39. Ariana
39
ARIANA
Oh, God, Portia. What have you made me promise?
I’m clinging to my wineglass as if it’s the only thing preventing this ship from sinking. Dominic’s teasing, in that gentle tone, is the last thing I need.
He must have picked up on something, despite us being so careful to act normal, to just be ourselves, but he is an expert at reading people.
‘Just one night. Please, Ariana, just give me one night before we tell them everything we’ve found.’
After reading through the last journal, Portia and I went back and skimmed through the earlier ones, racing against the clock. We couldn’t spend too much time in the walk-in closet, in case the guard got suspicious.
“You understand what this means?” she whispered to me. “There are people who know where this little girl went. Capos in Il Consiglio . There’s no way Gabriella went missing without somebody knowing.”
As we swiped through the pages in a hushed rush, trying to find any information we could, the tension and anxiety in that room became so suffocating, as if we were being vacuum-sealed.
There is a massive gap: Bianca didn’t journal from the start. She only picked it up once the twins were born. As to the pact, this sick truce between Giuliano Scalera and Emilio Randazzo, there were no more details and zero information as to what happened to baby Gabriella once she was born.
We sat defeated, journals scattered all around us, when Portia gasped in such shock and horror, I reeled back.
“Oh my…oh my God,” she whispered under her breath, fresh tears brimming from her eyes as she clutched at her golden cross again. “The dates… her birth…this… this is why he left me.”
I froze, holding a breath. “Left you? Who?”
Now the sluices of the dam opened properly. The last thing I expected today was this. Portia’s heart breaking in front of me.
“Rosalia’s dad, my husband…this… this godawful secret is why he left me and told me he couldn’t see us anymore. That things were getting too tough at work, and he had to move and?—”
I pulled her into my arms, and for a long while, we just sat as she sobbed and clung to me, sputtering out a fractured love story through haggard, painful breaths. A story about a man she loved once, the father of her own little girl, a man who was forced to leave them. And now it dawned on her that he left to protect them . From Don Scalera’s dirty secret he was the sole custodian of. And her working in the Don’s household all these years, pouring all her love into those boys, not knowing their dad was the reason for her own heartbreak.
Eventually, she pulled away on a hiccup. “ Cara , we must tell Dominic, but you understand that I need to…that I need to protect him, we’re not even divorced—” She broke off, gasping between breaths. “This was his way to protect me. God. If I only understood?—”
Clearly, Portia had never recovered from this loss as her voice cracked with emotion.
“Yes, yes, I get it. Completely,” I managed as I tried to soothe her. “It’s okay, we don’t need to say anything yet.”
“Ariana,” she whispered then, leaning close to my ear, as if the walls were listening in…which they might be doing from my experience with this crowd. “The Scaleras will never hurt you. They will never hurt me. But they will pull the limbs off men who know something about Gabriella. I need to go see him to warn him. Maybe he’ll talk now? It’s been twenty-two years. And with Don Scalera dead…maybe, just maybe…” She pushed me at arm’s length, and I rested back on my heels as she stared into my eyes as if the whole world hinged on me. “We cannot talk about this, not until I’ve warned him. Just one night, promise me, one night.”
“Why don’t you phone him?” I whispered back. “Right now.”
Portia’s gaze volleyed between my eyes as she shook her head, frantic. “From here, on my company phone? While I’m in Bianca’s closet?” She was quivering all over now and scrambled to gather the journals and seal them in those plastic bags again. “Are you mad? What if they trace the call and—and?—”
“It’s okay, I get it,” I said.
But now with Dominic here, I get it even more.
Dominic owns a security company, and this is why I couldn’t whack a security guard on the head and walk out of a private clinic in Boston. In the clinic, the cameras are so well-hidden, I never saw one. In Bianca’s walk-in closet, there aren’t any cameras, because if there were, Dominic would have been here hours ago, because he has a knack for tech and someone might be watching our every move.
I’m trapped under so many secrets, I can hardly breathe…and Dominic is threatening to tease them out of me? I shouldn’t drink. I should keep my head clear, but he’s here, his tall, masculine frame towering next to me, his elbow brushing against my arm as he unbuttons his cuffs and rolls up his sleeves.
With every fold of the fabric, he reveals more of his muscled forearms, my gaze taking in those strong but elegant hands that touched me with such delicate reverence at the swimming pool this morning. I completely forgot this man can be brutally cruel.
In fact, I can’t weave his gentle side and cruel side together at all. I suck my lip, knowing I’m in too deep. I’m treading water, battling a tide I only want to be swept away with, straight into his arms…the last place I should be.
Portia’s parting words to me as we put back the baseboards repeats in my head, and I swallow another desperate sip of wine to pull myself together.
“You need to divert his attention, cara . I’ve seen how he looks at you, Ariana… Please. I’ve also seen how you look at him. Just one night. He already has you in his bed, and even though I know nothing happened last night, and I’ll never push you to do something you don’t want to… but Dominic never has women stay over, or in his bed for that matter, and you…you have Randazzo’s seal on your body. Please ? —"
I had to stop her from talking before I lost my mind. How do I look at Dominic? How does he look at me?
As he walks over to the sink to wash his hands, I scan his body, his posture, his profile, the way his hair falls forward over his forehead. I’ve been desperately studying him, looking for anything that might spark my memory of Randazzo, but the photo we found with the journals showed me Dominic isn’t Randazzo’s son. I’d hazard a guess he’s ninety-nine percent Guiliano Scalera’s offspring. But is that enough? Not with the fresh knowledge of my half-brothers in the mix.
Never mind our family dynamics, the seal of Randazzo is a temporary tattoo, made to last only a few months.
Then there’s the sad fact that beyond being assaulted by Franco, I’ve never had sex with anybody.
That Portia suggested I seduce Dominic to keep his mind and body occupied is such a joke, now that I’m alone with him, I break out in a nervous giggle. I wouldn’t know where to start. In fact, my inexperience petrifies me.
Dominic looks up from where he’s doing a surgeon’s job washing his hands. “What are you laughing about?”
I drag in a strained breath, forcing my gaze to stay locked with his. “There’s nothing to tease out of me,” I lie. “We really did spend the day ferociously cleaning. Once Portia got started, she got a bit obsessed.”
Because Portia had to do something to kill time, to digest and organize her scramble of thoughts after her epiphany in that closet.
And so did I.
I might be sitting on the biggest pile of secrets here as it is—adding Portia’s hardly makes a difference—but my own discovery makes me want to curl back inside a shell I don’t have. And with Dominic here, I’m even more open and exposed because he knows things about me that I’ve never told anybody before. Things that hurt so much, sometimes, I still feel bruised, deep inside my core.
A hurt I really want to shed. With him. Those hands…his voice…the way he touched me. His suggestion that he could help me overcome what Franco had done to me?—
The last thing I want is for him to be my brother, because I want him to guide me to the space where I can live with being broken.