Chapter 11 #2
Mom pushes me and Lucy out of her way. “Carlucci? Darling, what’s wrong? You two, get back. Give him some air.”
Lucy and I hover behind Mom, exchanging terrified glances. Did we do this to Dad? We did this. He’s having a heart attack because he caught his children fooling around together, and who can blame him, considering what he believes about us? I fumble for my phone. “I’m calling an ambulance.”
Dad seems like he’s going to collapse, and then his face clears and he straightens up. “Put that phone away, Damiano. I’m fine.” His eyes are burning with fury, and they fall on Lucy. His teeth clenched, he seethes, “Get her out of my sight.”
Like hell. Dad’s putting all the blame on my sister when it was both of us in this bathroom. “Wait, Lucy isn’t the one who—”
Mom’s eyes flash, and she seizes Lucy viciously by the hair and drags her out of the bathroom. “You little whore, polluting this family with your corruption. How dare you behave this way under our roof.”
Lucy screams in pain and fights Mom every step of the way. I try to go after her, to save my sobbing sister from being violently manhandled, but Dad seizes me by the shoulder. “You brought your sister to a meeting of Malus families? The Sokolis saw her, and you didn’t kill them all?”
I’m blindsided by the wrenching change of subject. He knows about that?
Dad shakes me. “Antonio was shot tonight because of your arrogance. Francesco’s son is fighting for his life in surgery right now.
And you came home and did this?” He gestures furiously at the bathroom.
“Lucy was supposed to sell a few jewels for us, not meet the next fucking dons of the most powerful families in Malus. You went behind my back, Damiano. You’ve put your mother and your sisters in danger. What you have done is unforgivable.”
He shoves me out of the bathroom, surprisingly strong for a man who was gasping for air and clutching his heart just moments ago.
Distantly, I can hear shrill female voices.
I have no doubt that Mom is ranting at Lucy and calling her names while Lucy sobs wretchedly.
I want to go to her, but I have to wait until Dad has finished taking his wrath out on me.
Otherwise, he’ll do it to Lucy. My only chance to keep my sister safe is to convince Dad that I acted reasonably tonight, and then he can talk Mom into forgetting what she saw in the bathroom.
Inside Dad’s study, he rounds on me, his eyes black.
He’s breathing hard like an angry bull. “Tell me why I had a phone call from Francesco telling me his son Antonio was shot by Sokolis tonight. Explain to me in explicit fucking detail, Damiano, why you were in an empty restaurant with Don Cristiano, Don Vincenzo, Rafiel Lucania, and your sister. You were doing what I told you not to do, weren’t you? ”
I keep my chin raised and stare straight ahead. “I was.”
“If you weren’t my son, I’d take a blowtorch to that viper tattoo on your arm and put a bullet in your head. Do you realize how this makes me look in front of my capos? Francesco’s son might die, and it’s because you went behind my back to play at being don.”
“Tell them it was your idea.”
“It was my idea to take Lucy with you?” he bellows.
I keep my voice strong and steady but don’t raise it.
I don’t want it to sound like I’m challenging his authority.
“Lucy is best friends with Adora Vici. Lucy has connections with Vincenzo Vici and Cristiano Montoni through Adora that I don’t have.
It made good strategic sense that I took her with me. ”
“Do not stand there and feed me bullshit,” Dad rages. “You’re not even going to pretend you’re sorry for what you’ve done?”
“I’m sorry about Antonio, but I’m not sorry that I tried to make allies for the Barones.”
Dad raises his hand and backhands me across the face. I see the blow coming, but I don’t try to protect myself. He hits me with full, furious force, making me stagger. Pain explodes in my cheek. I blink hard and shake my head, then I straighten up and fix my eyes on the wall again.
Don’t react.
Don’t let him see how much I want to return his blow with one of my own.
Take his violence for Lucy.
“What do you think those Sokoli men are telling their krye right at this moment?” Dad shouts.
Krye is their word for boss. “They are telling him, Lucy Barone knows what Don Carlucci and his son are up to. Lucy Barone can be captured, raped, and tortured until she tells us all she knows. They will be saying the same thing about your mother and Ariana. They are all in danger now. What the fuck were you thinking?”
My stomach drops. “It wasn’t my intention to put them in danger. We can protect them.”
“Keeping them away from our family business was protecting them, and you just ruined that. And then in the bathroom… Lucy… Your sister was… I can’t even say it.
I have never been more disgusted and ashamed of you, Damiano.
My own son. A good-looking boy who can have any woman he wants.
I don’t understand.” Dad paces up and down.
“I knew there was something wrong with that girl. She’s too attached to you.
Too dependent. Like a goddamn shadow. She seduced you, didn’t she?
She got her claws into you like a fucking witch. ”
“She’s your daughter,” I exclaim. “Don’t talk about her like that. What’s been going on between us is my fault, not hers.”
Dad rounds on me with a snarl. “Do you really expect me to believe that? You have other women. You have friends. Lucy haunts this house. She does nothing and has no one but you. She’s latched onto you like a demon, and if you’re not careful, she’s going to drag you down to hell. I won’t let that happen.”
I step up so we’re face to face.
“It was my fault. Deal with me however you see fit, but leave Lucy out of it. Mom already frightened and upset her enough. I’ll do whatever it takes to prove that Mom, Ariana, and Lucy are safe, and that Lucy isn’t dangerous. I’ll kill every Sokoli myself.”
“I’m supposed to trust you, knowing my own son is morally degraded? I have put up with so much from that disobedient, sour-faced girl because she is your blood and you are my son, but now she has crossed the line.”
Should I do it? Tell Dad that we’re not actually related, and that we’ve been lying to him all these years? But that would make Lucy more vulnerable than ever. Her supposedly being my blood is all that’s keeping Dad from storming upstairs and wringing her neck.
“Dad, listen to me. I have given you my life. I will keep giving you everything, as long as all of us remain a family under this roof.”
The words taste like ash. Lucy isn’t my sister. She’s never been my sister. She’s the woman I love, but I just swore to Dad we’d stay family.
Dad paces up and down in silence, and I keep my lips sealed, hoping against hope that what I’ve said gets through to him.
Finally, he pushes his hand through his hair, straightens his cuffs, and seems to come to a decision.
Turning to me, he says, “This is what’s going to happen.
Lucy is going to take a job overseas with one of my associates.
You will not know where or with whom, and you will cease to have all contact with her.
You will never speak to her again, and you will focus on protecting your mother and Ariana.
I will not hear one word of argument from you about this.
I am this close to beating that girl senseless and throwing her into the gutter.
You are both lucky that I have not killed her. ”
My vision blurs at the edges as Dad threatens Lucy.
Suddenly I’m not in Dad’s office anymore.
I see it with terrifying clarity. Lucy screaming as fire engulfs her.
Her skin blistering. Her hair ablaze. Her beautiful brown eyes wide with terror and pain as the flames consume her flesh.
She’s reaching for me, begging me to save her, but I’m not there. I’m powerless, while she burns alive.
My fault. All my fault.
Cold sweat breaks over me. The smell of smoke fills my nostrils even though there’s no fire here. Just the memory of it. And the screaming.
Always the screaming.
A shout bursts from my lips. “No! You won’t touch her, and you won’t send her away.”
“Damiano, I am warning you,” Dad growls. “Not one more word.”
I breathe hard and fast. He means it. He’ll kill her. But if Lucy is sent away to an unknown place, she’ll have no one to protect her and I’ll never see her again. The thought is a knife in my heart.
“Dad, listen to me,” I say urgently. “Lucy must remain in Malus. I need her. I love her.”
“You should have thought of that before you took her to that meeting. If she’s captured by Sokolis, at least she won’t be able to reveal much.”
I leap on his words and lie through my teeth. “Lucy knows everything. I told her all about the family business. Every single one of our secrets.”
Dad looks at me like I’m an insect he dearly wants to crush under his shoe.
“How could you be so stupid, Damiano? Or was this your plan all along, to feed your sister secrets and tie my hands?” He rubs a hand over his face, shakes his head, and moves around behind his desk.
Planting his hands on the wood, he addresses me.
“I’m not having her in this house. If Lucy can’t leave Malus, then she will get married.
She needs a man who can keep her under his heel as I have failed to do.
A man who will keep her away from my son. ”
My mouth goes dry. Lucy marry someone else?
Watch another man take the woman I love away from me?
That night outside the diner, I promised her we’d be together.
I held her in my arms at the burning warehouse.
I took her to the auction. To the restaurant.
I put her in danger again and again because I couldn’t stay away from her. Because I love her.
But I’m not don. Dad still holds all the power.
For now.
As though he can read my mind, Dad reaches into a drawer and pulls out a gun, and the weapon glints menacingly in his hand.
He aims the gun directly at my chest. “Or you can keep arguing with me, and she’ll get a bullet.”
I stare at the gun as blood pounds in my ears.
At my father’s cold, merciless eyes. The very first moment I laid eyes on Mom and Dad in the group foster home, I should have known what they were offering me was too good, too perfect, too dangerous.
But I was blinded by hope. All I could see was a wonderful new life for Lucy, not knowing that it would one day lead to our destruction.
“I’ll find someone suitable,” Dad continues. “Someone who can control her. Someone loyal to me. And you will smile at the wedding, Damiano. You will congratulate the groom. You will kiss your sister on the cheek and wish her well.”
I see it. Lucy in a white dress. Another man’s ring on her finger. Another man’s hands on her body. Another man taking what’s mine. The image makes bile rise in my throat.
“And you will never touch her again. If I ever catch you with Lucy again, I will kill her. She’ll disappear, and you’ll never know where I buried the body.”
Every word is a knife in my heart. I want to grab that gun and shove it down his throat. I want to tell him that Lucy is mine and no one else will ever touch her. But the gun is pointed at her heart, not mine. I know my father. He’d do it. He’d kill her to prove a point. To maintain control.
“And, Damiano? If you ever try to kill me, or if by some small chance you succeed, my men will kill Lucy. I’m going to give them the order right now, so you had better not think about doing anything stupid.”
The perfect plan for us to be free, for me to become don and marry Lucy, dies before my eyes.
“If you murder Lucy’s groom, my men will kill Lucy. Are we clear?”
Doors slam shut in my face, one after another. Chains wrap around my body, holding me cruelly in place. Rage burns in my heart, and I feel like I can’t breathe.
I did this.
I saved Lucy only for my love to become a death sentence.
Dad’s eyes bore into mine, the gun aimed squarely at my chest.