Chapter 16
Allie
Loppa wouldn’t leave Mario’s side while he and Ringo discussed the best way to approach Don Conti. I worried about his wound, but was also frustrated because Ellie was right.
I had a soft spot for anything wounded.
It made me pause outside the bedroom she’d been assigned.
Between the villa’s two stories, there were five doubles and the bedroom suite on the top floor that Mario and I shared.
My heart skipped a beat remembering how sweetly he’d made love to me in the soft morning light that lit up the view, but kept our little corner of the hillside in shadow.
I swallowed that down and braced myself to confront my sister. Sure, she’d left on a high note, teasing both me and Mario with her little act, but I knew her better. She was hurting.
I knocked lightly. “Hey, can we talk?” I spoke to the wood of the door.
A rustle, and then the notable click of her lock sounded in the quiet night. The door creaked as it opened.
Ellie was in a T-shirt and soft yoga pants I recognized. “You’re wearing my clothes.”
“Duh, you’ve got all my lingerie.”
Oh, right. “I can give half of it back if you want?” She packed so much, I could go two weeks without ever thinking about wearing anything twice.
Her eyes squeezed into slits of mistrust. “Half? Ew. You wore my underwear?”
I swallowed. This wasn’t going well. I’d come to offer an olive branch, check on her simmering anger, not provoke it further. “I’m sor—”
“Bish. High five.” Ellie stuck her hand in the space between the door and the frame. Her grin was wide.
I tapped her palm with mine, still hesitant.
She swung the door open. “Spill. Was it the flowered baby doll, or the slinky purple number that did the trick?” She fanned her face dramatically.
“I’m not—”
“Oh, come on. Which magic piece of lace tugged that stick out of his ass?”
Despite myself, I laughed once. My face heated.
“Big sis? Your ‘husband,’ he’s hot.”
It was my turn to fan myself, but I resisted. “We need to talk.”
Ellie shifted so I could drop my butt on the double next to the already mussed up one. She shut the door and re-locked it. Her eyes traced my outfit and the state of my weariness. “Are you getting enough sleep?”
I shot her a look.
Her mouth curled into a tight, knowing smile.
“I should ask you the same thing. Ringo?”
“Don’t go there. It was stupid. A rebound affair.”
That’s what had me worried. “Did you love Johnny?”
Ellie ignored my question for a moment or two, opting to stare at one of the paintings on the wall. “At first, maybe. He was…dangerous.” Her eye roll didn’t match the words.
Somehow, I had the feeling that Ringo had her ex beat by at least light years, if not whole universes. I kept that thought quiet.
Ellie picked up a thread of my question and turned it on me. “And you? You love…him?”
At least she refrained from using her nickname for my husband. I took a deep breath. “I’ve been thinking about that.”
“You don’t think about love, you just…love.”
Her outburst was illogical.
“I think about it.”
“You would,” she shot back. And that was our biggest difference. I thought about things like love, what it was, how it happens, and she just…fell.
Yet, I’d fallen. I hadn’t really been questioning what was budding with Mario. I’d wanted it. Badly. So much so, that I ignored many things.
“I guess I must love him.”
Ellie flopped onto her bed and propped her chin on her hands to study me. “Why must you?”
“I don’t know.”
Her face twisted up. “You do. Think. That’s what you do best, right?”
“But I can’t think of why.”
Ellie laughed, but her face fell into sadness. “Oh, Allie. Welcome to the dark side. Love just is. You can’t think about it because it isn’t something that happens in your brain. It happens much… lower.”
“Don’t be crude.”
She rolled to her back and studied the ceiling. Her silent laughter stilled, and she sighed. “Okay, you love him. What’s next?”
I mimicked her position, staring at the wooden beams that crossed the ceiling at irregular intervals.
The house must be really old because the beams weren’t perfect.
And, the house was solid. The outside was a jumble of different-sized stones, while the inside had the cool coziness of a cave.
Each window well was at least two feet deep.
It resembled a squared-off castle running the length of the wide hillside terraces.
The distracting thoughts helped me to answer her question. “I don’t know what’s next. I feel like I’m losing him.”
Ellie turned toward me to pay attention. “How?”
I shivered. “They’re trying to kill him.”
“Newsflash. Whoever that is? They’re trying to kill you, too, and I’m not having it. Wake up, big sis. You need to get gone from here. Hide out, change things up. You can’t think this one away, you’ve gotta act.”
The plaster between beams was uneven, patched many times over the centuries. “If I do that, I lose him for real.”
“And you don’t want to do that, do you? I hate to tell you this, but you got it bad.”
“It?”
“Love.”
She made it sound so awful. And it was. Heartbreakingly so. If I stayed, the train wreck that had begun when he took my ride share was finally grinding to a halt. Something, somewhere was going to roll over us, taking everyone in its path with it.
“You need to leave, Ellie. Forget the vacation plans, just…leave. Do you what you do best and float your way back up to safety somewhere.”
“I’m not leaving you here with them.”
I took a deep breath. “You have to. I’m in love.”
“You’re an idiot.”
Only my twin could get away with calling me that.
I studied her. She didn’t say it with her usual bluster. “You didn’t really love Johnny, did you?”
She shook her head. “Like I said, maybe at first. Then I saw him with this…bitch.”
“Excuse me?” She knew how much I hated anyone using that word outside of its intended veterinary use.
She fixed her gaze on me, dropping all her defenses. “Allie, the woman was one of those. You know?”
No, I didn’t, and I wouldn’t indulge Ellie’s assumptions. “Impressions aside, what did she look like?”
“Tall, polished, gorgeous… evil. You know that queen in Snow White, the evil one?”
I nodded so she’d continue.
“Think that, but…Italian. Mario’s skin tone, hair color, long ass nose, but not quite so outdoorsy. Quite indoors-y if you get my drift?”
Dianora’s face flashed through my head. “Curly hair?”
“Disgustingly perfect curly hair. And so fucking pampered. You can tell she’s never washed her own dishes.”
I’d gotten that vibe from Dianora. If it were the same person…
“How do you figure she’s Italian?” There were more things going through my head, but I picked that question to ask first.
“Because when I caught them together, she was whispering fucking sweet nothings into Johnny’s ears and he answered her back in Italian.”
I blinked. “Johnny Pornstach knows Italian?”
Ellie shrugged. “I thought it was sexy.”
A quick smile broke across my face, remembering a few of Mario’s unguarded moments. Yes, it was sexy.
“Now I hate to even hear it, because—”
I finished her sentence, falling back onto the intuition we had developed from being together since before we were born. “Because you don’t know what they’re saying, right?” Loppa’s hand grabbing my phone flashed through my thoughts.
“Yup.”
I rolled to my feet. “Come with me.”
“Huh?”
I tugged her out of bed. “I want to go look at the pictures again.”
“Oh, Allie, do we have to?”
Yes. There was one grainy photo that I needed a good long look at. And I needed Ellie there to confirm it was who I suspected it was. Whoever was in the car with Johnny was a witness, accomplice, or possibly even the shot-caller.
But everything had been cleared from the living room. There were male voices coming from one of the offices which I followed.
Ellie and I snuck up to the closed door and leaned in. Our eyes met across the frame. “That’s Mario,” I mouthed.
“And Ringo,” she confirmed with a whisper.
My eyes narrowed at his name. I didn’t trust that man at all. They both were talking in low tones. Whatever they were saying wasn’t in Italian, at least not in the cadence I was used to hearing. It sounded more like Mario’s grandfather’s dialect.
Which made sense. They were alone, in that circle, I suppose. Even though Ringo definitely wasn’t Italian. His accent was too American, but tonight it was different. If Ellie hadn’t confirmed it was his voice, I would have had a hard time recognizing it.
“No!” Mario’s sharp tone cut off whatever Ringo said.
And damn it, I was being discussed, because I certainly recognized the word, “bride” in that sentence. Mario had said it enough around me to sink in. I closed my eyes to concentrate on the flow of words rather than trying to translate. He was angry, but in that controlled way of his.
Ringo wasn’t much better. His bitter comebacks were sharp, argumentative.
Ellie tapped my arm to get my attention. She mouthed something at me that looked like, “What the fuck are they saying?”
I shrugged.
Then Ringo spoke.
“You’re not taking his place. Damn the code. You’ve got it good. For once in your fucking life, take the loss. We’ll get him back without sacrificing you to that witch.”
What?
“Your way would have my cousins, my uncles, and my grandfather in peril. This is on me. Not them. Don Manca will understand. He’s the one who taught us: protect the family, protect our secrets, eliminate complications. The solution is simple.”
“You forgot a big part of that section. It goes, protect the home. Your home. Your wife. Damn it, Mario. You always do this.”
There was thunderous silence. My heart filled with fear. I knew I shouldn’t be standing here as witness, right out in the open, learning my husband’s secrets. But I needed to know them.
“Is that why you betrayed me?” Mario asked.
Ellie’s eyes went wide. I held up a finger, so she’d keep quiet. It was odd how I’d picked that stupid gesture up from Mario so quickly. But it worked to keep her from barging in or making a sudden noise.