Chapter 20 Annetta
ANNETTA
I scramble to my feet, ignoring the soreness in my thighs as I put on a scowl despite the fear thrumming under my skin.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“Don’t be a bitch,” Russell says without any heat.
Has he slept at all since I last saw him?
His eyes are red-rimmed, and his grey clothes hang off his skinny frame like an elephant’s skin.
He looks over at the perfume bottles on Serafina’s dresser and steps over to pick up Rêves de Pensées—her favorite.
That’s when I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that he was telling the truth.
The pills in her closet, a hidden boyfriend—Serafina was keeping secrets, from me, from the whole family.
I can’t breathe. A sick, foul scent like rotting flowers coats the back of my tongue. My stomach lurches, and I swallow the horribly familiar nausea rising in my throat.
The image of Frederico in bed with that girl through the crack in the door, of my Prince Charming husband finally exposed as a disgusting monster—and now, Serafina? How could my sweet, perfect, innocent sister have lied to me? Why didn’t I know?
Russell ignores me as he takes the perfume, sprays it onto the collar of his shirt, and lifts it up to smell. He turns his bloodshot eyes toward me. “You don’t smell like her.”
He knows.
My blood runs cold.
Even as I’m reeling and the edges of the room go blurry, a desperate, animal instinct for survival has me blurting out, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Russell scoffs. “It’s your fault, isn’t it? Carlo said that the guy we cleaned up was supposed to kill you, but he got Serafina on accident.”
I want to cry. Fucking Carlo.
“You shouldn’t believe everything my brother says.” My voice is distant, like it belongs to someone else.
He strums his fingers through Serafina’s jewelry display until he touches the gold cross necklace she used to wear every Sunday. He pockets it.
Righteous anger swells inside me. “Put that back.”
“You know they asked me to kill you.”
My anger dissolves into chilling fear.
I don’t have to ask who he’s talking about. He takes one long step forward, placing himself halfway between me and the door.
Once, when we were little, Serafina and I were redecorating her room. I jumped from her bed to the floor, and Mom came running up to whisper-hiss at us that we needed to be silent when Dad had guests.
If I stomp loud enough, as a last-ditch measure, someone downstairs might hear me, but Dom will notice I’m gone first… won’t he?
I just need to stall.
“You wouldn’t get out of this house alive,” I say, and a vicious part of me hopes he doesn’t. He’s ruining Serafina’s memory when she’s not here to defend herself, and all for what—to scare me?
Except he doesn’t seem all that concerned with me as he walks to Serafina’s bed, pushing aside the canopy to sit down.
He’s got a gun stuck in the front of his waistband, the outline faintly visible behind his shirt. I avoid looking at it, trying to meet his eye, but he’s looking everywhere in the room but at me.
“I don’t give a shit about that anymore. Your sister was the one good thing I had, and some fucking bastard killed her by accident.” He runs his fingers across her pillow in a caress so tender that I look away.
There has to be another explanation, something I’m missing, even as the truth stares me in the face. Serafina was good—she wouldn’t have spent time with some loser like Russell without reason.
“You sold her drugs,” I snap, latching onto the most logical explanation.
Hurt crosses his face, and his fingers dig into the pillow. “She never paid for those. She asked for them, and I brought them to her—you knew the pressure she was under.” He finally meets my eye, his gaze hard and accusing. “You knew her better than anyone.”
“I didn’t know about you,” I choke out before I can stop myself. I slap a trembling hand over my mouth, and the bastard has the fucking gall to look sympathetic as I compose myself. “Why would she hide all this from me? Why would she lie to me?”
He stands but doesn’t move again, staring at her pillow with a lost look in his eye. “She wanted to tell you, but she was suffocating even before you left. When you married Frederico for her, she thought she had to be perfect to deserve your sacrifice.”
“She didn’t—”
Russell laughs bitterly. “I told her. Trust me. I told her all the time.” He touches a picture of her on the wall. “Why didn’t you stay in Florida, Annetta?”
He turns toward me, the blame and loss in his eyes like the glare of the sun—too bright to look at directly.
I hate him. After everything I’ve done for Serafina—helping her with school, piano, dance, and even marrying Frederico—she repays me with this. With drugs and a secret lover.
Serafina was the one bright spot in my life, the one good person in our family.
I always thought that living in her shadow, my horrible marriage to Frederico, and his mom—all of that was worth it for the only person in my life who deserved those sacrifices.
All I’d been doing was putting more pressure on her, making her feel like Russell was the only person she could turn to.
I hate her. I hate that she didn’t love me enough to sacrifice for me, that she thought my life could be thrown away to Frederico while she got to stay and live hers. And I hate that she didn’t trust me enough to believe I would’ve made that sacrifice anyway, if she’d told me the truth.
I take a step back, bumping into the wall behind me, and Russell pushes forward.
“I would’ve.” Hate and love and grief for my sister twist together, writhing in my belly like snakes. “If I’d known what was going to happen to her, I would’ve stayed.”
Even if she wouldn’t have done the same for me.
He takes another step forward until he’s breathing down my neck, his hand rising toward my face. “I can’t forgive you for what you took from me.”
SLAM.
The door crashes open.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Dom stands in the doorway, imposing and furious.
I’m standing with my back against the wall, tears on my cheeks, and Russell’s too damn close, snatching his hand back from me like he’s guilty of something. Dom surges forward.
“We were talking—” Russell starts, but Dom’s already on him, squeezing his neck and shaking him like a puppy.
“Yeah, that’s the problem. You don’t talk to my wife.” Dom slings him to the ground and lands a swift kick to Russell’s belly.
Russell rolls over and throws up.
All over my sister’s carpet.
“Dom!” I shove his massive body, but he holds me away by my shoulder like I’m nothing as he lands a brutal stomp to Russell’s extended hand. Dom looks over to me as Russell screams in pain.
“What the fuck were you two talking about?” Dom asks.
I wrap my hands around his wrist. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Why the fuck were you crying?”
Russell groans from the floor. “It wasn’t her fault, she—”
“Shut up, Russell!” Dom and I shout at the same time.
Dom pulls his knife out from his waistband, and Russell scrambles for his gun. Dom kicks his hand, launching the gun across the room, and bursts out laughing when Russell groans, clutching his broken hand to himself.
“You have balls, kid, I’ll tell you that much. But you gotta be a real dumb fuck to talk to my wife in a room alone like this. How much did they pay you? Because, I’ll tell you now, it wasn’t nearly enough for what I’m about to do to you.”
Hate for Russell shocks me with its intensity.
I want all of this to go away—back to how it was before I found the pill bottles in her closet.
I want Dom to hurt him.
I want to punish Serafina for choosing Russell over me.
But when Dom drops to kneel over Russell, the movement kick-starts me into action.
I can’t punish the dead. There’s nothing left for me in this room.
“Dom, I want to go home,” I say, hearing the ineffectual whine in my voice.
He barely spares me a glance as he grins down at Russell, who, strangely, has gone completely limp and expressionless. “Go wait in the car, angel. I’ll be right down.”
“No,” I whisper.
Dom’s head snaps toward me. Russell’s eyes flick from Dom to me.
“I want to go home. Now.”
I peer at the man my sister chose. He watches me impassionately.
He’s not asking for my mercy. He’s got nothing to lose. And even though I hate him, for a moment, I understand him completely.
I turn and walk away.
I think Dom will go through with it anyway—kill Russell, because why not?
It’s what he does. But once I step into the hallway, heavy footsteps sound behind me.
We walk through the house like that, with him several steps behind me, until we get to the bottom of the stairs and he finally catches up.
For once, he’s not smiling as he snatches my hand in his.
“For your parents,” he says.
I dig my fingernails into his hand, and the corners of his mouth twitch.
The living room explodes with drunken laughter as Dad, my brothers, and Carlo’s friends play poker in the sitting room. Mom’s in the kitchen, preparing drinks for them.
“Serafina, help me get these drinks out to the guys,” she says.
Dom waves Mom off, a luxury I’ve never been afforded. “We’re heading home, Debbie. Thanks for the dinner.”
In the penthouse, Dom and I step off the elevator into his foyer.
I take off my heels and pass them to him before striding into the living room.
The tall, open windows that once felt like a little slice of the outside world are now like the pane of a glass case.
I look down at the cars passing below, taillights glowing red against the black streets, and into the golden windows of the other apartment buildings.
None of what happens in our penthouse matters to those people. None of this matters at all.
When I turn around, Dom’s looming over me with barely contained anger.
“Did he touch you?” he snarls.
“No.”
“What did he say to you?”