Chapter 12
Twelve
There is an awful lot of waiting. I’m not good with waiting. Never have been. The revelations that have come forward in the past two weeks are enough to make any soap opera’s head spin. A mafia telenovela.
And here I sit, just waiting.
Waiting for what, I’m not sure.
Not that the break from whatever Vitali has stuck in his panties regarding my brother isn’t nice, but it almost feels like a calm before the storm. Serene waters create a false sense of security before what’s underneath drags you into the depths of the sea.
It’s been several days, and I’ve barely caught a glimpse of Vitali. Dario is always around, keeping a distrustful eye on me, but that is it. Evaline is still healing and Vanya returned with Adrian’s second to Las Vegas to make sure the opening of her woman’s shelter goes smoothly.
So, it’s been just me, and my best friend boredom.
We’re besties.
“We can’t just wage war, Adrian,” Vitali’s thunderous voice booms through the walls as the elevator opens into the penthouse. “Even if we came up with a plan, we don’t have the numbers to stand against Salvatore’s army. He has the entire Italian-based mafia at his disposal.”
Fear clutches my lungs at the mention of Vitali’s uncle, causing my breath to catch in my throat. Even an ocean away, he still has that control over me.
“I’ve been keeping an eye on his operations, and he doesn’t have as much loyalty as you think,” Adrian tells him. He’s right. Salvatore De Luca has burned too many bridges by stabbing his allies in the back. Many of his men have left over the years, and the ones my father brings in to replace them are practically children.
“You can’t know that for sure,” Vitali growls. He stomps into the kitchen and grabs a bottle of water from the fridge. Angrily, he unscrews the cap and downs its contents like he is chugging beer at a frat hall. “You heard what my mother said. They are just going to keep coming at us.”
None of the men seem to have noticed that I am in the room. If they did, I doubt they would be talking around me so freely.
“Not if we hit them all at the same time.”
Vitali throws up his hands in frustration. “We don’t even know who they are.”
“We don’t,” Kenzo admits candidly. I wonder if I can sneak out without them noticing or thinking I’ve been spying on them. “But her brother might.”
Halfway up from the couch, I freeze, eyes wide as I stare at the three of them like a deer caught in headlights. Kenzo has his thumb pointing directly at me as if he’s known I’ve been there all along. Adrian and Vitali turn to face me, their eyes narrowed.
“Sure,” Vitali drawls. “Let’s trust the man who tried to assassinate me. ”
What? Elio would never do that. It’s suicide. I’m smart enough to keep my trap shut on that little comment. Something tells me Vitali wouldn’t appreciate me defending my brother right now.
“Why not?” Adrian ponders as he comes to take a seat in one of the chairs across from me. His gaze meets mine, hard and unrelenting. “Where is your brother, Gia?”
My gaze bounces between him and Vitali, who is rolling his eyes like some petulant child.
“She isn’t going to tell you anything,” he tells Adrian. “If my belt on her ass couldn’t get her to spill his whereabouts, I doubt you’ll have any better luck.”
Is my face on fire? It feels like it is. Heat spreads up my neck at his casual mention of the spanking he gave me on the plane.
“I don’t know.” It is a whispered truth. I have no idea where Elio is. If I did, I wouldn’t have been stuck in that cabin with letting my sell-by-date approach without doing something more. Vitali scoffs and shoots Adrian a look that screams, I told you so .
“You don’t know, or you don’t want to tell us?” Kenzo asks from where he is perched on a stool near the bar. “Make that distinction very quickly or else we might think of other methods to gain that information. They won’t be as pleasant as Vitali’s belt, trust me.”
“I already told Vitali,” I pressed, unable to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “If I knew where Elio was, I wouldn’t have been in that fucking cabin starving and freezing to death. He was supposed to be back in a week. He never showed.”
Vitali scoffs. “He was never going to come back for you, Gia,” he sneers. “Your brother would have known that taking me on as a target would result in his death, not mine. He left you there. Like a coward.”
Tears spring to my eyes at his cruel words. He doesn’t know. Doesn’t understand. If Elio took a contracted hit on Vitali, it meant he was forced to.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I sniff, refusing to let the asshole see me cry. Vitali shakes his head dismissively.
“And you do?” he asks angrily. “How long did you know Elio before he left you? A month? Two? Did you ever ask him why he decided to rescue you from your father?” He mockingly puts up air quotes when he says the word rescue. “The power in your cabin had been purposely cut, Gia. It didn’t just get shut off. Someone knew you were there and wanted you to die in that cabin, alone.”
I shake my head, my face hot with disbelief, as his words, sharp and indifferent, slice through the air between us. His expression remains unchanged, eyes cold and unyielding. No, he wouldn’t do that. Elio came for me because we are family. My eyes sting, the tears pushing harder to escape the bars I’m holding them behind.
“If no one else knew you were there, Gia,” Vitali continues coldly. “It means that it had to be Elio. We barely managed to find that godforsaken piece of land, I doubt anyone else did.”
“You’re lying,” I hiccup. Damn, there go the tears. “He wouldn’t do that to me. Why would he seek me out and then kill me? Why would he risk everything and then abandon me? It doesn’t make any sense. You’re just trying to get me to hate him so that I feel some sense of loyalty to you. It won’t work, Vitali De Luca. Your family may have betrayed you, but that doesn’t mean mine did.”
Vitali snorts, crossing his arms against his chest, and stares down at me as if I am the dirt beneath his shoe. “At least my father never tried to sell me to gain favor.”
That stings more than it should.
A lot more.
“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Adrian interrupts with a growl. He turns his attention back to me. “You are going to tell us everything, Gia. You may not know where your brother is, but you know something. Faro is your father. Salvatore’s sottocapo . Don’t pretend like you’ve never overhead information you shouldn’t have.”
Information you shouldn’t have.
That is the problem. Growing up, I heard many things that could have gotten me killed. Then my father learned about my newfound skillset.
“Look—” Licking my bottom lip uncomfortably, I then bite into the soft flesh to the point of pain as I attempt to figure out what to tell them. How to tell them? There is a lump lodged in my throat that I can’t swallow. My hands are clammy, and I wipe the sweat off on my leggings, nervously running them up and down my thighs. Taking a deep breath to settle my anxiety, I lift my gaze to Vitali. “They call you il traditore del sangue .”
Vitali flinches at the name. Kenzo and Adrian narrow their eyes in confusion.
“It means blood traitor ,” Vitali explains, his face pale beneath his Italian coloring. His friends’ expressions darken.
“What the fuck?” Kenzo curses. “The only blood traitor is that fucker Salvatore and those who willingly followed him after he stuck a knife in your father’s back.”
That can’t be right. Everyone knows that Vitali killed his own father to become Don, murdering several of the upper echelon. My father told me the story. Said he barely escaped with his life. I’ve seen the scars from the bombing.
“Not everyone knows what my father was planning.” Vitali shakes his head, rubbing his temples in frustration. “Everyone who knew about Salvatore’s treachery was killed in the bombing. You can spin whatever story you like when you’re the only one left alive.”
“Your mother and sister are still alive,” Adrian hisses. “They know.”
This is a can of worms that should probably stay closed. In fact, I’m almost positive that it would be better left untouched. At the best of times, I’ve never been known for my restraint. And this is definitely one of those times.
“Your mother is one of the reasons so many of your father’s men follow Salvatore,” I blurt out. Three pairs of eyes are back to focusing on me.
Vitali’s face darkens like a thundercloud on a stormy day.
“What did you just say?” The color drains from my face, and I stare at him wide-eyed in fear at the outright vitriol his tone conveys.
“Vitali,” Kenzo warns, but there isn’t any true heat behind it because if his friend chooses to hurt me, he won’t stand in the way. Their allegiance is to Vitali, not me. I’m alone in the lion’s den without any allies. The way it has always been.
“When your father was killed, she was the one who told everyone what happened,” I rush to tell him. “She spread the story of how you stabbed him in the back due to jealousy. How he planned to turn the throne over to Salvatore because he didn’t think you were ready.”
“That’s bullshit,” Adrian spits out. “Everyone knows that Salvatore has always been salty over the fact that his brother was given the reins over the mafia.”
Swallowing hard, I shrug, unsure of the family dynamics of the past. I was barely seven years old when everything happened, and my world was turned upside down. My mother died that day, in the bombing that took out Aurelio De Luca’s top men. Any love I might have experienced growing up died that day with her.
“Salvatore forced her to spin his tale,” Vitali sneers as he paces the length of the back of the couch. The vein in his temple is jumping, and he clutches at his hair in frustration. “That has to be it.”
Adrian and Kenzo exchange a doubtful glance that doesn’t go unnoticed by their friend.
“You think she betrayed my father? Betrayed me?” The sorrow in his voice cuts deep. All this time, I doubt he ever believed her to be an accomplice in Salvatore’s story. She’s his mother, but if the ordeal with Kenzo’s own mother Megumi tells us anything it is that betrayal can come from the most unlikely of places when power and money are involved.
“It is always something I’ve thought to be off the table,” Kenzo admits. “But”
“No offense, Kenzo, but my parents weren’t an arranged marriage. They were a love match,” Vitali interrupts coldly. “She didn’t come from prestige or wealth. Hell, she didn’t even know who he truly was until he proposed.”
Kenzo’s mouth turns down at the edges. I can see the apology written in his eyes, but that doesn’t stop him from speaking his truth. “That doesn’t mean that something didn’t change over time or that you were told the whole story.”
“Do you know who has the whole story?” Vitali mocks. “ No one, because they are all dead except your mother who can’t be trusted with the information she’s given us.”
Kenzo shrugs his shoulders as if to say, that’s fair . The three of them remain silent as they mull over what they’ve learned. They haven’t asked me any new questions and unless they do, I’m not inclined to simply give answers. I never expected the conversation to take a sudden turn when I mentioned what Vitali is known as in his home country. It eats at me that he hasn’t been aware of the rumors that Salvatore and his mother spread to gain favor.
“Maybe there is someone who knows the truth,” Adrian breaks the silence. “Someone who knew our parents growing up. A person who would have attended Royal Elite when they did.”
Their conversation floats to me across the room, a jumbled mess of facts and figures, names and faces. They fail to make sense as I listen, intermittently catching a phrase or two. Whatever school they are referencing, I’ve never heard of it. From what I can gather, it is some kind of Mafia college for heirs and made-men.
“Tomas Ivankov.” Adrian snaps his fingers as he calls out the name. “He would have gone to Royal Elite at the same time as our parents.”
A prickling sensation, like the stroke of a whetted blade, courses through me at the sound of his name. My blood runs cold, plunging calm demeanor into an arctic chill. Growing up, I heard whispers, stories that painted him as a phantom in the night. I’uomo nero . The boogeyman. A tale to scare children of the upper echelon of the mafia from misbehaving. Until, one day, I found out the boogeyman was real.
I remember the last time I saw him—his dark eyes gleaming with a malice that could make even the strong quiver in fear. The memory frays my nerves, stings like salt poured onto my gaping wounds. My heart tightens, my vision blurs for a moment as his name sears itself into my mind, underlined by past horrors and looming threats.
Tomas Ivankov might be a hero to many, but to me, he is just another man who stole my innocence too soon. A monster. A murderer. And Vitali is ready to drag me back to the hell I managed to escape.