26. Georgia
26
GEORGIA
A knock at the door a short time after Elio left had me spinning around guiltily. I’d been carefully going through the contents of his room, looking for any kind of clue as to the kind of man Elio Santori had become, because I certainly didn’t recognize him. Sure, his face was that of the devastatingly handsome man who had charmed me all those years ago, but his soul… that was very different.
The door opened, and a beautiful dark-haired woman lounged against it. Her eyes weren’t the same, but the family resemblance was undeniable.
She had to be Elio’s little sister. The one he’d always been planning to get back.
“I’m not interrupting your snooping, am I?” she asked lazily, immediately clocking my bent-over position at the bedside table.
I straightened up and shook my head. “No. I was finished.”
I really was finished. Elio had nothing of any kind of personal nature in the room. Maybe he’d scrubbed it before locking me up in here. That was the only way to explain the fact that there wasn’t a single scrap of personality in the whole place. It really was a prison cell.
“Good to know. I’m Giada.” Elio’s sister sauntered into the room and closed the door behind her.
The lock turned outside. So, there was still a guard there.
“Don’t worry, you’d never make it past me to the door,” Giada smirked, reading my thoughts easily.
“Yeah, you’re probably right. I’m not a fighter.” I surveyed her fit form. “I’m totally unprepared for life as a thug’s wife.”
Giada’s eyebrows shot up, and she let out a cackle of laughter. “Thug’s wife? If you think that about my brother, wait until you meet my husband. Thug life. Nice. Reckless and brave without anything to back it up, but brave, nonetheless.” She stopped in front of me. “I heard you know my brother from way back.”
I nodded stiffly. She was making me nervous. She had an unpredictable aura about her, like she might hug me, or stab me. She sank down on the edge of the bed, leaving me awkwardly standing over her. As if my thoughts had summoned it, she reached into her back pocket and pulled out a wicked-looking knife. She twirled it easily between her fingers.
“You know, I’m not a big believer in women being forced to do things they don’t want to. I don’t like it on the street, or in my family. The De Sanctis family isn’t big on it. It’s against Renato’s code; well, except when it came to his own wife. So, that begs the question… what made you another exception?”
I shrugged.
“He knows you, of course, so I guess that changes everything. It means that he chose this for you. Which means he thinks you deserve it.”
“I deserve being forced to marry a murderer and being locked up in a room for the rest of my life?” I bit out scornfully.
Giada shrugged. “I don’t know. Do you?”
I took a deep breath and smoothed my hands down the old T-shirt of Elio’s I again had on. I still didn’t have proper clothes.
“Look, as nice as this show of female camaraderie is, I had time penciled in to stare at the wall and cry, followed by screaming into the pillow. I really need to get on with it.”
Giada stared at me and then burst into laughter, her red lips stretched wide. Maybe everyone in this house was a psychopath.
“That was a good one. I liked that. You know, for a bride, Elio could have done a lot worse.” She chortled, standing and flipping her knife around.
She moved it so fast, I barely registered the motion before it was pressing into my throat.
“But I need to let you know that if you hurt my brother, I’ll cut your throat, bitch, anytime, anyplace.”
“Your brother is the one imprisoning me,” I ground out, alarm beating through me.
“Yeah, he is, which isn’t like him at all. Something about you has him all turned around, and I don’t like that. He’s been through enough.”
“What’s he been through?” I heard myself ask. Suddenly, I wanted to fill in those blank years between us more than anything so I could start to understand the man Elio Santori had become.
“What hasn’t he? He lost his soul overseas. He came back different… get used to it. As for why you upset him so much, I guess you fucked him over when you were both young.”
“It was the other way around, actually. He broke my heart.”
Giada scoffed, pressing the knife harder into my throat. “Either you’re stupid or a liar. The only way all of this is happening now is if you really meant something to him, and my brother doesn’t care about people easily. You could count the people he cares lives or dies on one hand, and for some reason, it looks like you’re included. If that’s the case… there’s no way he hurt you. You hurt him, and you should spend your life fixing it.”
“I swear. He was the one.” I stared into her dark eyes. “I loved him. He’s the only man I’ve ever loved.”
Giada pulled back. She tossed her hair behind her shoulder and snapped her knife closed. I took the first easy breath in a good ten minutes.
“Weren’t you married before this?” She raised an eyebrow at me.
I just nodded.
She let out a chuckle. “Well, in that case, I guess you two have a lot of talking to do. Good luck with that, my brother isn’t an award-winning communicator. I brought you this.” She took a bobbin of black thread and a needle from her jacket pocket.
This was Elio’s doing. He’d asked her to bring it. I didn’t know how to feel about that.
“No offense, but your clothes are a little…”
“Unfitted?” I suggested.
She shook her head. “Stinky. You haven’t got anything else to wear?”
“I didn’t really have a chance to pack much.” I sighed and stepped away. That fact should’ve been embarrassing, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.
“Okay, well, leave it to me. Good luck with my brother, you’re going to need it.”
And with that, she rapped on the door and left without a backward glance.
The lock turning shut after her departure echoed around the room.
Someone brought dinner to my door, and two armed men set it up at the table in the window. Neither of them looked directly at me the entire time. Once they’d left, the door was once again locked, and I fell on the food. I’d missed too many meals lately, and I barely paused for a breath as I inhaled the meal.
Pasta with basil and tomato. Simple. Perfect. It was so good, I nearly cried. It tasted like my nonna’s pasta. I ate so fast that I nearly felt sick when it hit my stomach.
I sank back against the chair and stared at the moon rising in the dark sky. Tall trees reached for it, and stars sparkled. I hadn’t seen the stars in a decade. LA stars were the kind on Hollywood Boulevard, not in the sky.
I hadn’t met many of the Hollywood stars in person, either. All my dreams of designing my own line of clothes… of having a brand and a store… they all felt so far away now. All I had left of those childish fantasies were a few half-sewn designs that I didn’t even love. My clothes used to be bold. It was haute couture or go home. I’d been so audacious as a privileged little daddy’s girl in Castel Amaro.
Meeting Elio had changed all that. Not just the tragic end of our love story, but meeting him in general, had introduced me to another side of the world. It was one my father had protected me from. Funny how the roles had reversed now. I was penniless and had been living in a shitty apartment with a door that didn’t even lock and a loan shark paying unexpected visits to work out payment plans. And Elio? He was rich. I could tell by his clothes, the quiet expense of a man who only buys the best. Since I couldn’t picture Elio shopping, he probably had some underling go out and fill his closet periodically with black suits, black shirts, and black shoes.
Tommaso had trusted me with dressing him. When we’d first moved to LA, I’d gone to school, and he’d worked. We’d been comfortable then, I supposed, though I didn’t remember much. The grief had weighed me down. I didn’t manage to stay in school. I was too depressed and despondent. A few months had passed that way, until Tommaso started to see someone. He was a therapist. His name was Drew. I began counseling with him and slowly came back to the world.
I yawned, my jaw cracking.
Wandering through the past was exhausting. I just wanted to sleep and sleep, preferably before Elio got home and I had to work out how to act around him.
A niggle at the back of my mind reminded me of something important that I’d forgotten. I emptied my bag out on the bed. It was the one I’d had with me at work, the night the Ravellis had broken into the atelier and would have attacked me… if not for Elio showing up.
He’d taken my phone and wallet, of course, but I still had some of my things. Most importantly… I tugged open the broken lipstick tube, and there it was. The flash drive my father had sent me. I had no idea what was on it and no way to find out. Elio wasn’t exactly supplying me with a laptop. I tucked it back inside the lipstick case and put it in the inside flap of my bag.
I was so tired. So tired of running and being scared, and tired of feeling like my life was out of my control. I’d been feeling that way for a long, long time. Much longer than the last week or so. It had been years and years. Maybe even since the last time I saw Elio, when I’d been full of naive hope and love.
Elio coming into my life again was showing the differences in us starkly. An unforgiving light was beaming down on the choices we’d made to become the people we were. What had Giada said? He’s been through enough. What had Elio been through? I was more curious about that than whatever was on the flash drive.
I lay down and snuggled into the covers. The half-finished dresses hung in the front of the closet. A testament to how I had never managed to reach my dreams, but I’d never forgotten them, either.
I’d contemplated going back to school just when Tommaso’s family had found out that Drew was living with us. They’d cut him off. School was out of the question. I got a job making custom alterations, we downsized, and then Tommaso got sick.
He stopped work, I worked more hours, and my dreams were pinned away out of sight again as I slowly lost my best friend.
After, Drew had moved away to deal with his own grief, and I’d ended up just like I was when Elio had found me. My life had become a tragedy when Elio ran away, and it had never quite turned around.
Lately, I’d been drifting aimlessly; just surviving, not quite living. The days had been blurring into each other as I worked hard, ate cheap, and existed every single day.
Now, I was living again. I was feeling again.
Like it or not, Elio Santori had once again turned my life upside down.
Could I survive him a second time?
It looked like I was about to find out.