39. Basilio
Basilio
I t was mid-February. I didn’t visit my sister, Emory, nearly as much as I should have. Dante and Priest were here too. We combined pleasure with business.
We took care of the business earlier. We secured a deal with a distributor and intercepted another gun shipment going my father’s way. Customers grew agitated and displeased with him. Slowly but surely, they turned their backs on him and came running to us.
Eye for a fucking eye, Father.
The soft piano notes filled the air of my sister’s living room in Las Vegas. She always had a fondness for luxury, opera, and everything chick-flick. I fucking hated all that shit. There was only a short period in my life that I tolerated it. I didn’t care to think about that period.
My jaw tightened as venom crawled through my veins, same as it did every time I thought of her . And I thought about her all the fucking time. It had been two hundred-and-eighty-nine days.
I looked for her everywhere. Yet, it was as if she never existed. Even Madame Sylvie disappeared.
“You should stop going on killing sprees, Basilio,” Emory scolded.
Anyone else would shit their pants to say something like that to me.
Not my sister and cousins. And lately, they’d been giving me advice more than I cared to hear it.
“The men that work for Father will never betray him, you know that.”
Yeah, so I expanded my hunting ground to men that worked for my father. Angelo got on that list too.
“Are you listening, Basilio?” she nagged.
“I’m trying really hard to ignore you,” I grumbled. “But you’re making it hard. Isn’t there a man’s heart you need to squash or something?”
She was just as damaged as me. No amount of my protection could have spared her our father’s brutality. It left a mark. I still remembered her as she used to be. Soft and caring.
Our father wiped that shit out. Just as he did everything soft in our lives.
I still remembered her hiding underneath my bed, begging for a bedtime story so she wouldn’t have to hear the screams.
“Isn’t there a wife you need to find?” she retorted sarcastically. Nobody else would dare to suggest that. I’d gut them alive.
The notion of taking any other woman to bed was sickening. Love and affection had no room in our world. I had gotten a taste of it and it ruined me. For anyone else.
The rational part of me understood I couldn’t remain single for the rest of my life. The sooner I secured an heir, the less chances of my father declaring another heir. He took another mistress after Thalia and the rumor was he was trying for another kid.
Because Emory and I were his greatest disappointments. Like I gave a fuck.
“No.” Okay, as far as conversations went, this wasn’t that great. I knew I had to marry, secure an heir. But fuck if I was in the mood for it.
There was only one woman that made me want to make that leap.
Out of the blue, Emory jumped to her feet and grinned.
“We’re watching the Olympics tonight,” she announced.
Dante and Priest snorted. I agreed with the sentiment, but I knew Emory always wanted more out of life than this life of the underworld. It was the least we could do. Grant her an evening watching the Olympics.
Fuck, it will be a long night.
The large fifty-inch screen came on and the broadcaster's enthusiastic voice filled the room.
Jesus H. Christ.
Dante, Priest, and I shared a glance. Dante rolled his eyes, smirking.
He thought Emory was corny. He wasn’t off base, but we loved her.
Priest quickly wiped a hand across his mouth in a poor attempt to hide his amusement.
He knew Emory would try to kick all our asses if she caught us laughing at her.
I should just come up with some poor-ass excuse and get the fuck out. If I said it was time to go hunting for Russians or anyone, they’d all believe me.
My mind made up, I stood up and adjusted my cufflinks. I opened my mouth to excuse myself for the night when the commentator started blabbing again.
“The next team is our ice princess darling Star Flemming and her partner Derek Konstantin.”
“Oh my gosh,” Emory gushed. “These two are everyone’s absolute favorites. She’s so fucking good at it, already won an Olympic gold medal in singles when she was barely seventeen.”
I shot an agitated look at the television and nothing would have made me happier than to shoot the goddamn thing so it would go off. The audience cheered and screamed like new gods were born.
A pair stepped out onto the ice and Emory squealed, reminding me of the young girl she used to be a long time ago.
“Star had some rough times lately, but I know she’ll come out on top.” Emory must have been her number one fan. Wonderful, from underworld to a fanatic.
I stood frozen, unable to look away. The two figures glided in perfect harmony, hand in hand. Dark hair and golden sunshine. Hair of the spun gold and light green eyes stared at the screen.
She was on television.
The familiar bright smile on a woman’s face that I used to know so well. Her unruly blonde curls pulled up in a tight bun. She was slightly thinner, but it was unmistakably her . The only woman I had ever wanted.
The woman I had been desperately searching for.
“Yesterday the pair skated effortlessly. These two are amazing together! What chemistry!”
The commentator on the screen cooed in excitement as snippets of their yesterday’s performance flashed across the screen. Twists. Spirals. Jumps.
Fucking Christ. No wonder her legs were so important to her.
Images flashed like polaroid through my mind.
The first night when she offered me five hundred bucks to catch her, claiming her legs were valuable.
Her odd ballet lessons. The day we met at the ice skating rink but she certainly didn’t give the impression of being a champion.
Yet, now as I watched the screen, every move on ice reflected a professional figure skater. I didn’t know jack crap about ice skating, though you didn’t need to know much to see that the performance yesterday was good.
“Let’s see what kind of show they give us today. I have a feeling it will be spectacular. And if they deliver, we’ll be seeing them tomorrow. I have no doubt these two are in the race for the gold.”
Emory snickered. “If she doesn’t win the gold medal, the Olympics are rigged.”
I watched in a daze as a woman that looked like my Wynter skated to the middle of the rink, looking like an ice princess. Or a queen.
Dante shoved a glass into my hand. “Here, sit down.”
For the first time in over a decade, I allowed someone to tell me what to do. My eyes glued to the screen, as if I was scared she’d disappear again. I watched them take their spot in the middle of the ice rink.
I watched her shake her shoulders out, take a deep breath in and then out, and then she was in the zone. Just as she was when I watched her take her ballet lessons. For fuck’s sake, I thought she was training to be a professional ballerina. Not a professional ice skater.
Star Flemming.
She gave me a different name. Wynter Star.
Her partner and she shared a glance. The audience was cheering them on. Chanting her name like they were celebrities.
Star! Star! Star!
Derek! Derek!
People were going nuts over them.
The two of them turned around at the same time to face the center of the ice. Her partner held out his hand to the side and without even glancing his way, Star put her hand in his. The two were so synchronized, almost as if they shared the same breath and same thoughts.
I fucking hated it.
Her hand pressed against her chest, her neck gracefully extended as the notes of a song came up. The music started. “Unstoppable” by Sia. I couldn’t tear my eyes off her.
She danced with him, but all I could see was her.
The music led her, her muscles relaxed as she danced expressing every single tune of the song with her movement. You felt her dance, felt her message. Fuck, she was unstoppable.
As she skated, her whole face glowed.
It made it impossible to look away from her. As if she felt every word and note of the song.
“Look at the height! Triple Lutz! And another. Look at those jumps! I have never seen such chemistry on or off the ice.”
My grip tightened around the glass and ice rattled in it, protesting. Wynter’s expression was of pure bliss. It was that expression which haunted me for the last nine months. It was the way she looked at me. Like I was her whole world.
“Wow, she’s really good,” Priest muttered.
“You think she’s boning him?” Dante asked curiously, and I wanted nothing more than to punch him.
“Speculation has been that the two of them are a couple,” Emory chimed in unhelpfully and unknowingly fed the rage boiling inside me. “She denied it, but her partner refused to confirm or deny, which feeds all the frenzy about them.”
I’ll hunt him down and kill him , I resolved.
“Impeccable triple Salchows, synchronized to perfection!” The speaker screamed, his words piercing through my brain.
I had no fucking idea what that meant. Except that she flew through the air.
She moved fast on the ice. So fast that if she fell, she’d break more than just one bone in her damn body.
“Look at that Death spiral! Amazing! These two are truly unstoppable.”
“Holy shit!” Emory exclaimed. “What a comeback!”
My sister was jumping up and down from the excitement while I felt my rage expanding in my chest, threatening to explode.
Wynter was arched backward on one foot, close to the ice as her partner spiraled her. One mistake and her skull would be split open. The next moment she flew through the air and landed on her feet. Emory’s excited screams sounded distant, the rush in my ears drowning everything out.
“Triple axel. Again, synchronized perfectly!”
They both landed at the exact same moment. As if they were one, body and soul. The way she looked on the ice took my breath away and I wasn’t even sure it was in a good way.
“Look at that throw jump.”
I fucking hated seeing her with him. His hands on her body. “These two have the most amazing chemistry I have ever seen.”
Hate slithered through my veins. Venomous and powerful. I should stop watching it before I blow a gasket.
The performance ended, the final notes of the song ending at the same exact moment as their final pose. The audience went wild. The couple on the ice panted, both of them out of breath.
Then her partner lifted her by her slim waist, twirled her in the air and then pressed a kiss on her lips. I gripped my glass like my sanity depended on it, the cracking of glass mirroring the state of my heart and soul.
The sound of breaking glass filled the room and shattered around me. Hearing the broadcaster rave about the couple felt like a blow to the stomach. It stole my breath away, turned my blood to fire, then killed something inside me. I lost it.
I reached for my gun and pulled the trigger. The TV screen sparked. Then I destroyed every goddamn thing in Emory’s living room.