10. Nicola
Nicola
G etting involved with Edward is the worst decision I’ve ever made.
Worse, because I went into it with a clear head and an end goal, and somewhere in the past two weeks, I lost both.
Dire consequences and all that. Betrayal cuts deeply, worse than a physical knife to the stomach, with my own hand wrapped around the handle.
And I know how that feels. An unfortunate accident when I was ten with a kitchen knife and a neighbor.
Heart pain is so much worse, especially because there is no place to throw the blame away. There is only me.
I’m avoiding every single mirror in the house. There’s no use looking in them, knowing I’ll only see a phantom.
Edward is a gambler. A cheat and a liar. He owed Arden money, and now my father is dead. Where does it leave us? I know where it leaves me, and it’s right up shit creek with my paddle burned for good measure.
The cops have been trailing me. Cunningham keeps them at heel-nipping distance, but Mary isn’t making any strides at the facility, and no one is willing to help me find Scott. Edward assures me he’s been working hard to track down the fedora hat killer, but it feels like a dead end.
How do you find a phantom?
How do I trust that Edward actually saw who he says he saw?
The questions add up to another brick in the wall between the life I wanted and the life I’m stuck inside, and I wonder if there’s a way to chip away before it gets too high or if I should just give up.
Another day and another grueling interview with the cops.
They’re getting nowhere with me, which only makes them hungrier to take me down. They scent blood in the water. Rather than suffocate inside, I blindly tear my way out into the rose garden.
Grief, a palpable wave of it, crashes down and catches me by surprise with its ruthlessness.
I used to pray to God for peace, where I wasn’t living in fear. Now that I’m alone, the threat is gone, but more of them rose up in the emptiness They’re worse than the beast I knew. It might hurt to be reprimanded, verbally and physically, but the unknown face of what’s underneath my bed is something else entirely.
Summer has always agreed with me. The flowers perfume the night air, heavy and cloying and familiar.
I’ve run here every time things go south.
My own private world, cultivated by the gardens like a fantasy just for me. Here, with the roses, with the lupine and the lavender and the peonies, I’m myself.
Louisa can’t do anything for me anymore. Not when she went to bed for the night and left me on my own and not in the light of day when she’s full of misplaced optimism.
The house is a cage, and the walls close in around me, melancholy and oppressive. The house isn’t a home anymore. Not like it’s been a home for a long time.
The rose garden sleeps under an oppressive cloud of pure scent and sweetness. The humid night air glides like velvet along my skin and I stumble along the path, breathing in deeply, absorbing the heaviness.
I let my feelings for Edward grow and intensify into something impossible to ignore.
There is no room for feelings in a feud of this magnitude. Wars happen. They are the danger of being involved with organized crime. The best thing for me to do at this moment would be to send our men, Daddy’s men, to take down Edward and end the reign of the Balestras for good.
It’s been three days since I’ve seen him.
I drop onto a stone bench covered in lichens with beds of Russian sage, hyssop, and echinacea on either side. Why can’t I bring myself to do it and accept him for who he really is?
If this is the price of being a leader, then I’m not ready for it. I never wanted it in the first place, and my brother should have been here. It was his place, not mine, the oldest child and the son to boot. That was the way things worked with the Salvatores.
The roses are distasteful and tedious, the scent intoxicating and bringing back with full strength the memories of my first kiss with Edward. I stumble off the bench toward the fountain with a statue of Neptune gurgling a steady stream from the clamshell in his massive hands. Waterlilies float in the basin, and the ripples of starlight reflect over the top of the water.
This place is no longer a sanctuary but a little less like a prison than the house. At least out here, the humid breeze is a balm.
Shit, it wouldn’t even be a comfort to have Scott here. It’s one of those realizations so large they appear small, almost inconsequential. Rather than the two of us against the world, it’s every man for himself, to the point where we don’t have a relationship together.
If I ever live long enough to be a mom, I’ll never let that happen to my kids.
Just like I’ll never let their father lay a finger on them.
I head for a line of flat rocks positioned on the opposite side of the fountain and fold myself down cross-legged, skirt flowing over day-warmed stone. This will do nicely . There’s no better place to mope, really, and what I really want is a second to do exactly that.
To hide out and feel sorry for myself before I have to go back to being strong.
It shouldn’t bother me what Edward does or who he owes money to. This is the real price of business, isn’t it? You use what’s at your disposal in order to take down those who stand in your way.
Maybe I even need to borrow a page from his book.
I thought I had the knack of it and look where it got me? Absolutely nowhere.
Hidden from view, Louisa doesn’t see me as she limps into the garden. I jump at the sound of her feet over the gravel path, her attention focusing on something I can’t see. The silence stretches on, the burble of the fountain nothing but a blur in the background.
I haven’t seen her this focused since she and my mother found us children playing in the flour. The two of them went off like hell on asphalt and marched me and Scott out to this fountain, dunking us under.
I shake my head and lose my breath entirely when a second person steps out from the shadows of the arbor.
“You’re late, Stefan.” Louisa’s crisp voice carries well enough. She leans her head forward in a conspiratorial fashion. “I thought you weren’t going to show up.”
“You can’t be too careful,” the second person says. “I needed time to make sure things were clear.”
“Of course things are clear. I know what to do.”
I glance at them sharply, rubbing a hand over my chest to remind myself to stay quiet. No one is supposed to be out here, no strangers. Where are the guards?
Suspicion keeps me quiet, and I duck down to avoid detection, muscles constricting.
I only half see the man she’s meeting, but his height marks him as different from anyone else I know. And the fedora hat…
It doesn’t move from his head, not even with the wind sweeping through the garden and ruffling the leaves, setting the flower buds to flicker and dance.
Their profiles are only semi-visible from this angle, and the light from overhead is enough for me to catch a glimpse of his features. A scar, twisting the man’s lip that he’s attempted to hide with a face tattoo. The hat, the height, the scar?—
I lose my breath. Didn’t Edward say he saw someone like that the night of my father’s murder? What would he be doing here, and what’s his business with Louisa? I recoil back from the sight, shaking my head.
“We need to talk about the money.” Louisa gazes solemnly up at the man, and he raises an eyebrow at her, wearing a neutral expression.
My instincts scream at me, willing me to sit up and pay attention.
To absorb and memorize every detail of their interaction because we have a traitor in our midst.
Edward isn’t clean, he isn't innocent, but right now, he’s the one I’ve got in my corner.
“The money is going to be transferred to our account once the loose ends are tied,” the man snaps at Louisa, although his face hasn’t changed. “We have to be patient. The police are working for us, not against us. Nothing will be helped along by your continued meddling.”
Louisa laughs scornfully. “You wouldn’t have even looked this way if not for my meddling. What else is left?”
“The girl.” Those two words land like hammer blows. His malice is clear, the fourth person in the garden with us.
“Nicola? She’s no one. She has no idea what she’s doing, and the police will have her too nervous to suspect anything.”
“I’m not willing to place my faith in her like you are. There’s no way to assure the girl won’t be a nuisance.”
The longer I crouch there watching, the tighter my knees. They lock in place, and my palms go clammy. It’s not possible. This isn’t happening. I’ve fainted, and this is my fever dream, the worst of my personal nightmares where everyone I care about turns against me.
Louisa can’t be involved in any of this. She can’t turn on me and leave me truly, really alone. Would death be better than that?
“Nicola is basically a child. She wants nothing to do with this life. She wasn’t even capable of bringing down Edward Balestra the way her father demanded,” Louisa replies.
The shock of hearing his name jolts me into action.
No, death isn’t the option. It’s the weak way out, giving up right when things get tough. But if I stay here much longer, they’ll find me. Their conversation will only last so long before they part ways, and one or both of them come this way. Louisa is right on one thing: this isn’t my world, not really.
I’ve been adjacent.
Before they have a chance to find me, I bolt, keeping low as I wind my way through the familiar garden paths. My tendons clack from being frozen for too long.
Voices lifted in shouts are a flag trailing me. Gravel crunches underfoot. Louisa might not be able to move, but her friend with the hat definitely can.
“Nicola, sweet pea, there is nowhere to run. We know you are there.”
She knows the gardens as well as I do, too.
Louisa is in on the whole thing. The blackmail, the cops, the murder. She knew from the start, and she tried to get me off the right path by casting the blame somewhere else. My chest constricts, and my breath races out of me like it can’t stand another moment in my tightened lungs.
What the hell am I going to do?
The killer is here, and he’s in the prime position to take me down. I have to get in the house somehow and call Edward. Call someone. Find the guards and make a run for it before they find me. If I don't hurry, then everything is done.
Is my brother even still alive?
The shock of the thought has me stumbling over my own feet, and I reach out to catch myself, snagging my fingers against the rosebush. Thorns pierce through my skin. Hissing, I slap my opposite palm to my mouth to keep from saying a peep.
Pain splits my skull, and the scream erupts anyway.
The hand in my hair yanks me backward with such force I slam onto my spine and hit my tailbone hard against the ground. In the next beat, the tip of a blade presses to my throat and digs in deep, drawing blood.
“A child, yes,” the stranger murmurs. “Nosy and incorrigible.”The blade angle changes, the knife against my throat.
“You make enough noise to wake the dead. Did you know that? You are nowhere near as bumbling as your old man, however, drunk and always putting his nose where he doesn’t belong.
The tall man drags me back, but the scream is dead. My focus narrows on the blade, and I jump, my body reacting, the knife close enough to shave off layers of skin.
“This is the same knife that gutted your dear old dad,” the man continues. “It’s a fitting irony, of course. You were next on my list no matter what your dear old nanny says.”
Gravel and sharp pieces of rock dig into my legs and hips as I kick out, but there’s no freeing myself. Not with the blade there, not with his fingers frozen in my hair, prying hard enough to rip each individual strand from my scalp.
“And now, the legacy will end here.”