Chapter Three #2
The exterior of the house is made predominantly of concrete and steel. It is designed to withstand gunfire, explosives and any number of ways that might be used to root people out.
As soon as the door closes, she arches her back, and I set her down quickly to avoid dropping her. “What are you doing?”
“You don’t need to carry me. There’s nowhere for me to go. Do you think I’m going to fight you both in a demonstration of my hand-to-hand combat skills?”
“They aren’t nonexistent,” I say. I look at Lucchino, and gesture to the wound on my face.
“Like I said—” she looks up at me “—I know how to survive. And that would include knowing when not to fight two gorillas in suits.”
Lucchino looks insulted. I don’t feel insulted, but perhaps that’s because I’ve spent several hours in her presence now, and I understand that this is simply the way she communicates.
“We will meet in the study,” I say to Lucchino. “And I will make sure that everything is secure to my standards. But first I will deal with her.”
I pick her up again, simply because I know she hates it, a reminder to her of exactly who is in charge here.
And then I head up the stairs. The inside of the house does not look like the outside.
Rather, it’s warm, and made to look like a classic villa.
There is wood trim and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, fireplaces.
All to make you forget that you are actually in the bunker.
“You…” She’s twisting and flailing in my arms, but I expect it now, so there’s no hope of her flinging herself out of my arms and down the stairs, though it seems that she’s trying her best to do so.
“You will settle down,” I say.
“Or what? If you kill me, it runs entirely counter to your goal, doesn’t it?”
“You are staying here, whether or not you want to. The manner in which you stay here will be entirely up to your behavior. If you think that I have qualms about leaving you in a single room, where I will provide you with a bedpan and a tray of food once a day, you’re incorrect.”
“One tray of food wouldn’t be enough for the baby.”
“We would make it a laden tray.”
I carry her down the hall, to a room all the way at the end. Each door in the house is also bulletproof. And handily soundproofed. So that once I lock her in there, I won’t have to listen to her indignant shouting, of which I am certain there will be much.
I open up the door, and carry her to the center of the room, where there is a large four-poster bed. I deposit her down onto it, and she howls in indignation.
“How dare you? How dare you carry me around like a sack of produce?”
“At last, you understand your value to me.”
She looks at me, her beautiful, stubborn face screwed up into an expression of mutiny.
She is altogether outraged. I know that if she had a weapon she would gladly use it against me. For the first time, I find myself grateful that she is the mother of my child. Because the child will inherit a measure of grit, that is certain.
She is also fiercely intelligent—I had a look at her school records.
But measurable intelligence, academic thought, as interesting as it might be, is not necessarily the key to survival.
It’s the creative thinking, the problem-solving that she has demonstrated throughout her life.
I believe her when she says that she has survived all those things.
She has the spirit of someone who is determined to survive anything.
I feel a modicum of guilt over having to prove to her how helpless she is in the situation.
But, I haven’t let guilt drive me in a very long time.
The way that you get out of organized crime isn’t easy.
It’s not clean, and there is no way to do it without getting blood on your hands.
I have learned to live with guilt. And I learned to silence it a long time ago.
It neither controls me, nor haunts me. It’s just an occasional reminder that while I might do a good impersonation of a sociopath, I’m not one.
It is the one thing, perhaps, that separates me from my father. “I think you will sit here quite comfortably until I’m ready to deal with you.”
“I will not—”
I ignore her. Instead, I walk out the door, close it firmly behind me and deadbolt it from the outside.
Every door can lock on both sides. But once I turn the key in the lock, she will no longer be able to set herself free.
I do, and if she screams and pitches a fit, I can no longer hear it.
That mess sorted, I head back down the stairs, where Lucchino is waiting.
“She is…not what I expected,” he says.
“What did you expect?” I ask.
“A woman who was rather more pathetic, I have to say. One who would agree to rent her body out to carry your child… I thought she would have to be a deeply tragic sort of creature. This one is…fiery.”
“Mercenary,” I say as I walk away from the base of the stairs, through the elaborate entryway and into the study, where my four other most conditionally trusted men are waiting.
“The mother of my child is safely here in residence. And you all know your responsibility. Lucchino is going to leave tonight. He is going to engage in some reconnaissance. Find out who exactly is attempting to take her. Who wants to use my child against me. What I want from you is to find out who feels like we do. That power needs to be decentralized. Returned to the people. That these empires need to be toppled, which we’re doing from the inside out by staging hostile takeovers from within. The baby is accelerating the timeline.
“The rest of you will stay here. And help make sure this place is guarded. It is better if some of us stay hidden.”
“So they can’t kill us all at once?” This came from Ronaldo, scarred and cynical, as all of us were.
“Yes.”
This was a difficult business in a difficult time. It was more than business; it was what we were all born to. Every single one of us had exited either my father’s criminal empire, or another one when we were young men. A dangerous fraternity of sorts.
The Lost Boys isn’t an entirely wrong descriptor for us. Fighting pirates, while not altogether being tame ourselves.
“And what do you wish us to do with the woman?” Paolo asks.
“If she can behave herself, then she can be given some privileges. Though at the moment, she has not proven herself trustworthy. I wouldn’t be surprised if she attempts to steal a boat and sail back to Europe. Until she is…controllable, she will have to be under close watch.”
“I was unaware that babysitting was part of the job description,” Ronaldo says.
“The job description is what I say it is. Or have you forgotten?”
“Of course, Ciro,” he says, using my first name very deliberately. “How could anyone have forgotten?”
Just because I’m not hardline like my father doesn’t mean I allow dissension in my ranks.
As he well knows. When I find Renzo, he’s as good as dead.
So while they might enjoy exercising their jaws being subordinate, they know that there’s a limit.
I’m not a man to be trifled with. I am the one that led us out of the impenetrable darkness and into the twilight that may one day have a dawn.
It’s a war. And there is a cost to war. One I’m well prepared to pay.
But one thing I vow: my child will not pay that price.
If Lindsay has to be a prisoner in this house for the next five months, then she will be. And if she thinks she can appeal to my softer side, then she will find herself sadly disappointed.
As I do not have one.