damian’s voice tickled my stomach when it should have put me on edge.
Wow, I was so bad at this grudge thing. Then again, a grudge implied I cared enough to hold one. Plus, Damian was awfully nonchalant for someone I had been avoiding for the past week.
I turned to face him, racked my brain for an explanation, and came up short, so I went with the truth. “There are new textbooks in my locker. I don’t know who put them there, so I’m checking to see if they’re boobytrapped.”
He leaned against the row of lockers parallel to mine and crossed his arms. “Boobytrapped? This isn’t Home Alone. We’re not children fending off goons.”
“I don’t trust you guys.” I trusted no one, except maybe my mom.
“They’re just textbooks, Princess.”
“How would you know that?”
He closed the distance between us and leaned against the locker next to mine. His breath fanned across my face as he inched forward, closing the gap between us. “Because I put them there.” In one swift move, he swiped up the books and placed them in my hands with a raised brow. After giving me a two fingered salute, he turned and left.
I looked down at the textbooks, a little stunned. Calculus. Macroeconomics. Literature. Spanish. Environmental Science. Computer Science. My classes. He really made it hard to hate him. What was his end game?
Before he reached the door, he turned back to me. “And Princess?”
“What?”
“See you in the library tonight.”
That.
That was his end game.
Maybe he needed me to chase away his loneliness as much as I wanted him to chase away mine. But damned if either of us would admit it.
Loving someone is giving them the power to break your heart but trusting them not to.
Julianne Moore
A light switch has multiple components. A hot wire. A 120-volt AC current. A neutral white wire. Two terminals. Power running from the fuse box. It isn’t just a switch. It isn’t just turning something on or off.
Nothing is that simple.
This included turning the truce between me and Damian on and off. It’d be so simple to just hate him or like him but not both at the same time. That would be like Allied forces invading Normandy every morning and retreating every night.
It took a toll on me. I liked Damian when I shouldn’t have and hated him when I could have allowed myself to like him. It was these conflicting emotions that distracted me as I wandered into the kitchen in the De Luca mansion.
I opened the fridge, which they had built into the antique cabinets, and pulled out a travel-sized bottle of orange juice. Araceli, who I suspected disliked me, had stopped delivering my breakfast, which left me to fend for myself out here.
When I shut the fridge door, Angelo stood on the other side, leering at me. “Little Miss Vitali, growing older and older each day, I see.”
“You don’t see anything, Angelo. You’re blind.” I rolled my eyes, uncapped the orange juice, and moved to walk around him.
His hand slammed down on the fridge, his arm now blocking my path. “You little—”
I cut him off before he could spew his stupidity. “—D
o you not get it? Are you that daft? I can provoke you all I want. I can call you names. Throw punches. Hell… I can kill you, Angelo. I can reach out, grip your throat with my bare hands, and squeeze until the life drains out of your pathetic, beady eyes.” I needed to nip this in the bud, to remind him of the hierarchy with words he could understand.
He pulled his gun out of his holster with his free hand and set it on the kitchen island. “Silly, naïve girl. I can end you right now. I can place a bullet in between your demon-red eyes and end this yapping before I get a fucking migraine.”
I leaned on my heels and took a casual sip of my orange juice, which I knew would irritate him. “There’s nothing you can do to stop me that won’t end with you dead anyway. That’s what it is to be a Vitali, and that’s how little the De Luca name means.”
His eyes narrowed, and he strode toward me. I started to question how much he cared about whether he lived or died. Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe I wasn’t providing a deterrent but giving him a challenge. Maybe instead of nipping this in the bud, I’d provoked him more. After all, rumors of the De Luca craziness had to exist for a reason, and he shared lineage with Ludovico De Luca.
“Your father thinks he can just send you into my territory without even consulting me. He thinks he owns the Italian mafia worldwide.”—Papà policed it, which was close enough.—“He thinks he can do what he pleases, and all the other syndicates play along because that’s how it’s always been.” His arm lowered from the fridge, and he took a step toward me. He reached out with his finger and poked me in the chest. “Well, he’s wrong.”—Poke.—“That’s not how things happen in my territory.”—Poke.—“You best tell your dad, the De Luca family answers. To. No. One.” Poke. Poke. Poke.
I tilted my head. Condescension oozed out of me with purpose as I caught his finger between my fist. “I’d be happy to tell him that if you’d give me a phone.” My saccharine smile escalated his rage.
Why wasn’t I stopping? This was crazy. Angelo De Luca was a mad man, but I was mad, too. Last night, I’d seen the way Damian winced when laying on the library’s divan. The day before that, I heard the whip of Angelo’s belt through the air vent connecting my room to Damian’s. My parents had odd ways of showing their love, but never once had they laid a hand on me.
Angelo slipped his finger from my grip and nodded at the gun. “There’s a bullet in that gun with your name on it.”
“Does that make you feel like a man? Do those threats help you sleep at night?” I took a step toward him, and I couldn’t get a grip on my anger. My dad raised me to be the stereotypical calm Vitali, but I was so far from calm, I wouldn’t be able to locate myself on a map. “Here’s what helps me sleep at night. Knowing you’re weak—”
“I’m not weak—”
“Only a weak man beats his son every night. You’re alive because my family lets you live. You’re alive because your son could beat you to a pulp but hasn’t decided to capture your throne. It’s that grace that has allowed the breath to flow through your lungs. One day, your luck will flee, and each breath you take will be a struggle. On that day, your son will lead your syndicate. I’ll be there to laugh. And the rest of the syndicates will move on with their daily operations—no changes made, because you mean absolutely nothing to anyone.”
I caught movement by the kitchen entrance. My eyes tangled with Damian’s over his dad’s shoulder. Black and red. Red and black. No way out of this stare down but to dive deeper into this mess and trust I’d find an escape.
But a part me knew there was no escape.
To be trusted is a greater accomplishment than to be loved.
George MacDonald
Tick. Tick. Tick.
I turned my metronome on and placed it on the floor in preparation for Angelo’s visit tonight. The beat helped me focus, and I liked to concentrate on it instead of the whipping. And I had no doubt the whipping would be bad tonight. Angelo had to be mad after his show down with Renata, but he’d take it out on me.
I wasn’t a push over. I didn’t usually let people treat me like this. I’d always pictured fighting back throughout my childhood, but when I finally grew big enough to throw a mean punch, I had already set my eyes on dethroning Angelo. That was a job that would take more than brute force and a few clever punches.
So, I sucked it up. I held my anger in. And every night, like clockwork, Angelo came into my room, slid his ten-thousand-dollar snake skin belt from his pant loops, and went to town on my back, stopping just before the skin split to avoid physical evidence.
The door opened. I laid flat on my bed, not bothering to look up. His belt made noise as he unbuckled it. It slid across his pants, and still, I didn’t look.
His bored tone did nothing to abate my irritation. “Kneel. Floor. You know the drill.”
I realized I must have looked absurd, too damn old and big to let anyone beat me like this and not fight back. But I did as Angelo demanded, my mind blank. My knees met the floor. The wood dug into my skin. Still, no noise but the metronome.
A whip of the belt.
Tick.
Another.
Tick.
More, more, more.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
The raw skin on my back blistered. This was about the time he would usually stop, but he kept going.
“You’re a disrespectful bastard.”
Whip.
“I never wanted you.”
Whip.
“You’ll be nothing.”
Whip.
I rolled my eyes and stared at the metronome on the floor.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Whip. Whip. Whip.
His words no longer made sense, his insanity growing wilder and wilder each time the snake skin connected with my flesh. He hadn’t always been like this. When Mama lived, he kept to himself while she raised me. When she died, he took it as permission to have his way with me. Never leaving a scar. Hitting just enough to take me to the brink of bloodied flesh.
But my skin split today, and I knew Renata’s words—true as they were—had done a number on him. Fuck my life. The belt sliced the skin below my shoulder. I grit my teeth. Didn’t she know she’d made it worse?
He growled out, his Texas accent strengthening with his fury. “No fucking respect in my own fucking household. I own the De Luca family.” Whip. “I own this land.” Whip. “I own this town. I own this state.” Whip. Whip. “Do you get that, boy?”
Not for long, he didn’t.
I didn’t answer. He tore the skin on my lower back. My teeth drew blood from my tongue. Any more lashes, and I’d need a hospital trip for stitches. He didn’t relent, the belt whipping in rapid succession.
Each time someone challenged Angelo’s ego, he took it out on me. I was the threat to his throne, the only De Luca in the line of succession, the only one who could take over. That made me his target, and if he could kill me without incensing the entire town, he would.
Instead, he settled for a belt and my back, and I let him because I was biding my time until the cogs fell into place and I gathered enough supporters, turned his caporegimes and soldiers against him, and could guarantee a successful coup. He sought short reprieves; I planned for the end game.
Angelo pushed me forward with the heel of his boot on my back. I let him, my eyes shifting to my dresser, where I knew a pen laid. A lunge forward. A swipe of the hand. A click of the pen. A push deeper, deeper, deeper into his neck, and Angelo would bleed out while I watched. I didn’t do it, but I considered it for point five seconds before I reminded myself of my grand plan.
The Benefactor’s plan.
Spend time with the lower level De Lucas at The Landing Strip. Treat them better than Angelo ever could. Work my way up to converting the caporegimes. Use my army to dethrone Angelo and his loyalists. And keep Angelo alive to watch the syndicate he could never wrangle thrive under my rule.
My face pressed against the cool wood. A final lash on my back severed another strip of my s
kin. The blood on my tongue pooled in my mouth. Tick. Tick.
“Look at you, taking a beating like a weak, pathetic, little bitch.” He really had no idea. His guffaw sounded too jovial for the blood dripping down my back. “You’re no son of mine.” The tip of his boot connected with the back of my head, whipping it to the side.
The last image I conjured before darkness faded in was the fall of Angelo De Luca.
Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.
Dr. Benjamin McLane Spock
I wasn’t sure Damian would show up at the library that night, but he’d beat me to it. By the time I had a copy of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet open, Damian had fallen asleep on the divan opposite of mine.
My eyes crawled the length of his body, studying him in a way I normally couldn’t. At six-two, his legs hung off the edge, and his muscular frame hardly fit the divan. He had an arm slung over his head, pulling the bottom of his shirt up. I caught a peak of the V leading into his sweats and bit my lip. Holy hell. They didn’t make men like him in Connecticut.
“You’re not reading.” I jerked my attention back to his face. His eyes still remained closed, and he looked like he was sleeping. He peeked an eye open. “If you’re not going to read, what’s the point?”
My brows drew together, and I pulled the book closer to my chest. “I didn’t think you’d be here.”
The anger I’d seen on his face in the kitchen still lingered in my mind. I’d been wrong to intervene in his life like that, but I didn’t regret it. Not as much as I should have. Angelo De Luca needed to be taken down a peg or ten.
“Are we not doing this anymore?”
I wanted to ask what exactly this was. But that would cross an unspoken line, so I sighed, drew my knees to my chest, opened The Prophet, and started to read. Damian’s breathing leveled out again as I read him to sleep.
My eyes darted between the page and his body as I read, “The timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness. And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.”
Renata Vitali Page 5