Chapter Sixteen
Vittoria
Groaning. I tried to open my eyes, but even the dim light was blinding, sparking waves of nausea.
Rolling onto my side, I vomited onto the moldy straw covering the cold concrete floor. I managed to get myself to a half seated position, and held my head in my hands until the room stopped spinning.
Deep breaths, Vittoria. Where am I?
The last thing I remembered was arguing with Leo and Carlo and then nothing. They must have taken me anyway, but why? I thought this was all about helping me escape Romeo and giving me a new lease on life, but nothing about this felt like rescue anymore.
Keeping my eyes partly lidded, I took note of the small space I was being held in that reeked of blood and fear.
Gross! Maybe Leo and Carlo had never been working for the Vitales at all.
Romeo had warned me that as his wife, I would become a target, but he’d also trusted the men who were hired to keep me safe.
The only family I knew that had issues with the Vitales was mine, but we’d settled that when my father married me off.
A familiar scent punctuated the awful stench where I was being held.
“You’re finally awake. How are you doing, princess?
” Leo stood at the entrance, but he was different.
He’d always reminded me of a wound-up predator, barely contained within a taut, muscular frame.
But now, leaning against the iron bars, arms crossed with a smirk on his face, all that tension was gone.
He was still a dangerous predator, but not on the prowl.
Now he was in his den, relaxed and in complete control.
“What’s going on, Leo? Why am I here?”
His eyes glittered dangerously. “Leonardo to you, princess.”
I hated the smug arrogance in his voice.
“Whatever, Leonardo!” I enunciated every letter, infusing them with sarcasm.
“Watch the tone, princess, or I may have to muzzle you.”
Arguing with him wasn’t getting me anywhere. “Can you please tell me what is going on.”
He walked closer to me. “What will you give me if I do?”
I immediately recoiled, then let out a moan as my head jostled and the world turned sideway for a moment.
Please don’t let him be the kind of monster I think he is.
“Don’t be a pig,” snapped a familiar voice. From the far wall, a shadow stepped into the murky light and took on the shape of my father.
“Papa? What are you doing here? What’s going on?”
Standing beside Leo, the resemblance finally clicked. The whiff of cologne that had been tickling my senses were the same as the one my father wore. How had I missed it? He and Leo stood the same way, smiled the same way, had the same eyes and chin… No. How could I not have noticed?
“Who is this man?” I stammered, but he didn’t have to answer, because in my heart I knew that whoever this man was, he planned on killing me and my father was going to let him.
“Leonardo is your brother, Colombina,” my father said, smirking at my expression of shock. “Yes, you have a brother.”
“You never told me!”
“And why would I? He is my son, my heir, my weapon to wield on the day when the Calogerà family would take back everything they lost to the Vitales. And what are you? A woman who spent her entire life proving she would never put the family first, only her own selfish interests.”
My mind raced. I had to get the hell out of here and warn Romeo. “Okay, I understand,” I said with a calmness I didn’t feel, “but what am I doing here now? If we’re getting out of here, then let’s go.”
My father and brother smirked at the same time, an old monster and his younger reflection. The identical arrogant lift at the corner of their mouths chilled me, a reminder of everything else they might have in common. The fine hairs on my arms stood up. A warning.
“Not so fast, daughter. Leo has informed me of your reluctance to leave your husband.” He spat out the last word like it was a bad taste.
“Well, yeah. I didn’t know our family was staging a coup.
If he’d been honest from the beginning, I would have left him a long time ago.
You know I hated the match,” I told him, daring an accusatory tone.
“If I’d known this was part of your plan, I wouldn’t have jumped from my window to escape the wedding. ”
I didn’t mention that I hadn’t planned on falling, or how lucky I was that Romeo was there to catch me.
He chuckled. “You were always so rebellious. How do I know this isn’t you pretending to be loyal to your family?”
Think… think… “You’re right. I have always been rebellious, and I’m sorry for the trouble I’ve caused you, Papa, but I was never disloyal, and I’m not now.”
My father studied me with the disinterested cruelty of a boy deciding which leg to pull off a bug first, then turned to the man he called my brother. “What do you think, Leonardo? You’ve been with my daughter for weeks. Do you think she’s lying?”
Leo’s eyes continued to glitter, his stare so intense that I could all but feel myself pinned by those twin pools of blackness. As dangerous as I knew my father could be, I realized this man was far worse, not merely ruthless but unhinged.
“So what if she is?” Leo countered. “The family always has uses for good liars—“ His cold gaze moved over me. ”—and well-trained whores. If you think she can be useful to us, I’ll keep her and I’ll deal with her impertinence in the basement, where all disloyal soldiers go to learn their lesson.”
Holy shit! This guy was terrifying. For the first time, I understood the difference between darkness and evil. Romeo possessed darkness. It lived inside him, and prowled beneath his skin. But it had rules.
Boundaries.
Loyalty.
Leonardo had none. How could we be related when we were so different?
“Scusami, brother. Where have you been all these years?” I kept my tone light and interested, trying to salvage the situation and prove to my father I was on Team Calogerà.
“Calabria. Learning how to lead this family and exterminate its enemies.”
“So this is why you spent so much time in Italy, papa, leaving me all alone.” I turned a practiced pout on my father, playing the old game between us. “You ignored me to visit my brother? Why did you never bring him home to meet me?”
Leonardo visibly disliked the forgiving smile my father showed me. Without warning, he lunged at me, gripping my hair so tight I screamed.
“Basta!” my father barked. “Let her go, Leonardo! Hurting your sister isn’t part of our arrangement.”
He gripped my brother’s other arm and twisted it behind his back.
Leo dropped me and the two of them tussled.
I ran past them and out of the pen. I guess they didn’t expect me to put up any resistance as there were no guards that I could see.
I ran blindly as desperate to find an exit as the panicked cattle that had once thundered down this self-same chute.
Hopefully I’d have a better ending than the cattle that came before me.
Bang! Bang! Bang! The steady rhythm of someone hitting the metal bars of the stalls with something. If that was Leonardo behind me, and I was pretty sure it was, then he’d won against my father and no one could help me now, but myself.
Don’t lose it, Vittoria, pretend you’re back home. It’s all a game.
I slipped off my shoes and carried them in one hand, slinking backwards into the deeper shadows as silent as a cat. The banging stopped; he was probably listening to see what direction I’d gone. I threw one of my shoes as far as I could and heard the soft thud it made when it landed, but did he?
“I’ve got you now, sister!”
It worked. He went after the shoe and I plunged deeper into the darkness, following the wall I found off the killing floor and into a maze of smaller rooms and halls. There was no light back here. All I could do was keep moving and pray I wasn’t turned around and heading right back to my brother.
Just when panic began to rise, my hand brushed a padlock holding two ends of a chain together, securing…
I felt around until the two sides of the door revealed themselves.
A door, hopefully it led to freedom. I couldn’t do anything about the padlock, but there was some slack in the chain.
I pried at the unused door and managed to shove it open about six inches, letting in a precious slice of dim moonlight.
Was it enough? They say that anything you can get your head through, your body can too.
I wiggled my head and one shoulder through when the bang, bang, bang started up again.
I was so scared and struggled to fit through the opening.
“When I catch you, sister, I will teach you to obey with my fists.”
Tears streamed down my face as I forced myself through the narrow opening, tearing clothing and skin just to get away from him.
It was a dark night, with only half a moon in the cloudy sky but after the pitch-black slaughterhouse, I could see enough to run as fast as my feet were willing to go over the abandoned gravel parking lot.
Up ahead, I could see a roadway. I moved toward the side in the tall uncut grass and prayed I didn’t step on anything sharp.
I slowed down and stayed low. The progress was slow until I heard the sounds of a vehicle from in front of me.
It could be a trap. I hid lower and watched as several cars turned off their lights and pulled across the cattle guard and into the tall grass.
I listened to the sounds of whispered voices…
familiar voices. Could it be? If I was wrong, I’d end up back in there with the monster who called himself my brother.
“Romeo,” I whispered into the darkness.
“Vittoria?”
“Oh, thank God!” I stood and ran toward the barely discernable human shapes until one scooped me up in his arms.
“Principessa, is it really you?” Romeo cradled me in his arms, and covered my entire head in kisses.
Little one, he called me, and oh how I missed his terms of endearment, and if we managed to get out of here in one piece, I’d tell him everything, including my stupid childish fantasy of the princess in the tower.
“I’m sorry,” I sobbed. “I didn’t know. I’m so sorry, Romeo.”
“Shh, Principessa, it’s okay now. I got you. Can you tell me what to expect?”
I quickly filled him in on Leo and my father and the lack of men in the back of the slaughterhouse, but how I may have ruined any chance of surprising them by escaping and putting everyone’s guard up.
“Romeo, please be careful. He’s obsessed with killing all the Vitale men. You’re his biggest target, husband.”
“Rom, we gotta deal with this before they find out we’re here,” Tony said.
Romeo’s eyes went black and his expression cold. He transformed before my eyes from the loving husband to the cold mafia Don. “Tano, take Vittoria home and guard her with your damn life,” he said, passing me into his brother’s arms.
“I love you, Romeo. Come back to me,” I begged as Tano carried me away. The last thing I saw was the Vitale men fanning out into the darkness, swallowed up into the silent night.