Collateral

by Natasha Knight

  I shake the thoughts away and yawn. I’m tired. I only had about two hours of sleep last night.

  I get to my feet and begin the steep climb back up to the house. I’m sweating by the time I get to my room, noticing how, like at my father’s house, there’s no lock on the door. Although there isn’t one on the outside of the door either. That’s an improvement, right?

  Once inside, I go into the bathroom to shower. There is a lock there, so I use it.

  I strip off my clothes and switch on the water, testing the temperature, making it as cool as I can. I step under the flow, standing there for a long minute, letting the water clean me, wash the salt and sand from me.

  The shampoo and conditioner smell good, like vanilla, and I wash my hair and when I’m finished, I wrap myself in a thick towel and go back into the bedroom, careful when I open the door to be sure I’m still alone, that Stefan isn’t lurking somewhere.

  According to the clock, it’s late afternoon.

  I unzip my duffel bag which is on a chair nearby and put on a pair of underwear—one of the few things I did bring with me—and the tank and shorts I’d slept in the night before. Which only reminds me of what he did, and I can’t think of why I packed them.

  But at least they’re mine, not his.

  I dig my wallet out and pad barefoot to the bed. The marble is cool under my feet, the breeze that’s blowing in from the open French doors salty and warm.

  I sit on the edge of the bed and open my wallet to take out the only thing I care about. The only thing I couldn’t leave behind.

  It’s just a small photograph and it’s a little bent but I look at it, at us.

  Mom, Gabe and me.

  We were laughing so hard and I can’t remember why. It was taken the year before she died. We were visiting our grandparents in Carmel. They’re gone too now.

  I see why my father says I look like her. Especially now that I have bangs. Although my hair is a little lighter than her almost black hair, we have the same eyes exactly, a pale blue-green. And even though I’ve been told some of my expressions match my father’s, my bone structure is from my mom.

  She was eighteen when she met my father. And looking at this, I understand why he looks at me strangely sometimes. It must make him remember her and I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

  I look at my brother, Gabe, and wonder how he’s doing. Wonder how he’ll react when they tell him why I’m not there to visit him this week.

  Maybe I can find some way to call him. At least let him know I’m thinking about him. Gabe doesn’t like talking on the phone but maybe I can get one of the nurses to convince him.

  I yawn again and I put the photo on the dresser beneath my wallet, then I lie down. It takes all of three seconds for me to fall fast asleep.

  6

  Stefan

  It’s early evening when I walk in the front door of the Palermo house. It’s good to be back. Good to be home.

  Millie tells me Gabriela is in her room and I pass hers on my way to mine to shower and change. Get the grime of New York City off me.

  The sun is still high and it’s still warm. I don’t mind the heat, though. I grew up in it and it doesn’t bother me.

  After a quick shower, I put on a pair of jeans, a black V-neck T-shirt and shoes. Rather than walking out into the hallway, I open the balcony doors and step outside. I take a moment to breathe in the salty air, to feel the Sicilian sun on my face.

  There’s nothing like it anywhere in the world.

  I walk down the length of the balcony to the open French doors. I’m sure she doesn’t yet know we share a balcony.

  The curtains billow softly, and my shoes are silent when I step into her room to find her asleep in her bed. Her breathing remains level as I approach.

  She’s lying on her back, pretty dark hair strewn around her, the thin blanket pulled up to her chest. One hand rests on her belly, the other is over her head on the pillow. She looks so relaxed, her face soft, her mouth slightly open, thick eyelashes fluttering ever so slightly.

  She’s pretty. Her features have changed little since I first saw her on her sixteenth birthday. She was like a woman then too.

  But with a father like Gabriel Marchese, I guess it’s to be expected.

  I wonder about her. About what she’ll be like.

  The first time I went to her house, crashed her Sweet Sixteen, I’d been crazed. After my visit to the morgue, I’d drunk a bottle of whiskey before coming up with the plan to go there.

  It was risky, stupid even, but my brother was dead, and his killer had left evidence behind.

  I still remember how she’d trembled in my presence.

  My glance shifts to the nightstand where her wallet lies open and I can see her driver’s license, some credit cards.

  Daddy’s girl.

  Daddy’s precious princess.

  My jaw hardens.

  I’m about to turn away when I glimpse the corner of a photograph sticking up from underneath the wallet. I glance to the sleeping beauty once more before moving her wallet and picking up the picture.

  It’s a small square and a little damaged so I have to peer close to see the faces, three of them. Two children and their mother. Gabriela must be six or seven in this photo and has a smear of strawberry ice cream on her chin.

  Beside her is a boy. I know who he is, too. He’s two years older than her.

  Gabriel. Her brother

  Funny how she’s become the image of her mother and her brother looks nothing like either of them but resembles his father instead.

  No one’s heard from the younger Gabriel Marchese in two years and the rumor is that his father killed him in a rage.

  I put the photo down and glance at Gabriela again. Young. Eighteen.

  I shake my head, wondering for a moment who I am. What I’ve become to be able to do this. To take an innocent.

  But I stop myself there.

  She’s no innocent. She’s Marchese’s daughter. His heir. And her hands are dirty by association.

  I wonder if even in sleep she feels this shift in my mood because she stirs, her forehead creasing, her hand coming to her face. She mutters something and I watch her, wondering if she’ll wake. If she’ll scream when she sees me. But she turns slightly to her side and falls back asleep quickly. She must be exhausted from last night and this day of travel.

  When she draws her arm in and the blanket shifts, I notice a scar just beneath her shoulder blade. I peer closer. See seven matching scars, actually. Tiny little burns. I touch one lightly, feel the bumpy skin.

  She makes a sound but doesn’t wake.

  I straighten.

  The rest of her back is unmarked, at least the part that I can see. And these are marks that can easily be hidden.

  I shift my gaze to her duffel bag nearby and I go to it, rifling through the few things, mostly underthings, a pair of jeans that will be too hot for summertime in Sicily. A book. I pick it out, read the title. A romance. Typical.

  She’d packed a gun in here. I wonder if she’s realized it’s missing yet. My men found it when they searched her duffel before checking in at the airport. It’s in my study now. I’ll address that with sleeping beauty when she wakes. When I go over the rules.

  I smile. Remember her face when I spanked her ass.

  Remember the feel of the plump, supple flesh against my hand.

  She’s mine.

  All mine.

  The spoils of war.

  And thinking about the things I’m going to do to that pretty little ass of hers makes my dick hard.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket and I lift it out, check the message.

  It’s Rafa. He’s here.

  I give my princess one last glance before I walk out the door to meet him, telling Millie to wake her for dinner when I pass her in the hallway.

  Rafa’s waiting for me in the foyer.

  “Stef,” he says, smiling. He’s the only one allowed to call me that. He’s been doing it since w
e were little. Rafa is a few months older than me and like a brother.

  The thought reminds me of Antonio.

  Antonio in life.

  Antonio in death.

  The memory of him on that table at the morgue as vivid as the day I saw it. I’m not sure I’ll ever forget that.

  But that’s a good thing. It keeps me one step ahead of my enemies. Revenge may be best served cold, but it’s a churning, burning rage that fuels that vengeance.

  Because taking his daughter is only step one in the destruction of Gabriel Marchese.

  “Rafa,” I say, going to him, giving him a short, tight hug and a pat on the back. “How did it go? You got it for me?”

  He hands me the bag. “I thought you had your mother’s ring,” he says.

  I take it from him, reach inside to retrieve the box and set the empty bag on the nearby table. I open it to look at the obscenely large square-cut diamond on its heavy platinum band.

  “She won’t be wearing my mother’s ring.” I won’t let a Marchese taint the ring that was given to my mother from my father and worn with love.

  I close the box and slide it into my pocket.

  “Drink?” I ask him just as I hear a door open upstairs.

  His eyes flicker to the second floor and I turn to watch Gabriela emerge from her room wearing a turquoise sundress. Her straight hair hangs loose to her shoulders, the thick bangs brushed to the side and tucked behind one ear.

  She doesn’t realize we’re there as she looks down either side of the hallway before turning and seeing us.

  She stops short.

  Rafa clears his throat.

  I remain silent, watching her as she steels her spine and walks to the stairs, her hand tentative on the intricately patterned iron banister as she makes her way silently down the marble staircase. Silent because she’s wearing flip-flops and even so, I can see the shape of her slender legs, the lean muscle of her thighs.

  As she nears the bottom, her gaze shifts to Rafa momentarily. Before returning narrowed eyes to mine, she lifts her head a little higher. Haughty and arrogant is my princess bride. My stolen bride.

  I will rid her of her arrogance.

  She comes to stand a few feet from us. “Were you in my room?” she asks me boldly.

  I’m surprised by her question, by her daring. Clearly a single spank to her ass didn’t instill any fear.

  “Correction, Gabriela. You are in my room in my house.”

  “Did you come in there while I was sleeping?”

  “I did,” I say, smiling as I step a little closer so she has to crane her neck to look up at me. She can’t be more than five feet five inches tall.

  Speaking of.

  “Flip flops are for the beach or the pool. You’ll wear high-heeled shoes to dinner.” I look her over. “The rest is fine. Go upstairs, change and come back.”

  Her brows rise high on her forehead, and she looks from me to Rafa and back.

  “What?” she asks.

  Rafa chuckles. “I’ll see you later, cousin.”

  I hold her gaze when he walks out of the house.

  Millie passes by, carrying something to the table already set for dinner out by the pool. She pretends we’re not even standing there.

  “What part was confusing?” I ask Gabriela.

  “I’m…are you serious? You want me to change my shoes for dinner?”

  “I’m for fucking real, yes,” I say, using her own words from earlier, reminding her how I dealt with her the last time.

  She shifts her weight to one foot, jutting her hip out a little and cocking her head to the side. She studies me and I watch her pale blue-green eyes. Eyes the color of the Sicilian sea. The color of foam that washes up on the beach.

  “Sure,” she says, pasting a fake smile on her face and turning to march back up the stairs. “Why not?”

  I watch her go. This isn’t the response I expected. I thought she’d give me some ridiculous fight. She is only eighteen, after all.

  But she’s no child.

  I give a shake of my head as Millie reappears with a silver tray upon which sits a tumbler of whiskey.

  “Thank you,” I say, taking it, my eyes sliding back up to the closed door of Gabriela’s borrowed bedroom.

  Millie’s been with us for a long time. She worked for my father before me and she’s devoted to my family.

  I head outside, walking around the pool to the edge of the patio to look out to the vast sea. I think again about how Palermo is the most beautiful place on earth.

  A few moments later, I hear Gabriela’s heels clicking loudly on the stairs. I don’t turn around, but my mouth moves into a smile.

  The tantrum’s coming, her little show of resistance. It’s all she can do because when it comes to us, she has zero control and she knows it.

  “Is this more to your liking?” she asks from behind me.

  I turn to find her standing just outside the large open doors of the patio. A glance at her feet shows me she chose a pair of turquoise high-heeled sandals, one from a local designer. Her slender legs look even longer now.

  I nod my approval and sip my drink, watching how her hands clench and unclench at her sides, how her jaw tightens when she grits her teeth.

  Moving to the table, I pull out her chair. “Sit.”

  She mutters something under her breath.

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t give me orders like I’m a dog.”

  “I’ll give you orders exactly as I wish.”

  She stands her ground.

  I gesture to the chair. “Don’t be a child. I’m hungry.”

  “I’m not a child.”

  “You’re acting like one. You want to pick a fight? I’m happy to engage. But be smart about it and choose well. Now sit. Or go up to your room and I’ll be up to deal with you after I’ve eaten.”

  I see her throat work to swallow and she studies my face, my eyes, maybe gauging the level of threat. I remember the scars on her back. Remember what she said to her father in the study about punishing her.

  “Sit down, Gabriela,” I say once more. “I’m hungry and you must be too.”

  She acquiesces, not replying but making her way to the seat, pulling it out farther and making a point of scraping the iron legs against the tile.

  I move to my chair which is across from hers and Millie appears with two of the staff to serve the first course, a homemade pasta dish.

  “Wine?” she asks me before serving my guest.

  My eyes are still on Gabriela who is studying her plate. “Gabriela?”

  She looks at the bottle and I know in the states, she’s too young to legally drink, but she nods her head and I give Millie the okay.

  “Leave the bottle,” I tell Millie.

  She disappears and Gabriela picks up the glass to drink a sip of white wine. I sip my whiskey.

  “Eat,” I tell her, picking up my knife and fork and starting, hungry because I haven’t eaten all day.

  She slices the ravioli in half to look at the filling before placing a piece in her mouth. She’s quick to eat another bite.

  I smile.

  “Is there anything you don’t eat?” I ask when she finishes her plate before I’ve finished mine.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks defensively.

  “Restrictions to your diet. Allergies. So I can tell the staff.”

  “Oh.” She picks up her napkin and wipes her mouth, then shakes her head. “No.”

  I nod and it’s quiet again as I finish my plate. The staff appear to clear our plates and set the second course down. I watch her eat her fish with slightly less gusto and when she finishes her glass of wine, I pour her a second.

  We don’t talk until we’ve both eaten the fish course and dessert, a chocolate torte. Millie’s specialty. I think she made it to welcome Gabriela, but I don’t comment.

  Millie understands what this is about and although she knows better than to share her opinion with me, I’m aware
she doesn’t agree with what I’m doing.

  When dinner is cleared, she picks up her glass.

  “What do you have on my father?” she asks, surprising me.

  I smile at her bravery. “Nothing you need to concern yourself with.”

  “It’s got to be big if he agreed to this.”

  I just give her a smile and sip my drink.

  “I’m not so valuable to my father you know. If you think taking me will hurt him, you’ll be disappointed.”

  “I’m not concerned with hurting him. My plan is to bury him. And I think you’re wrong. I think you’re very valuable to your father.”

  “As a piece on a chessboard he can manipulate to win his games, nothing more. I’m not precious.”

  “You remember.”

  “How could I forget the stranger in my room stinking of death?”

  My mood darkens and she must see it because her expression falters.

  I get up, go to her to refill her glass. It’s probably not a great idea but I’m feeling reckless. I walk inside and return with the bottle of whiskey, refill my glass and resume my seat.

  “What did he do to you?” she asks.

  “Trust me, you don’t want to talk about that, Gabriela.” I pause. “I have a question. It’s strange to name you the feminine version of your brother’s name, isn’t it?”

  She looks surprised by my choice of topic. “I guess my parents weren’t feeling particularly creative.” She lowers her gaze to her glass, drinks a big gulp before looking at me again, her sea-foam eyes closed off.

  “Explain that.”

  “My mom struggled to get pregnant with my brother and they were told they wouldn’t have another baby so maybe they were unprepared. Change the subject. I’m not talking about my family with you.”

  She drinks the rest of her wine and reaches for the bottle.

  “That’s probably not a good idea,” I say.

  She ignores me, refills her glass.

  I don’t stop her. She needs the liquid courage, maybe.

  “How old are you?” she asks.

  “Twenty-nine.”

  “Why do you want me?”

  “To fuck with your father.”