“Why would I do that?” He crosses his arms, looking me up and down with a challenge on his face. He’s asking what I have to offer.
“I stay.” Those two words mean everything to me, but he doesn’t seem to get their value. “I can run any time, and you know it. Take your eyes off me for one second and I disappear. Poof. Leave you with a whole mess. But if you let him go, I stay in the Colonia.”
Letting Dario go was never in Massimo’s calculations, and he’s doing them now. I’m ahead of him for the first time.
“He’ll be back for you. Out of spite.”
“If I’m married to Sergio and he’s protecting me…”
“And you’re keeping him happy.”
“Happy” doesn’t mean throwing him a party. It doesn’t mean telling him he’s handsome and smart without giving away the fact that I find him disgusting. It means giving him access to my body. Opening my legs for him. Letting him touch me, lie on top of me, fuck me. It means pretending I like it. No one is that good of an actress. Black Widow would snap him in two before letting him near her.
“I can’t promise that.” Sergio could very well outmaneuver Massimo, then I’m stuck… but this is a risk I need to take. “Okay. You annul and free Dario, then I marry—”
“No. I annul, you marry, then we dump him in Jersey.” He must see my alarm. “Alive. Ten bucks in his pocket.”
“And you tell him that if he comes back, you’ll kill me.”
“That’s a deal.”
This happened way too fast. I have to save Dario without his consent. It’s the only way. But I can’t condemn myself on a moment’s notice.
“Do one thing for me,” I ask.
“I don’t have time for this much horse trading.”
“Let me see Dario one last time. To say goodbye.”
“You trying to move in there with him?”
“Please. I won’t tell him about the wedding or getting let go. It’s just a conjugal visit,” I say.
“Cameras off, I guess, huh?”
“Gross, Emo. Yes.”
“Nice try. Okay, camera off, but mics on. And turned up. I hear a single word I don’t like out of either of you, he’s dead.”
“Deal. I will marry Sergio and keep him happy. And you’ll let Dario go.”
“After the wedding, he can go.”
“Right after.”
While I’m pleasuring Sergio, Dario will be set free. It’s poetic, if poems are ever horrifying.
“My word is good,” Massimo says. “I’ll be glad to get out from under this guy. He’s a pain in my ass. You can have your ‘conjugal visit’ tomorrow night. Now get out of here.”
He walks away, coat flapping in the wind, head down, having traded his sister for a chance to kill his enemies.
When Timothy takes me back, I check the street outside. The note is gone forever, whatever it meant. No Connor. No Remo.
We’ve been abandoned. My choice was made because there are no others. There are no rescuers in wait. I am all Dario has. My resolve hardens. I’m doing the right thing.
CHAPTER 20
SARAH
I sleep like a woman with a clean conscience. I don’t even dream. Nine hours compress into a blink. Let the world turn. I’ve made my choices.
But I wake in a state of panic.
Will Massimo keep his promise?
Can he?
Will Dario stay away?
I should convince Dario I don’t want him, but how? He’d never believe me. Not after the way we’ve treated each other to convince his captors that there’s nothing between us but violence. The threat on my life if he returns will only deter him until he’s back on his feet. Then getting me back alive will become a challenge. Dario never backs away from a challenge.
Bowing my head under the shower, I let scalding water burn my back, breathing thick, heavy steam.
I can get out of this. I can call Massimo and say I’ve changed my mind. Make another deal. Find a way around it.
What if I ran away today?
They’d kill Dario or keep him alive to draw me back.
What if I burned down the church?
They’d unlock the doors to save him or let him die.
What if I killed myself?
Isn’t that what I’m doing already?
I shut the water. All the options are too extreme, and none have as good a guarantee that Dario will be freed.
I slept well for a reason. Doubting my choice is causing more stress than the choice itself.
The mourning period for my father isn’t over, but it is for me. I’m done with black. Today, I wear a deep plum dress my mother made for me. It has short sleeves and a jewel neck. The skirt lands a few inches above the ankle and is slimmer and more modern than the mourning dress. When I see myself in the mirror, I am almost convinced I’m an outsider woman with a host of options.
I go out to the kitchen and the smell of bacon.
“Don’t you look nice,” Grandma says earnestly.
Not the reaction I expected. Nor is the way she stands in front of me and squeezes my hands.
“Thank you.” I’m not sure what else to say. She lets go of me to tend to the popping bacon.
“Your brother worked through the night.”
“On what?”
She waves at the question because the answer isn’t meaningful to her. She may not scold me over moving out of mourning early, and she may be more chipper than I’ve ever seen her, but she hasn’t really changed.
She hasn’t been this cheerful since the day before I was kidnapped.
The day before my wedding.
So, she knows.
I wipe down some of the bacon splatter on the counter.
“About the other day,” I say. “When I found Mom’s severance papers…”
“Oh, don’t worry about that.” She shuts the burner when the bacon is exactly perfect. “I understand why it upset you. We don’t have to mention it again.” She offers me a quick smile before snapping a pair of tongs from the counter. She’d like nothing more than to never speak of it.
“I wasn’t asking for forgiveness.”
She freezes with a slice of bacon clamped midway between the pan and the paper towel-lined plate.
“Of course you weren’t.” She lays down the slice and takes another.
“You should have told me.”
“Why? So you could decide what was best?” She speeds up the transfer. “You were always of your own mind. Always about yourself. Have you thought for a minute that the entire episode might have been painful for everyone involved?”
“Especially Mom.”
“She made her choices.” She lays down the last of the bacon and drops the tongs in the sink. “Can we just celebrate without fighting? How about you make some toast for your brother’s sandwich?”
Celebrate.
That’s what this will be. A joyful time, when a man and a woman are united as one. As I get the bread, I see the scars on my fingers. When widows and widowers are remarried, the cuts are sliced into the exact same place, resplitting old wounds that lost their complement to make a new match.
“You don’t even trust Sergio.” I press the lever on the toaster, staring at the white lines that will always fit Dario’s. “You think of him as an outsider.”