FIFTEEN
Nastasya
“ Y ou saw him three days ago, and you’re just telling me now?” Lana chastises as she slides onto our sofa, her long legs extended to one side. “How is he? I bet he’s still hot as fuck.”
I level her with a hard stare, arms folded across my chest. “If you ever mention Benito to me again, I’ll take great pleasure in shaving your fucking head in your sleep.” No word of a lie—I’d film it for the sheer indulgence of reliving the moment over and over.
The bitch values her auburn locks far too highly.
“Get your panties out of a twist.” She blows me off with the flip of one hand. “I’m married now, Stasya.”
Like that’d stop her. “It wasn’t my idea to have you help with this.” It took four years of hard work before I could be in the same room as her without wanting to throttle the harlot. I’m starting to remember why I struggled against the temptation.
“Yeah, yeah. You told me that last time.” My cousin drops the pretenses and slides to the front of her seat to unpack the hefty catalogs from her tote. “Now, this woman is the one I used for my dress.” She pushes a gaudy pink book to the forefront. Not using that one, then. “But a friend said this lady does excellent work.” She slides a pale blue portfolio beside the last.
I find what she said hard to believe. Not that the designer does excellent work, but that Lana would have a friend. People like her can’t help but repel others; it’s a gift she was born with.
“I sent Benito links to my two venue choices for him to discuss with their security.”
“See?” Lana lifts one perfectly drawn eyebrow. “It’s impossible not to mention him.”
I glare at her as I settle on the sofa opposite. “For me, sure. For you, his name is easy to avoid.”
“Seriously.” She scoffs, laying out fabric samples. “If you plan on going into this marriage with a jealous attitude, you’ll be miserable. He’s downright fuckable; women want him wherever he goes.”
“Snip, fucking snip,” I sass, making a scissor motion with my fingers.
She rolls her dusk-gray eyes. “Are you going with white? You know that traditionally, only virgins wear white, right? People might find that odd if you wear it.”
“Must be why you chose gold, huh?”
She narrows her gaze. Everyone in the family knows of Lana’s reputation. Most of us were surprised she managed to find a man who’d have her when she came with a goddamn phone book of conquests. In all fairness, the guy is one ‘roid short of a full kit. All muscle, no brains.
“Look.” Lana leans back, crossing her stick-like legs. “I’m here as a favor to Uncle. Neither of us are stupid enough to think this is anything other than him being a dick about the whole affair, right?”
“He always was the loving father first and foremost,” I quip.
“Exactly. He’s being a jerk by making me help, shoving it down your throat that you’re stuck with this family forever, even if you don’t like us.” She shrugs, hands tossed. “I don’t know what you two argued about, but I get it; I hate my parents too.”
“I don’t hate him,” I correct. “He…” I sigh, figuring she doesn’t deserve the explanation. “I want black for my dress.”
Lana’s round eyes bug out. “Pardon?”
“Black.” I wave a dismissive hand at the samples. “This whole fucking thing came about because my best friend was murdered. Why not symbolize the death of everything I hold dear? Friendship, freedom, love.”
She tilts her head to one side, lips in a flat line. “As the bride wishes. What would he-who-shan’t-be-named think?”
“He can go suck an egg if he doesn’t like it.”
“Only an egg?” She smirks.
“Fine.” I fight one of my own. “A dick. He can suck a dick.” I refuse to get along with this heathen heartbreaker.
Lana packs the fabric samples away, muttering, “I’d pay to see that hot mess.”
I watch my cousin as she opens the catalogs on the polished coffee table to the marked pages, studying her harsh features, which come together in an eclectic way to give her look a high-fashion edge. She’s an unusual beauty, not the classic soft face of storybook princesses. But she has an air of mystery that makes one curious to know if the brave face she presents to the world is all she truly is or if more hides below.
I wait until she finds the section she wants and then drop the question. “Why did you do it?”
Her manicured hand stalls on the glossy page. She takes a moment, deciding whether to dredge up old memories or let the hurt lie. “What does it matter?”
“I guess it doesn’t.” Why does anything matter in the end? “It’s just a puzzle I could never work out.” We were close as kids, like sisters.
And then she fucked the boy I loved.
Lana sighs, slumping against the back of the seat. Her gaze meets mine, devoid of any discernable emotion. “I thought you’d broken up.”
“Even if we had, that doesn’t answer why you thought it’d be a great idea to fuck him, Lana.” It had only been days since Benito had cut me loose.
Not months. Not even weeks. Days.
She shrugs. “What did you want me to do? Turn him down?”
My veins pulse with rage. “That would have been a start.”
“Hell, Stasya.” Her features scrunch. “The guy was sex on a stick at sixteen. Why the fuck couldn’t I have a piece of the pie?”
“Morals,” I holler. “You knew I loved him.”
“Yeah.” She leans forward. “Loved. As in, didn’t anymore. I thought you’d both given up on it because of the risks involved. You said yourself that he’d been radio silent.”
“And so, you jumped in my grave.”
“Stop being so fucking dramatic.” She rolls her eyes. “It was nine years ago, Nastasya!”
“And you’ve never once apologized,” I holler, rising to my feet.
She stays silent while I pace the room, nervous energy pumping hot through my limbs.
“Maybe not.” Her words are quiet. Careful. “But don’t you think what I’ve done since then is worth so much more than an apology?”
I turn, frown deep on my brow.
“I kept the secret,” she explains with a tight shake of her head. “Uncle Arseni doesn’t know a thing about the tryst you had with Benito.” She snarls when I bristle at his name on her lips. “I said the ‘B’ word—get over it. But I could have said a whole lot more to Uncle if I’d wanted to hurt you, Stasya.” She pauses to raise her eyebrows. “A lot more.”
I don’t want to give her the credit, but she is right. She has the power to destroy the fragile remains of my relationship with Papa, yet she chose to remain quiet even when our bond dissipated in the fallout.
“Why did you stay quiet?” I lean back and fold my arms.
She shrugs, gaze averted. “I didn’t see the point in tattling. You were hurt enough; I didn’t need to do it again.”
My phone vibrates on the table between us. Lana’s gaze darts to the device.
“Who is it?” I don’t have the stamina to deal with Papa right now.
She sighs and lifts her eyes to mine. “Can I have a fucking code name for the guy if you’re going to get all primal every time that I say his real one?”
I ignore her request and dive for the device. Why would he phone? It’s physically impossible for us to hold a conversation. “Hello?”
“Nastasya.” Surely, lacking a tongue would make his words harsher than that? “It’s Dion.” Well, there you go. You’re such a dick, Stas. “Benito’s a little…” He makes a frustrated sigh. “He’s in the middle of something, but he wanted to get a message to you.”
“Okay?” I meet Lana’s curious stare. “He could have typed it out like he has so far.”
Dion chuckles. “Uh, yeah. No. His hands are, should we say, a little unclean right now?”
“Right.” I drag the word out.
“Anyway. I’ll send you a friend request from him in a moment. Can you accept it so that he can video call you?”
“Why?” My brow knits. “Has something happened?”
“Uh, sort of.” For a senior member of the De Santis family, Dion sounds like an awkward teen right now. It makes me wonder what the hell they’re up to. “Check your notifications, okay?”
“Sure.”
He disconnects, and I open the social app to see the new red circle awaiting my attention. I tamp down my excitement at being able to scour the private parts of Benito’s life and accept the immediate Messenger call.
“What’s happening?” Lana whispers, shifting closer.
“I don’t know.” I move the phone so that I’m framed in the screen properly and squint at the dark image from their end. “What are you doing?”
The image shakes as Dion talks. “Give me a second. I need to head back inside.”
The grainy tones tell me he walks on concrete. But where? Lana moves closer to my left. In any normal situation, the invasion of my privacy would irritate the hell out of me. But right now, I value her input on what she sees.
“Here we go.” The sound of a heavy door opening scratches through the speaker. “Say hi, lover boy,” Dion teases Benito.
A thrill courses through me at the visage of my fiancé’s broad frame, his back to the camera. He wears a form-fitting black T-shirt, his honed and defined body on beautiful display. A coy smile plays on his full lips; his head turned slightly to show his strong profile.
“Still hot,” Lana mutters.
I thrust an elbow into her upper arm.
“Ow!”
“So, big bro and I were doing an errand this morning when we came across something you might be interested in.” Dion switches the camera to his face. “Benito wants you to take a look and let him know if anything seems familiar, okay?” The De Santis boys definitely all share one thing: good genes.
“Take a look at what?”
Even Lana sighs beside me.
“Not what.” Dion hooks an eyebrow before switching the camera again. “Who.”
“Woah.” Lana leans back, eyes wide, as the new image becomes clear.
I, on the other hand, lean in to be sure what they show me is indeed what my eyes tell me it is. Benito circles a pole, the thick kind that supports a house or other large structure. But what makes my jaw drop isn’t the way my betrothed’s hair sits disheveled over maddened eyes or that what appears to be thick streaks of blood cover his hands.
It’s the man tied to the timber support.
“He isn’t on our books,” Dion explains. “But this chump speaks pretty darn good Italian. Ain’t that right, leccaculo ?”
The man’s head hangs, chin against his chest. He emits a wet-sounding chuckle, refusing to answer.
Benito fists the John’s hair and jerks his head upright to show the man’s face. It’s bloody but not bruised. They’ve had fun with him yet left his features untouched so I can easily identify his face. There’s only one problem: I didn’t see above the men’s waists that night.
“I need to hear his voice,” I say. “I won’t recognize a face, but I’d know the voice.”
“You heard the lady.” Dion’s hand extends from behind the camera to shunt the guy in the shoulder.
The captive winces. Their harassment wasn’t restricted to his head, it seems.
I glance beside me at Lana, mesmerized by what plays out on the other end of the video call. “Do you know this guy?” I stage whisper her way.
She shakes her head. “I wish I did.” Her butt slides over the sofa cushion again until she’s a hair’s breadth away from sitting hip-to-hip with me. “Do they think he’s one of the guys who went after you?”
Benito’s head whips up in the shot. The malice in his eyes is palpable, even through the screen of a six-inch device. He strides towards Dion, his head tilted to one side and his eyes narrowed as he stares into the camera.
“She’s here to help pick out my dress,” I answer robotically. “I hope you like black.”
His lush lips split into a grin, eyes softening as he moves away. Back to the camera, Benito flicks one hand out to point to the man tied to the pole. He snaps his fingers. The man jolts.
I’m in fucking awe of how Benito can command a room without the one thing most people rely on to threaten and intimidate: words.
“What do you want this fucktard to say?” Dion asks.
“I don’t speak Italian,” I remind him. “I don’t know what they said.”
“Do you remember any of it?”
“Something that sounded like chia… Ugh. Chiama… ” I butcher their language.
“ Chiamata?” Dion asks.
“Yeah. What does it mean?”
“Call.” He makes a huff while Benito fidgets with his bloodied hands. “Come on then,” he coaxes the hostage. “Let’s hear it.”
“ Chiamata, ” the man mutters with no shortage of sass, chin to his chest again.
Benito jerks the man’s head high and smacks the side of one hand to his throat—twice.
“He wants you to say it louder,” Dion explains.
“ Chiamata, ” the man enunciates with husky chords. “You happy now? Anything else?”
The camera shifts as though Dion gets comfortable to their left. “Now, use it in a sentence.”
“What is this? Jeopardy?” the guy quips.
My dark suitor uses the hand nested in the man’s hair to whip his skull swiftly against the pole. The crack is sickening.
“Fuck!” The man winces. “What the fuck do you want me to say?”
Lana leans in as though the goddamn call is an episode of her favorite Netflix drama.
“Say what you fucking said when you fired the shot!” Dion hollers.
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” The man jerks against his restraints. “You fuckers are crazy.”
Benito holds a finger up to the guy, twitching his chin to the left as though he struggles to remain calm.
“Where were you last Friday?” Dion’s tone is calm and level, but the intonation in the words has me ready to confess.
Each De Santis brother is as deadly as the next.
“I was at my brother’s house. With him all night.”
“For how long?” Dion appears bored.
“Until midnight.”
“And can you be sure?” Dion asks. “Is there anyone who can back up your claim?”
Benito leans down in front of the man, hands braced to his knees while he levels a steely glare with the hostage. Answer me, his malice screams.
“Pretty damn sure, asshole. You can ask him: my brother.”
With the reflexes of a panther, Benito smashes the man’s head backward again. If he keeps this up, the guy won’t be able to answer anything.
“Ask him how tall his brother is,” I interject into the macabre show before me. I didn’t see their faces, but I saw enough of their legs to know the men were the same height as one another.
“You hear her?” Dion asks.
The guy nods slowly. “He’s taller. By a foot.”
Fuck. “If he speaks the truth, he can’t be the guy.” I slump in my seat, dejected.
Now that the opportunity for closure has been taken away, I realize how much hope had slowly bloomed throughout their interrogation.
A deep rumble pierces the line, and I lift my head to find the source of the noise was Benito himself. He stands beside Dion, only his muscular chest visible in the shot. With a whip of one hand, he ushers Dion from the room.
All I hear is the crack of Benito’s knuckles while my soon-to-be brother-in-law removes us from the spectacle.
“What is he doing now?” If I could climb through the damn phone to get back behind the closed door, I would.
“He’ll find out who the guy’s brother is and make sure he tells you the truth.”
“And if he’s innocent? How will you explain what you’ve done to him?”
The camera turns to Dion’s face in time to catch his amused smile. “He’s far from innocent, Nastasya.”
“Who is he?” Lana asks, leaning in from my left.
Dion’s heated stare hits her; no trace remains of the humor he held for me. “Nobody to you.”
She removes herself from the shot, quietly shifting back to her sofa on the opposite side of the table. Girl just got told. Makes me wonder what Benito has shared with his younger brother.
“Can you tell Ben to do this again later, please? Call me?”
Dion nods, one hand massaging the back of his neck. “Sure.” A shocked moan erupts from the mafia prince’s right. He shifts his attention to the disturbance and frowns. “I better go.”
“Yeah.” Because who’d want to miss out on a little bit of torture, right?
Fuck me. Years, I’ve complained that Papa doesn’t include me in the gritty parts of the family business, and here I am privy to those of my in-laws before the marriage documents have been drafted.
What the hell does that say about loyalty? Trust?
The screen goes black, yet I stay with the redundant phone hanging in my hand for a moment longer. In a few short days, the man who broke my goddamn heart has already done more for me than my father.
I’d be a fool if that didn’t make me love Benito a little more.