He glanced around through the sheets of rain beyond the car’s canopy and saw windows painted with the legend Campanelli Clothier: Fine Garments for Gentlemen and Ladies. Painted across the bottom of each window, below the elaborate lettering in English, were the same words in Italian, in smaller letters of a humbler style.
“Stop the car.” The words were out before he knew what he meant to do.
Sitting beside him, taking up more than his share of the rear seat, Aldo frowned. “Something wrong?”
“No. But I’m getting out here. Go back with the car. I’ll make my way home on my own.”
“Paolo, it’s not a good idea.” Aldo hated when Paolo walked the neighborhood streets unaccompanied. He knew better than to make a comparison to Fausto where Paolo could hear it, but he’d made his protest clear more than once. A don had good cause to travel in a group.
Paolo had Cosimo for protection when he needed it. But this neighborhood was the closest approximation to a home he had, and he would not cower here.
“Go back with the car, Aldo. I’m fine.” Cosimo was standing in the rain, holding the door open. Paolo stepped out.
He didn’t have an umbrella; when they’d left for uptown the sun had been bright in a clear sky. But he had his hat, and a little rain wouldn’t hurt.
He crossed the street and entered the clothing shop where Fredo Montanari’s brother worked.
A little bell jingled over the door as Paolo came in. The dim shop smelled strongly of cloth and talc, and the air thrummed with the cyclical pulse of several sewing machines. At the front was a small desk with one chair behind it and two before it, and a raised platform with three tall mirrors arranged around it. A few cases and racks showed finished clothes and accessories.
Farther back were rows of fabrics in bolts and boxes of notions. Behind those were six sewing machines, being run by six women.
One of whom was Mirabella Montanari. Her hair was bound up under a black kerchief, but he could see her face, the deep frown of unhappy concentration making the angles of her features even sharper.
Paolo hadn’t expected to see her here. He wouldn’t have told Cosimo to stop the car if he’d known she’d be here. It was her father he’d felt an impulse to visit.
She looked up then and saw him. Hatred made murder of her expression.
Agosto Campanelli was hurrying up from the back, and Paolo took the chance to look away from Mirabella without seeming as if he couldn’t meet her confronting glare.
“Don Romano, what an honor to see you today. Are you here to be dressed?”
“Yes. I’d like a new suit. Is Montanari here? I hear he’s very good.”
Campanelli blinked once. No doubt he knew what had happened with Fredo, and how Paolo was connected to it. “He’s new, but yes, I’m pleased with his work. If you’d like to have a seat over here”—he indicated a front corner, where a small, comfortable seating arrangement had been set up.
“I’ll stand, thank you.”
With the usual nod that was nearly a bow, Campanelli backed away and bustled off to find his tailor.
Paolo could feel Mirabella’s eyes burning into his back. He heard Campanelli snap at someone to get back to work and could guess at whom the admonishment had been directed.
After a few moments, another male voice, this one with a heavy accent, said, “Don Romano?”
Paolo turned and faced Luciano Montanari. He looked older than when Paolo had last seen him, and weary. He wore a black armband. He was grieving.
“Luciano. I would like a new suit.” He spoke in Italian.
The man paled, but his jaw was rigid. Paolo saw him struggle between fear and contempt. Fear ultimately won. Humbly, with his eyes downcast, he said, “With respect, don, I am not in debt with you at this time, and I cannot afford to make a gift.”
“I’ll pay, Luciano.”
He wasn’t sure why he felt this impulse to make a gesture to this man. He’d done him no harm. His brother had made his own choices and faced his own consequences. Paolo felt no responsibility for Fredo, or for his family. Yet here he was, ordering a suit he did not need from a tailor he did not know.
Montanari considered him quietly for a moment—a bit longer than was polite—before he offered a reluctant smile. “I would be most honored to dress you, don.” With an outstretched arm, he indicated the bolts of cloth lining the wall. “I assume a winter suit? Would you like to choose a pattern for the wool?”
An hour later, Paolo had chosen the wool and the cut and had his measurements taken. Montanari was all business, and they passed the hour without more conversation than was required for the transaction.
Paolo found the experience both calming and tense. He preferred not to make small talk, so Montanari’s quiet allowed him the chance to think through his meeting uptown and the plans his new purchase had advanced.
But he could feel the tailor’s daughter watching him, glaring at him, wishing him ill, and he couldn’t seem to quiet the echo of her hatred in his mind. His attention constantly turned in her direction and he had to work not to look.
Hatred was an emotion he was familiar with, in both aspects—hating and being hated. In fact, he’d say that hatred was his most common feeling, so common it was a comfort, a guiding principle in his life. Hatred drove him forward, kept his heart beating, shaped his life with purpose.
He understood hatred at its very essence, and he understood himself best by the things he despised, and by those who despised him.
The antipathy of men like Fredo Montanari didn’t bother him. He felt no hatred toward them, but he understood why they might prefer to hate him rather than reckon with their own failings. But they’d earned the consequences he dealt.
He took it as a badge of honor that men like Martin Deller and Frederick March hated him. They despised him because they’d thought him their inferior, and he’d proved them wrong.
Hatred fit him as well as his skin.
Yet Mirabella Montanari’s loathing had weight and heat. He felt it hooking onto his back like a parasite. It grew more burdensome with every second he stood in that shop, feeling her glare but refusing to allow himself to meet it. When the fitting was complete, Paolo had to stave off the urge to blow out a gust of relief.
He paid in advance—surprising Montanari and Campanelli both—and, noticing a rack of umbrellas among the display of men’s accessories, purchased one for his walk back to the Little Italy Community Society.
When he stepped out into the rainy late afternoon, he saw his red Mercedes parked at the end of the street—out of range of view from the shop—and was, frankly, glad, though it meant Cosimo had ignored his order. Had he not, it would have meant a long, wet walk. He opened his new umbrella and headed toward his car and driver.
As Cosimo saw him and opened the door to get out, Paolo saw that Aldo was still with him. He’d told them to go, and they’d gone no more than fifty feet.
“Signore Romano.”
He’d heard that voice only a few times, in song or stress, but he knew it at once and turned to face Mirabella. She was surprisingly close, and visibly flushed, as if she’d run after him. Her black kerchief had slipped back on her head. The rain was soaking her hair and running in rivulets down her rosy cheeks.
He noted all that in the instant before he saw a flash of silver and felt a sharp punch in his belly. Then another, and another, and another.
Mirabella’s slight body was rocking and grunting, her face twisted with rage and exertion, and at first he couldn’t make out why. Then she reared backward, and he saw she was holding a large pair of silver scissors. They were covered in red. Her hand, too, dripped red.
“Paolo!” Aldo shouted from somewhere. “No!”
“Don!” Cosimo shouted at the same time.
There was bustle around him, but he barely sensed it. His belly suddenly hurt terribly. He dropped the umbrella and put his hand there, and he hurt more.
His hand was red, too. The world was beginning
to tilt oddly and spin.
It wasn’t until his knees buckled and he collapsed to the ground that the horrible familiarity of it all crashed over his senses, and he understood what had happened.
He’d been stabbed. Again.
“Paolo, fuck!” Aldo was there, lifting his head and shoulders off the street. It hurt, like his belly was packed with hot coals and broken glass. The rain was in his face, and he couldn’t see.
Somewhere off in the fog, he heard a woman screaming, “No! No! No! Rilasciami!”
Rina? Was it all happening again? They were hurting his sister again, and again he could do nothing. He was powerless to save her. He would always be powerless to save her.
“Don’t hurt her,” he said but didn’t know if the words had left his mind. He tried again, with all the effort he could muster. “Don’t hurt her!”
“All right, Paolo, relax. It’s all right. You’re gonna be all right.”
He didn’t know who was speaking.
Paolo woke to a burning pain and torpor he knew well—and a smell he detested. Sickness and the unnatural tang of disinfectant. The sounds were familiar as well—the hushed tones of people speaking not to him but around him, of him and for him. Before he opened his eyes, he knew where he was.
He’d dreamt vividly, of a life he’d never before imagined. A life of power and success, but of raw misery, too. Comprehending that it had all been a dream, a malaise settled over him, heavier than the pain in his belly.
But when he opened his eyes, he was not in Dr. Goldman’s clinic.
At first, he didn’t know where he was, but he knew he wasn’t there. It was daylight, and sun streamed across the bed and into his eyes. With a groan, he slammed his eyes shut again and turn his head. The movement made his belly burn, and he groaned again.
Facing away from the window, he opened his eyes, and past and present settled into their rightful places.
It hadn’t been a dream. He wasn’t in the clinic, recovering from the attack on him and Caterina. Six years had passed since then, and he wasn’t that stupid boy any longer.
He was Don Romano. He was Il Bestione.
He was in his own bed. Thinking in English.
And he’d been stabbed again.
By a woman.
“You’re awake, good.”
That voice was familiar, and the past called out to him again. Someone had sent for Dr. Goldman. Someone had let that doctor into his home.
“Why are you here?” he asked, his voice as rough as if it were dragged over gravel and thorns.
The doctor came to the side of the bed and offered him water. Paolo tried to lift his head and take it, but he failed, as pain shot through him like a lightning strike. The doctor slid his hand under his head and helped.
As he struggled for a drink, Dr. Goldman said, “I’m here saving your life again. No need to thank me.”
Paolo didn’t. The doctor gently set his head back on the pillows.
The door swung open and Paolo squinted in that direction. His vision was blurry, but he could tell by the way the vague form filled the doorway that it was Aldo who’d entered.
“You’re awake. Grazie Dio.” Aldo crossed himself like an old woman. “How is he, doc?”
“Yes, how am I?” Paolo’s voice felt a bit smoother, for the water, but the effort to speak was great.
Rather than answer either of them, the doctor used his instruments to listen to Paolo’s chest, feel for pulses in his arms and legs, take his temperature. Paolo saw a bandage around his arm, near where the doctor gripped it to check for a pulse. There was a bandage around the doctor’s arm as well.
“The fever has passed,” Dr. Goldman said. “But only just. You need to treat yourself as if you almost died, because you did. The absence of a fever doesn’t mean the infection is completely gone yet. However, if you’re careful and keep the wounds clean, they should heal. The blood will replenish. It will take some time, but if you respect your body and let it mend, you should recover your health.” He began to put his instruments away in the black leather bag he carried. “But Paolo, I advise you to consider this a warning. The life you’ve chosen leads only one way—to this. You are a man who makes enemies far more than friends. If you stay on this path, it will happen again—and maybe I won’t be able to save you next time.”
He barely heard the doctor’s counsel; his mind was too busy trying to sketch in the details of what had happened. Mirabella Montanari had stabbed him with tailor’s scissors. As he caught hold of that fact, the rest of the memory became vivid.
“Where is she?” he asked.
He was speaking to Aldo, but the doctor answered first. “It’s not right, Paolo, what you’ve done to her. I know you’re a better man than this. I know you are.”
On his best day, he had no patience for a lecture on morality, not from anyone. Today was not his best day. Besides, he had no fucking idea what he’d ‘done to her.’
He glared at the doctor. “Are you finished?”
Resignation pulled Dr. Goldman’s shoulders until they drooped. “I am. I’ll be back tomorrow to check—”
“No. I have no more need of your service.”
“Paolo …” Aldo said, carefully.
Paolo ignored his half-spoken warning. “Goodbye, Dr. Goldman.”
“As you wish.” He fastened his bag and left the room.
Aldo stayed. “With respect, Paolo, you’re not ready to go without a doctor. You’ve been out for most of three days.”
“What did you do to her?”
Aldo pulled the chair beside Paolo’s bureau close to the bed and sat down. Now, Paolo could see him well enough to note the bags under his eyes, hanging on his too-pale cheeks like old leather.
“Nothing,” Aldo said. “You said not to hurt her, and we didn’t. But we couldn’t just let her go after what she did, so we brought her here.”
Paolo didn’t remember telling them not to hurt her, but he was glad they hadn’t. Still … “Here? Where?” Where could they have put her? The basement was no place for a woman. The main floor was only the offices, the parlor, and the kitchen. All the rooms on this floor were his private space. He didn’t use them all; most were empty. But this floor was his private space. They’d put the woman who’d tried to kill him in his home?
“Down the hall. I didn’t know what else to do with her. I just knew we couldn’t do nothing, and you didn’t want her hurt. So she’s here. Under guard, of course.”
She was in his home. He had a prisoner.
All of Paolo’s energy drained out of him at once, and he couldn’t hold his focus. There was more he wanted to know, more he wanted to say, and do, but it was too much effort even to keep his eyes open.
Something Aldo had said surged forward in a final wave, and Paolo tried to grab it.
“It’s been three days?” he tried to ask, but he didn’t know if his mouth moved.
What had been happening for the past three days?
VI
When they’d first brought she to this room, it had been furnished with a heavy, upholstered armchair, a small writing desk and a hard wood chair, a bureau, a nightstand with an electric lamp, and an iron bed with a feather mattress and a set of linens. And a woven wool rug on the plank floor.
If she had been a guest, it would have been a comfortable room.
But she was not a guest. She was a prisoner.
The first time they’d unlocked the door, she’d crashed the electric lamp over the head of the man who’d opened it, and she’d flown as quickly as she could out of the room—but the corridor was too dark and confusing. They’d caught her at once and thrown her back in and locked the door.
They did not replace the lamp, or bring her an oil lamp or candle. When dark came to the world, it came to her prison as well.
The second time the door had been unlocked, she’d used the wooden chair as if she were a lion tamer at the circus, shoving it and herself forward, pushing the man—a different man from those
she’d seen before—ahead of her, making him stumble backward until he’d spun his arms and nearly fallen, and she’d seen she’d made it to the staircase. But he’d been fighting and shouting for help all the way, and a whole army of men stormed up the stairs to stop her.
They took all the furniture but the bed from her then.
She’d tried to fasten a rope from the linens and draperies and escape from the window, and she’d almost made it, except a knot gave and she landed too hard on the ground below. Limping, she didn’t make it to the alleyway before she was caught again.
They took the linens and draperies then.
And her boots and stockings.
And nailed her window shut.
And even took the rug.
Now all she had was an iron bed, too heavy for her to move, and a feather mattress.
There were men everywhere in this strange house. More than she could keep track of. And one woman, about her age, who brought her food and emptied her pot. But that woman always came in with two men, and she refused to speak.
No one spoke to her, except the big one who came in and, in his strangely accented but fluent Italian, yelled at her to mind her manners and count herself lucky while she still could. She responded variously by spitting in his face, flicking her chin, or telling him to fuck off. Sometimes she did all three.
That man wanted to hurt her. She could see it in his eyes, the way they narrowed to slits, and in his cheeks, the way they shook and reddened as he wiped her spittle away. And in the heave of his rotund chest and the giant knots of his fists.
They all wanted to hurt her. Every man who was her warden looked at her as if he wanted to tear her limb from limb.
But not one of them had. Not even those she’d hurt. Not even the man who now bore three long, angry scratches down his cheek and throat.
They weren’t gentle. When she fled and they caught her, they shoved her into the room, not caring if she fell. Twice, they’d bound her tightly enough to make her hands and feet numb and left her lying on the floor.
Il Bestione (The Golden Door Duet Book 2) Page 6