Chapter 40 #2
“Go through the groves,” I instruct Giovanni when his excess speed has us arriving at the compound in a record-breaking time. “They could be watching the gates, waiting for us to arrive.”
I stop there, but Dante speaks the words I refuse to say. “Because there’s no show without an audience.”
Giovanni tears the surveillance van through two rows of lemon trees, uncaring that he’s doing irreversible damage.
When he pulls up to the back stairs of the Caruso manor, Dante and I sprint out the sliding side door and race for the wing of Camille’s room while Giovanni and Matteo clear the main living rooms.
A man in the foyer falters my steps when he tracks our race up the stairwell. I swear I’ve seen him before, but for the most part, my speed remains unchecked. Wondering why I remember his kind eyes can wait until after Camille is safely located.
My ribs, which I suspect are fractured from the bullet, scream with every step, but I don’t stop. My protective instincts have always been on point with Camille, but now they’re blinding.
By the time we reach the landing of Camille’s room, my lungs feel like they’re lined with sandpaper. Every breath scrapes painfully against the bruised ribs I’ll wear for eternity if they guarantee Camille comes out of this alive.
As we step inside Camille’s playroom, a heavy silence shrouds us.
It hints that something is terribly wrong.
It’s quiet. Too quiet. Silence doesn’t belong in a place meant for play, laughter, and a little girl twirling in the pink leotard she chose to wear this morning.
It was covered in sequins similar to a stripper’s bikini.
“Dante…” I nudge my head to a man lying slumped near a large toy box. He’s unconscious but breathing, and his head is contorted at an unnatural angle. The nanny assigned to Camille this morning when I called in sick is lying next to him.
I don’t breathe when Dante checks for a pulse.
His jaw clicks with a fury so uncontrolled it vibrates through the air when he fails to find one.
In sync, our heads jackknife to the right when a child’s frightened whimper booms through the silence. The hidden entry door to Camille’s bedroom is slightly ajar, and I see frantic, jerky movements through the gap.
Dante nudges the door open far enough for us to slip into Camille’s room without drawing attention, and my heart launches into my throat.
Anna, my stepsister, is at the side of Camille’s princess bed, wearing an immaculate dress and the brittle, polished smile we perfected in our tweens.
She’s rambling obsessively to herself, and with the gun used to kill the nanny, she continuously scratches at her arms as if they’re covered with bugs.
Despite her limbs trembling like a leaf caught in a wind tunnel, Camille’s headshake is strong when Anna asks if she’s sure she doesn’t want some juice.
“It’s yummy. I-I swear. It’s just like the special juice Nonna gave your mother all the time when she was a child.”
Carmela never gave Anna “special” juice. I was the only one forced to swallow the ghastly-tasting orange slop whenever we had a big family event. It made me so ill, I spent days in bed instead of the hours my stepmother wanted to hide me from the hierarchies of my father’s family.
Camille continuously shakes her head while her eyes float toward the main door of her room, seeking the assistance of the adults she knows will always protect her.
I haven’t looked back once since I started sprinting at the docks, but I can feel the presence of Dante’s family rising behind me like an unbreakable wall, ready to bounce at the first sign of trouble.
Dante’s voice is as lethal as the weapon he withdraws from a holster on his hip. “She lost any leverage she had when she turned up at the recital with her mother in tow. Camille is terrified of Carmela.”
My heart twists so painfully it tears. I understand exactly what Camille is feeling because I lived and breathed it. I only survived my childhood by the thinnest thread.
I refuse to let Camille go through another second of torment.
When Dante lines up his shot, I curl my hand over his as I did nights ago.
Camille is scared, but Carmela won’t be the only person Camille will fear if Dante goes through with this.
I’ll never forget how one of my father’s fights with his mistress turned physical, and he stabbed her to death in front of me.
Something like that taints young minds. It made me believe Carmela’s taunts were endearing.
The effects of seeing this murder will be worse for Camille since she believes Anna is her mother.
“I’ll get her out safely,” I say to Dante when he glares at me in shock. “I promise you. I just need you to trust me.”
He barely dances his eyes between mine for two seconds before he nods. His immediate faith swells my heart, but I don’t have time to relish in it.
Anna senses us before she sees us.
Faster than I can blink, she snatches up Camille’s arm so aggressively the girl’s face instantly pales. She digs her varnished nails into Camille’s arm and whirls her around so she can use her as a shield.
Coward.
“Stay back,” she snaps out, her shriek echoing even with the room filled with all the props children love.
I slowly lift my hands, palms open, then step forward. “Anna… this isn’t you.”
Her eyes flash with panic when they land on me. I’m the ghost from her past, the one person she can’t fool with a fake smile. I’ve always seen through her lies, and this is her biggest to date. “Don’t pretend you know me.”
“I know you.” I take another careful step forward. “I know you’re not this person. I know that deep down, where your mother can’t touch, you’re a decent person. You were just raised by the wrong woman.”
My words crack her mask, but the scratch-like indent seals over almost instantly when it is replaced with cold, brittle fury.
“Don’t patronize me,” she hisses, digging her nails in deeper.
“You ruined everything. She was mad at me because you slept with someone! I only suggested a hen’s party because I wanted an excuse to go out and have fun.
I wanted a reason to breathe.” She peers past my shoulder.
“Then you met him and everything changed.”
Her eyes return to me, hot and void of emotions mine hold at her confirmation that what Dante said earlier is true. I knew it was. I was just too shocked to let it fully sink in.
“She blamed me. You know that, right? She said if I had kept a better eye on you, we wouldn’t have needed to scheme so many people while trying to work out who her father was.
Four years it took to find him, Cici. Four long years I had to bounce from man to man, pretending I was the woman from their dreams.” She chuckles in disbelief.
“When I finally found him, I thought I’d be free.
But she told me I was stupid. That the deal I agreed to was chump change.
” I can’t tell if it is the drugs talking or her when she murmurs, “Nothing I ever do is good enough for her! She said I wouldn’t even get this right, and she was right. ”
“Carmela never takes the blame for anything. It is always someone else’s fault.
And she never issues praise, but that doesn’t alter the facts.
” Ignoring the red dot highlighting a wrinkle on her forehead, I continue.
“She shouldn’t have blamed you for my actions that night. You were barely an adult.”
Her shoulders curve over her chest as she lets out a harsh, relieved breath.
It is redrawn when I add, “But you can’t keep using your mother to excuse your mistakes.
You’re not nineteen anymore. You know the difference between right and wrong.
You know hurting a child is wrong.” As tears threaten to topple from her eyes, I appeal to the little girl who bandaged my cuts and bruises when I took the blame for her mother’s favorite dress being ruined so she wouldn’t get in trouble.
“Let her go, Anna. Please. You’re hurting her. ”
Nothing I say is getting through. I can see it in her lifeless eyes. She’s too tangled in the lies she’s been fed her whole life, so I have no choice but to shift my focus to Camille. She is an innocent in all of this, and I refuse to let the actions of adults continue to hurt her.
I can’t see Dante’s face, but I feel the tension rolling off him when I signal for him to get ready to take his shot before I start singing.
“Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool? Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full.”
Anna glares at me like I’ve lost the plot, but I don’t stop because Camille understands why I chose this song.
Her erratically panting chest stills as determination squares her shoulders.
“One for the master.”
At the “one” in my sentence, Camille’s shoe comes down hard on Anna’s exposed toes.
“And one for the dame.”
This time, Camille slams her elbow into Anna’s ribs.
“And one for the little boy who lives down the lane.”
Anna yelps when my last prompt sees Camille throwing her head back. If Anna wasn’t cowering in pain from the jab in the ribs, Camille’s headbutt would have missed its mark. Since she’s hunched over, she falls back with a groan, and her grip loosens enough for Camille to escape.
Camille doesn’t hesitate for even a second when I hold out my arms for her. She races for me so fast that Anna doesn’t have time to react, much less dodge the bullet Dante pops between her brows the instant his daughter is safe from danger.
Or should I say, our daughter.