Chapter 3 #3
I consider going home and begging for a fleet of Montoni bodyguards to shield me from Vici vengeance, but throwing myself on Dad’s mercy means becoming his pawn and being subjected to his cruel words and even crueler fists.
He’ll dress me in silk and jewels, parade me around, and sooner or later, probably use me to slaughter another rival family.
My hand shakes as I write a customer’s name on a coffee cup and hand it to Grumpy Graham. Night after night in my dreams, I watch the Vicis die. I wonder what happened to Vincenzo Vici. I wish I could beg for his forgiveness.
“Good afternoon, Miss Montoni.”
I look up, and recognition courses through me. The bulky man standing before me has black hair, a gold earring, and a short beard covering his jaw.
My father’s most trusted capo, Pietro.
I’ve been so petrified that the blond Vici from the laundromat is going to appear that I’ve forgotten my own family is hunting me down.
“What do you want?” I whisper through numb lips.
Pietro’s mouth curves into an ugly smirk. “It took me some time to realize you never left Malus. Don Agnello misses you. I’m taking you home, and we’re going to make him a very happy man.”
I back away from the register, and the cold metal of the counter behind me presses into my back.
The day I told Dad I wasn’t going to marry a stranger, he beat me so hard that he gave me two black eyes.
He had to delay my engagement party for a week while I healed.
While I was locked in my room, I reasoned that at least by getting married, I would no longer be at my father’s mercy.
I feared marrying into the dangerous Vici family, but maybe, just maybe, my husband would feel some affection for me.
Not love me. I had no hope of that from an arranged marriage that was all about duty.
But if only he wouldn’t beat me, or rape me, I hoped that marriage wouldn’t be worse than the life I was already living.
There were purplish marks under my eyes the morning of the engagement party.
As I covered them with makeup, I remembered Mom wincing as she dabbed concealer and powder over painful purple bruises.
She never let me see her cry and lied to protect Dad, but I knew that he’d been the one who’d hurt her.
Then when I was fourteen, she died in a car accident. A brutal end to her unhappy life.
I tremble all over. If Pietro drags me home, Dad will beat me so hard and so viciously that he might kill me.
Pietro holds his jacket open slightly, and I glimpse his sleek black gun holstered under his arm. He drops his voice, and his smirk, and his eyes turn hard and threatening. “I said we’re going home.”
“Is something wrong, Adora?” Graham asks from over by the coffee machine, hesitating as he pours milk into a stainless steel jug.
I look around helplessly as despair surges through me. If I don’t go with Pietro, things will turn violent. There are half a dozen innocent people in the coffee shop. I can’t save myself, but I can make sure that no one else gets hurt because of me. There’s already enough blood on my hands.
Swallowing down my fear, I reach under the counter for my bag, and walk out with Pietro gripping my upper arm. His fingers dig possessively into my flesh. Graham calls after me, but I close my ears to his confusion and walk faster.
A sleek black car is waiting by the curb in the freezing afternoon air, and Pietro opens the back door for me.
I hesitate before the dark interior, hoping for a reprieve or a chance to flee, but Pietro puts a hand on my back and shoves me inside.
I huddle in a ball on the leather seat, trapped under the crushing weight of my despair.
In less than fifteen minutes, we arrive at the Montoni mansion.
The entrance to the property is surmounted by stone eagles that glower at me as we pass inside, and the wrought iron gates grind closed behind us.
The intimidating edifice of glass and stone is a monument to my father’s power.
As sumptuous as it is, this house is a cage dressed up to look like a cold, empty palace.
I get out of the car, and my captor seizes my upper arm once more, yanking me toward the front door. Stumbling over my own feet, I’m dragged up the front steps while I protest, “I can walk by myself.”
“I thought all you knew how to do was run. Get the fuck inside.” He throws me through the front door.
The door slams shut behind us, the cage closing with a clang.
The entrance hall is silent and dim except for a single light trained on the portrait dominating the wall between the sweeping staircases.
Don Agnello is posed in a high-backed leather chair, the Montoni signet ring gleaming on his little finger.
The artist has captured the arrogant set of his robust jaw and the calculating gleam in his eyes.
Dad’s hair curls slightly, like my brother Cristiano’s, but he wears it short, shunning any softness that curls might give him.
An eagle is perched on his wrist, symbolizing the family’s power and strength.
Shadows gather around Dad, but his eyes, the same amber shade as the eagle’s, as my own, blaze forth.
Nothing in this house is warm or inviting. The marble stays cold on the warmest day. My footsteps echo like I’m in a deserted museum at midnight.
I brace for Dad to appear, striding toward me with anger blazing in his face, but the house remains ominously silent.
Pietro points upstairs. “Go take a shower. You’re a mess. Clean yourself up before the don sees you. He’s out right now, but he’ll be expecting you at dinner.”
I force myself to put one foot in front of the other and climb the stairs.
My bedroom is as I left it, though someone has tidied away the jewelry box that I sorted through on the afternoon of the engagement party, and the several pairs of high heels I chose not to wear.
Probably our housekeeper, Mrs. Santoro. I’ll be happy to see her, at least.
I turn on the shower and get under the spray that’s as hot as I can bear.
Steam billows around me. I shampoo my hair and scrub my body, dreading the moment I’ll have to turn the water off and go downstairs for dinner.
I wish Cristiano were home. He’s older than I am, and he’s been in Naples these past few years, learning the business from the Italian side of the family.
He and I have never been particularly close, but at least Dad never hit me while he was looking.
I don’t even know if Cristiano knew about the Vici slaughter or is aware that I ran away. I didn’t dare contact him after my blood-soaked engagement, fearing whose side he would be on. Now I’m home, I suppose I don’t have to worry about that anymore. It would be nice to hear his voice.
I wrap a towel around my body, and though my hair is sopping wet, I pad through to the bedroom to where I left my bag on the bed, intending to get my phone out and call Cristiano.
My bag is gone. I stare at the empty spot on the bedclothes. That phone is my lifeline. My only connection to the outside world.
Pietro.
He must have come in here and taken it while I was showering.
Holding securely to my towel, I run out of the room.
I find Pietro along the corridor in one of the living rooms, the contents of my bag strewn on the coffee table while he scrolls through my phone.
He’s plugged a device into the charging point that seems to have allowed him to get around the need for a passcode.
I hold my hand out, shivering with cold as water slips down my back. “Give that back.”
Pietro ignores me as he scrolls and taps the screen. There’s nothing salacious or incriminating on there, but it’s my phone and my privacy that’s being invaded.
“You have no right—”
“No right?” Pietro looks up, and something ugly shifts in his expression. “You ran away. You embarrassed Don Agnello.” He pockets my phone. “The don gave me very specific instructions about how to handle you until he returns.”
“What instructions?”
His smile makes my blood run cold. “Whatever it takes to make you regret running.”
I snatch for my phone, and Pietro seizes my wrist.
“Get your hands off me,” I cry, shocked by the malice in his expression.
He releases my wrist, draws back his hand, and slaps me across the face. While I’m still reeling, he backhands me even harder. Pain blossoms in my nose and cheek. As blood drips over my lips, a sob rises up my throat.
“You’re hitting me now as well?” I say through my tears. Pietro has watched Dad strike me dozens of times, but he’s never done so himself.
“Do you think it matters what I do to you? You were brought back here to be punished.”
He raises his hand to hit me again. I should never have gotten into that car. This is my last chance to escape before Dad gets home and things get even worse.
I duck into a crouch, pull back my elbow, and punch Pietro in the balls.
He roars in pain and anger.
I have only a split second to enjoy his humiliation before he seizes me by the hair, drags me over to the balcony door, opens it, and thrusts me out into the freezing air.
He slams the door in my face and locks it.
I hammer on the window with one hand, clutching my damp towel with the other. “Let me back in, asshole. Let me back in!”
The sun has set, and light is fading from the sky. The chilly day is turning into a freezing night. My bare feet prickle with cold, and bitter wind lashes my body.
Pietro puts his hands in his pockets and leers at me through the glass. “You’ll stay there until the don returns.”
Exhaustion and heartache collide with frantic adrenaline, and anger crests inside me. “Fuck you,” I scream, beating the glass. “Let me back in, you limp-dicked motherfucker.”
Nonna cursed harder than a sailor when she was angry, and I feel her presence swelling inside me.
Pietro’s expression fills with spite as he enjoys my helplessness. “Maybe Don Agnello will marry you to someone else. Or maybe he’ll let me be the one to kill you, just like I killed your mother.”
My breath fogs the transparent surface as my pulse throbs in my ears. “What did you say?”
Mom wasn’t murdered. She died in an accident.
An accident. Her car hit a tree while she was driving late at night.
I heard the police breaking the news to Dad while I sobbed on the stairs.
Dad was emotionless and silent while he stared past the officers, and then he thanked them for their time.
His reaction was unsettling, but I’ve seen Dad shut down emotionally before.
It made sense that a man would go into shock when he’s told his wife is dead. Unless…
Unless he was only pretending to be shocked, and he planned out how he would react beforehand. He had an alibi for the time of Mom’s death. He was in a casino with Don Carlucci, the head of the Barone crime family, and several of their capos.
But where was Pietro when Mom had her “accident?”
My gaze shifts back to the man leering at me through the glass. I shake my head, disbelief tumbling through me as tears drip down my cheeks. “No. No. You couldn’t have done that.” My voice cracks on a sob. “Why would you do that?”
“Orders are orders, Adora,” he says with a snicker, and turns away, vanishing out of sight.
A scream tears from my throat, and I double over in agony. I can hear Dad ordering Pietro to kill his wife, and to make it look like an accident. If it’s true, I don’t understand how either of them could do that to an innocent woman.
It’s not true.
Pietro just said that to be cruel.
It can’t be true.
At eighteen, Mom married the former Montoni don’s eldest son.
Their wedding photo once hung in the living room.
In it, Dad was young and handsome, but there was already a gleam of cruelty in his eyes, and I don’t doubt that he had already murdered at least one man.
Mom’s smile was heartbreakingly hopeful.
She was a beautiful mafia bride decked in satin, pearls, and lace, and her face didn’t yet have that haunted look that I knew so well.
The cold bites into me and my shock turns to despair.
Darkness presses in around me.
I beat on the glass, pleading with the man who might be Mom’s murderer. “Pietro, let me back in. It’s freezing out here. Please unlock this door.”
But he doesn’t return.
I sink into a crouch, my arms wrapped around my body. Water freezes on my skin as it drips from my hair. I shake with enough violence to make my teeth rattle, and the wind carves across my body like a razor.
The minutes tick past.
I beat my hand on the glass until I’m bruised, and I yell for someone to save me. My voice fails before anyone comes.