Chapter 21 Dom #2
I shrug. The cat’s out of the bag now.
Riccardo speaks in a low, respectful tone to Annetta, which raises him several notches in my book. Maybe I’ll recommend him for a promotion after we off his capo. “They wouldn’t say anything about it, signora. I think they’re a little afraid of men right now.”
I roll my eyes when Annetta shoots me an “I told you so” look.
“What are your names?” she asks the girls in a clear voice.
The younger one answers, pointing between them. “Maria. Lucia.”
“Okay, Lucia. The man who took you, what did he look like?”
Lucia thinks for a few moments. “Small barba.” She points to my beard—the word for beard in Spanish and Italian being the same, making her meaning clear.
Riccardo swears under his breath. “They speak English?”
Annetta approaches me. “Taller?” she asks, holding her hand to indicate a height taller than me. “Or shorter?”
The girls confer for a moment. Then Lucia answers in a stream of Spanish.
“Hold on,” Riccardo says, and fishes out his phone for the translation app.
He has the girl repeat herself, and she tells us the man is about Riccardo’s height, with green eyes and a very short beard.
Annetta frowns. She asks the girls several times through the translator, “Green eyes? Are you sure?”
I have a bad feeling when she turns to me. “I need to speak with you. Privately.”
“Watch the girls,” I say to Riccardo.
Upstairs in our bedroom, Annetta paces around the room like a caged tiger.
“Since when do you understand Italian?” I ask.
“Since Frederico’s mom refused to speak to me in English. She thought it was embarrassing that I didn’t understand.”
“What?”
She waves me off, an urgent brightness to her face. “Dom, it’s Marco.”
The name tugs on a hazy memory. The last time I saw Frederico’s younger brother was at Annetta’s wedding, as I watched the whole thing unfold from a far-off distance. Marco was the best man. I remember thinking he looked like a bastard, like all of Frederico’s family.
“I thought I was just going crazy, that I saw Frederico outside the church, but I think it was Marco.”
“What the fuck do you mean you saw him outside the church?”
“I mean, I saw him outside the church after our wedding. I thought he was Frederico because he shaved and was wearing Frederico’s clothes, but now I’m certain—it’s Marco.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that?”
She raises an eyebrow at me. “So you could’ve told me I was seeing things? Like with the elevator?”
“Fuck.” I groan. “Alright.”
“He was always taking trips to Cuba. He”—she presses a hand to her mouth—“he used to bring me souvenirs when he came back. I never knew he was snatching girls off the street, and I never would’ve guessed they’d bring them as far as Chicago.”
“Did they ever find out that you knew about the girls?”
“At the end, yeah.”
So, the Chiarellis have more than one reason to hunt Annetta. If she knew about the girls they were trafficking, her running back to Chicago could fuck up their whole cash cow operation.
I’m going to enjoy killing off that damn family one by one.
She bites her lip and looks away from me. “Giulia told me Frederico would never cheat on me with another Italian woman, and that I should count myself lucky that he was only sleeping with foreign girls.”
“What?”
Her voice comes out as a near whisper. “She gave me pills to induce ovulation, and she said they were gonna use one of those girls as a surrogate if I didn’t give Frederico a baby soon.”
Rage burns into my chest like a hot poker through the heart. Before I can think, I grab Annetta and crush her against me.
Useless. I’m useless. I keep thinking I can fight her enemies, that I can kill anyone who wants to hurt her, but I can’t undo all the shit she’s had to go through. There’s no protection from the past.
She mumbles against my chest, but the blood pounding in my ears is so loud that I have to draw her back to arm’s length to hear her.
“We have to help them.”
The girls. She’s talking about the girls.
“We’ll get them a hotel tonight,” I promise. “I’ll go have a word with Riccardo.”
“No.” Her voice is firm. “I mean, the rest of the girls. All the other ones who are being trafficked.”
I bark out a laugh. “You can’t be serious. That’s gotta be hundreds of thousands of people.”
“We can help some of them.”
“You need to focus on yourself. How are you going to help those people when you can barely keep yourself alive?”
She pushes against my hands on her shoulders and plants her feet in a wide stance like we’re about to spar. Fuck.
“Annetta…”
“Dom.” The corner of her mouth spasms like she’s holding back tears, but her eyes are clear and dry.
“I waited three months to kill Frederico after I saw him in bed with a girl. I let that go on for three goddamn months. And in the end, the only reason I did it was to save myself, so I wouldn’t get pregnant.
How many girls did I let get hurt because I was too scared to do anything? ”
“None of this was your fault. You got him, didn’t you? You did more than anyone could’ve asked of you.”
“No. I can’t lie to myself anymore. I can do something to help Maria and Lucia. We can help them.”
She gives me a firm look that makes my heart swell and my stomach sink. “Promise me you’ll get those girls the best hotel money can buy, and then promise me you’ll get them home.”
She’s stealing a piece of my heart every time she rips another promise out of me, but I do it anyway, because this is the Annetta I know.
If saving the entire fucking world is what it’ll take to bring her back to me, then she’s going to learn I meant every word of my vows. I’m not letting her do any of this alone.
I cup the back of her neck and press forward until my forehead touches hers.
Her eyelashes flutter shut.
“I promise.”