Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Nathalie
"No — no—"
I wake up gasping. My hands are out in front of me and my heart is going so fast it hurts and I sit there in the dark trying to remember where I am and what is real and then I see the glow of a cigarette and I follow it up to his face.
He is sitting beside the bed, shirtless, watching me with those pale eyes through thin smoke. The bandaging at his chest is white against his skin, stark and clean against the tattoos that cover most of the rest of him.
My shoulders drop.
"You're okay," I breathe in relief.
"Are you disappointed?" he replies, and brings the cigarette to his mouth.
I look at him and I don't answer because I don't trust what comes out if I do.
I remember the knife going in. I remember the way he had looked at me in that half-second before he fell, that strange, unguarded expression, and I remember the bottom dropping out of my chest and not being able to explain it, not to Renzo's men who were grabbing my arms, not to myself, not to anyone.
I am not disappointed. That is its own problem.
I try to swing my legs off the bed and find I can't. I look down. A chain runs from my left ankle to the bed frame, light but sturdy, enough length to stand and move but not enough to go anywhere meaningful.
I look up at him.
He lifts one shoulder, unrepentant. "I can't have you running again, princess." The cigarette hangs from the corner of his mouth in a way that has no right to look the way it looks. "You might actually kill me next time."
He stubs the cigarette out and reaches for the tray on the nightstand. There is food on it and before I can reach for it myself he takes the fork and holds it out toward me.
I look at it. Then at him.
"I can feed myself."
"I know," he replies, and waits.
I open my mouth. He feeds me and I eat because I am hungry. Arguing about it costs more than it's worth this morning. He gives me water and then he wipes my mouth with a cloth and his fingers stay at my lips a minute longer than necessary and his eyes come up to mine.
"I don't want to keep you here," he says. "But your father needs to pay what he owes."
"He's not coming." The words come out flat because I have stopped dressing them up, at least in here, at least with myself.
I have been turning it over for days and the shape of it doesn't change no matter how I approach it.
Alana is a coward and she would have told Gerald the moment the pressure became inconvenient, and Gerald would have told my father, and my father would have looked at whatever information landed on his desk and made a calculation and the calculation would not have landed in my favor.
He is probably relieved. One less thing in his vision, asking for his attention.
I look at him.
"He doesn't care about me," I say. "He never has. Not after my mother died." I pause. "You can use me as collateral. I won't fight it. But I have one condition."
He watches me.
"Want me," I say. "Look at me. Pay attention to me.
" I hear how it sounds and I keep going anyway because I am past the point of protecting my dignity about this.
"I know how pathetic that is. The closest thing I have to a friend is a cousin who actively dislikes me and you are, genuinely, the only person who has looked me in the eye for longer than I can remember.
" I hold his gaze. "I won't run again. I'll wait here until you sort whatever you need to sort with my father. But until then, be good to me."
He is quiet for a moment.
"Princess," he says, and his voice is soft in the way that means nothing gentle, "I can kill you right here. What cards do you think you're holding?"
I lean forward. "You need me alive. And I can hurt myself."
His face changes. Something pulls tight behind his eyes and I file it away.
Someone needs me alive. Someone needs me in one piece. I have not felt that in a very long time and the fact that the someone in question is my kidnapper is a conversation I will have with myself at a later date.
"Audacious," he says. "I'll give you that." His voice hardens. "I don't like being threatened."
"It's not a threat." I reach up and cup his jaw and I feel him go still beneath my hand. "It's a plea. I don't know you and I don't know what any of this is but—"
He pulls back.
"Then beg for it," he says.
I stare at him.
He leans in and the softness is entirely gone now, replaced with something sharp and deliberate and almost cruel. "You're a pathetic rich girl that nobody likes, aren't you?"
He almost smiles. "That's why you're asking your kidnapper to want you. That's quite low, princess. Really low." He tilts his head. "You can go lower. Beg for it. Tell me how good you'll be for my crumbs. How badly do you want someone to love you since your daddy doesn't?"
I try to pull back. His hand clutches my chin.
"Say it," he murmurs.
His eyes are very close and very still and I can feel his breath and the tears that sting my eyes are humiliation and exhaustion and something older and more fundamental than either and I am so tired of holding all of it in rooms where no one is watching.
"I'll be good," I say, and my voice shakes on it. "I'll do anything. Just look at me."
He kisses me, biting down on my lips gently. My eyes flutter shut and he pulls back and kisses the tears off my face, my cheeks, the corner of my eye, and the tenderness of it after the cruelty of the last sixty seconds makes me shudder.
He pulls back and looks at me.
"That's more like it," he says quietly. "I like this deal, princess. We can work with this."
Then he winces.
I look down. A small dark bloom is spreading through the white bandaging at his chest and I feel my stomach turn over.
"You need to change the dressing," I tell him.
"I know." He stands. "Since you've promised to behave, you can move through the house. But the chain stays on and if you try anything," he holds my gaze, "my men will not hesitate."
I nod.
A knock at the door brings the doctor and behind him a man I haven't seen before, though I have the sense, from the way he positions himself in the room, that he is not staff in any conventional sense.
He is around thirty, lean, and carries himself with dignity.
His eyes move over me with an assessment that is thorough and not particularly warm.
"I'll take her while you're seen to," he says, and it is not quite a question. The man turns to me and gestures toward the door with brisk courtesy. "This way."
I walk beside him through the corridor, the chain at my ankle making a soft sound against the floor with every step, and I look at the house properly for the first time.
It is old. The thick stone walls and high ceilings and windows have been here longer than anyone currently living in it, but the interior is modern, with clean lines and dark materials, and the kind of lighting that is cold. It is a strange combination and it shouldn't work as well as it does.
"This is the Don's residence, Don Luca, the man who brought you here," the man beside me says, without looking at me. "Luca Di Meglio is the Don of the Las Vegas Italian family. That means this city, everything that moves through it or operates within it, answers to him."
Luca, that's his name. Funny how I never thought to ask. And he wasn't a con man or kidnapper. He was Mafioso. My father was doing business deals with a mafia man. I should be terrified of his identity.
"You're his right-hand man?" I ask.
He glances at me sideways. "His brother," he replies. "Renzo Lotti."
I look at him. "I get the feeling you don't like me."
"How did you guess?" Renzo answers, in a tone so dry it could sand wood.
"I don't want anything from him," I say. "I don't care who he is or what any of this is. I just want to get through this and go home."
Renzo makes a short sound that isn't quite a laugh.
"What?" I ask.
"Nothing." He resumes walking.
"What?"
He stops and turns to look at me properly for the first time and his expression is caught between exasperation and reluctance.
"You stabbed him," he says. "He's walking around with stitches in his chest and a fresh bandage and he carried you back to his room himself. "He looks like he wants to say more but
he looks at me for one more second and then he looks away. "Never mind," he replies, and starts walking again.
I follow him.
"I won't hurt him," I say to his back. "Or anyone else. Whatever deal he has with my father, I won't interfere. He can use me however he needs to."
"I don't care what you and he have," Renzo replies, without turning. "As long as you know what you are in this house. A bargaining chip. Nothing more."
He signals to a maid at the end of the corridor and tells her to take me to the garden and then he turns and walks back the way we came without another word.
The garden is large and overgrown at the edges in a way that suggests someone planted it with intention a long time ago and the intention has since been redirected elsewhere.
There are roses along the far wall, still going despite the lack of attention, and a stone bench near the center where I sit and tip my face up toward the sky.
I suddenly remember my crystal. I had probably left it at the hotel in the chaos of being taken and in the weeks since I had barely thought of it, which is strange because for the two years before this, it had barely left my person.
I look up at the pale sky above the garden wall.
I think about asking Luca if he could help me get the crystal back. When he is in a reasonable mood, which is not a mood I have yet successfully identified or predicted, but presumably it exists. He would probably say no. He seems like a man who defaults to no as a matter of principle.
But it was worth asking. I lower my eyes to the roses along the wall and I think about what comes after this.
When Luca has done whatever he needs to do with my father and the deal is resolved and I am returned to wherever returned looks like.
My father will be furious. He will blame me for the exposure, for the inconvenience, for the disruption to the campaign.
Gerald will look at me and I will understand from it that my access to the correspondence is finished.
I will ask to go abroad. A program, maybe a placement, something with enough distance between myself and New York that the absence is geographically justifiable rather than just quietly sad.
He will agree because I will be out of his way and that is all he has ever wanted from me. I look up at the sky again and I say it quietly, to the garden and to no one, to the space where someone should be and isn't.
"I give up, Mom." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "He's never going to like me."
The roses move slightly in a wind I can't feel from the bench. I sit there for a while longer and let the quiet be what it is.