Chapter 8 Cassian #2
I chuckle, reach out to lift a lock of wavy hair.
She slaps my hand away. I lean closer, pick up the smell of my bodywash on her. I like it. I smile. “Nothing to be embarrassed about, Little Moth,” I whisper. “Your wet pussy gave you away last night.”
She turns to shove me, and I laugh outright. “You’re such an asshole, you know that?” she asks.
“I do so I’m going to let that one go,” I say, smiling wide. “Don’t worry, I find you pretty to look at too.” I wink.
“That’s not why… I mean…” She’s clearly flustered. Unused to compliments, I guess. “I wouldn’t care if you thought I was a hag.” She turns away again, clearly uncomfortable and unsure how to handle me. I feel a small pang of guilt. I know how sheltered her father kept her. She’s unused to men.
“My father is Italian, and my mother was Syrian. She passed away a very long time ago,” I give her, sitting back in my seat. I don’t tell her I never got to meet my mother. Never got to hear her voice or see her face. I don’t tell her I’m the reason she’s dead.
The way she looks at me shifts. I turn my gaze out the window as the vehicles pull off the property. I’m about to tell her I don’t need her pity when she speaks.
“How long?” she asks, surprising me and I recall how she lost her mother five years ago. I suppose we have that in common.
I shift my gaze back to her ready to tell her I’m not interested in discussing our pasts, but I stop because I see something I don’t expect. An openness on her face. A vulnerability. It catches me off guard and I hear myself speak before I even think about how to answer.
“Twenty-nine years.”
She looks confused. She doesn’t know my exact age. I’m afraid she’s going to tell me she’s sorry for my loss, but then she speaks, surprising me again. “I was fifteen,” she volunteers. “I’m afraid I’m forgetting her face. Her voice. I’m scared I’m going to forget her.”
I don’t speak. I can’t. I can’t fucking breathe. I just sit there watching her.
“Sorry. Never mind.” She shakes her head, clears her throat and although her eyes are damp, she doesn’t cry. “I feel like the president,” she says, gesturing to the SUVs ahead and behind ours.
I’m glad for this change in topic. I’m ill equipped to respond to whatever that was.
“Your father traveled with a motorcade larger than this if I recall. I suppose Michael and Malek have slimmed down given budgeting issues.” I know the finances of the Moretti family have dwindled since her father’s death.
Payments haven’t been coming in like they would when Alaric was at the helm.
There’s a lack of respect for Michael. The tide for the Moretti family was changing even before I stepped in. Does Allegra realize that?
She’s quiet for a few minutes. “I’ve been here on a school field trip,” she says as we pull out of the gates.
“Excuse me?”
“St. Anastasia. Before you bought it. It’s a replica of a church in Verona.”
“You know that?” I ask. She nods. “Have you been to the original?”
“I’ve never left the country,” she says.
“That’s too bad.”
“It was rumored something like the Spanish Inquisition was held here by some bad priests, but nothing was ever found.”
“Is that so?” I don’t offer any details on what was uncovered during my rebuild.
She shrugs a shoulder. “What you said about my dad last night, you’re wrong.”
“Does your brain always work like this?”
“Like what?”
“Jumping from one topic to another? It’s exhausting.”
“Am I going too fast for you?”
I snort. “I’m more worried about you tiring yourself out.”
“Well, don’t worry about me and I’ll try to speak more slowly so I don’t overtax your brain,” she says, doing just that.
I raise an eyebrow.
She smirks.
“Your father wasn’t a good man if that’s what you’re trying to tell me,” I say.
“He never hit us.”
“Well, he hurt plenty of people, Allegra. And no matter how you feel about him, you’d have been a pawn to him.”
“You don’t know anything about him.”
“A daughter is always a pawn.”
“Speak for your own family, not mine.”
“I have no sister. No daughter. I never will.”
“What, you’ll only have male offspring? You do know how that works, right?” She snorts.
“I meant I won’t have any offspring,” I say and immediately wonder why I said it. Why I’d tell her that.
She looks puzzled, but curious. I expect her to ask what I’m talking about and I’m not sure if I’m grateful or disappointed when she doesn’t.
“You said something to Malek,” she says instead. “You’ve danced this dance, and it didn’t end well for us. What did you mean?”
“You caught that?”
She nods.
“I mean Moretti and Trevino families have a truce in place because things have gotten ugly before. Territories crossed, borders not respected. And every time that’s happened, our family has come out on top. Every single time. More than once an example has been made.”
“You mean soldiers were killed?”
“No, that’s expected when there’s a war between mafia families. I mean an example.”
“You’re being cryptic.”
“You sure you want to know?”
Her eyes search mine for a moment, but she nods.
“A woman.”
“What?”
“A woman is made an example of. A daughter, or, if there’s no daughter, a wife or a sister.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“He really did keep you in the dark. You should ask your brother. Or Malek.”
“I’m asking you.”
“Take care. Sometimes ignorance truly is bliss.”
“I’d rather face what’s coming eyes wide open.”
“A Moretti with a backbone. Who knew?”
“I want to know, Cassian. I want to know when I can get back to my life.”
The way she says it makes me pause because she is just so far off the mark. Did she really think Michael would just pay what he owed, and I’d drive her home, no harm, no fowl?
“No, you don’t, Allegra. Drop it,” I tell her.
“What did my brother do anyway?”
My phone pings with a notification. I take it out of my pocket and unlock it. “Doesn’t matter, not where you’re concerned,” I say, reading the text from Angelo letting me know he’s sent a file on Allegra.
Me: That was fast.
Angelo: Not much to look into. She’s pretty much been kept behind closed doors since she was fifteen.
I glance at her before clicking to open the folder. Jet’s right. She’s under my skin.
“What did he do?” she pushes. “Because I think it does matter, because if he can’t pay it back, won’t you make an example and put the Moretti’s back in their place? A woman, you said. Won’t you make an example of me then? That’s why you took me, after all.”
I merely glance at her, but don’t respond, grinding my teeth together to keep my mouth shut as I scan the file. I’ll read it properly later.
She reaches out to close her hand over the screen of my phone and I see the space where the missing finger should be. She’s been subjected to violence she should not have been subjected to. I know it in my gut. I know this was no accident.
“Sorry to interrupt your very important scrolling, but this very much concerns me,” she says.
I close the file. “Be smart, Allegra. Do as I say and drop it.”
“Tell me what happens to me if he can’t pay,” she insists.
I shift my gaze from her hand to her face, take in those amber eyes, counting the gold rings circling each iris.
“There is no if, Moth. And there is no your life. There never was.”
“What does that mean?” she asks after a beat.
“Did you hear what I said? About daughters and the role you play?” She watches me, waiting for me to continue.
I’m sure this is not what she wants to hear, but she’s only fooling herself if she believes anything else.
“You’re a pawn. However you claim your father felt about you, you were a pawn to him and you’re a pawn to your brother.
I know about the marriage contract that was being negotiated before he passed. The one Michael finalized.”
“That wasn’t…”
“But all of that is beside the point. There will be no marriage, not anymore,” I say, surprising myself with the declaration because I suppose I just decided it. “And Michael won’t be able to repay his debt.”
Her forehead furrows, she shakes her head. “He has a week. You said, he has a week.”
I snort. “If he had a lifetime he couldn’t pay it back.”
“But you—”
“And even if, by some miracle, he did, that wouldn’t matter, not anymore.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Life isn’t fair, sweetheart.”
“You can’t just change the rules at will."
“Don’t be na?ve, Little Moth.” I tuck a lock of wild hair behind her ear.
She slaps my hand away. “I’m not na?ve and stop calling me that,” she says as the SUV comes to a stop in front of the Moretti house and the solider in the passenger seat opens my door.
“But you are na?ve, Little Moth.” I lean closer, my gaze sweeping her features, noting the smooth skin, the slight flush that creeps over it whenever I’m near. I pull her to me, press my cheek to hers and bring my mouth to her ear. “Because you don’t yet understand that you already belong to me.”