Chapter 11 – Isabella
“ Y ou call that a deadlift?” Siera, the militant personal trainer, yelled across the gym.
I pursed my lips. She was taking exercise, something I loved and that gave me endorphins, and turning it into a dreaded three hours of my day. Cecilia was adamant that I drop my body mass index, even more than what I needed to fit into my dress. I had been here every day this week, and each session was edging closer to dangerous levels of physical extreme.
I thought she couldn’t hurt me. I promised myself this wouldn’t break me.
I wasn’t so sure anymore.
“If I do another full rep at this weight, I’ll hurt myself,” I snapped and promptly dropped the bar.
“Pick that up!” Siera marched up to me, a villainous glint in her eyes.
Several people were staring, so I pulled myself straight and tall. “No.”
While I preferred more fluid exercises, I wasn’t a stranger to weightlifting. From the sharp pain in my joints—not the ache in my muscles—I was done and should rest the areas for a few days before trying at a lighter bar weight. Workout injuries were no joke.
“Insolence,” Siera sneered.
I rolled my eyes. This woman was taking her role much too seriously. “Don’t make me call your supervisor.”
“Is that disrespect I hear?” The woman was in my face. “Because I have permission to show you no mercy.”
Well, that definitely wasn’t legal. The tough girl bootcamp act was one thing, but that comment was taking it too far.
Since we were in a non-mob gym that catered to affluent suburban housewives, this woman couldn’t actually do anything in such a public setting. Absently wondering where the strega found this drill sergeant, who’d been making my last week a living hell, I disassembled the weights. Sierra didn’t say anything as I picked up my personal belongings and trudged to the locker room.
I should have known better than to go somewhere private.
Coming up behind me, Siera pushed me against the lockers. “You think you’re so tough now? I know who you really are, Miss Rinaldi .”
I cried out as she twisted my arm. The pressure on the joint threatened to pop the damn thing in a very inconvenient way. Warning bells pealed in my mind. This wasn’t just some wackadoodle trainer. This woman’s morals crossed a line—a very dangerous line. She was like me, from the criminal underworld.
Shit! Why did I have to pick a fight with her?!
“You’ll go out there and run five miles around the track,” she hissed.
“Get off!” I screamed, wrenching my body in a last-ditch effort to break away.
“Wrong answer.”
Her fist connected with the soft flesh of my stomach, sending an explosion of pain and misery through me. I cried out.
“Stop that,” I protested. Fear coiled deep inside me when I realized a moment later that no one would believe me if I told on her. They either wouldn’t believe me, or they wouldn’t care.
“I’m responsible for making sure you lose the weight.” Another hit, this one no doubt bruising something vital. “By any means necessary.”
I coughed. It was bad enough the cooks were starving me with a severe calorie deprivation diet that they dared refer to as nutritional. Now Cecilia had an ally at the gym? Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing to let this woman beat me so badly that I couldn’t leave my room for a few days.
They can’t win! Fight!
I stomped on the woman’s toe, launched myself backward, and screamed at the top of my lungs. Her grip on my arm faltered. I twisted free, landing a solid kick with my shoe before leaping over her prostrate form. It was a small victory. There would be repercussions, of that I had no doubt.
But for today, I was free.
Hurrying from the locker room, I went straight for the front doors. The goons there gave me a cursory look before escorting me to the waiting vehicle. If they wondered where my gym bag was or why I didn’t have my jacket, they didn’t say. I couldn’t stop shivering in the backseat. The cold in my bones had nothing to do with the temperature. I was in serious trouble with no one to help me escape the nightmare. At the mansion, I bolted to my room, and in a rare stroke of good fortune, the strega didn’t catch my arrival.
I felt it immediately as I stepped over the threshold. Something was different. I closed and locked my door before sweeping a look over the room.
Again…. It’d happened again.
From past experiences, I knew the stalker wasn’t here. But his essence lingered.
“What did you leave me this time?” I whispered, going to my reading nook.
On occasion, he’d left trinkets on my writing desk, vanity, or bathroom counter. Never on my nightstand. But more often than not, there were items in my favorite spot, the place I felt most at peace, the area I designed to comfort myself when times grew rough.
“I should tell the don,” I whispered, trying to make myself comprehend the seriousness of the situation warranted the risk of being blamed.
It was madness to accept these offerings. A complete stranger had access to my room. And yet, as my fingers brushed over the white cardboard box with the words Post Workout Treat written in a strained scratch of a Sharpie, I couldn’t bring myself to march down to the underworld boss’s office.
Just like all the other times.
If I was being honest, if I wanted to truly examine my feelings, I would have to admit the painful truth. It wasn’t me I wanted to keep from the don’s wrath. Nor Gio either. The thought of the don capturing—of torturing—the spectre…. For what? Bringing me goodies after a hard workout? That wasn’t fair.
No, I had to intercept the ghost again and try to make him see reason.
The thought of seeing him sent a wicked burst tingling down my spine.
“He’s not here to hurt me.” The moment I said it, I realized how ridiculous that assertion sounded. I couldn’t know that!
Yet, as I popped open the top of the box, gazing upon the small chocolate bunt cake with strawberry frosting stripes, I felt it in my soul to be true. Whoever was coming in here knew me. Our forbidden interactions were more personal than the constant contact with anyone else in the famiglia. And I knew I wasn’t quite ready to put a stop to them.
Whatever business the intruder had with the mob, his kindness and thoughtfulness bought my silence.
***
Registering for gifts should have been a fun experience. It should be something the bride and groom did together, or the bride and her mother. The idea was to select domestic items that could be used when the couple set up house, something Alonzo and I would never do. When my parents died, Signor Bruno and his family quickly moved into the old don’s mansion. It was quite a shock, coming home after abandoning my semester finals to find outsiders living and breathing in our home.
It was too painful to wonder what would have happened if I stayed in Chicago and finished college. My future might have been very different, maybe even full of freedom! If an assassin wasn’t sent to end me. But there was no doubt my brother’s life would likely have been cut short. No, coming back was the right thing to do, and enduring acquaintances living in our home wasn’t the biggest adjustment.
But it was a mockery of the idea of marriage to think Alonzo and I would be setting up our own house. There was no leaving the mansion and the ever-watchful eye of the don—and his witch of a sister.
Still, I had an image to uphold.
With everything else about the wedding falling apart, Cecilia was adamant that we keep up pretenses despite the whispers that I was cursed. Why else would my father and mother be murdered? Wouldn’t a curse explain the fire at the wedding caterer’s restaurant? The destruction at the florist’s? And the tragic news we received this morning about the officiant!
Their superstitions would have been amusing if it wasn’t making my life unbearable.
The women and matrons brave enough to gather around me cooed and clucked over the bougie items in the home section of the high-end department store. I wandered past the displays, wondering if the ladies of the famiglia were placing bets as to what stroke of ill luck would befall me next. The delicate floral place settings were starting to look alike. We had perfectly good fancy dishes at home that my mother had been serving from for years, rotating the seasonal patterns.
There was an ache in my chest as I looked around the items. Not only would these not go to my own home, but this moment was all wrong. As it always did, thinking of my parents threatened to crack the lid on the stone box where I kept their memories.
An uneasy sigh escaped my lips.
“Everything alright, my dear?” Maria Gianetti asked, not unkindly.
I looked into her eyes and tried to imagine what the days leading up to her own wedding had been like. Did her mother help her pick out fancy dishes and linens? “So many of the wedding activities are a little sad for me. That’s why it’s so nice of you and the others to be here,” I said meekly, letting some of my truer feelings show for once.
If I was happy and upbeat, brushing off their concern, it might raise more questions. These feelings were natural, and while I preferred to grieve in private for what should have been, it lent credibility to my situation to have them see me like this.
“Well, of course, it’s tough,” Maria cooed, wrapping an arm around me. “You poor lamb. First, the caterer’s restaurant burned, and then the frightful incident with the bakery.”
“Freak accidents,” I assured her, even though an inkling in the back of my mind said it was too coincidental to be a mere chance that each piece of this wedding was toppling. It felt as though someone tipped the domino and was waiting in the wings to ensure the rest fell.
Maria tsked her tongue. “You have so much on your plate with this wedding….”
Whatever else she murmured was lost on me as I looked across the displays of crystal, glass, and pottery. A man in a black hoodie stood behind a display of vases. A medical mask covered most of his face, while a baseball cap shadowed the top half.
But I could feel his gaze on me.
It drew me in until I couldn’t breathe properly.
The spectre—and he was haunting me in daylight. Little tremors of excitement shivered through my body.
I shot a glance to the main aisle where Cecilia’s goons prowled up and down the length of the tiled floor. While their beady gaze tracked the main thoroughfare, the escalators, and the exits, they weren’t scanning the edges, where danger lurked in the shadows. Other bodyguards stood by the escalators, looking bored. Their rapt attention was laughable.
Disentangling myself from the embrace, I sniffed and made an excuse about running to the lady’s room. I moved parallel to the man who’d walked right past the guards. My path made it seem as though I was indeed heading past the dining utensils and table linens to the back wall where the bathrooms were. Only once I was out of sight of my party did I veer in the stranger’s direction.
He wasn’t there.
Scowling in frustration, I looked around the upper floor of the department store. It was hard for someone as large as him to disappear. But it was more than his size, it was the essence of the man. Something dark pulsated around him. The energy was thick and tangible, calling to me, beckoning me to find him!
I kept to the edge of the store, first so that the ladies wouldn’t see me wandering about, but also because I didn’t want to leave myself exposed to surprise.
Stupid, stupid! I could be chasing a kidnapper or murderer.
This could be my doom. And yet, no matter why he left such thoughtful presents, he hadn’t shown me he meant any harm. His friendliness cheered me in these desperate, trying days.
Even when I knew I shouldn’t accept this twisted attention.
I stopped short as he suddenly blocked my path. We were in the bedding section, mattresses to the right and left, and he simply appeared as if from thin air. My stalker had never been this close before without the thick cover of night, never allowed me to see so much of his formidable form, preferring to stay as one with the shadows.
He was so tall that I had to tip my head back to look up at him.
Wow…. A simple math calculation with my own height plus shoes gave me the reasonable guess that he was six and a half feet tall.
“Hi there,” I breathed. I sounded awestruck, young. Probably silly. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Aren’t you worried someone will catch you watching me?”
Grey, unblinking eyes, the color of the autumn sky when the clouds hid the sunlight, watched me. The rest of his face was concealed. It should have been frightening. I was crazy to be standing here, staring back at him.
“Thank you for the bath salts and muscle rub, and the bunt cake the day before. It was delicious,” I said, deciding kindness was the better course of action this time. Besides, I didn’t have the gifts to throw back in his face. “But you shouldn’t have taken the risk.”
The ghost stared at me with unblinking intensity. “Your trainer won’t be bothering you again.”
Those words, clipped and short in cadence, sent a rush of excitement through me. It was the same forbidden tones I heard in the inky darkness of the night. But here, under the bright overhead fixtures, it was as if he was trying to hide his true voice from me.
“Yes, we heard that she’s taken a leave of absence.” I shivered but laughed. “It will be nice to enjoy the gym again.”
The spectre nodded once.
I had the terrible urge to reach out and touch him. It was silly; we were standing in the bright light of the department store’s harsh overhead fixtures, and yet this man didn’t seem real. If I could touch him, feel the warmth of his skin, the solid presence of his muscles, maybe it would be easier to believe he was actually here.
“Thank you, for whatever you did to make her move across the country,” I smiled up at him.
One long arm lifted. My breath caught in my throat, but I didn’t flinch. He was going to touch me.
I braced myself for the impact.
And then felt incredibly silly when I noticed the brown paper bag from a coffee shop clutched between his fingers.
His words came out tight, strangled, maybe strained. “You looked hungry.”
Was that a note of shyness in his gruff, masculine tone? Or was he forcing his voice to sound like that, so I wouldn’t recognize him?
Grinning, I plucked the bag. “Starved. We only had tiny salads for luncheon.”
“I know. I saw.”
Those four words should have shocked me. Set off warning bells in my head. They didn’t. In part, because I’d known all along that he was near. The same prickling at the back of my skull that vibrated with the strength of a cellphone right now, had been tingling since I stepped out of the vehicle to be escorted into the eatery.
I pulled the pastry from the bag, my insides clenching painfully. It was unlikely he knew they were starving me. He only left me treats and dainty, indulgent food. Things that I loved, just like the other small presents.
Emotion pricked in my eyes.
I didn’t want to admit to this stranger that I had no control over my life, even the simplest parts like what, when, and how much I ate. He couldn’t know that his snacks were the only substantial calories I had in a day, even if they were of the less nutritional variety.
“That’s your favorite,” he murmured roughly. “Isn’t it?”
Realizing I’d been lost in thought, I nodded quickly, murmured my thanks, and took a huge bite. That large, muscled frame seemed to visibly relax.
Stupid girl that I was, I moaned around the soft, succulent apple as the rich spices burst over my tongue in a complex palate of flavor. Taking food from a stranger, a man that basically admitted to stalking me, was as dumb as could be. This could be drugged or poisoned.
But I continued to nibble on it, flirting with the danger that this man presented because I was hungry. There would be nothing until dinner, and that would likely be chicken cooked without oil and fat, bland and flavorless on a bed of greens.
“Who are you? And what do you want?” I breathed.
The stranger simply watched me.
“Look, if you’re here to cause trouble with my…family, I can’t help you. I’m not the heiress, nor do I have any real power or influence.” I popped the last bite of apple tart in my mouth, wishing there was more.
“Ah, little siren, you have more power in your little finger than most men have in their whole body,” he breathed, taking a step forward.
My heart skipped a beat. I looked up into his face, searching desperately for an answer. This stranger was here to cause trouble, and as much as part of me, the part buried in the box with my parents screamed to let him, I needed to think of the consequences of my actions.
“I don’t know if you’re doing this for power or because you think you’re in love with me, but you can’t. I’m spoken for. The best thing for you is to forget about me. Take my warning as a thank you for all your thoughtfulness. Stay away, I’m no one worth dying over.”
“You are far from a nobody."
That simple emotion set off a maelstrom of emotions.
I reeled them back long enough to choke out, “I have to go now. Please…leave me alone.”
The idea of someone who’d done something nice for me being hurt because of it—no matter his reasons for doing it in the first place—made my chest ache. I turned and darted back through the store. Just in time too! The strega was marching toward the bathroom to look for me.
I made up a quick excuse about seeing linens on my way from the lady’s room, and when she didn’t believe me, I moved to show her.
“I read an article about one of the Hilston girls having a pair just like them from Belgium nuns.” I lied through my teeth, hoping against hope the witch bought it.
Cecilia pursed her lips, rubbing the material between her fingers. “We’ll send to Belgium for the real thing. I won’t have it said that the Bruno family buys cheap knockoffs.”
Lifting my gaze, I swept the space. The tingle in my spine was gone. Hopefully, my stalker received the message and that was the end of that nonsense. The Brunos were my life, the only way to make sure my brother remained safe. Any other adventure was impossible.