Chapter 4
Lucy
Two years later
“Lucy, posture.”
I straighten my spine at the dinner table, my fork hovering over the chicken I can barely taste.
Even though I’ve been living in this house for two years, dinner is a formal affair, and it makes me nervous.
I’ve never felt at ease in this majestic house of stern gray stone, with columns and tall, gleaming windows.
It’s nestled in a neighborhood of large, expensive houses just like it, set back from the streets behind wrought iron fences and landscaped gardens.
This is a far cry from the Malus I was born into, which was a world of peeling wallpaper and roaches, where the apartment reeked of cigarettes and desperation, and dinner was whatever Mom remembered to buy before she disappeared again.
Across from me, Ariana sits with her napkin folded just so in her lap, dressed perfectly with her hair smooth and shining. She catches my eye and smirks.
Mom dabs at her lips with her napkin. “We’re attending a charity gala next week. Ariana will be coming with us. Lucy, you’ll stay home with Mrs. Monti.”
“What about Damiano?” I ask.
“Damiano will be attending with us, of course. He needs to be seen.”
Needs to be seen. Like he’s a show dog being paraded around. But at least he gets to go. I have to stay home with the housekeeper.
“Lucy should come too,” Damiano says, and I flash him a grateful smile.
Dad doesn’t even look up from his plate. “Lucy isn’t ready for that kind of event.”
“When will I be ready?” The words slip out before I can stop them. The silence that follows is deafening.
Mom’s lips thin. “When you learn not to speak out of turn.”
Damiano reaches under the table and finds my hand, giving it a quick squeeze. It’s the only comfort I get.
Later, when everyone else is asleep, I hear my door creak open. Damiano slips inside, closing it quietly behind him.
“You okay?” he whispers.
I nod, but we both know it’s a lie.
He climbs into bed with me like we’ve been doing since the group home, wrapping his arms around me. “They’ll warm up to you. Give it time.”
“It’s been two years, Damiano. They haven’t warmed up to me. They don’t want me here. They tolerate me because you wouldn’t come without me.”
Damiano doesn’t argue because we both know it’s true. If only I knew how to make myself so useful to them that they can’t imagine life without me.
I’m sitting in the library one afternoon, reading a book about gemstones, when I hear voices from Dad’s study down the hall.
“…doesn’t fit in. If Damiano wasn’t so attached to her, I’d send her to boarding school in Europe and be done with it.” Dad sounds impatient, and I picture him pacing up and down.
Tears prickle in my eyes as I realize he must be talking about me.
I’ve been trying so hard. I’ve learned to sit quietly at dinner.
I laugh at Dad’s jokes even when I don’t understand them, and dress in the way Mom wants me to dress.
I try to be friendly with Ariana, though she still looks at me like I’m something she scraped off her shoe.
Yet it’s not enough. Mom still corrects my posture, my diction, the way I hold my fork. Dad barely acknowledges I exist unless I do something wrong.
And Damiano is slipping away from me.
Not intentionally. I know he doesn’t mean it, but he’s being prepared for something. I can see it in the way Dad pulls him aside for father-son talks that I’m never included in. Damiano comes back from these talks looking older, more serious, and more distant.
“She’s just shy. She’ll grow out of it,” Mom replies, but she doesn’t sound like she believes her own words.
“She’s trouble, and she distracts Damiano. She’ll never be anything but a burden to this family.”
I don’t hear Mrs. Barone’s response because blood is rushing in my ears.
Burden. Trouble.
I look down at the book in my hands. The Gemologist’s Handbook. I’ve been reading it because Mom loves jewelry, and I thought maybe if I learned about it, I could find something to talk to her about. Some way to connect with her so she would smile at me.
But a new thought occurs to me. This family is obsessed with money and power.
I hear Dad talking on the phone about deals and profits, and Mom discusses her friends and acquaintances in terms of how expensive their clothes are and how much money their husbands make.
Jewelry is important in their world. I have no idea what I want from my future, but this could be it.
If I become an expert and make myself invaluable to Mom and Dad, if I can impress them, then I’m not just Damiano’s unwanted sister anymore.
I’ll be an asset. And assets don’t get discarded.
That night, I don’t wait for the middle of the night to go to Damiano. I need him as soon as dinner is over. He’s not in his room, and so I wait. My fingers trail over his desk. His school backpack. I grow impatient, wondering where he is, and idly open a desk drawer.
What I see makes me freeze. A gun, gray metal, cold and deadly, nestled among pencils and erasers like it belongs there. I reach out with trembling fingers and touch it. The metal is cool, and it’s heavier than I expected when I pick it up.
Why does Damiano have a gun?
“Lucy, do you want to—”
I spin around. Damiano is standing in the doorway, his mouth parted in surprise at what I’m holding. We stare at each other.
“It’s not loaded,” he says quickly, closing the door behind him. “The bullets are separate. I would never be so careless.”
“Why do you have a gun?”
He pushes a hand through his curls, looking older than his fourteen years. He won’t meet my eyes. “Dad gave it to me. For protection.”
“Protection from what?”
Damiano doesn’t answer. He takes the gun from my shaking hands and puts it back in the drawer, closing it firmly.
“Damiano, what’s going on? What is Dad involved in?”
“Nothing you need to worry about.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t treat me like I’m stupid.” My voice rises in pitch, along with my anxiety.
His jaw clenches. “I’m not. I’m protecting you.”
I don’t need protection. I need the truth, but he won’t give it to me. “Do you think I’m a burden?”
His face transforms with concern. He comes forward and pulls me into his arms. “What? No. Never. Where is this coming from?”
I want to tell him what I heard, but if I do, he’ll confront Dad, and that will make everything worse.
“It’s a feeling I get from our parents. Just the way they look at me sometimes.”
“They don’t understand you yet. But they will. I promise.”
I wish I could believe Damiano. I let him hold me anyway because this is the only place I feel safe.
That night, I lie awake thinking about the gun. About the expensive cars that come and go at odd hours. About the men in suits who defer to Dad with a particular kind of fear-tinged respect.
I’m not stupid. I’m beginning to suspect what this family is. I just didn’t want to admit it.
Meanwhile, Damiano’s nightmares are getting worse. He wakes up screaming at least twice a week now, and I always run in to comfort him. I slip into his bed and hold him while he shakes, while he gasps about fire and burning.
“Lucy, no. Lucy, please. Don’t go in there.”
Tonight is particularly bad. He’s thrashing so violently, I’m afraid he’ll hurt himself.
“Damiano, wake up. I’m here. I’m safe.”
His eyes fly open, wild and unfocused. Then they land on me, and he makes a sound like a wounded animal, pulling me against his chest so hard I can barely breathe.
“You’re okay. You’re okay.” He’s saying it like a mantra, his hands running over my hair, my back, my arms, as if checking that I’m real and whole.
“I’m okay,” I promise. “I’m right here.”
He buries his face in my hair, and I feel wetness on my neck. Tears.
“I can’t lose you, Lucy. I can’t. You’re all I have.”
“You won’t lose me. Never.”
We stay like that for a long time, wrapped around each other in the darkness.
Within his embrace, something shifts inside me.
It’s the way I fit against him. The way his heart beats against my cheek.
The way his fingers tangle in my hair like he’s trying to memorize the feel of it. Is this how a brother holds a sister?
My own heart is racing, and warmth pools in my stomach. I never want to leave his arms. It doesn’t feel like how a sister loves a brother.
Am I falling in love with Damiano?
Confusion crashes over me like ice water. I’m twelve years old, and I have tender feelings for the boy who calls himself my brother. The boy who saved my life, who’s the only person in the world who truly loves me.
I open my mouth to ask him if he feels the same about me, but what if he’s so horrified that he pulls away? What if he never comes to my bed again or lets me come to his?
What would Mom and Dad do to me if they found out? What would they do to him?
I picture their cold eyes at the dinner table. The way they assess everything and everyone. They took us in, but we’re not really theirs. Not their blood. If they discovered the truth, that we lied about being siblings, they’d throw me out. Or worse.
And if they knew I had these feelings for Damiano? My stomach twists, and I close my mouth.
Damiano only sees me as the sister he wants to protect. I can never, ever tell him.