Chapter 37
Vivi
I KNEW GRIEF. Mama’s death was an open wound, still painful and forever fresh. But this. Luca’s betrayal was a living, breathing creature inside my body, clawing for escape. And it hurt. Oh, how it hurt.
Every moment with him flashed before my eyes.
Each word.
Every touch.
Our first kiss.
My first time.
His feelings were just like his eyes.
A complete illusion.
“You’re one of them,” I whispered.
He shook his head. A piece of hair slashed across his forehead like the knife stabbing into my side.
He licked his lips, making them gleam pink under the fluorescence, and then he reached for me.
I dodged his hand, and he flinched. “Vivi, please. I’m yours.
I’ve always been yours. Just as I was a minute ago.
Just as I always will be. I love you, and that’s all I ever wanted you to know. Never this truth.”
“But you used me.”
So intimately.
Tenderly.
Passionately.
Everything was a lie.
“That was never my intent. I had a job….”
I was his job. I groaned and held my rolling stomach. He’d told me as much, and I didn’t listen. I didn’t listen because I was a complete, desperate fool.
“Your father left me with no choice.”
I was never his choice.
My dear God.
I held in a cry with the back of my hand.
So much made sense. Five years of Luca’s dismissal.
Damian’s inherent loathing. “Hating you is too simple,” he’d said.
“You’re nothing to me or to anyone, and that, Princess, is why he is at Piascere and you’re here alone.
Capisci?” Oh, I did. I finally understood everything.
I was the pawn in more than my father’s chess game.
Luca wanted something, but it was never me.
I really was alone.
The abyss surrounding my heart swelled, pushing out the light and burying me under a web of darkness.
My eyes dropped to the floor, where I stared into the unknown.
“Uccello.” I drowned in the compassion in his voice, sinking further into the void. He was so good. So convincing. He sounded like love, and I hated him for making me feel anything. Because I felt too much.
The boots on his feet blurred. I looked up.
His lips trembled, or maybe those were mine, as his crumbling features swam before my eyes.
Something caught inside my chest. I inhaled a hitching breath, yet it fled my lungs before I was relieved.
I gasped again, but I couldn’t replace the missing oxygen. I hit myself and inhaled rage.
“Bird, please don’t cry. God, please,” he begged, stepping forward.
I stopped his progression with my hand. Pain stung my palm.
The sharp smack echoed through the room, swinging his face to the left and staining his skin red.
The second crack didn’t end the agony or the sob attacking my rib cage.
I spun to the one-way mirror and threw myself at the glass.
The cool surface bit into my skin as my aching forehead pressed to it, and then my fingers scraped, and I begged. Unabashedly, I begged.
“Get him—get him—out. Please.”
I closed my eyes so the strangers on the other side couldn’t see my breaking heart. They only heard it in the brutal cry that escaped my lungs.
Heat from Luca’s chest hit my back. His hands soothed my shoulders, and his words enraged the creature tearing through my flesh.
“Stiamo bene. Ssh, tutto andrà bene. Ti amo.” We’re fine. Ssh, everything will be fine. I love you. “Amore mio, per favore lasciami spiegare.” My love, please let me explain.
“Get him out.” I hit the glass, pounding it with my fists. “Make him leave!” What was a growl became a scream when I said it again. The latch of the door clicked, a scuffle ensued, and then there was no more heat. No more words. Or the sun, fresh air, and man.
“Vivienne. Uccello, per favore,” he implored. “Look. At. Me.”
But I wouldn’t. Not this time. Never again would I look at him with devotion in my eyes—a blind love that clouded my judgment.
“I’m not leaving her,” he bellowed, and I begged whoever was on the other side to end my suffering.
“Please, I… I can’t breathe.”
Finally, peace. But not really. The room went silent while a war raged inside me.
I didn’t understand this anguish. I opened my mouth to release the agony, but all that came were mute sobs, snot from my nose, and tears from my eyes.
Then I felt him. The tips of his fingers touched mine on the other side—a mirror of my emotion.
I looked at Luca but not really. I saw him as if we were face-to-face. His square jaw twitched. His midnight eyes focused on me, watching. Always watching. The scar he loathed, but I loved because it was part of him, yet all I really saw was myself. Little, stupid Vivienne.
Pain, raw and angry, clawed out of the abyss, taking my heart as it escaped.
“I hate,” I said to my bruised reflection.
Nausea rolled my stomach. I swayed on my feet.
I hated everything and everyone, but most importantly, my life that I wasn’t sure how to keep living.
“I hate,” I said again while sinking to my knees, wrapped up in my own arms to keep from falling completely apart. It happened anyway.
Mama. Francesca. Sam. Luca. I opened my mouth to scream. To rage at the world and God. I begged him to erase time, so I could live in the blessed cocoon of ignorance because the truth hurt in a way my body couldn’t manage. It was too much, and finally I slipped into the shadows.
A knock on the door startled me awake. I blinked against the grit behind my eyes. The hand of comfort on my shoulder was light, and I lifted my head to focus on a ghost with a bun pulling her wrinkles taut.
“Francesca?”
She nodded, a tiny smile curling the corner of her mouth. “Mia cara. Come now, off the dirty floor.”
I was too numb to object, too weary to piece together how or why a dead woman helped me up. My foot slipped on the tile, but her hold on my arm kept me upright and steadied me on the short walk across the stupid gray room to the stupid hard chair that I sat on with a thump.
Another knock. This time a stranger with red hair dropped off a platter with a teapot, two mugs, and a tray of store-bought cookies.
Not the stupid burnt coffee. The door latched behind her on the way out, and Francesca poured steaming water over a bag, dunked it once, twice, then pushed it in front of me.
“Drink and eat. It’s been a long night.”
“It’s been a long life.” The words were brittle and cracked, but they were also true.
“You’ll find a lot of apologies from me and Sam, and I think more than anyone, Luca.
You may or may not believe them, and that’s your right.
For me, from the bottom of my heart, I am incredibly sorry.
My role in this was never to bring you pain.
It was always about justice, not just for Benny but for everyone involved in this maddening world. May I explain?”
I brought the cup to my lips, ignoring how it shook on the way. The liquid singed my throat, fueling the hatred already festering there. “Do what you must to end the charade. I’d like to go home. After story time, either charge me or let me go.”
“That’ll be your choice.”
“I haven’t had many.”
“No, you have not.” She lifted her mug, her pinky finger extended as if she were royalty while she sipped. When she was done, she enunciated each word like a stabbing blade. “Benny died by the hand of your father.”
I rolled my eyes. “A rival family pulled the trigger.”
“That’s what Vigo wanted you to believe.
But he directed the hit because he lost trust in mio marito.
From that day on, I lived with a promise to myself that I’d make Vigo Cabello pay for the crime, but I had no way to really hold him accountable.
Not until I was approached by a federal task force assembled to breach the Cosa Nostra.
The goal was to break up the families, weaken and dismantle the business.
To do that, they needed information from insiders who would go so deeply undercover that no one would suspect their actions. ”
Faces floated through my mind. Friends and relatives. My husband and his partner.
A rough sound scratched my throat. “How many?”
“Enough,” she said. “Those of us on the inside rarely reported out. It was too dangerous. Our purpose was to gain trust, extract information, and relay it when we could. I was already on staff, so I had no trouble maintaining my position.”
Hatred seared through my veins and into my hand, which smacked the table. “But you let the guards in at Sofia’s wedding. The guard who assaulted me, pezzo di sporcizia bugiardo (you lying piece of filth). I don’t believe anything you have to say.”
I crossed my arms as she shook her head so violently that strands of her hair fell out of her bun.
“My God, Vivi, that wasn’t me. I was a scapegoat, and I knew the outcome would mean death. So I ran.”
“So you ran,” I mocked. “And then what? And then Luca pretended to kill you? Because I was there when my father ordered the hit, and I saw my husband’s hollow eyes when he came home.”
“It was all an elaborate hoax witnessed by Gio. We couldn’t take a chance. The family must believe I’m dead, or Luca is in jeopardy because your father called the hit.”
“But all that killing ate him up inside. I saw it.” I felt his need.
“Luca is a soldier. That is the truth. But he’s not a hit man as your father believes.
No one died unless his position was jeopardized.
This is a war, Vivienne. It may look different than those fought across oceans, but it’s still cutthroat and vindictive.
He saves more lives than he takes. Most of those on Vigo’s hit list are as well as they can be in witness protection. ”
Incredulity struck me as if it were a fist. “The men from the Cantina?”
“Detained.”
“How is that possible?”