But bad men were dangerous and unpredictable. Storyland ogres were easier to understand, and therefore defeat or avoid.
“Mirabella,” he said. “Sit, please.” His accent had the hooks and swirls of Sicilian, but he spoke true Italian. With a careful wave, he indicated the chair nearest her, which faced him.
To the big man still holding her arm, he spoke in English. She didn’t understand the words, but she heard a name. Her warden was Aldo.
Aldo led her to the table and pulled out the chair. Mirabella sat. Then Aldo spoke in English, the Beast nodded, and Aldo left the room, closing the door.
That man had been her antagonist for the past five days, and yet she missed him the moment the door closed. He had not hurt her. He hadn’t been kind, or gentle, but she’d been safe.
Now she was alone with the man who’d shown no feeling at all when he’d driven a cleaver through her uncle’s wrist. The man she’d stabbed and tried to kill—and by the looks of him, had nearly succeeded.
She was alone with the Beast.
But she would not show him fear. Never.
“Are you well?” he asked.
Thinking that was an absurd question for him to ask, when he was holding her prisoner, Mirabella didn’t stir herself to answer.
He didn’t push her to do so. Nor did he say anything else. They sat in silence until another knock at the door. The Beast said, “Come,” and the door opened.
The young woman who brought Mirabella’s meals and emptied her pot came into this room. A man followed her, one of the men who’d been guarding Mirabella. They both carried large trays laden with food. They set them on the table and began laying out a meal.
As they worked, the Beast ignored them, keeping his frosty gemstone eyes focused on her. “You and I are going to share this meal and discuss the problem we have.”
The mouthwatering aromas of the food pulled Mirabella’s attention from the man facing her. She watched the servants—they were obviously servants—arranging the meal. There was steak. Gnocchi. Asparagus. Bread. Chianti.
Hours had passed since she’d eaten, and her stomach audibly reminded her of that fact. Any thought she might have had to refuse the meal was undercut by that rumble. But she would see him taste the food first.
Except he wasn’t eating the same thing she was. Her plate had steak, gnocchi, and asparagus. At his place was a flat bowl of soup.
The table laid, the man and young woman left the room. Again, Mirabella was alone with the Beast. He picked up his spoon and gestured that she should pick up her utensils as well.
They had given her a knife—a sharp one. She held and examined it, letting its blade capture glints from the electric lamps. Was this knife enough to finish the job she’d started?
Perhaps. But she’d never make it from the building alive. If she were lucky, she’d die quickly. If she were not …
Giving up the idea as folly, she picked up her fork, too, but then studied the plate before her warily. Her earlier thought returned: would he try to hurt her with the food? Poison or some other kind of drug?
When her gaze shifted across the table, she found him watching her, impassive as ever.
“If I meant you harm, Mirabella, you would already feel it. The food is safe.”
Still unwilling to speak to the man in anything resembling a conversation, Mirabella lowered her eyes and studied his soup. They were not eating the same thing. Why not?
“I had an unfortunate accident recently and my digestion isn’t its usual strength at the moment. I thought you’d prefer a more robust meal than mine. But if you’d prefer soup, I’ll ring for Maria.”
Mirabella struggled not to smile. He was talking about what she’d done. She’d hurt him enough to make him suffer, at least. An unfortunate accident. There was humor in the phrasing, irony.
But when she met his eyes again, he showed no signs of it. Not even the suggestion of a smile. In fact, there was no sign that he’d ever smiled in his life. No creases at the corners of his eyes, no curves at the sides of his mouth. Only his scars.
Another of his names was The Young Don, and he was certainly young to hold as much power as he did. Perhaps he was young enough not yet to have even the crinkles smiles made. She had no such lines on her face. But she was twenty-one. The Beast was assuredly older than she.
“Would you like me to ring for soup?” he asked again.
Torn between the need to give this man nothing he wanted and her hunger for the meal, Mirabella couldn’t answer in either direction.
When she remained quiet, so did he. For an infinite moment thick with the tension inside her and between them, neither moved, nor seemed to breathe.
Then a small voice in the back of her mind called her attention to her realization that neither fight nor flight would solve her quandary. She needed to outsmart the Beast. She needed a strategy.
Therefore, she needed him to drop his guard, in spirit and in truth.
She cut into her meat. It was tender and perfectly prepared, and red juices oozed.
The Beast watched her take a bite. She tried not to show how much she enjoyed the taste.
When she swallowed, he spooned his soup. Really, it was broth, with very little of substance. If that was all he could eat, she’d hurt him badly.
A fillip of guilt struck her heart, and she sat back, surprised. Any harm she’d done this man had been wholly earned—and more. She had no cause for guilt.
So she shoved that errant emotion away and focused on the food before her.
Her captors had fed her fairly well, and, though she and her father were in far more dire straits in Little Italy than they’d been in the real Italy, they’d managed to eat sufficiently not to starve. Mirabella also knew how to eat in company. Tasty as the food was, she didn’t shovel it into her mouth like a starving beggar at a bread line.
And yet, compared to her dinner companion, she ate quickly and unrestrainedly. When her plate was empty, his bowl was more than half full.
He stopped his stunted attempts at his meal when her meal was finished.
They hadn’t spoken since he’d asked if she’d prefer soup, but now they had nothing else to do.
“You and I have a problem to resolve,” he said as he watched her dab her mouth with a linen napkin.
Still she hadn’t spoken. Her impulse was to recalcitrance—in this situation more than most—but she reminded herself again that she was best served if the Beast lost his wariness of her. If he thought her compliant.
“Do we?” she asked.
His head tipped to one side. Over the course of the meal, he’d weakened more; his complexion had gained more pallor, the sheen on his forehead had grown thicker. Yet his voice was strong and calm.
“Yes. What you did, it can’t go without answer. Not only did you attack, but you did it on the street, before witnesses. If I let that go, my reputation will pay the price, and thus my business. You must pay for what you did.”
Knowing that it was in her interest to show weakness and worry and fear—emotions she truly felt, though they rumbled beneath a cover of spite—knowing that if she were pliant, compliant, she might find a way to win her freedom and possibly hurt the Beast more, Mirabella discovered that she couldn’t do it. Her back would not bow. Her eyes would not drop.
She stared straight at him. “So kill me.”
“I do not hurt women.”
Because that was a funny thing for this man to say, Mirabella laughed.
“I don’t,” he repeated.
“You do. Every wife, every mother, every daughter, every niece of the men you maim and kill—you’ve hurt every one of them.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“’Who has done evil must do penance,’” he quoted. “Those men, men like your uncle—what I take from them is their penance.”
“It is not your place to assign penance. You are not a priest, and surely no god. And my uncle was a good man.”
The Beast sighed an
d shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Your uncle was a gambler, who threw the dice even while he was already in debt to his ears. He knew the price. He gambled his hand away just the same as the dollars he couldn’t afford to lose.”
“And his life? Did he gamble that away, too?”
“I didn’t kill your uncle. He killed himself. That, too, is his sin to bear.”
“You ruined him. You maimed him, and forced him to sell off the things he needed to keep his business. You left him with nothing. He would be alive if not for you.”
“No, Mirabella. He would be alive if he hadn’t cut his throat open rather than face his problems. He would be alive if he hadn’t gambled himself into my debt. He would be alive if he had been strong enough to resist his baser urges. But Fredo was a weak man. Blame me all you like, I don’t care. His death is not on my conscience. I only ever take what is owed.”
“And what do you think I owe you?”
He sipped his chianti before he answered. “That is the question before us. How do you make good your debt for what you did?”
Mirabella neither had an answer nor wanted to conjure one. She sat quietly, her gaze steady on the Beast.
He let that silence hold past the point of comfort. Then he said, “Normally, in a situation like this, where a woman owes the debt, I take it from the man she holds most dear. In your case, that would be your father.”
A gasp escaped her mouth before she could hold it back. Perhaps she was naïve, but that hadn’t occurred to her. She’d been wrangling for her freedom, worrying that her father was worried, not that he was in danger.
Her father shouldn’t have been in the Beast’s crosshairs. He had no vices, unless one counted a too-soft heart and a too-keen sense of honor.
That was the reason they’d had to leave Firenze. He’d tried to help a lady he’d regularly dressed. Finding bruises on her body too often when he took her measurements, he tried to intervene and get her help. When their plan went awry and the lady was pressed, she’d traded the name Luciano Montanari to save herself. Her husband had sent after him the kind of bad men the Beast surrounded himself with.
Mirabella could have kicked herself for her stupidity. In a world run by bad men, there was no safety for good men. Of course her father was at risk.
“My father has done nothing to deserve your so-called penance.”
“You’re right. But you have. You are a woman, and I don’t hurt women. If I hurt him, he will be paying a cost you’ve incurred. Not my responsibility but yours.”
“That’s a convenient manner of arranging the truth.”
Another tilt of his head, and a flash of warmth in his cold eyes. “That’s a poetic way of calling me a liar.”
“Not a liar. A manipulator. Words will twist in infinite ways, but it doesn’t change the truth. You are cruel. And you are responsible for the hurt you cause. You’re a beast.”
His eyes narrowed to slits, and he leaned forward. The only sign that the movement caused him discomfort was a subtle twitch at his jawline. “I’m the Beast, Mirabella. You should remember that.”
She was in no danger of forgetting. Yet she challenged him nonetheless. “Why? You don’t hurt women, as you say.”
“But I will make you watch while I hurt your father. I can make it happen for a very long time. Days. And I will make you watch every minute.”
Every bone in her body, every nerve, every drop of blood cried out for her not to show this man any weakness. No fear, no worry, no doubt. Humility would serve her better, but her entire identity demanded she resist him.
Yet the threat, so quietly but strongly stated, rang true. He would do what he’d threatened. He would torture her father, perhaps kill him, to make her pay what he said she owed.
Thus it wasn’t strategy that humbled her, that pulled her shoulders into a slump and softened her voice when she said, “Please don’t hurt my father.”
It was fear. She couldn’t let him do to her father what he had done to her uncle, or worse.
He’d won. And so quickly.
“I don’t want to,” the Beast responded. “That’s why we have a problem. I have seen that your father is honorable. He came to me on your uncle’s behalf. He’s been here every day, asking after you, offering himself in your place, begging for my mercy.” The Beast wiped his brow, and Mirabella saw that he was near the end of his strength. “You’re wrong. I’m not cruel. I’m willing to be brutal, and there is a difference. I take only what is owed. I don’t wish to hurt an honorable man, but his daughter tried to kill me, and I can’t let that go. I don’t hurt women, and I don’t wish to hurt this man. So tell me, Mirabella Montanari, how do you propose to clear your debt to me?”
Mirabella stared at the plate before her. All that was left of the meal the Beast had offered her were a few swirls of bloody juice from the meat and some licks of cream from the gnocchi. The food that had filled the plate churned in her unhappy stomach.
What she wanted was to show him he hadn’t beaten her, even if he had. She hated herself for how hard it was to do it, but she lifted her eyes and fixed her gaze on him.
He was fading. Pain and weariness—weakness—was overcoming his will. His skin had become ghostly pale, and a bead of sweat trickled along his hairline. It was obvious how hard it had become for him to sit upright, to sit calmly, to breathe. Perhaps she could wait him out, simply sit here, silent, resistant, and wait until he couldn’t hold his senses together another moment. Until the extent of the harm she’d caused him was fully exposed.
But that hateful sting of guilt struck her again. He was too human like this. His weakness should have been a victory, she should savor it, but instead, it made him too human, too vulnerable, not enough the storyland ogre she could vanquish.
“I don’t know,” she finally said.
“Nor do I,” he answered. “Until we know, I cannot let you leave. Do you understand?”
“I’m your prisoner.”
He sighed. “I suppose you are.”
“And my father?”
“As long as he doesn’t cause trouble for me, and you and I reach an arrangement between us, he is safe from me.”
But there was the rub. Her father might cause trouble if he thought it would help her, and as he grew more worried and desperate, he would act more recklessly. “He will want to save me.”
The Beast nodded. “He does, yes. That’s clear.”
“Will you let me send word to him, so he stays away and doesn’t worry?”
Those cold, beautiful eyes studied her before he said, “I will allow one visit, one hour, where he can see you’re unharmed, and you can calm him and make sure he stays out of trouble.”
He’d surprised her, and she knew she hadn’t done a good job of hiding that fact. “Thank you,” she said, and then forced out, “don.”
Something happened around his mouth that Mirabella thought might have nearly been a smile, but really it was only a twitch. “My name is Paolo.”
She knew that. To her, he could never be anything but the Beast. However, understanding he was making an offer, or a request, or perhaps it was a demand, and recognizing her own vulnerability, Mirabella said, “Thank you, Paolo.”
“You’re welcome. Would you like a dessert?”
“No, thank you. I would like to go back to my room.”
“Very well.” Raising his voice, he called out, “Come in, please!” and the door opened almost at once. One of the men who’d been guarding her stepped into the room.
In Italian he said, “Gus, take Miss Montanari back to her room. And tell Aldo I want to see him.”
The man named Gus nodded, said “Yes, don,” and grabbed Mirabella by the arm.
“Be a gentleman, Gustavo,” the Beast warned, and Gus’s grip eased, though she was under no delusion that she could have escaped it.
As Gus pulled out her chair and ‘helped’ her stand, the Beast said, “I’ll see you for breakfast, then.”
“You will?” she asked
, surprised again.
“I will,” he said.
As Gus began to draw her away from the table and toward the door, the Beast said, softly, “Mirabella.”
“Yes?”
“Leave the knife.”
Gus’s grip crushed her arm suddenly, and he reached for her other. The Beast put up his hand, and Gus backed off, though his hold remained punishing.
His eyes fixed with hers, the Beast waited.
Keeping hold of that stare, she let the knife slip from her sleeve into her hand and set it back on the table.
“Be a gentleman, Gus,” the Beast said again and waved them both away.
VIII
Later that evening, after Mirabella’s dinner with the Beast, Aldo, Gus, and another man came into her small, bare room. Aldo pulled her into a far corner of the room and stood with her, holding her there while he directed the others to return all the furnishings, including the rug and lamps. Then Maria, the maid, came in and made her bed.
When the room was dressed as a guest room rather than a cell, Aldo followed the others out. At the door, he turned and asked, “Do you read?”
“Of course I read,” she snapped. “Do you think I’m an illiterate bumpkin?”
“I don’t know what you are,” he answered, and then pulled a few volumes from his suitcoat. “The don wants you to have something to do. If you like to read, there are a lot of books here. If there’s something else you enjoy, tell me.”
“I enjoy long walks in the fresh air,” she said at once. “I enjoy freedom.”
Aldo smiled without an ounce of humor. “Something you can do in this room.”
She crossed her arms and didn’t respond.
With a brusque tip of his head, a gesture that shouted ‘suit yourself,’ Aldo set the books on the bureau and left the room. The tumblers turned, and she was locked in yet again.
For a long time, Mirabella stood exactly in the place Aldo had held her, with her arms still crossed. She contemplated the room, all its comforts returned, and wondered what it meant.
Il Bestione (The Golden Door Duet Book 2) Page 8