14. Ivy
14
IVY
I’m not sure which God I pissed off, but it must be one of the vindictive ones. A powerful deity who obviously thinks I haven’t suffered enough this week.
I’d pray for forgiveness if I thought it would help, yet somehow I’m convinced pleading words to an unseen force won’t help me escape the back of my brother Alonso’s car when his henchman is seated on the opposite side of the vehicle with a gun pointed at my chest.
I haven’t been blindfolded, which doesn’t bode well.
Usually, when Gabriel summons me via an unwilling abduction, I’m delivered to him with my head hooded or eyes bound. Today it’s only my wrists that are restrained in front of me, in what looks to be the silken tie from my bathrobe.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Shut up, puta .” Alonso scowls at me from the rearview mirror. “Just because you’re currently in one piece doesn’t mean you’ll stay that way.”
I raise a brow, trying to wordlessly articulate how little my brother intimidates me, but it’s hard to pull off nonchalance when the tortured soul I once saw in his eyes is no longer there. He’s empty. A black hole. One that currently has my phone.
He turns up the radio, the Latin pop blasting my ears.
The drug-addled guy beside me starts to sing, his bellowed words off-key and unnecessarily spat my way as he swirls his gun at me like a conductor’s baton.
Does Alonso realize I’m one unseen pothole away from being a perforated mess?
I shift my body toward the door and stare out the window, breathing through the unease. I’ve survived every Gabriel-inspired abduction so far. I’ll survive this one too. I just need to be smart.
I take note of the landmarks outside. The buildings. The street signs. I’m being driven back toward the city like a battered yo-yo in need of retirement. Then driven into the underground parking garage of a towering apartment building far taller and classier than my own.
Once Alonso finds a parking space and cuts the engine, he grabs a leather jacket from the passenger seat and throws it at me, the heavy weight slapping my face before falling on top of my bound hands.
“Keep that over your wrists,” he sneers. “Don’t draw any fucking attention.”
Both men get out, the two of them coming to stand at my door, the drug-addled gun wielder pulling me from the vehicle by my hair, blatantly dismissive of the ‘no attention’ memo.
I’m walked to the elevator like a death row inmate and spend the ride to the seventeenth floor staring at the security camera, willing whoever mans the front desk to notice me. When the elevator dings, I’m led into a quiet hall to the first door of five apartments.
There are no visible neighbors. No guards. No new faces that might help.
“Don’t go getting any ideas,” my brother snarls. “We run this floor. Nobody else comes up here.”
“Except the girls.” Gun Guy snickers while unlocking the front door and pushing it wide.
Alonso shoves me forward, and I clench my teeth to stop from flinging a string of profanity his way as I stumble inside.
“Hurry up.” He pushes me again. “Dad’s waiting.”
I sidestep out of his reach as both men continue into the sunlit living room of a well-appointed apartment, the front door falling shut behind us. The space is anchored by two sleek leather sofas facing each other, flanked by glass side tables, a matching coffee table centered between them.
Art hangs from the walls. Abstract paintings in bright colors.
The place is clean and tidy—almost normal. Except for the subtle security cameras in the ceiling.
I continue farther inside, the interior opening up to a large kitchen and dining room where the man who was once my father sits at an elegant wooden table, a laptop open in front of him as he squints at the screen.
He looks different. Less thug-like than I remember and more underworld chic with his linen button-down and thick, slicked back hair.
“She’s here.” My brother drags a gun from the back of his waistband and dumps it on the polished wood along with his wallet and keys, then heads for the kitchen and grabs two beers from the fridge.
Gabriel raises his gaze, slow and imperial, taking me in with an unimpressed once-over.
“Want me to keep my Glock trained on her?” Gun Guy asks.
“No.” Gabriel indicates with a lazy hand for me to take the chair opposite him, his expression impassive, unreadable. “I can handle my own daughter.”
A chill skitters down my spine. More than ten years, and he still doesn’t understand the concept of emancipation.
“Sit,” he commands.
“I’d rather stand.” I raise my chin, my wrists still bound and bearing the heavy weight of Alonso’s jacket.
Gabriel chuckles. “I see you’re still a petulant brat who hasn’t realized the air in your lungs is only there because I allow it.”
Oh, I’ve definitely realized. But I’ve also come to the understanding that cowering to him doesn’t help either of us. As much as he hates my animosity, he despises weakness in any form, especially from those he spawned. “Why am I here?”
He closes the laptop and relaxes back in his chair. “When you dishonored this family and filed for emancipation, it was under the strict instruction that you wouldn’t interfere in my work.”
I keep my expression locked tight, my breathing level. “I remember.”
“Then why is it that I’m seeing your photo in the Baltimore Sun with the mafia boss’s nephew?”
Photo ? “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He raises a brow and retrieves his cell from his pants pocket. He swipes the screen a few times, then slides the device toward me.
I step forward to read the heading of an online article— Remembering Carlo Pelosi—A Pillar of Support in Times of Loss. Beneath it is an image of Carlo’s wake and through the mourning crowd, you can clearly see me talking to Salvatore, our gazes locked, bodies facing.
I swallow the bile coating the back of my throat. “Not many funerals are by invite only. Unfortunately, I don’t get to pick who attends.”
“So you recognize the man you were talking to?”
“Yes.” I don’t bother denying it. He knows I’m smart enough to remain informed. “But he was only asking for directions to the bathroom. He didn’t know who I was.”
It’s so fucking risky to lie, yet in this case Gabriel’s suspicion is riskier. He’d be paranoid that I was making deals with his enemies, which is a far more punishable crime.
“Are you aware of his reasons for attending the funeral of your employer?” he asks.
“I have no clue.” I wish I did, but despite the influx of information over the past twenty-four hours that revelation got lost in the wash.
“Don’t lie to me.” Gabriel’s eyes narrow.
“I’m not.” My heart thunders, but I can’t backtrack now. “I don’t know why he was there. I was too busy grieving the boss who took me in when you warned everyone in this city to let me die on the streets.”
“And my life would’ve been far more simple if you had.” He sits forward, his elbows resting on the table. “There are whispers that my enemies are using your funeral home to dispose of bodies.”
I scoff, poised to tell him how ridiculous that is when all the other ridiculousness I’ve recently been made aware of pins me like a butterfly in a display case—Liv dating a criminal. Carlo being associated with the mafia.
And goddamn Hugo, who’d previously been a Pelosi Funeral Home employee, until I’d found the cremator warm when arriving at work multiple mornings this year without Liv or Carlo being the ones using it. He’d been fired over the suspicion… but had adamantly denied being the culprit.
Fuck, Liv, don’t tell me you’ve doubled down on your stupidity and mixed business with pleasure.
I breathe through the painful unease. “Those whispers aren’t true. I’d know.”
There’s no way in hell I’d know.
Salvatore and his family would’ve kept it under wraps. Which would further explain Liv’s need to keep secret her new diet of mafia dick.
Gabriel scrutinizes me. “Are you sure about that?”
Not even a little bit. In fact, the accusation makes a whole hell of a lot of sense.
“Yes.” I hold my chin high. “I’m sure. All staff are on site Monday to Friday. And someone is always on call out of hours to pick up decedents. If someone was using the cremator without permission, I’d know. It takes hours for the retort to cool after use.”
“Well, I’m not convinced,” Gabriel muses. “We’ve lost many men this year, and very few bodies have been found.”
“Probably because we live by the ocean,” I drawl. “I’m sure the sharks have been well fed.”
His expression hardens, the rage I’d known in my youth glaring back at me. “You’ve forgotten how much I despise your sharp tongue,” he snaps. “Javier and Miguel are among the missing. Don’t you think Aunt Teresa and Camilla deserve closure?”
What those two beautiful women deserve is the peace that comes from living without threat from my heinous uncle and the devil he spawned. But I keep that thought to myself, hoping to deescalate the situation.
Gabriel sighs. “You continue to disappoint me, Isabella. But not to worry.” He pushes from the table and moves to stand. “You will stay here for the time being. Just in case you remember something that may be helpful to your family.”
Panic raises every hair on my body. “No. I won’t stay. I’m not your daughter anymore.”
“You’ll always be my daughter. No matter how hard you try to deny it.” He jerks his chin toward the kitchen where Alonso and his henchman dump their beer cans on the counter and start toward me.
“No.” I fight against the bindings on my wrists, tugging and pulling. “You can’t do this. I’ll—” I struggle to form a formidable threat, but there isn’t any. The cops won’t help me, and I can’t drag my friends into this mess. Yet again, I’m on my own and the one-woman show is getting old quick.
“That’s right.” My brother grabs me by the back of the neck and gets in my face, his beer breath flooding my senses. “You’ll do as you’re fucking told.”
I thrash and thump at his chest, my fear-driven aggression cut short when the gun man closes in, raising the hilt of his weapon. “Don’t?—”
He cold-cocks my cheek, the point of impact exploding with pain.
Black clouds my vision.
I must lose a second of consciousness because the next thing I know I’m being dragged along the carpeted hall, into a room smothered in enough pink to make Barbie envious.
They dump me on the floor near the bed and walk for the door.
“Stop.” I scramble to my hands and knees, struggling against my throbbing head and wonky vision to keep my balance. “ Wait .”
Alonso pauses in the doorway, looking down the Roman nose Gabriel’s side of the family gave to him.
I should beg. Plead. Blubber for my freedom. But even if the men in my gene pool were easily influenced by vulnerability, I’d have absolutely no desire to show it.
Instead I glare through twenty-eight years of festered hatred. “This is a mistake.”
He smirks as he grabs the door handle. “Don’t worry. I’m sure you’re well past your expiry to be of any use in this room.”
I stiffen, taking in my surroundings with more scrutiny—the rainbow lamp on the magenta bedside table, the sheer glitter pink curtains, the bright unicorn duvet with a row of teddies resting against the pillows.
It looks like a typical little girl’s room… but it’s not.
The commercial video camera sitting atop a sturdy tripod near the open bathroom door, along with the surveillance cameras in all four corners of the room, confirm that the cartel is still making money from child pornography, just like they did when I was younger.
“I suggest you stay away from the balcony,” Alonso drawls. “If I catch you out there I’ll be tempted to see if Daddy’s little runaway knows how to fly.”