Chapter 4
Aurora
When Severu asks Elio, “Is he still alive?” I’m not sure if I actually hear or just desperately imagine the answer of “Yes” on the other end of the line.
Severu nods, though, as if confirming something, and doesn’t launch into a batch of phony condolences.
So I had to have heard correctly. Curse is alright. Or, he’s still breathing, at least.
I’m not. The relief I feel isn’t sweet or soothing.
It’s a knife through the ribs, spilling blood and stealing the air from my lungs.
I’m still seated in the car, the door open between the two Camorra men and me.
Woozily, chest contracting, I lean forward, letting my head settle heavily between my legs.
Through the sick roar of my pulse in my ears, I hear Severu continue speaking to Elio.
“We’re at my address in Rosedale. I’m sure you know the one,” he says. “I’ll keep her safe for you until such a time that you or your brother can come and fetch her.”
This time, with my ears trapped between my own knees, I don’t hear Elio’s reply. But the conversation must end, because when Severu speaks next, he’s addressing me.
“Your fiancé is alive. The Titones will be along to collect you, and I doubt they’ll make us wait too long.
” He moves closer, the shining, dark points of the toes of his leather shoes stepping into my blurred line of sight.
“However,” he continues, “I must insist that while we do wait, we do it inside the house instead of out here. I told Elio I’d keep you safe, and I can’t imagine the Titones would react particularly kindly if I let you get shot or abducted right out of my driveway now. ”
If I had a little more energy, a little more breath in my body, I’d snort bitterly at that.
The only reason he cares about me potentially getting hurt is because of how the Titones would react in response.
He doesn’t give a damn about me as a person, about my safety, about whether I actually live or die.
I’m some kind of pawn to him. Just like I’ve been to every other man in my life.
Not that I expected anything different. And at least he’s honest about it.
Strangely, it makes me actually trust him a tiny bit more.
Whatever Severu’s goals in this situation, ultimately, he doesn’t want to piss off Elio and Curse.
If he wants to avoid me getting hurt out here, then I doubt he’d have any reason to hurt me inside the house, either.
At least in this moment, he seems more business-like than blood-thirsty.
Like he’s weighing up my care and safety against everything else that’s happened tonight, and coming to the conclusion that damaging me would come with a very big price-tag attached, one that he isn’t willing to pay.
But is that enough of a reason to follow him inside his house?
Then again, he does have a point about staying out here. If the Titones haven’t found or captured Alessandro, there’s no way to know if or when he will show up again. He could appear any second.
If I have to choose between Alessandro finding me outside or going inside with the Serpico strangers before me…
I know which choice to make.
Swallowing thickly, I lift my head. I take a breath that’s meant to steel me but instead just makes me quiver weakly. Pathetic. I have to be stronger. I have to survive this night so that I can get back to him.
Two sets of hands reach for me – the same but different.
They’re the same size; shaped the same way with the same long, almost elegant fingers; and holding themselves in such identical postures that I once again think that they must belong to a father and his son.
But one set of hands – Luca’s – is heavily tattooed, while Severu’s isn’t.
“I’ve got it,” I rasp, getting to my feet.
I don’t wobble or fall over, so both men seem content to let their hands drop.
For now. But they take other precautions, caging me in on either side as we walk up the rest of the long driveway, then a gravel path, towards the huge, solid-wood front door of the mansion.
Every step makes the tender place between my legs sting with the memory of what Curse and I have done.
It feels like it happened a lifetime ago. To someone else entirely.
At the front door, Severu remains close at my side while Luca moves a bit ahead, using a security code on a pad and a set of keys to unlock, then open, the door.
The breathless quiet of Severu’s wealthy neighbourhood at night gets punctured, like a pen driven through a balloon.
Noise crashes over me in layers it takes me a few seconds to fully untangle.
There’s music, voices, laughter, clinking glasses, and a clattering sound that has to be billiard balls.
Two tall men are stationed immediately inside the door, and they nod deferentially to Severu and Luca before their gazes snag on me.
“We’ve got a guest tonight,” Severu drawls, unbuttoning his exquisitely-tailored jacket and handing it to one of the waiting men. “Everybody must be on their best behaviour.”
“Everybody” consists of more men than just these two by the door.
Ahead and slightly to the left, there’s a huge open room with chairs, a bar, and a pool table.
Gathered there are about ten or maybe twelve more people – some holding drinks, some holding lit cigars, some holding pool cue sticks.
Scents of scotch and smoke and cologne and sweat drift through the air.
There’s not a single woman here besides myself.
I prickle with anxious awareness at that, like vastly outnumbered prey, but after the men give me the once over and share a few whispered words among themselves, they seem happy enough to return to their previous raucous activities.
Severu is clearly the leader among them.
No one has questioned him about who I am.
And I have a feeling – or I hope, at least – that no one will truly bother me while I am here.
Not with Curse Titone’s name attached to me, anyway.
As if to prove how little my appearance here matters, one of the men in the room ahead sends billiard balls scattering fantastically across the velvet surface of the pool table, causing a commotion of cheering, jeering, and swearing to break out among the group.
“Excuse me!” A high, feminine voice drags my gaze from the men to an ornately carved wooden staircase beyond.
I was wrong about being the only woman here.
Because I see one now. She hustles down the steps, clutching a long white skirt with one hand, bare toes peeking out from beneath its lacy hem.
In her other hand is a small hardcover book.
“Excuse me!” she says again, louder this time. She doesn’t stop when she reaches the bottom of the stairs, continuing onward resolutely, holding her book aloft, her skirt – which I now see is part of a long white nightgown – rippling with her movements.
“I am trying to read!” she snaps at the men in the room.
She holds her book up even higher, sending light skittering across the spidery typeface of the title on the cover.
The Castle of Otranto. I’ve studied books and worked in the Buffalo Library system long enough to recognize it at once.
It’s considered by most to have been the first gothic novel ever written.
A sordid story of unburied bones and ghosts, marriage trysts and mayhem.
Strangely, the woman holding the book appears as if she’s pulled herself right out of its pages.
She looks like some ancient Italian princess with her bizarrely old-fashioned nightgown and thick chestnut waves that fall all the way to her waist.
“Good, Fia, you’re awake,” Severu says. “Fiametta is my younger sister,” he explains to me. “She can keep you comfortable here while we wait for you fiancé’s arrival.”
At the sound of Severu’s voice, Fiametta turns towards us, lowering the book.
Getting a good look at her from the front does nothing to dispel the anachronistic nature of her appearance.
If anything, she just seems even more misplaced in time.
Her oval face is pale and pretty, with a small, heart-shaped pink mouth and absorbing dark eyes that seem to gaze out at me as if from some masterful painting.
Her hair is parted in the centre, falling in heavy lines about her shoulders and down her back, and the nightgown is ruffled and lacy, the neckline buttoned all the way up to her chin.
The only bright colour in her outfit is a thin scarlet ribbon neatly tied around her throat, the bow of it a bloodied butterfly.
“Your sister?” I echo. She doesn’t look much like Severu. And she’s much younger – maybe even two decades younger than him. She can’t be out of her early twenties, if that.
“Yes,” Severu responds. He faces Fiametta and gestures to me.
“This is…” Hesitating, he tilts his head.
In the light of the house, I can see the shape and structure of his face so much more clearly.
He’s sinfully handsome. But his beauty leaves me cold.
“Well, I haven’t had the pleasure of learning your name quite yet, have I?
” He tries again. “This is Curse Titone’s fiancé. ”
Fiametta’s eyebrows dart upwards, and the men in the other room go still once more.
“Oh, now you’re quiet,” Fiametta tosses at them over her shoulder as she pads across the floor to us, soundless on her sockless, shoeless feet.
“Curse Titone’s fiancé,” she murmurs, coming to a stop before me.
While she doesn’t bear much of a resemblance to her vastly older brother, when she tilts her head, it’s eerily similar to the gesture I just saw from him.
“Is that your real hair colour?” she asks somewhat abruptly.
I blink. Is this for real?