They yelled and growled and threatened. But not one of them had struck her or done real harm to her. They’d even brought in a doctor, the same who’d helped her uncle, to check her ankle and bind it, and clean and treat her scrapes, after she’d fallen from her makeshift rope.
They fed her well, too—better than she and her father had been able to afford to eat in this new world, since her uncle had fallen into his misery. Twice a day, the silent young woman came in carrying a tray. In the morning, there was a bowl with something like polenta, a hunk of sweet bread, and a mug of tepid coffee or tea. In the evening, there was a meat—already cut into bites; they wouldn’t give her a knife—and a pasta or potato with a cup of wine. A man stood and watched her eat. They brought her water when she asked.
Five days ago, Mirabella Montanari had tried to kill the terrible man the people in this neighborhood called the Beast. She still had his blood on her hands, in the creases of her knuckles and the beds of her fingernails. His men had snatched her off the street then and brought her to this place. The same place they’d taken the Beast.
The street had been full of people, witnesses to what she’d done and who had taken her. Her father had been a witness. Surely, they all knew where she was—or, at least, where to begin to look—but no one had come. No police, no neighbors, not her father, no one.
For five days, she’d been imprisoned, and treated as a prisoner, but not harshly.
She didn’t know what they meant to do to her. She didn’t know if she’d succeeded in killing the man who’d maimed her uncle, then ruined him, and finally driven him to suicide.
Did they mean to keep her a prisoner forever? Or were they waiting for their don to die before they killed her?
She sat on the bare mattress with nothing to do but ponder that question as she watched the sun dim and tried to work out a better plan for escape.
On the afternoon of the fifth day, as she was coming to expect the evening meal, the big man came into the room. She’d stopped trying to charge at the door each time it opened; there were too many men between her and freedom, and all she succeeded in doing was making them more cautious and weakening herself for a better-planned attempt.
Though she seemed to have run out of plans.
He came in prepared for her assault, but she only glared at him, sitting cross-legged on the bare mattress.
He carried a bundle of something and set it on the mattress before her.
Towels and washcloths. And what appeared to be a change of clothes.
They hadn’t allowed her to wash since she’d been here. She was still wearing her blood-stained clothes, now torn and even dirtier after all her attempts to flee. All the hygiene they’d allowed her was the pot under the bed to handle her waste.
Mirabella wanted that bundle more than she’d wanted almost anything in all her life, but she didn’t move. She only lifted her eyes again and fixed them on the fleshy face of the man standing before her.
“Come. You’re going to wash and change. Make yourself presentable.”
He spoke Italian, but in a way she’d never heard the words before. His accent had the nasal tone she’d sometimes heard English spoken around the neighborhood. It leached the beauty from her language.
English was an ugly language, she’d decided. America was an ugly place.
She missed home. Life in Firenze hadn’t always been easy, especially not at the end, but it had been comprehensible. She’d had hope there—though she’d been too cavalier to value it.
If she had valued the life she’d had more, perhaps she’d have stayed. Her father had told her it was her choice; he had no choice but to leave Firenze, but she could have stayed.
No. She could never have let her father go alone. He had lost too much already.
Sometimes, since they’d arrived, she’d wondered if it wouldn’t have been better if she’d convinced her father to stay and face what loomed there.
Mirabella and her father had crossed the ocean to build a new life in a safer world, but there was no safety here. Bad men and misery were everywhere. But the misery here was darker, bleaker, and more confounding.
Better the devil one knew.
“Get up,” the big man said, flicking his hand impatiently. “Now.”
“Fuck off,” she replied, though she wanted to wash, she wanted clean clothes. Taking anything from these bad men, even cleanliness, was a devil’s bargain.
With a powerful snap of his arm, he reached out and caught hold of her arm, his thick fingers hooking around it like claws. She could feel the quake of anger in his muscles, but he didn’t hurt her. His grasp tightened right up to the point of pain and held there.
“Listen, you murderous little bitch. For all I care, you can stew in your own waste until you rot. But it’s not up to me. You will wash, if I have to strip you down and hold you under the water myself. While I’m at it, I’ll clean out that filthy mouth. Understand?”
Mirabella didn’t respond with anything more than a glare, but when the man pulled on her arm, she didn’t fight him. She stood.
“Pick all that up,” he said, nodding at the pile of clothes and bathing linens.
She did. He kept hold of her arm, and it was awkward to reach with only one hand, but she gathered up the pile and held it to her chest. It smelled of fresh laundry, of soap and sunshine, and for a single heartbeat, Mirabella almost thought she’d cry.
Tears were so rare for her, however, that the urge passed before one managed to find the path to her eye and outward. Mirabella had learned long ago that tears accomplished nothing. Anger was better. Sorrow made the heart slow and sluggish. Rage made it race.
Sorrow was collapse. Rage was action. She chose rage.
The man dragged her from the room. Three other men stood around the corridor, all of them alert, and she realized they were all there to keep her in line.
A smile almost tugged at her lips. Four men. They needed a team of four bad man to control her. And people called women the weaker sex.
She was dragged down the hall to a closed door. The man opened the door, and Mirabella saw a room almost like a kitchen, with porcelain tiles on the walls. He shoved her in and slammed the door. She heard a key in the lock and the tumblers engaging—a sound she’d grown hatefully familiar with.
It was a bathroom, but she’d never seen anything like it before. There was a commode and a sink and an enormous tub.
Beside the door was a small table; she set her pile there, dragged the table to block the door, then turned and examined the room. Above the sink was a mirror, and above that, an electric light with a pull string. She turned on the light.
And gasped at the sight of herself in the mirror.
She was filthy. Her hair was matted and greasy, and there was blood and dirt on her face. Her skin was a strange color, almost yellow, and she had bags under her eyes almost as dark and heavy as the big man’s.
There was a bar of soap on the sink—and a toothbrush and a pot of baking soda as well. And a hairbrush.
For the first time in days, Mirabella felt that there might still be something good in the world. It was only a tiny, tenebrous flicker, but it was hope nonetheless. Just the chance to bathe and be clean again felt, in this moment, like a gift.
There were two spigots on the sink, and two on the tub. At first, she couldn’t understand why, except perhaps to fill more quickly, but when she turned them both on at the tub, after a matter of seconds, the water on the left-hand side grew hot.
Hot water. From the pipes. In a house.
Fascinated, she forgot everything else but that marvel, sitting on the tub with her hand under the flow, feeling it grow warmer, and then hot, and hotter, until she realized her hand hurt.
The skin of her palm was red.
Hot water right out of the pipes. She’d heard of such a thing but had never been anywhere grand enough to experience it.
This house was large, but she wouldn’t have called it grand. And yet, there was this marvel
ous room, fit for a palace.
And she was going to have a bath. Using the cold spigot to find the right temperature—the exact right temperature!—she dropped the stopper into the drain and let the tub fill. While it did, she went to the sink to brush her teeth and scrub her face until it gleamed.
Then she brought the soap over to the tub, turned off the spigots, and sank into the most perfect bath she’d ever had in her life.
For now, just these few moments, she let herself not care that she was a prisoner, not wonder why they were keeping her, or why they’d given her this gift. She let herself not worry about her father or grieve for her uncle. She simply sank into the tub and was glad.
Not caring that it would take hours and hours to dry, Mirabella washed her hair after her bath, draining the dirty water out, turning the tub spigots on again and kneeling over the side of the empty tub to rinse the soap out. No brush like the one they’d left her was going to get through her ridiculous mane, wet or dry, so she used a towel to dry it as well as she could, then turned her head upside down and finger-combed it, working out the snarls and mats with slow care.
The binding for her ankle, she couldn’t work out how to use again, so she set it aside. Her ankle was black and blue, and still a bit swollen, and tender, but it bore her weight well enough. She wouldn’t be able to run on it, but in the bath she’d faced a truth: she wasn’t going to win her freedom with escape. There were simply too many men, too ready to catch her.
She was going to have to figure out what they wanted of her and either give it or strike a bargain. If all they wanted was a prisoner, and there was no bargain to be struck, she’d return to the question and find a way out.
Meanwhile, she was clean and dry and felt a thousand times better. She felt stronger—though her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten. Dark was falling; usually the young woman brought her evening meal near sunset.
A meal was a worthy trade for this long, uninterrupted respite for bathing.
Dry and fresh, revived, Mirabella went to the table that blocked the door and unfolded the clothes awaiting her.
They were different from her own. She and her father had only arrived in New York a few weeks ago, and she didn’t yet have the money for materials to make herself new clothing—and she wasn’t sure why she should have to. New York styles were binding. Women wore corsets every day. She preferred her own skirts and blouses, her low-heeled boots and soft underclothes. Though her father was a talented tailor and had dressed some of the most elegant women in Firenze, though he’d taught Mirabella similar skills, if not the natural artistry of his talent, she’d never cared much about clothes. She was no country peasant, she understood fashion and its role, but she simply had never cared to play the part. In her mind, comfort and ease of motion were more important than catching strangers’ eyes.
But in New York, even poor women bound themselves up and tried to look fashionable. Especially young women.
What the big man had left her were such clothes: a corset, camisole, drawers and a long petticoat, a summer wool skirt in a dark, rusty red, and a fussy ivory blouse with a high neck that buttoned up the back.
Typical of a man not to realize how complicated those clothes were for someone dressing herself. But Mirabella took her time and managed it. It helped a great deal that the blouse was quite too large for her, so she was able to close most of the buttons and slip into it that way.
The corset, she simply ignored.
There was no kerchief for her hair, or pins or combs to put it up, so she left it loose and flowing damply over her shoulders and down her back. Left untamed and unbrushed, when it dried she would look like she’d been struck by lightning, but there was nothing for it.
When she was dressed, she wasn’t yet ready to leave this tiny porcelain Eden, so she closed the commode and sat on it, breathing deeply of the lingering scents of washing.
After a few minutes of quiet, a heavy hand thudded against the door. “Sbrigati!” the big man shouted.
Mirabella stood and walked to the sink. Her ankle hurt, but it held. She studied herself in the mirror and decided she looked like herself again.
She went to the door, dragged the table back to its place, and knocked lightly. When she opened her mouth to tell him she was ready, she discovered she couldn’t speak to him except in insults. So she closed her mouth and let the knock suffice.
The tumblers in the lock turned, and the door opened. The big man stood there, wary and ready for her to fight. But she only stood and gazed at him, working to keep her feelings from her face. She’d decided that she would not gain her freedom through fight or flight.
She would have to outsmart them.
The big man surprised her; he didn’t lunge for her or grab at her. Once he realized she didn’t mean to fight or flee, he simply stood at the threshold, gaping at her, his mouth open and his eyes blinking.
He said something in English, but Mirabella could count on her fingers the English words she knew, and he hadn’t said any of those. His tone, however, did not seem angry.
When he reached for her arm this time, he was almost gentle. “Come,” he said in Italian, and she went.
There were four men in the corridor now, in addition to this big one who seemed in charge. Their wary looks amused her. Little Mira had all these very bad men at the ends of their ropes.
But the big man didn’t stop at the door to the room that was her cell. When she slowed, expecting it, he tugged on her arm and led her onward, toward the stairs.
For one glorious, fluttering heartbeat, Mirabella thought they were letting her go.
But he led her past the head of the staircase, to the other side of the corridor, and stopped at the first door there.
He knocked, and a voice from inside said something in English.
She didn’t know the words, but she knew the voice, and couldn’t stop herself from drawing back, pulling at the big man’s hold.
She’d stabbed him as many times as she could manage, but he was alive. She’d tried to kill him, but he was alive.
Now she understood why they’d kept her all these days. They were saving her for him, to take out his vengeance as he wished. To make her pay. She’d seen his kind of vengeance. It had killed her uncle. Slowly.
The Beast. He was alive.
And this man was leading her barefoot into his lair.
VII
The big man opened the door.
Mirabella locked her legs, but the big man was much too strong to resist, and she was much too proud to allow herself to be shoved stumbling into the room, so after one moment’s resistance she walked in on her own power.
The room was large and seemed to be both sitting room and dining room, with a heavy table in dark wood and four chairs in the same wood, upholstered in dark brocade. A divan and two heavy armchairs were arranged before a fireplace, with a low table with a Victrola and another, taller table where bottles and crystal decanters of liquor were arrayed. Two shelves of glassware hung on the wall above it.
Two other doors were visible in the apartment, both open, one leading to a bedroom and the other to a bathing room that seemed, from what Mirabella could see, very similar to, if grander than, the one she’d so recently enjoyed.
A few paintings hung on the wallpapered walls—landscapes of Sicily, she thought.
It was a comfortable apartment, certainly more luxurious than where she and her father lived now, but little grander than the home she’d known most of her life. Her father had been a highly valued tailor and dressmaker, in demand among the elite of Firenze society. For most of Mirabella’s life, they’d been comfortable.
Until.
But those were old, dead worries, and she couldn’t spare them a thought. Not when new, lively worries confronted her directly.
At the head of the heavy table sat the Beast.
He looked terrible.
His skin was pale and grey, the color of an abandoned hornets’ nest, and the electric
lights showed a damp sheen across his brow.
Despite her worry and wariness, a blossom of satisfaction opened in Mirabella’s chest. She’d hurt him badly. Five days later, and he could barely sit up.
But he was sitting up, dressed in a crisply tailored suit. And his eyes were as powerful and terrifying as ever.
His eyes were the first thing she’d ever noticed about him.
She’d known who he was before she’d seen him—her uncle had whispered a warning to her before she’d gone onto the stage that night to sing—but when she’d turned and faced him, she’d been struck dumb for a moment and had missed her entry into the song.
Those eyes had seemed to glow in the candlelit restaurant. They were an intense, breathtaking color—a blue, pale yet vibrant, with a kiss of green. In any other person in the world, those eyes would have been heartbreakingly beautiful, but in the Beast’s face, they were only cold stone. Stunning, but lifeless.
All of him was the same. He was, objectively, a very handsome man. He was tall, with wide, strong shoulders, solid at the chest and lean at the hips. His hair was thick and lush, a deep brown with an alluring loose curl, kept short and fashionably styled. His jaw was strong, his nose straight, his lips full.
There were scars on his face, prominent scars. Obviously violent scars. But scars were not always imperfections. Sometimes, they were enhancements. The Beast’s scars could have been.
He should have been powerfully attractive.
But there was nothing soft in his look. No promise of warmth or comfort, no suggestion of kindness. Or rage and malice, for that matter. The best description Mirabella could conjure for the Beast’s appearance was stony. He was a carved marble statue of an ancient Roman warrior. Hard eyes, cold heart.
The eyes and heart of the man who’d calmly chopped her uncle’s hand off and walked away.
Right now, facing her while he sat at that table, obviously struggling with pain and weakness she’d caused him, the Beast seemed human for the first time—and her fear of him both settled and intensified. He was human after all. No storyland ogre, merely a bad man.
Il Bestione (The Golden Door Duet Book 2) Page 7