“I… I…” she stammered out, then, she burst into tears. I held the girl, rocking her back and forth, and waited as patiently as I could for her crying to subside. Then, when she was calmer, I prodded her again.
“Can you tell me?”
“I’ve never seen… I didn’t expect…”
“Didn’t expect what?”
“There was a meeting. I was serving drinks. When everyone got in an argomento.”
“Okay,” I encouraged her to go on.
“Three men are now dead.”
My heart stuttered. “Which three men?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know them.”
“Was it any of the Cavettis?”
“No, they were the ones firing.”
“Who?”
“Signores Romeo, Marcello, and Savio.”
I didn’t know how to feel about that. I genuinely and sincerely didn’t. Then an awful thought occurred to me. “They didn’t shoot my brothers, did they?”
“No. They shot other men. Older men.”
The gaping hole where my stomach had gone missing filled with the proper organ again.
“That’s the other thing I need to tell you,” Philippa murmured, wringing her hands and looking tentative.
“What?”
“But I… I didn’t know until today. I swear I didn’t.”
“Didn’t know what?”
“I didn’t know what the Cavettis were doing to your brothers.”
I gripped her shoulders, pushing her back to an arm’s length from me. “Antonio and Giorgio?”
“Yes. I’m so sorry but they are being torturato.”
“Tortured?” I squeaked out, horrified. Then I asked her a question I was afraid to know the answer to. “Who’s doing it? Who is it that’s torturing them?”
“Signore Angelo and his men. They are hurting them.”
My stomach crashed at my feet, leaving behind a gaping hole again. “How are they hurting them?”
“Electrocution. Whipping. Beating. He makes them shriek and thrash about.”
I forced myself to press even further. “What about Romeo? Is he doing any of the torturing?”
“No, signorina. He—how do you say—taunts them. But that is all.” She paused, looking back at the doorway. “There is more,” Philippa continued, and I took a deep cleansing breath.
“Yes?”
“Your fratello with the short hair…”
“Antonio, yes. Go on.”
“He is not doing as good as the other. He is.. uh…” She hesitated as if struggling to come up with the proper words. “Mentalmente istabili.”
“Mentally unstable?” I echoed, my heart breaking for my eldest brother.
“Yes. He does not know where he is. Who he is.”
“I have to get to him. To them.”
“Impossibile. They are guarded all the time. If you were to go, you would be shot.”
“But…” I knew she was likely correct, but…
“Or Signore Angelo would kill them. Or your sorelle.”
“Chiara and Alessandra are being tortured, too?”
“No, signorina. They are not harmed. They are like you.”
“Held captive, then.”
“Yes.”
I dragged my hands over my arms, feeling cold despite the warm temperature the Cavettis maintained in this room. I didn’t know the right move to make. I didn’t know what I could do. I spent hours pacing my room after the maid left, trying on scenario after scenario that might allow us all to escape. Yet no matter how I looked at it, the cards were stacked against us. My brothers were—or had been—physically powerful, but they stood no chance against an armed security force, especially when Antonio was in a compromised condition.
I remembered the feeling of chilly stainless steel against my naked skin and shuddered. Romeo was so unpredictable. I’d been so sure he was going to slice me to ribbons and let me bleed out that night, and he hadn’t had any problem with giving me the same impression. As usual, he’d held all the power while I held none. And I didn’t think it possible for me to alter that dynamic.
But then I remembered one of the last things he’d said as he’d pressed his hard arousal against me. “Do you feel that? Do you feel what you do to me?”
He’d acted as if I’d been the one at fault for causing his sexual yearning. As if it’d been me that had made his body react that way.
My mind drifted to the memory of sitting around the television in my room with my sisters watching some romantic comedies. One of them had been about a woman using her sexuality to manipulate the man she’d been dating. But that was fiction. Such a thing could never work in the real world. Could it?
I thought of how Romeo’s eyes would darken to molten levels when he got hard. How he seemed less rational when turned on to that extent. How he appeared to be fighting for control when he had me naked and laid out before him like some sort of ancient tribal sacrifice. Was there a way to use that to my advantage?
He’d perpetually held the upper hand and still did with me being his prisoner. But if I could tweak things just slightly, perhaps I could tilt things just enough to gain back a bit of the control I’d lost.
Now, I just needed to decide how.
8
Romeo
Feeling as high as if I’d taken some of the drugs we sold, I half jogged to Lucia’s room after the slaughter of the other crime lords. It felt so exhilarating to wield the power we as Cavettis had stolen, especially since that power had been robbed from the Bonifacios. And now I would go and sate myself on one specific Bonifacio in particular.
A handful of bloodstains from the incident downstairs remained on my suit, but it didn’t matter. I’d go change in a few minutes, anyway. I opened my bride-to-be’s door with a flourish, speaking before I even caught sight of her.
“Pull out all the gifts I’ve given you, farfalla. Put on the undergarments, the earrings, the stilettos, and the evening gown.”
I barreled out as fast as I’d raced in, leaving her to follow my instructions. I had a staff to order around and things I wished to prepare.
An hour later, I stood outside her door again, freshly showered and changed. As much as I adored punishing Lucia, I hoped something of our last interaction had stuck with her. I preferred her submission to her rebellion.
When I pushed open her door, I found a vision. She had obeyed my directive and had donned the gown, earrings, and stiletto heels. I looked immensely forward to seeing how precisely she’d followed the rest of my mandates. But in the meantime, we had somewhere to be.
For the first time since I’d personally placed her in this room, I whisked her out of it, even spinning her a little on the way out.
“What has gotten into you, Romeo?”
“It’s not what has gotten into me, but what will later get into you,” I quipped back, leering at her while also feeling surprisingly playful.
And that was something noteworthy. When was the last time I’d felt playful? Even for just a moment?
I ushered her all the way to the third floor and then out on the roof where a long patio had been constructed above the lights of the city. Dusk had fallen, making the streetlamps glitter like jewels in the distance, and I fingered her dangling diamond earrings, reminded of the similarity. Alongside these lights was the charcoal gray expanse of Lake Michigan, its waters seemingly flat in the distance. Still, the sight was nothing if not spectacular. I’d always admired it. Its shifting tides. Its dark ebbs and flows. In some ways, I felt like that inland sea. Tempestuous, powerful, and sometimes deadly.