Chapter 11
Curse
“Where are you?” Elio asks the moment I answer the phone.
“Montreal,” I tell him.
I hear him sigh between his teeth.
“And where have you been the past couple of days?”
“Just outside of Montreal,” I say. It’s not really a lie, I guess. But Elio’s too smart for my shit.
“Marco Messina is dead,” he says. “Got his fucking throat slit on his wedding night, and something tells me he didn’t just fall neck-first onto his own fucking knife.”
“Well,” I say, leaning back against the door I’ve just shut, “technically, he did fall…”
“You’ve got her, don’t you.” He doesn’t even bother phrasing it like a question.
“Who?” I reply blithely, knowing the person he means is currently sitting inside the vehicle I’m leaning up against. I don’t mind leaving her in there for a few minutes. It’s got bullet-proof glass windows. Just like the house.
“For fuck’s sake, Curse. Aurora fucking Bianchi. Don’t play dumb with me. You and I both know there’s nobody else who could have gotten into that house that night and killed him.” He mutters something under his breath in Italian. “I should have known you’d pull a stunt like this.”
“Why should you have known?” I ask, honestly curious. Because for most of my life so far, I never actually planned to do anything like this. I always thought that I’d let Aurora live her happy little life somewhere very far away from me.
“Because you’ve been in love with her since we were all dumbass little kids, that’s why.”
My breath punches out of me.
In love. I don’t even know what the words fucking mean. Maybe I was capable of such a thing once.
Not anymore.
“No,” I say. The word sounds strangely rusty. Like a nail that’s been lodged in my throat too long, and Elio’s just yanked it out with plyers.
“Yeah. Sure,” he says with a sardonic laugh. “Same shit I used to tell myself about Deirdre. Told myself that I was just possessive of her. That I wanted to own her. Not to love her. Meanwhile, I would have cut my fucking heart out and handed it to her on a platter if she fucking asked me to.”
I don’t answer. Because while I’m sure he’s right about himself and his own feelings towards his once-prisoner, now-wife, he’s dead-wrong about mine.
“Before my wedding, you told me,” he says, suddenly serious, “that you would never get married. Because of her.”
I remember the conversation well. When I told Elio I’d never marry.
Still her, huh? he’d asked.
Still her, I’d answered.
Her. The only woman I’ve ever thought about on a daily fucking basis. The only woman I’ve ever dreamed about. I don’t even dream about my own fucking mamma.
But I still dream about Aurora.
Still. Fucking. Her.
But that’s not love. That’s obsession.
Love requires things that I do not fucking possess. A shred of goddamn humanity, for starters.
“I didn’t kill Messina and then steal her so I could marry her instead,” I hiss into the phone. And that’s true. I still don’t have a fucking clue what I’m going to do with her going forward.
“You might have to,” Elio says, and so casually, too, as if he isn’t making a bomb go off inside me with his words.
“Explain,” I grit out.
“From what I’m hearing,” he replies, “New York is in fucking shambles right now. Everybody’s pointing fingers at each other, trying to figure out who killed Messina and took his bride. The other bosses are at each other’s throats. And Alessandro Messina has vowed to track Aurora down.”
“Alessandro Messina?” That’s Marco’s adult son from his first marriage. Technically, I guess he would have been Aurora’s step-son, even though I’m fairly certain he’s five or ten years older than her. “Why? What does he want with her?”
“He wants Buffalo,” Elio says. “He wants everything Aurora’s papà bestowed upon her husband.”
“Yes,” I say, frustration climbing up my ribs. “Bestowed upon her husband. Her papà is dead and Marco got everything. She’s worthless to them now.”
Worthless to everyone but me.
“Not quite,” Elio says. “Apparently, there’s some upset over the transfer of assets.
Marco was never specifically named in Bianchi’s will.
In the event of his death, everything goes to Aurora, to be transferred to her husband after one month of marriage.
But it never says who that husband has to be. ”
Shit. Shit.
“So you’re telling me,” I say, dragging my free hand through my hair, “that all of the Bianchi wealth, business, and power is currently in Aurora’s name? And that it will stay that way until she’s been married to somebody for a month?”
“Precisely so.”
Well, this certainly fucking complicates things. I don’t give a shit whether Aurora has money or not. I don’t care if she’s a penniless, nameless nobody or the Queen of fucking England. It was never business that made me take her.
But it will be nothing but business for the men who will no doubt be coming for her. She’s got a Buffalo-sized target on her back that I didn’t even fucking know was there until now.
“The way I see it,” Elio says, cutting into the raging buzz of my thoughts. “You have two options. The first option involves hiding Aurora away somewhere lonely and isolated for the rest of her days. Maybe we could get her set up somewhere in Ireland, now that we’ve got connections there.”
“Absolutely not.”
I’m not sending her to another continent. Not unless I can go with her, and I doubt Elio would tolerate my absence here for long.
“That brings us to your second option.”
“Which is?”
“You marry her. Give her a ring and give her our name. If you manage to keep yourselves alive for a month, then everything will transfer to you. Of course,” he adds, “that doesn’t mean that you’ll be safe. But at least it’ll mean that you’re the new target going forward. Not her.”
“That choice works out alright for you, too,” I say, narrowing my eyes.
“Sure it does,” Elio says easily, without any guilt or shame.
“I won’t say that having an American connection, and all that Buffalo business, under Titone control wouldn’t be a boon to us.
But that isn’t why I’m suggesting this course of action.
I’m suggesting it because I know what Aurora means to you, even if you don’t know it yourself.
And, frankly, I don’t even want to know what kind of carnage you’d unleash if she was ripped away from you now. ”
I don’t speak. It’s hard to breathe.
“Then again,” Elio says, “there is a third option. You could always give her to Alessandro Messina, or let one of the New York big shots have her as their wedded wife. I have a feeling they’d be a lot more forgiving about the fact you slit Marco’s throat if you’re happily handing them the keys to Buffalo in return.
One of his enemies would probably even pat you on the back for a job well done. ”
“You’re fucking kidding.”
“I am,” he replies at once, though there’s no hint of laughter in his voice. “It’s option one or option two, Curse. You’ve got your choice to make. But fucking make it. And make it quick.”
The line goes dead.