Chapter Thirty-Eight
Valentina
S lumped on my couch, I sit staring off into the distance like I have been for the better part of the past fourteen hours.
Fourteen hours of torturing myself with every scenario of why I haven’t heard from Matteo yet.
I’d half expected, or maybe hoped, that I’d find him waiting for me on my doorstep when I came home last night, but he wasn’t on my stoop and he wasn’t inside my apartment either.
There’ve been no calls or texts.
No communication whatsoever.
No sight of him.
With every passing hour, the horrifying thought that he might not actually come here and end it with me in person, that he might simply disappear from my life and for good this time, is becoming more of a reality.
Cruel.
It would be cruel, but then again, I’ve been cruel to him.
Maybe he’s decided that this kind of treatment is exactly what I deserve. I can’t find it in me to disagree even as I can’t bear to think about it.
Trying to take my mind off him doesn’t work either.
Thinking of Adri only serves to remind me that losing him also means losing access to the club and his resources.
He told me that the first thing he did when he became Don last week was assign a few more trusted men to Enzo’s side, tasking them all with finding the sex trafficking ring’s home base. Now I’ll never know the result of those missions. I’ll have to start over, all my time at Firenze having been wasted, thrown away in an instant.
Grabbing a pillow, I press it against my face and scream into its depths. It does a good job of muffling my wails, almost too good.
That pisses me off. Everything’s been pissing me off since last night. I cursed when I opened my eyes and realized yesterday wasn’t a nightmare, grumbled when I dropped the shampoo bottle in the shower after squeezing some out onto my palm, shouted when the top of the blender came off as I was making my smoothie this morning, and nearly lost it entirely when, after all that, I checked my phone and Matteo still hadn’t called. In short, I’ve been bouncing between grief and anger like some sort of manic yo-yo.
The useless pillow hits the wall with a decidedly more satisfying thunk .
I need to create a self-care cocoon and wrap it around myself otherwise I’m actually going to drive myself crazy. With the remote in hand, I put on a random episode of Friends , then snatch a nearby candle off my coffee table and head into the kitchen.
Taking my frustrations unfairly out on the inanimate object, I slam it angrily down on the counter and go digging through my drawers until I find a lighter. All my other candles went straight to the trash when I learned about Matteo’s phobia, but Aurora gave me this one to cheer me up last week when he was radio silent. It seems only right that I burn the hell out of it to force some much needed relaxation into my body, whether it’s willing to accept it or not.
The feeling is there again, the same one that niggles at me, telling me that I’m not seeing something obvious.
I roll the wheel of the lighter over the wick and sparks fly. For some reason, it’s those sparks that connect all of the dots together.
Burn .
Burn the candle.
Dagny burned her hand.
And Adriana burned her finger on her straightener that night. The same finger on which she wore our mother’s engagement ring.
The wick catches fire before my eyes.
I saw the burn on the polaroid, I just didn’t think about it. Didn’t think it was important. And maybe it isn’t, but Matteo’s words ring in my ears.
How do you know Adriana is dead?
I pat the sides of my leggings until I find my phone. My hands shake so much that I nearly drop it as I unlock it and dial my Papà ’s number.
He answers on the first ring.
“ Mija ,’ he says warmly, his voice holding no traces of the brutal cartel jefe he also happens to be.
“ Hola ,” I answer. I’m desperate to just jump in and get to the reason I called, but I can’t do that without worrying him.
“It’s been far too long, mija . I’ve missed you.” More guilt swells inside me. I should have been checking in more with him. He’d smack the back of my head for saying this, but he’s not getting any younger. “ Cómo has estado ?”
How have I been?
I can hardly say ‘ good, I infiltrated one of our biggest rivals’ social headquarters, killed the heir, and developed really strong feelings for his brother. You? ’ so I simply say,
“ Bien, y tú ?”
He ignores my question back to him. “What have you been up to? Your brother won’t admit it, but I can tell he also hasn’t been hearing from you. Should I be worried?”
“No, Papà ,” I assure him, using a softer voice. “I’ve just been busy.”
“Don’t use that tone with me, I know when you’re trying to manipulate me, you know. You can’t fool your father.”
I smile. “That’s because my father is the smartest man alive.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere, nina .” He chuckles warmly, the sound drifting off into a companionable silence. “So tell me, Valentina. Why did you call me? I know it isn’t just because you missed me.”
“I really do,” I answer guiltily. “But you’re right. I need to ask you a question about Adri.”
There’s a pregnant pause.
Then he sighs heavily. “Valentina—”
“It’s just one question,” I interject. My father also feels that I should leave the handling of Adriana’s murder to them and try to move on with my life. “One question, I promise. One request actually.”
“What is it?” he questions wearily.
“I know you buried the…” I swallow thickly. “...the finger.” He growls angrily through the phone. “But you must have taken a picture of it.”
“Why—”
“Please.” I interrupt him again. I’ve never spoken over my father before today, but I can’t bear to wait. “Please don’t ask why and don’t try to talk me out of it. I can’t tell you why and I’m so sorry to have to make you look at it again, but I really need you to send me that picture.”
I wish I could have asked Thiago for it instead of putting my father through the pain of digging it up, but I know he would never have sent it to me.
Something in the raw urgency of my voice makes my father listen. Without seeing his face, I can’t tell what he’s thinking. All I can do is wait out the excruciating silence as it stretches for five, ten, then thirty more seconds.
Then a minute.
The silence is finally broken, but not by his talking. It’s the sound of my phone vibrating against my ear.
“I just texted the photo to you.” My father’s voice is destroyed by grief, the kind that’s so deep rooted it’s inoperable. “I hate that you made me send it to you, I never wanted you to see it, mija . You shouldn’t remember your sister that way.”
“I’m sorry too,” I say, putting him on speaker.
Even though the words are sincere, I know I sound distracted when I say them, because I am.
I click on the iMessage app and see a thumbnail of what looks like a severed finger wearing a ring, thrown haphazardly into a cheap box.
The nausea is immediately back, except this time the smoothie might splash across my kitchen cabinets with a violence that’ll make this morning’s blender incident look like child’s play.
Biting down on my lip to keep the vomit at bay, I enlarge the photo. I don’t need to look at it for more than a split second to see what’s there. Or, in this case, what isn’t there.
This finger may have my Mamà ’s ring on it, but the ring is slightly too big. It’s also not the nail color she had on that day.
More importantly, there is no burn.
No raised flesh whatsoever where there should very clearly be courtesy of an extremely hot straightener.
The entire reality I’ve constructed since the night she disappeared falls apart with one glance. I wish I’d pushed harder to see the photo two years ago instead of letting my guilt make me back down when my father said no.
This isn’t Adriana’s finger. It can’t be.
And if it’s not her finger then maybe, just maybe, that means she’s alive.
“ Mija ?” my dad questions. “Are you still there?”
I’m shaking so hard, I can’t keep the phone still in my hand. It seems highly improbable that she would still be alive a couple of months shy of the two year anniversary of her kidnapping and supposed death, so I don’t dare give him, or myself, any hope.
But this makes me believe that she was at least alive for longer than we initially thought. She was likely sold.
This changes everything.
And the first person I want to tell is Matteo.
“ Mija ?” my dad asks again, his tone growing more alarmed.
“I’m here, I’m here.” I bring the phone back up to my ear. My eyes are on the burning candle, but I’m lost in thought and thousands of miles away. “Sorry.”
“Are you alright?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“I can tell from your voice that something’s off.” He pauses before adding, “I think you should come home.”
“No, I promise, everything is fine,” I say reassuringly. “I can’t come home until she’s found, Papà .”
“That is not your responsi—”
“Listen, I have to go, I’m sorry again.”
I can tell he wants to argue but he knows he can’t force me to stay on the phone from all the way over in Bogotá .
“Alright, nina . I love you very much,” he says.
I let the words wash over me and give me strength. “I love you too,” I whisper quietly in return.
The phone is ripped out of my hand.
One second it’s pressed to my ear, the next it’s gone.
I gasp, turning, only to come face to face with Matteo. He looms dangerously above me, a towering mountain of quickly devolving fury as he grips my phone tight enough to break it.
Some bizarre momentary presence of mind reminds me of the candle burning behind me. I spin and blow it out quickly.
“Who the fuck is this?” Matteo snarls into the phone, every word strangled as they leave his lips. He glares down at me, a muscle spasming manically in his cheek. The smell of alcohol wafts off of him.
My eyes bulge. “Matteo!” I hiss, jumping to try and get my phone away from him. My fingers manage to brush over it before Matteo weaves to avoid me.
“Valentina?” I hear my father ask through the phone.
Matteo’s eyes burn with sharp, unrelenting wrath, his stare lashing me with a thousand accusations.
“What’s your fucking name?” he roars, unsteady on his feet.
Oh, god. He’s going to get himself killed.
Questioning my Papà in this manner is a surefire way to drastically shorten his life expectancy.
Panic makes me reach for the phone again.
Matteo’s hand snaps closed around my throat. A rage-filled growl rips from his chest with such force, it rattles the air around us. He pushes me until I’m at arm’s length, but I can still smell the alcohol on him. He reeks of it, like he fell head first into the world’s largest distillery. Just how much has he had to drink?
“This is Da Silva.” The clipped answer comes through the phone. My father doesn’t need to say anything else, the weight of his last name is enough.
Matteo’s hand slackens and the phone drops slowly away from his ears. His eyes close, his face twisting in pain.
Using his momentarily distracted state, I snatch the phone out of his hand, end the call, and throw it across the room. It bounces off the couch and hits the floor.
Immediately, it starts to ring.
My father calling me back, I’m sure.
When Matteo’s eyes reopen, they sharpen bitterly on me and drain to a lifeless color of black I’ve never seen before.
My lips part but I never get a chance to speak.
Matteo slams me back against the kitchen wall by my throat with such force that the air expels from my lungs. I don’t get a moment to suck it back in before he’s crowding me with his body. Raw emotion pulses in his eyes as they slash across my face. His voice comes out clipped and even but danger radiates off him like a dark shadow.
“You want to explain to me why you just told another man you love him when it’s my bed you’ve been sleeping in every night?”