Chapter 2
Chapter Two
ANTONELLA
“ Y ou look hot today!” Massimo wiggled his eyebrows at me as his lavender-manicured fingers worked at warp speed dicing a bell pepper.
“You’re going to lose a finger if you keep checking me out,” I teased.
“Then it wouldn’t be in vain,” he shot back, winking. “Seriously, though, your face is glowing. And your makeup is perfect. You’ll have to teach me some of your tips.”
My smile stretched from ear to ear. I loved makeup. Expressing myself with pots of creams and powders brought me great satisfaction. Just the act of applying makeup was comforting. I always fell into a peaceful state for the next five to ten minutes anytime a brush was in my hand, painting my face to match my mood. Sometimes I didn’t even realize how I felt until I started the application, and then it would all just appear in the mirror, inviting me to dig deeper, to find out why I felt that way and how I wanted to proceed with my day. It was like therapy for me.
I had put the products that Angelica had stocked for me to good use today. My signature everyday look was a thick winged black liner and rose-colored lips to balance the sharp eye. I kept everything else neutral, only adding a touch of poppy-colored blush to my cheeks and some light contouring to carve out my almond-shaped eyes.
I felt like my old self again. Well, almost...minus the whole “being kidnapped by a criminal” thing. So, I would gladly accept Massimo’s compliment when it was handed to me.
“Thank you,” I said, stealing a piece of prosciutto and shoving it into my mouth.
“Steal any more, and you’ll be the one to lose a finger.” He waved his knife in the air with a smirk on his face.
I swiped another piece and stuffed that one into my mouth, too. “Oh, please, you wouldn’t hurt a fly,” I said, forgoing all manners and talking with my mouth full.
In fact, Massimo was the second-nicest person in this whole house. The trophy for nicest went to Aurelio, based purely on the merit of his older age and reserved demeanor.
Massimo was my only friend. Our visits had become a high point in my day. He was funny, charming, and void of the toxic masculinity that filled this place like smog. He made me almost forget that I was here against my own free will. But sadly, that gray cloud was always hovering overhead, and knocked me back to my senses. No matter how much I wanted to trust Massimo, he was still Lazaro’s employee and his years-long fidelity to his boss would always loom over our relationship of only a few weeks.
“What are you cooking today?” I had just finished breakfast and half of a plate of prosciutto, but my belly was already growling for lunch from the tantalizing aroma of Massimo’s cooking.
The knife dropped with a clatter, and I jumped back instinctively. Massimo bit his lip, then exploded in a violent outburst of verbal diarrhea. “Okay, okay, you don’t have to beat it out of me. I can’t keep it in anymore!”
“Beat what out of you?” He was acting like a squirrel who had just had a hit of cocaine, and I was utterly confused.
He let out a heavy exhale. “I overheard you and Signore getting it on in the dining room.”
I gasped in horror. “Me and Lazaro?”
He nodded and resumed babbling. “I wanted to keep it to myself because, you know, I’m a professional and it’s none of my business, but I can’t, and I’m dying to talk about it. So, please, can we talk about it?!” He sucked in a huge breath until his cheeks puffed out, then put his hand over his heart and exhaled it.
Embarrassment. Shock. Neither of those words accurately described the nauseating feeling in my stomach. My eyes shot to the door. Thankfully, we were alone, with no guards in sight. “Who else knows?” I whispered.
Judging from how wide the dark blue waterlines of his eyes stretched, he wasn’t the only one.
“Angelica?” Lazaro’s maid was nosey, so I already knew the answer.
He nodded.
“Aurelio, too?” I held my breath. I’d die if that sweet old man had heard me moaning and rutting like an animal as my captor ate me out in attempt to squeeze information that I didn’t have out of me.
“Everyone,” he admitted, grimacing.
“Oh, God. Oh, God.” I paced back and forth, pressing my temples. “This is bad.” So bad.
“Calm down, signorina. It’s really no big deal.”
He must have been truly high, when just seconds ago, he had been ready to burst at the seams. “No big deal?! You were just freaking out to tell me!”
“I’m sorry. I tend to overreact. And I don’t blame you. Who can resist hooking up with a handsome, eligible man like Signore?”
“ Me! Especially when he’s keeping me captive here.”
Massimo stared back at me as if it were the first he had ever heard of the matter. That I was a prisoner.
“You think I want to be here? That I’m just a guest at Hotel Cosentino?”
It was ludicrous that he was oblivious to what his boss, Lazaro Cosentino, had done to me. I had made no effort to muffle my screams when his men had assaulted me or to silence my retorts when Angelica had tried to argue with me. And Massimo had even witnessed Lazaro’s assault on me in this very kitchen. Money must really blind and deafen people, which made this even more messed up.
At least Massimo had mentioned the part about being eligible. I didn’t think my stomach could have held out much longer if I had found out I’d let a married man touch me.
Massimo extended a hand toward my shoulder, as if he were going to touch me, but he never did. It was effective in halting my pacing. “Look, I know you have some preconceived notions about Signore Lazaro, but trust me, he’s a good man.”
Yeah, because he paid you to say that. “Listen to yourself! Good men don’t kidnap innocent women and threaten to kill them!” There was no way he could convince me otherwise, so he would have been better off saving his breath. “You must have seen hundreds of women in my place to be this...unaffected...this jaded!” My voice was loud enough that I was sure Lazaro could hear it from his office, even with the door closed.
But Massimo’s voice remained quiet. “No. You’re the only one.”
I glared at him. As if that should have meant the world to me. I was his one and only prisoner he sometimes groped. How cute. I clapped my hands together while screwing up my face. “Ahh, gee. I must be so fucking special.”
“You are.”
If looks could have killed, mine would have been strangling Massimo.
“He’s had . . . um . . . prisoners ,” he said, the word choking him on the way out, “before, but never any women.”
I scoffed. “So, that makes him a gentleman or something?”
“He’s never allowed any of them to stay in the nicest guest room in the house, nor has he given them free range of the estate. None of them were allowed to visit their favorite friend, either.” He flashed his pearly white teeth at me. Lazaro must have paid well because Massimo had the dental alignment of a movie star.
I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms over my chest. “Three minutes ago, you were my friend, but now, I’m rethinking things.” He was my only friend, but the continuous Lazaro-cheerleading was pissing me off.
“Ah, don’t be like that. I’m still your friend.”
I waved my hands in the air. “Then help me get the fuck out of here!” The longer I stayed here, the more I was losing my mind.
He shook his head. “I can’t do that.”
“Fine, then I’ll do it myself.” I’d had enough of the madness, dressing up like a doll and spreading my legs for a tyrant. I was getting the fuck out of here, with or without help.
Massimo’s lips thinned into a grim line. “That would be a mistake. This estate is a fortress. No one can get in or out without Signore’s permission. The iron gates and men with guns are all you see with the naked eye, but there’s more.”
“Like what?”
He looked around cautiously and leaned in. “Explosives,” he whispered. “They’re everywhere, just waiting for Signore to press the button.”
“Why on earth does he have more weapons than the military?”
“The family business is arms. The Cosentinos are the largest weapons supplier in Europe.”
The blood drained from my body, leaving me shuddering and cold. “Mafia,” I breathed out. My mind was racing. I had known, of course, Lazaro had to be involved in sketchy dealings, but I’d had no clue that it was this bad. That I was actually mixed up with the mafia.
“There is nowhere to go if you do escape. He will find you, and if he doesn’t, his enemies will, and you’re worse off with them. So, you see...you’re stuck here,” he said solemnly.
Stuck. “For how long?”
“Until he’s done with you.”
“What if he’s never done?” I asked, already knowing the answer to that question.
“He’s not a bad man.” I could tell that Massimo truly believed that his boss was a good man, but I would never be convinced. Working in this environment almost required one to adopt a cult mentality; otherwise, employees would riot. Lazaro was a master at brainwashing. Further proof that he was a bad man.
“You just told me he’s in the mafia!” I blamed myself for this—for becoming entangled with a crime organization. I just wanted a simple life and to sing on stage, but I now saw that God was never going to allow that dream to come true. This was my fate. It always had been.
“He can’t help that part. He was born into it; he didn’t choose this life. It would be more dangerous if he did leave. His own men and business affiliates would consider him a liability. Ears that have heard too much. Eyes that have seen too much. His father would have had to kill him.”
“Is that why he doesn’t get along with his father?” I remembered Massimo mentioning it the other day during another one of his verbal diarrhea tirades. He really should have seen a doctor for that habit.
“No. That situation is a little more complex, and it’s not my story to tell.”
“But this is?” He’d already opened Pandora’s box, what was one more detail?
“Even my mouth has limits.”
“I don’t want to be here,” I confessed again, this time with my whole heart behind my words. I’d had a life, even if I wasn’t sure it had made me happy. It had worked for me—the small apartment, the modest paycheck—and I wanted it all back, despite its mediocrity, if it would mean that I could be free again.
“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice,” Massimo said, crushing the last shred of hope I had held onto. “You might as well concentrate on what you are lucky to have by being here.”
“Like my neck?” I replied, my words soaked in sarcasm.
He chuckled. “Certainly that, but also a nice house with a pool and the beach. Good food. And me.” He gleamed at the end of his laundry list.
I gently shoved him.
“Listen, I value our friendship.” He eyed my hand as if he wanted to take it into his, but he didn’t. It must have been a rule that Lazaro had for his staff to never touch anyone. A rule that Angelica never seemed to follow when she was crushing my wrist and dragging me everywhere like I was a belligerent puppy. “I promise I will keep my ears open and let you know if I witness any discussion that takes place about you...providing it doesn’t cost me my own neck.”
That was the least I could ask for here, and I was grateful. “Thank you.”
Massimo pointed a finger with a perfectly painted lavender nail at me in warning. “Just don’t sell me out and tell anyone.”
I crossed my heart with my own unmanicured finger. “Never.” He was the only one I could have a conversation with here.
“Not even during pillow talk.”
“Ugh. Massimo!” I groaned, forced to remember my twisted mistakes.
“What? You never know what someone will bring up after some good hanky-panky.”
“Okay, can you just stop talking?” I was beyond mortified. It was bad enough that he knew how I sounded close to orgasm, but I didn’t need him conjuring up post-coital visuals.
Lazaro’s head between my legs last night on the dining table hadn’t been my choice. It had been a tactic by an evil man to coerce me into a confession for setting off an explosion that had nearly killed him and his army of men. His false promise of orgasm had been a tool to get me to admit that I had tried to kill him. But I was innocent. I knew nothing about the origin of the explosion. Hell, it had nearly killed me, too, when I had been taking a break in the alley behind the lounge where I sang.
Sex could never happen with Lazaro. I needed to remain clear-headed and focus on staying alive and proving my innocence.
Massimo’s eyes gleamed with mischief. “So, how was he?” I sensed he might have had a small crush on his boss.
“Like the devil,” I snapped. “Unforgiving and narcissistic.” Thankfully, we hadn’t gone all the way, but from the little preview I had experienced, he was all things dark and dangerous.
“Ooh, better than I imagined.”
“You imagine what it’s like to screw your boss?” Massimo didn’t need to know exactly what Lazaro had done to me, and that it hadn’t involved screwing.
“Doesn’t everyone?”
My mind flashed to a swarthy Bosco, the owner of the lounge where I worked, naked and sweating profusely. I shuddered. “Fuck, no!”
“You’re missing out. I know my boundaries, but can you blame a man for looking?”
I couldn’t. Lazaro wasn’t short on good looks, and it was rare to find a handsome man who had skills. But he was still a criminal.
I watched as Massimo picked up his knife and resumed chopping, the silver glinting as it sliced smoothly through a plump onion.
If I couldn’t escape Lazaro, then I’d have to earn my freedom by other means—more drastic means.