Chapter Eleven
Evelina Bianchi
I awoke to a crash in the main room of the apartment, and I jumped to my feet immediately, pulling on a pair of dark, worn leggings before rushing out of the room in a frenzy. My imagination had less than a minute to come up with scenarios. Maybe someone broke into the house, and as Zeke held them off, he needed me to run?
What if someone had incapacitated him?
What if he was dead?
That thought had my feet moving more quickly than my brain could comprehend.
I heard Zeke’s raised voice, but by the time I reached the living room, the door slammed shut, and I heard heavy feet racing away down the hall.
I looked around and found Jaimie with a stern expression, staring at a broken glass on the floor beside the oven. Her eyes raised and met mine.
She rolled them. “Someone is a bit pissy this morning.”
“I think that’s an understatement.” I glanced toward the broken glass and took a step to start cleaning it up. “What happened?”
“Well,” she replied, holding up a hand to stop me as she picked up the large pieces and set them on the counter. With her shoes, she could get close enough to clean. I glanced down at my bare feet and conceded. “I didn’t get the best news this week.”
I hesitated before asking. “I assume about my situation?”
I hadn’t been able to call Maggie again—not since learning how closely she was being watched. I knew she had to be close to giving birth by now, and there was so little time left. I couldn’t wait out Clide Newton and his plans forever. There would come a time when I would have to make a decision to leave and hope they didn’t find me.
Judging by Jaimie’s frustrated expression, I would need to be making that decision soon.
“Your fucking Dad,” she said. “Excuse the vulgar words, but this motherfucker has no problem hurting the women in his life, does he? I have worked for him and saw the way he treats his associates, specifically those who were women. I never considered how he coped with having four daughters and no sons, but I’m beginning to see the clear picture. Aria told me some things about him, but I couldn’t fully believe it until you.”
I considered my oldest sister and her situation. She had been happy to go into the Rissi crime family to find a home. I envied her decision. She had always been the strongest of us. The smartest, too.
I had always believed her to be invincible to our father’s cruelty. Even as she endured, she never came close to breaking. She didn’t hide from him. She didn’t complain. She just endured. To hear that she told her story—her awful story—to someone else had my gut clenching.
I had never even bothered to ask her about her experience.
“He is… not an easy father to have.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Aria made it sound far more passionate than that.”
I bit my lip before deciding on a response. “Talking about the things I’ve gone through because of him won’t change any of it. It will just bring up an irrational anger that will help nothing and nobody.”
“Have you told Zeke about any of it?”
I sealed my lips. I had not told him anything, but there were things he surely knew about me and my situation. He didn’t need the specifics. Nobody did.
“Well,” Jaimie continued when I didn’t reply immediately. “Your father has effectively made matters more difficult and messy. He has pledged a substantial number of his soldiers to bring you back. I questioned one of them and learned that his demands were simple. It doesn’t matter what state you’re in; he still expects you to come back. He encouraged his men to rough you up as a consequence of escaping.”
My heart raced at the words, but I didn’t show any reaction beyond mild frustration. “That sounds like something he would do.”
She began sweeping the last pieces of glass into a dustpan, staring at them with a furrowed brow. “It’s appalling. He’s only doing it to pacify Clide Newton. The more I learn about the connections between Clide and the crime families, the more precarious the situation becomes. Clide has been in business with Giovanni Rissi for years, but Giovanni has a moral code that Alonzo lacks. Clide uses the Rissis to launder businesses and to establish general business partnerships. It seems that they have gone in together on lab-made narcotics and a few other business ventures.
“Alonzo, on the other hand, does the dirtier dealings. He does human trafficking, which is something Giovanni said that Clide has been interested in for a while. Over the past two years, they have been dipping their toes in together, and as a favor to Alonzo, Clide agreed to break you in, Evelina. Break you in. Like you’re a fucking toy.”
The words should have hurt, but I felt nothing when hearing them.
Nothing about my father’s dealings surprised me. Hell, the mafia was a crime syndicate, and there weren’t rules or regulations. People did whatever they pleased, and there were no boundaries for most.
If I had heard how much my father didn’t care for me a year ago, it may have stung. But my priorities had shifted. He showed me exactly what I didn’t want to be as a parent. This entire situation showed me how far I needed to go to be safe from that monster.
Both of the monsters who hunted for me.
“But Giovanni won’t pledge any men to hunt for me?”
She shook her head and dumped the glass into the trashcan. “He keeps his hands clean of any form of human trafficking and has made it clear to Clide that he won’t throw his support behind it. But he does have enough businesses entangled with Clide that angering him beyond that boundary would be dangerous. He could lose a quarter of his men and a huge chunk of his wealth. Under different circumstances, he may have risked it…”
The unspoken words were clear. With my father coming at Giovanni and posing a clear threat, Giovanni couldn’t risk his entire family and his position to help a girl he had never met.
I rounded the counter and sat on a bar stool, propping my chin on my left hand. “What do we even do about this?”
“Zeke is going to see what he can figure out. He’s going to talk with Giovanni right now.”
So that was why he was so angry. The night we had shared melted into my mind, and my stomach tightened as I recalled falling asleep and waking up to start over again. And again. It wasn’t until the sun had risen that I finally made my way back to my bedroom, torn about the information I knew and hadn’t shared with him. I needed to tell him so many things, but I kept my mouth shut. Last night, I had considered telling him what I saw on the computer. As I was chopping vegetables and reading a book that I had no interest in, the weight of hiding another thing from him felt unbearable.
But when I had felt him out and told him that I didn’t need anything emotional, he had seemed relieved. Happy. So, did it even matter what I knew about him if our bond would never be more than physical?
I shut off the thoughts and said the first thing I could think of. “He must be eager for this to be over if he broke the glass after hearing that news.”
Jaimie snorted. “Yeah, okay.”
“What was that reaction for?”
Her brows rose up her forehead. “You think he wants this time with you to end?” I nodded once. “I pegged you as a little more self-aware. He’s angry because he wants you to be safe, not because he wants to get away from you, Evelina.”
I didn’t give her words weight. “If you say so.”
She clicked her tongue and straightened.
“I got a read on your sister relatively quickly. I understood her to an extent. It surprised me when she revealed she had been planning to betray the Rissis to help your father. I thought I had misread her until I learned she did it to protect you and your sister. It made me realize that I did read her right. I just didn’t have all the information at the time. You, though…” She paused. “I can’t get a read on you.”
“People can’t be read like books. They’re too complex.”
“That’s not true, and we both know it.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I don’t think you’re right.”
“Why do you say that?”
“My entire life, people have assumed that I’m ignorant. That I’m socially unaware. I’ve been called dense and stupid. Even my father stayed away from me because I was never a threat. Just because I don’t respond the way that people expect doesn’t make me any of those things. I show different faces to different people in different situations. Your read on me is going to be different than anyone else’s.” I shrugged and exhaled a deep breath. “So, I think that reading people is bullshit.”
Jaimie didn’t reply for a long time. She only stared at me before finally nodding. “For most people, that’s true. But for those of us who grew up as ghosts with unreadable faces and stories, it’s easier to see past the bullshit. I think you would understand that more than anyone.”
I didn’t need to say anything as I realized how true her words were.
It seemed there were a lot of things I could learn from Jaimie.