Chapter 30 – Luigi
Chapter Thirty
Luigi
H alfway up the driveway, I see the door wide open and I know some shit went down at the lake house. What the fuck? I had people watching the house tonight. I call Sal, yelling at him to get his shit together immediately.
He got a command from dad to leave the property tonight, so he had to. It’s a reasonable explanation, but I chew him out for not at least telling me that he was going to leave.
I call Danny next, since he should have more sense than Sal, who is dumb enough to defer to my father on the basis of family loyalty over anything else. He’s slightly more apologetic, but he doesn’t have any answers about what the hell could have happened to the girl in the house.
Nothing is missing from the house except Delphine, giving me absolute certainty that this was a targeted attack – and I’m the target. Could my father have done this? Or Angela? Is this part of some twisted plot to get me back together with Delphine?
I return to my car in an effort to think straight, and because I don’t know if I’ll need to get out of here on short notice. This might be related to the Pittsburgh situation, so I have to be careful about who I call. What questions I ask.
Angela doesn’t pick up when I call, which isn’t like her.
I know Delphine said she was acting strangely, but Angela is a dancer who no longer has her art as an outlet for her fucked up psyche.
She acts out once in a while. We fight all the time, but I’m closer to that crazy fucking woman than almost anyone in my family.
If she really wanted to run, if she really needed to get away from the family, would she really leave me with nothing, not even goodbye?
Was that why she played her little trick with Delphine?
In her twisted fucking way, she didn’t want to leave me alone…
It’s hopelessly foolish and romantic in exactly the way I would expect from my sister, but I don’t want to believe it’s true.
I call her three more times before I accept the fact that Angela won’t be picking up. Reasons currently unknown.
I’m staring at my phone when a call from an unknown number pops up. Delphine? At the same time, a call from my father flashes across the screen. My device gives me the option to choose between the two calls. It’s hardly a real choice.
“Dad. Tied up at the moment. Everything okay?”
“Are you panicking?”
He exhales slowly, like a gila monster beneath a heat lamp. He doesn’t have to say much more or do much more for me to understand the implications.
“Dad, do you have Delphine or know her whereabouts?”
“How long did you think you could hide a colored woman from me, Luigi?”
“Wanting privacy is not the same thing as hiding.”
I resent his implication. He makes it so much harder for me to deny Angela’s claims about our family and their beliefs.
Surely, even if something were more generally true, there would be exceptions.
And how much of that shit do I really believe?
Is there really something embarrassing about being out with a gorgeous woman, who I genuinely love from the bottom of my heart?
If he has her, he doesn’t know what I’ll do to get her back.
“You were hiding her for a reason,” my father continues forcefully. “You know there’s something shameful in what you were doing.”
Does he really think he can lecture me out of loving Delphine?
He’s wrong. What I feel for her has absolutely nothing to do with common sense.
Would it make sense for me to genuinely fall for a woman Angela selected for me and drugged?
My emotional connection to Delphine seems even more like fate because of the unusual circumstances surrounding her arrival in my bed.
She’s a gift that fell out of the sky and I don’t care what anybody thinks about her or our relationship.
I’m getting her back. Considering my father’s power and his temper, I should tread carefully, but I barely have control over my words.
Rage courses through me in unpleasant waves and I have to face the terrifying conscious realization that if he were in the same room as I was, I would beat the fuck out of my own goddamn father over Delphine.
“You have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Do you really think I’ll let some half-breed baby get involved in our family affairs, Luigi?”
“I think if you don’t accept your own grandson, you wouldn’t be a real Italian. I don’t give a fuck what you think about Delphine’s skin color.”
He pauses, almost like he’s considering my words, but of course, nothing could be further from the truth. I don’t dare read too deeply into anything he does or says right now unless he makes a direct threat against my life.
“Where is she?” I press him, before he gives me any feedback.
“Isn’t she holed up in your secret cabin with you?”
What the fuck?
“If you hurt her, I will never forgive you. Do you understand me?”
I can feel my heart beating out of my chest. It’s dangerous to expose this much vulnerability to him, even if he is my father. No, especially because he’s my father. I have spent my entire adult life learning to accept that his brutality is just a part of the package.
I kept Delphine from him because he’s ruthless and she’s so fucking good and pure. She doesn’t deserve his judgment or anyone else’s. Since she dropped into my world, all she’s ever done is make an honest bid at survival. I can’t hate her for that.
“I’m not going to hurt the goddamn woman,” he says. “I just found out about her.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Why do you think I’m responsible for her being gone,” He asks the question innocently as if he’s just trying to help. “I wouldn’t have had her kidnapped or anything.”
I can’t hide the panic in my voice.
“She’s gone. I just got to the lake house and she’s nowhere.”
My father doesn’t match my panicked energy. “And your sister?”
“I didn’t mention Angela.”
“I noticed,” my father says icily. Would I have mentioned Angela normally? He has this way of making you question your side of things and get so nervous about the details that you eventually slip up.
“She’s not here.”
“Is she at the penthouse?”
I’m fucked.
“No.”
“I think I solved your problem. She took your girl and ran off.”
It doesn’t make sense.
“Why did you call off the men watching my house tonight?”
“To teach you a lesson about hiding things from me.”
“Did anyone else know about that?”
“The underboss. You sound paranoid, Luigi. It’s more than likely the woman ran off. I pieced together all on my own that she was there the night of the club bombing. Can you really blame her for running away from this life?”
I can hear how badly he wants it to be true, but it just isn’t.
Delphine didn’t run away. Someone took her, and I won’t stop searching until I find out who it was.
After aggressively hanging up on my father, I give Peter a call, who picks up after a couple rings.
“I’m sleeping.”
“You sound wide awake to me.”
“What do you want?”
“Someone took Delphine.”
“Your pregnant girlfriend?”
I want to correct him and tell him that she isn’t my girlfriend, but that doesn’t feel right anymore. I might not know exactly how to define our relationship, but she means more to me than any of my previous girlfriends ever did.
“She’s gone.”
“Did your father find out?”
“Why is that where your mind went?”
“Your father is fucking crazy. No offense.”
He’s not wrong for saying it, but it’s not the answer I wanted to hear.
“He swears he wasn’t involved.”
“What? You think he would confess?”
“Call Mikey. I’ll meet you at the penthouse in twenty minutes. Call everyone in the family that you can.”
“Did you talk to Angela?”
“Angela isn’t responsible for this.”
“Are you sure?” Peter says. He seems to hesitate. “She was acting all weird the other night. I didn’t want to say anything, because I figured the bastard scrambled her head when he took a mallet to her feet but… I don’t know.”
“Angela is a separate problem. I don’t think she took Delphine away.”
“I’ll get Mikey and meet you at the penthouse,” Peter says. “Did you call the twins?”