Chapter 44 Bambalina
Bambalina
I wake to the sensation of someone slapping my face. As my consciousness returns, I’m aware of a weight over my back and now my thighs. My vision clears enough for me to see another blanket over my legs and a second one across my shoulders. The room is still so cold, my breath curls in front of me.
My gaze drags to the edge of the room, where the three Russian men are standing, One is smoking a cigarette, making smoke rings in the dull air.
One is scrolling through a phone. The other is leaning back against the wall, his arms folded across his chest, watching me, with his lip ticked up in one corner, like he’s enjoying the view.
When our eyes meet, he pushes himself off the wall. The eyes of the other two men follow him and my heartbeat picks up erratically. Less than two feet away, he crouches in front of me.
“You know why you’re here, little princess?” His accent is thick.
I shake my head, nervously.
He tips his head to one side and curls his lips under. “You’re bait,” he sneers.
The man blowing smoke rings drops his gaze with a grunt. “Not tasty enough, unfortunately.”
I look across at him, expecting him to elaborate but he doesn’t. He doesn’t need to. It’s clear what he means. No one’s coming for me.
“What do you want?” I whisper, my lips quivering.
The man crouched before me presses a harsh finger to my face, turning my head toward him. “Your brother has something we want.”
My brother? Nicolò? What could Nicolò possibly have that the Russians want? We’re the ones defending New York against them. They’ve had the upper hand all along. That’s why they killed Alessio. Isn’t it?
“And we know he is more than a brother to you… So, we are exchanging it for something he wants,” the man finishes with a smug, yellow-toothed smile.
My mouth dries completely. Of all the people in my life, how do the Russians know our secret? Did Alessio say something to them after Ria showed him my sheets?
The man with the phone barks out a laugh. “But he won’t get what he wants. Video first… girl later. Maybe.”
Video? My stomach drops. What video? Nicolò has never mentioned a video to me.
But then again, I’ve never asked him about his ‘work’ and he has never openly talked about it.
The closest I’ve ever come to understanding the inner workings of our family is when I was promised to Alessio.
Even then, my understanding of why and what was going on was extremely limited.
The man with the cigarette drops it to the floor and crushes it beneath a heavy boot, then approaches me from behind. I can no longer see him, but I can feel him. The weight of his presence presses up against my spine.
“Do you know how many men your lover has killed for you?” he whispers. “Do you know what kind of monster you’ve been living with?”
“Nicolò doesn’t kill for me,” I whisper, hoarsely.
“Doesn’t he?” the fair one says softly. “He killed Dario because he gave us information about your family. About you.”
The room tilts and I shake my head. “Nicolò didn’t kill him. My stepbrother is better than that. One of his soldiers did it.”
The man with the phone coughs bitterly and mutters something thickly in Russian. In two strides, he’s by the fair man’s side, holding his phone up to my face. The picture is clear as night and day, my expert eye sure there’s been no tampering.
Nicolò, dressed impeccably in the suit he wore when he drove us to Alessio’s house, is standing over Dario’s body leaking blood onto the ground, and staring into the camera, his expression a severe warning.
I have to blink several times in disbelief. How could he do that? How could Nicolò jeopardize everything at such a critical moment? If he killed Dario for me, why do the Russians have this picture?
My head is swimming and nausea settles in the pit of my stomach.
He lied to me. He swore he didn’t do it, but he did. And he lied to my face, smoothly, like lying was second nature to him.
The man slides the phone into his pocket and the deep voice from behind me returns to my ear. “And then he killed your fiancé.”
My whole body vibrates with shock.
“No,” I whisper. “You people killed Alessio. Nicolò told me. It was you who did it—Russians.”
“That is what he wanted you to think.” The fair man looks up at me with a sorrowful frown. “But, Alessio and his underboss were both killed by your lover. For you.” He watches my face change, blood draining, as the truth penetrates my skin. “Always for you.”
A sickening weight sinks through my ribs.
“No,” I say again, my voice crisper now. But my head is spinning and the walls are closing in rapidly. “Nicolò wouldn’t… He doesn’t kill people for me. I hate violence. He knows that.”
“That’s the point,” the man behind me murmurs. “He hides everything from you. Because he knows you’d break.”
The room is whirling now and my hands are tied so tightly, I can’t grip onto anything.
Nausea blooms in my stomach, rushing up my throat, and I vomit onto the man’s shoes.
He leaps backward, cursing in Russian, and I vomit again in the spot where he’d been crouching.
My throat hurts from the suddenness of it all and I cough and cry as the last retches shatter my entire being.
Nicolò’s face flashes behind my eyelids. His dark grey eyes and that soft smile I’ve never seen him give to anyone else. His promises to make me his and to never hurt let me go. Your life before mine. Always.
I collapse in the chair, crying hysterically. How could he do this to me? To us? He’s broken everything we had, and for what? Jealousy?
He killed them.
He killed them.
For me.
Two men have lost their lives, because of me. Two men who might have committed crimes, might even have killed people themselves, but had never lifted a finger to me, are dead. And it’s all my fault.
I try to breathe through the tears but the air won’t stay in my lungs.
And Nicolò lied to me. How can I ever trust him again? Assuming he and my brother-in-law do try to come after me. But, as is becoming clearer with each fractious beat of my heart, the Di Santo’s are ruthless. All of them. Why the hell would they care if I were dead?
The stench of my vomit fills the freezing air, my body weaker for having expelled it.
The lights above me quiver like waves, and the room topples to one side.
And then it all goes black.