Chapter 11
KARINA
The cabin.
The memory woke me in the early morning, but it was blended with jumbled visions of my husband in bed with a harem of women and I was too upset to make sense of it all.
It lingers, now, unsettling me as I pull my hair back and wash my face.
My eyes are glazed and dull, the dark circles beneath speaking to the poor quality of the rest I got last night.
No amount of makeup is going to fix that.
I didn’t cry after I realized Marco was gone.
Not a tear as Dante and Frankie walked me back to the house after the party dissolved.
I thought I might break down as I crawled into the cold, empty, traitorous bed, but no.
The anguish just sat in my chest like an anchor, holding me in place until my eyelids eventually closed.
I can’t believe that Marco just left me that way, and with an oh-so-nice-of-him advance notice that he intended to sleep with Jessica just to spite me.
A deep ache spears my heart. I never could have imagined Marco would do something like this.
But more and more, it seems he’s becoming someone I don’t recognize.
When we first met, I idolized him in a na?ve way. I’d been so smitten by him, so completely swept off my feet, that I wanted to believe in all the wonderful things I’d ever read or heard about romantic love, brainlessly projecting those fantasies onto our newborn relationship.
How wonderful he was. How attentive and caring and consistent in his affection. The heat between us and how real it felt. As if we were fated lovers reunited somehow over space and time. Now I know better. I was a fool to ever allow such thoughts into my head.
Reality is a bitch.
But it’s my reality, and I have to face it.
This mess is partially my fault. Maybe I am being unreasonable in denying us both the physical connection that seems to come so easily to us.
I just don’t know. All of this is so new to me.
Here I am, trying to figure out what a workable marriage to Marco would look like for me, when I’ve never even had a boyfriend.
I avoid meeting my own gaze in the bathroom mirror as I get ready.
My expression will be hollow and broken, I know, like a resurrection of my old self staring back at me.
Maybe I’ll never fully be that lost, sad young woman again, but it’s not too far off, is it?
I’ve already cut myself off from my family and condemned myself to a cold, loveless marriage.
My husband is perpetually frustrated with me and made no secret of his plans to take other women into his bed.
Is this really the future I want for myself?
Looking over my shoulder into the bedroom, I survey the perfectly made bed.
I slept on top of the covers, my head on the edge of the pillow, a thin throw blanket over me.
I might as well have been sleeping in a complete stranger’s bed for all the warmth and familiarity I experienced in it.
If only Marco had been there next to me…
but no. He spent the night with someone else.
As he will continue to do if I don’t figure out a way to fix this.
My heart is breaking even though it shouldn’t be.
My entire courtship with Marco was a trick, a sleight of hand that I got completely snowed by.
He thought he was gallantly saving me from the certain doom of marrying Pietro, yet here I am, just as unhappy as I would have been with my former fiancé.
Pietro wouldn’t have wasted any time getting other women into bed after our wedding, either.
At least Marco held out for a little while.
A sarcastic sob works from my throat.
I wish I could cut these feelings right out of my heart.
Worst of all, I miss Marco. I miss his warmth and the way he held me in his arms. Maybe it was all fake, but I loved it anyway.
And maybe I’m just pathetic enough to take whatever shade of love and intimacy I can get.
Why not? Perhaps I’ve fallen into some twisted level of Stockholm syndrome, falling in love with the man who has trapped me with his false affection.
Be that as it may, Marco is all I have now. He’s crushed me, yes, but a small part of me wants to grab ahold of him and hold on tight. See if we can make something of this mess we’re in. I don’t want to be miserable for the rest of my life. I’ve been miserable long enough.
I slip out of my pajamas and throw my robe over my undies as I peruse my closet for something to wear. Just then, the bedroom door opens. I scramble to pull my robe tighter around me, but then I see it’s Marco, and I relax a little.
“Hey,” I say quietly.
“We need to talk.” He gives me the barest glance as he walks past me.
My pulse throbs wildly as I look him over, straining for any sign of the woman he’s been with.
His hair is smooth and in place. He’s wearing the same clothes as last night, but nothing looks creased or rumpled.
Still, Marco is a pro. He won’t show me anything he doesn’t want me to see.
I abandon the closet and sit in the chair across from him by the windows.
It takes all my willpower not to throw myself into his lap.
I’ve never had to face the man that I love the morning after he spent the night with another woman. There isn’t a single part of me that knows what to do right now.
“Do you want a divorce?” I surprise myself as the question comes out of my mouth. But it’s the only thing I can possibly think of that he would want to talk with me about.
Marco’s brows shoot up. “What?”
“A divorce,” I say slowly, enunciating. “A dissolution of our marriage.”
He shakes his dark head and sighs. He’s certainly not acting like the cocky, triumphant man he should be, rubbing his conquest in my face. He seems frustrated. On edge.
“No. I didn’t come here to talk about us.”
Well. Of course he didn’t. Because there is no “us.” We’re just two names on a legally binding document that in actuality means nothing. But as devastated and angry and bruised as I am right now, I want to change that.
Standing from the chair, I slowly untie the belt at my waist and shrug my robe to the floor, leaving myself in nothing but a pair of black lace underwear. My pulse is pounding. I don’t know if I can stand to be rejected by him. But my body is the only peace offering that I have.
As the seconds tick by, I gather the courage to step closer.
My palms find the strong lines of Marco’s shoulders, and I lean down to press my lips against the side of his neck.
Catching the scent of his cologne, desire spears between my legs.
Breathing softly, I place another kiss higher, just below his ear.
“Marco,” I whisper.
A gasp escapes him right before a shiver ripples down his body.
“No,” he says, gently pushing me away. He meets my eyes and there’s not a hint of warmth in his gaze. “Karina—”
My lips part to protest the resistance I feel radiating off him. He’s going to turn me down, deny my olive branch, my attempt to right the ship…and I don’t know how to change his mind.
“Please. I want to make things right,” I say.
“Then sit down and tell me the truth.”
Heart sinking, I pull my robe back on and slump into my chair again.
“Tell you the truth about what?” My voice is husky with emotion, my throat tight.
“It just doesn’t seem plausible to me that you can live inside the Bruno compound for your entire life and not know anything that might help us find Livvie.
” He steeples his fingers and lets out a long breath.
“You claim your family shut you out of the business. Fine. But I know how careless powerful people can be in the comfort of their own homes, how easy it is to eavesdrop unintentionally.”
He’s talking about me overhearing that conversation he had with Armani. I blush.
Seeming not to notice my shame, Marco goes on, “Are you honestly going to look me in the eye and tell me you don’t have even a single drop of information that could be useful?”
I am momentarily stunned by the direction this chat has taken.
The last thing I expected from him was concern over Livvie’s abduction.
I mean, of course everybody is frantic over it, but the Bellantis have also been working hard to keep up appearances and go about their lives as normally as possible.
As for Marco specifically—between his shiny new car, and the party, and him slipping off with Jessica last night, I didn’t dream this would be the topic of our discussion.
“Why is this suddenly bothering you now?” I ask. “Did Armani get a lead?”
“No.” He glares. “And for the record, this has never stopped bothering me. Stop equivocating. Tell me what you know.”
A beat of silence passes between us. There’s hardness in his expression that I’ve never seen before.
Armani already suspects that I have something to do with all the trouble my former family has caused the Bellantis, and now Marco is insinuating that I’m willfully withholding information. Does he suspect me, too?
“If there was anything I could think of that might be useful to you, I would’ve mentioned it,” I insist. “Do you think I want an innocent woman being held against her will?”
He spreads his hands, as if to say, Well? Do you?
Fine, I’ll play this game. If this is what Marco wants, I’ll give it to him. I need to at least keep on semi-decent terms with my husband if I’m going to be a Bellanti.
“Okay. My uncle has a holding cell inside his office at the main house,” I say haltingly. “It consists of several rooms, but I’ve never seen beyond the first room, which…used to be a place of punishment for me. The whole of the space may be huge, or not, I really don’t know.”
I glance up at Marco, but his face is stone.
Clearing my throat, I continue, my voice growing stronger. “I also know that the basement is where a lot of my uncle’s men hang out.”
“Hang out and do what?” Marco asks.
“I have no idea. I always assumed it was just cigars and scotch and poker or whatever, but I’m honestly not sure what goes on down there. Work? Pleasure? Both? I used to see them come in and out through the basement door sometimes.”
“What kind of men?”
I shrug. “Just…made men. You know the type. Hard. Mean. Usually well-dressed.”
Marco nods. “Not the type you fuck with or stare at or ask questions. I got it.”
“Right. Anyway, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t tell you the names of any of them because my uncle assigns code names that mean nothing to me. I could try to write a list of what I remember if it would be helpful, but I doubt it’ll come to much.”
“It’s more helpful than you know,” Marco says. “Get me that list. What else?”
“Um, my uncle is gone a lot. Sometimes for weeks. He has a bunch of other properties, but I don’t know where. He turns houses over left and right, so the places I remember as a kid haven’t belonged to him in a long time.”
“Add what you can to the list anyway,” he says. “Even names of cities nearby, or regions, local restaurants, landmarks. Anything you can think of could be a clue.”
A specific face pops into my head, and all of a sudden I remember something else. “Wait. Frankie showed me a picture of Livvie and her bodyguard. I think he’s one of my uncle’s men.”
Marco looks dubious. “You’re only just now remembering him?”
I frown. “I couldn’t place him before. He had a tattoo on his neck, though, and—”
At the mention of the tattoo, Marco’s face drops. “Your uncle’s associate was Livvie’s bodyguard? Jesus. That must be how they got her. I need to tell my brothers. Not that it helps us now. We need a location. You think she’d be in the holding cell you mentioned?”
My shoulders slump as I realize how futile this is. How full of dead ends my information might be. “I don’t know. It’s possible. I’m telling you everything I can.”
But that’s not true…last night while I was trying to fall asleep, I had a couple flashes of a rustic cabin with split log siding and red trim. It’s the place I was thinking about when I woke up this morning. A place that has haunted me for half my life. Especially when I’m under stress.
“There is one place I know. A cabin. I was there once when I was little. It’s not far because I remember driving there from Napa after lunch and we got there before sundown…”
Marco’s eyes narrow as he leans forward in his chair. “You were only there once?”
I nod. “I was six or seven. I went there with my uncle and my father, but I don’t recall why. I remember being surprised that this cabin existed. There was a lake behind a bunch of pines, but I wasn’t allowed to swim in it. My father said it was contaminated.”
Marco listens intently as I tell him the story.
Tell him how they told me to wait in the car, but how I didn’t listen.
After they’d been gone for a long time and the sun started to sink in the sky, I was so bored that I snuck out of the back seat and wandered around the property.
I could see the lake through the trees. It was beautiful.
I thought maybe I could take my shoes off and dip my feet in and not get caught…
My stomach clenches at the memory, but I keep talking.
As I started to make my way through the overgrown shrubs and saplings and sticker bushes, I saw something lying in a heap in the weeds.
Getting closer, I could make out a big black trash bag, stuffed with something that bulged, leaking darkly onto the grass.
A pile of freshly dug dirt waited alongside an oblong hole in the ground.
That’s when my uncle came up behind me and grabbed me by the shoulder.
I told him I wanted to see the lake, but he said, “Your father already told you, Karina. Piedmont is contaminated. Now get your ass back in the car. I’m locking you in this time.”
Then he dragged me back, his fingers digging into my skin so hard that I had bruises later. I start to tremble at the flood of images, the memory of my terror and the pain afterward.
Something flashes over Marco’s face and suddenly he kneels before me, taking both of my hands in his. “Piedmont? Are you sure that was the name?”
“I—I don’t know. It just popped into my head. Maybe I’m misremembering.”
Marco stares at me for a minute, eyes distant, the wheels turning in his brain.
“Thank you,” he finally says.
He brushes his lips against my forehead and then leaves me, striding from the room with purpose.