Chapter 15. Ophelia #2
“Oh.” It’s not often I see emotion from Belladonna, but I sense it now. I don’t pry further, even though I’m desperate to be distracted from whatever may happen in thirty minutes’ time.
“It’s better for the family business,” she says, eventually.
“Emergency medicine?”
“Yeah. I’ll work as a doctor for the family.”
I wonder if she has much choice.
She clamps her mouth shut as we turn onto a less overgrown road. I take it as a hint that I am not someone she wants to open up to.
“How’d you get your hair so glossy?” I try.
“Genetics.”
“So, you’re telling me I shouldn’t be smearing flax seeds and bananas and coconuts on my head like that YouTube video told me?”
She bites down on a smile, glancing over at me. “Making granola on your head won’t fix shit.” She rubs the muscle in her shoulder and winces. “The beauty industry capitalizes on the stuff you can’t change. That’s why it’s still an industry.”
She may see me as an irritating fly, but I think my attachment issues and I are starting to see her as a big sister.
“Why don’t you like me?”
“You looking to do some self-improvement, or something?”
“I am,” I say, genuinely.
She laughs, rubbing her hands together like, Where do I even start? “I think you’re immature. And that’s probably harsh, because I think I was like you at your age, too. But it’s still annoying. And you’re selfish, ignorant to the way your actions affect others.”
“Like what?”
She sweeps her hand around her. “Like this. Doing this with seemingly zero thought on how it would affect Alex if something happened to you. I’m only going with you because if you went alone, you’d do something stupid like slip over and immediately get shot, and then he’d be moping around for the rest of his life. ”
She’s probably right.
I’m not used to having someone who cares.
“Maybe I’ll do something really cool, like … drop-kick them in the head.”
She laughs. “You’re literally that character in the movie that just fucking … dies.”
Great. Really filling me with confidence.
Oh God, this is a bad idea.
“I hope you and Alex can work it out,” she says, after a few minutes of silence, and I know how important he is to her, so it just might be the kindest thing she’s ever said to me.
“So do I.”
“By the end of tonight, you’ll feel ten times lighter,” she says, with the same easy confidence Alex has about his own safety.
Maybe it’s a byproduct of the dizzying combination of both money and power, but everyone at Sorrowsong seems to believe they’re invincible.
“So what’s the plan? We deal with your stalker, and then you and Alex are fixed? Just like that?”
Not fixed, but maybe we’d have a chance to start to fix it, to begin building the giant ladders we’ll need to overcome the obstacles between us.
It feels like we have these great big boulders blocking our way, that there might be a happy ending for us somewhere down the road, but neither of us can see it.
We just have to believe it’s there.
“That bad, huh?” she says, when the silence stretches on.
My fingers tighten around my seat belt when she skids round a bend way too fast. “We have a lot to adjust to. A lot of things that’ll make it difficult. But we’ll make it work. I know we will.”
The screen in front of us lights up, casting her frown and the flowers tattooed up her left arm in a blue glow. The sound of her phone ringing blares through the car speakers, cutting off whatever she was going to say.
“Dad,” she says, affectionately. “Always lovely to hear from you.”
Her father’s voice is deep, rough like he’s spent too many years smoking cigars. “Belladonna, my darling,” he begins, tone sickly sweet. “Luca has just informed me that your car isn’t in the castle parking lot.”
“He’s always been observant, that one.”
“What are you doing at four in the morning with no guards?”
“Just a favor for a friend. If we have an entourage, it won’t work.”
I try not to linger on the word friend for long, in case she takes it back.
The undercurrent of frustration in his voice is outweighed by the affection. “You turn my hair gray, Piccola.”
“I’m safe, I promise.”
“Who are you burying?”
She laughs, her usually sullen face brightening the same way Vincenzo’s does when he talks about his family. “I’ll tell you in about an hour.”
“Belladonna Luigia Francesca Morello.”
“What?”
“If I tell your mother, she’ll have your head on a platter.”
“Whoever it is, they tried to kill Alex last week.”
There’s a loaded pause, and maybe Alex’s stories of how his father treated him have scarred me, because I wait for the string of expletives, the cutting remark.
But Rocco just sighs, like this is the third time this week that Belladonna has put her life at risk.
“Don’t try anything clever. Just shoot for the heart and I’ll clean up the rest.”
Oh God. I think I’m having a panic attack.
I tune out for the rest of their conversation, staring at the inky landscape that juts above the bushes. The hills, fields, and pines of the Highlands are stained in dark shades of juniper and slate, ruffled by the wind beneath a cloudy, black sky.
Belladonna is watching me out of the corner of her eye. I’m sure she can see the panic on my face because she says, “Do you want me to turn around?”
“I don’t know.”
“I won’t let anything happen to you. Alex is family, which makes you family. I think you’re a dumbass, but he clearly doesn’t.”
“Thank you,” I whisper, picking my nails. “I’m just so tired of having this looming over me. I can’t remember the last time I actually slept. Like, properly slept.”
“So we’re doing this,” she says, finality in her tone.
She dims her headlights on the deserted road, I know we’re not far from Lochinver, because I can just about make out the lonely curve of Suilven jutting out over the hills and lochs.
The screen says we’re a few minutes away, so she slows the car to a roll, leaning forward slightly to scan every shrub, rock, and tree that we pass.
It’s eerily quiet, eerily deserted.
The location from the text takes us off the narrow road and onto a grassy plain that looks like it leads to nowhere. The wind whips around the car, churning the sea of sharp brambles and browning bracken that carpet the earth beneath us.
She turns all the lights off now, tires sinking into the marshy earth as we roll blindly toward a dense thicket of pines in the distance.
God, I hope the car doesn’t get stuck.
I don’t like this, and I can tell by the way Belladonna leans over me to open the glove box for her gun that she doesn’t like it, either.
She stops the car in the soft earth, pointing to something in the distance.
A car is parked at the edge of the trees.
“At least we haven’t been stood up,” I breathe, on a nervous laugh. I try to make out the silver car in the dark. It looks cheap, dented, and damaged. “Can you make out the license plate?”
“No. Looks like a piece of shit car. They might’ve stolen it.”
My shaking hand pulls the door handle as quietly as I can, the soft whistle of the wind infiltrating the car.
“I’m scared,” I whisper, as I push the door open.
The thought of standing face to face with my tormenter is suddenly overwhelming.
The list of suspects parade through my mind, a little procession of everyone I’ve ever pissed off.
“I’m not,” she replies, calmly. “We’ll handle it.”
“If it’s Cain?”
“It’s not. But if it is, we’ll deal with it.”
“If it’s Carmichael?”
“It won’t be. That’d be miraculously stupid of him. He loves this job.”
“Who do you think it is?”
Her eyes widen, like she’s one annoying question from leaving me to die in some thorny swamp in the Highlands. “How the fuck would I know? I hardly know you.”
“Could it be Shawn?”
“I could snap Shawn in half. Are you gonna keep naming people all morning?”
“Right. Uhh … no. I’m going.”
My boot sinks into the ground, the merciless cold sinking its fingers beneath the neck of my hoodie. “Wait here.”
Then I clutch my pen knife in my fist and push the car door shut.