With Mom, our relationship was complicated, unlike my father’s and mine which was quite simple. Mom could smile and indulge me like I was still a little girl, but the next moment scold me for using totally taboo slang. To my mom, I was trapped between a girl and a woman, so it was hard to predict what version she’d treat me as. Right now, it seemed like she was treating me as a hybrid—part woman, still a girl.
“I’ll remind her. Again,” I assured her.
“Your father will be gone tonight, so he wanted me to remind you to stay inside, keep the curtains drawn, and stay out of trouble.”
Of course he would be gone tonight. It was a Friday, and in this world, the weekends were the busiest. “When have I ever gotten into trouble?”
“Never,” Mom replied. “Let’s keep it that way.”
As I followed her out of the library, I considered the potential of getting into trouble. Since armed guards shadowed my every step and I was only let out of the house for doctor appointments or an occasional dinner, the chances were slim to nada. Inmates had more freedom than I did.
After rounding the hall, I bolted up the stairs. The last time I’d had fun was when Serena was here three months ago. I was way overdue in the fun department and didn’t want to waste a moment. I was halfway up the staircase when I heard her laugh, and I was still a hall away when I could hear what she was saying. Serena fit the loud Italian stereotype, along with just about every other.
I approached my room at the end of the south hall. Luca stood sentinel outside my door as Serena gabbed non-stop beside him. She might as well have been talking to a statue. It had been this way for two years, from the first time Serena had set her eyes on the more-seven-than-six-feet, brawned, bronzed man-god (her term, not mine) that Luca was. The most she’d ever gotten from him was a ghost of a smile and a couple of clipped responses, but she didn’t stop trying.
Right now, she was reminding him how she’d been a gymnast since kindergarten and was demonstrating that by doing an all-out split two feet in front of him. I rolled my eyes out of habit, but really, I admired Serena’s gall. She knew what she wanted and didn’t stop at anything to get it.
“The split trick didn’t work last time, Serena. Time for a new act,” I said as I stopped beside them.
Luca replied with his standard nod, first at me, then at the guard behind me who he was relieving for the evening.
Serena replied with her one-hundred-watt smile. “I don’t know. I think he might have looked my way for half a second this time, which is progress in my book.” She went from a front split to a side split in one seamless motion.
Watching her made me wince, but Luca’s face remained flat. “Is it true you looked at her for half a second, Luca?” I asked, trying to sound aghast.
“I’m on duty, Miss Costa, which means I only have eyes for you.” His reply was like him—strong, unwavering, to the point.
“My competitor is my own cousin. Unbelievable.” Serena gave me an unconvincing glare then popped out of her impressive split. “I don’t know whether to hug you or slap you.”
My gaze shifted to the statue with his hands clasped in front of him. “You’d better hug me unless you want to experience Luca’s wrath.” I was partly joking but not completely. My father had made it clear to my half dozen guards that no threat, small or large, was to be handled with a light hand. He’d put enough fear in each of them that I didn’t doubt if Serena slapped me—as teasing of a gesture as it may have been—Luca would have tackled her to the ground before handcuffing her.
My father was a specialist when it came to fear, and his own men were quite possibly more terrified of him than his enemies. His men knew the penalty for failing him was their life, but that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was the manner of their death. Being injected with the venom of the blue krait snake was a lethal injection, but unlike the judicial system’s lethal injection, it wasn’t over quickly. Or painlessly.
“Oh, I definitely want to experience Luca’s wrath,” Serena replied as she scanned him. When she winked, he either didn’t notice or didn’t care to respond. No doubt she could have stripped naked and oiled herself up and he wouldn’t have blinked an eye.
“If you’re done tormenting him, do you want to head into my room and decide what we want to do tonight?”
I wasn’t done with my question before Luca had thrown open my bedroom door, stepped inside, and begun clearing the room. You know, just in case an assassin had managed to get past the guards at the perimeter of the grounds, the ones stationed around and inside of the house, the security cameras, the metal detectors, and the four patrolling Dobermans who were just as vicious as the guards. After fifteen years of room checks, I’d grown weary of them. Annoyed even. I felt like I’d spent a quarter of my life waiting while some guard scanned and cleared a room before I could step inside it.
The other three quarters I’d just spent waiting . . . for something.
“When you take your break”—Serena leaned in close to Luca, her hand on the bend of his elbow—“you know where to find me.” She capped her suggestion off with another wink before bursting into my bedroom.
“If you need anything, Miss Costa—” Luca began.
“I know. You’ll be right outside the door.” I’d heard that hundreds, if not thousands, of times. “Thanks, Luca.”
A nod of acknowledgement, followed by one last scan of the room, and he stepped outside, closing the door as quiet as a whisper. Serena was staring at the door with a longing look, so I grabbed one of my pillows and tossed it at her. It hit her square in the back of the head, and still she didn’t flinch.
“You’re relentless.”
She sighed then tore her gaze from the door. “Relentlessly in love.”
“Relentlessly in love? You barely know him. Other than a few grunts and nods from him, and a whole heap of winks and creative gymnastics from you, that’s been the extent of your ‘relationship’ . . . and I use that term in the loosest sense. How can you say you’re in love with him?” I slid out of my pale pink ballet flats and slid them into their compartment in my closet. Every pair of shoes had their own spot, my sweaters were in neat, color-coded rows, and my skirts were all pressed and starched to the point a wrinkle wouldn’t dare disturb them. My closet was O.C.D. Actually, my whole room was. Everything had its place, and every place had its special thing. Realizing that made me want to shove my pink ballet flats into my turquoise strappy sandal compartment.
“It’s just a feeling,” Serena replied, working her thoughts out on her lip. “When I look at him . . . I feel it. I can sense something there. Something deeper. Something worth being relentless about.”
I huffed. “When you look at him, you see his body.”
Serena pulled off her burgundy leather jacket and threw it on my bed. It slid onto the floor, and she left it there. “His body caught my attention, but it’s that something-else factor that’s kept my attention.” She shrugged as she curled into the chaise stuffed into the corner of my room.
“What is this something-else factor you’re so adamant about?” After staring at her coat puddled on my carpet, I snatched it up and hung it on one of the coat-hooks just beside my door.
Serena smirked before answering. “Call it fate, call it destiny, call it kismet. Call it whatever the hell you want to, but no word is up to the task of describing it. Trust me.”
“Yeah. Not buying it.” I sat on the tufted bench at the foot of my canopy bed and crossed my ankles.
“You can’t buy into it until you feel it, and since the height of your experience with a guy is one standing outside your bedroom door with a gun, you can’t even begin to relate to what I’m talking about.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You would.” Serena snorted as she played with one of the hundreds of curls springing from her head. Like my mom, she had mahogany hair that was as curly as it was long.
Mine had decided to go in the opposite direction. The family eyes, complexion
, and stature had also passed me by. My hair and skin were so light, I was probably a couple of shades away from being classified as an albino.
“So what should we do tonight? I didn’t come all the way to Alcatraz to argue about the something-else factor with my cousin whose idea of intimacy is saying hi to a guy.”
I would have argued if she hadn’t been right. “Want to order pizza and watch movies?” I suggested, eyeing the large flat screen. Since I didn’t get out a lot, I watched a lot of movies. And read a lot of books. And played a lot of solitaire. And stared at the ceiling.
“We did that last time,” she said, giving me a look that told me I was quite possibly the most predictable, boring person on the planet. I was just opening my mouth when she added, “And the time before that. And the time before that. And pretty much every time before that. The first and last time we’ve ever done something different was when we ordered Chinese and played board games. Talk about a night of indigestion . . .” She flopped back farther into the chaise.
“Okay, fine. What would the adventurer, thrill-seeker, adrenaline-junkie like to do?”
Cocking a brow, Serena’s gaze went to the door. When her eyes drifted my way, they were gleaming. “Bust out of Alcatraz and have the kind of Friday night an eighteen-year-old should be having.”
That made me laugh. The longer I laughed, the flatter her expression went.
“Wait. Are you serious?” The idea alone had me glancing toward the door, practically holding my breath for Luca to come busting in and tackle Serena for even suggesting it.
“Does this not look like my serious face?” she asked, framing her hands around her head. “Because it feels like it is.”
“It looks like your serious face, but I can’t believe you’re serious about what you just suggested,” I whispered, wondering if she’d gone mad. She’d grown up around my family. She knew the rules, why they’d been created, and what the consequences were for breaking them.
“Come on, Josette.” She rolled her eyes. “How much longer are you going to live your life trapped in this place? How much more time are you going to waste organizing your closet? How much more life are you going to let pass you by while you wave at it from up here in your crystal tower? I mean, my god, it’s your life and you haven’t lived a moment of it.” Serena was as impassioned as she was loud, but somehow she managed to keep the volume down. Probably because she knew what I did—Luca wouldn’t hesitate to break down the door over what she was suggesting.
“You know why I live the way I do. You know why I have to be so careful.”
“Yeah, I do. There’s no shortage of men in this town who wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet through the head of the only child of the Blue Krait. But I know if I was in your shoes, I wouldn’t exchange a long life of nothing for a short life of everything.”
“Everything?” I repeated, sliding to the end of the bench. “Everything what?”
Serena shook her head like I was hopeless. “Everything you haven’t experienced and everything you never will if you don’t take a risk now and then.” She marched over to my movie shelf and started throwing cases on the floor.
“What the . . .” I stood up, gaping at her.
“Shut up. I’m tired of watching my favorite cousin’s life pass her by and staying quiet about it.”
After she flung a few more DVDs to the ground, she moved over to my bookcase. She tossed them into a pile on the ground. I was too shocked to move or order her to stop.
“You’ve read every one of these. No doubt multiple times.” She held up a well-loved copy of The Count of Monte Cristo before throwing it at my feet. “You’ve watched all of those movies just as many times. I get why you read and watch so many of them over and over and over again. At first I didn’t, but now I do.”
I felt my eyebrows pull together.
“Because you’re waiting to feel something. Waiting to feel what the people in those books and movies do.” She stopped sliding books from the shelf and studied me like I was almost something to pity.
“What exactly am I waiting to feel?” I hoped she knew the answer because I was conscious of the fact that I was looking for something, but not what that something was.
Serena crossed the room and stopped in front of me. “Love.” The word spread through my room. “Heartache. Passion. Fury. On top of the world one moment, crawling at the very bottom of it the next. You want to feel alive.”
My cousin had just put into words everything I’d wondered about for so long. She’d put a name to the nameless, and her speech and actions had sparked a fire inside of me. Small and just as likely to be extinguished as it was to grow, but that was the first fire I’d felt. I wasn’t going to pretend it wasn’t there.
Before I could change my mind, I leaned forward. “What did you have in mind?”
Serena’s eyes went wide, no doubt as surprised as I was at my question, but then that gleam of mischief flooded them again. “There’s this place downtown. Totally chill but a happening place.” Her hands flailed as her excitement level climbed. “Anyway, I was thinking we could sneak out your window later, get past the guards, then take my car to the club. We’ll be back before the sun’s up.”
So many things were wrong with that, I didn’t know where to begin. “Get past the guards? You do realize that’s about as possible a feat as living without oxygen, right?” Okay, I guess I did know where to begin. “And you’re suggesting we drive to this place in your car—with no armed escorts—and that we’ll just saunter up to the front door, get inside, have a good time, then make it back here, sneak past the guards again, and crawl into bed before anyone knows we’re missing? Have I left anything out?” I didn’t quite sound frantic, but I was close enough.
Serena shoved my leg. “So what if we get caught? What’s your dad going to do? Kill his only child?” She rolled her eyes like that was absurd, but I wasn’t convinced. “Ground you? Please, you’ve lived eighteen years of being grounded. Live a little. Or better yet, live a lot.”
It was easier for her to go along with this crazy scheme—she didn’t have a target on the back of her head. Or at her temples. Or between her eyes.
“Someone might recognize me.” My voice almost shook, but I was feeling stronger than I had a moment ago. That fire was growing, consuming my fear bit by bit.
“No one other than Costa family and employees have seen you since you were a kid. Whenever you go out—you know, twice a year,” she teased as she wandered to my closet, “you have some huge scarf tucked around your face, some huge cat-eye glasses on, and a trench coat that could double as a circus tent when it’s not hiding you from the public eye. The only Josette Costa Chicago knows is the one who dresses like an old hermit who’s afraid of the sun. No one will recognize the gorgeous, albeit grumpy, woman in front of me now.”
I knew she was right. The last time my father’s enemies had seen me, I’d had pigtails. There was very little of that girl in me now, on the outside as well as the inside. Eyeing the window, I bit my lip. Behind those French doors was a balcony that looked out over the lake. Trailing up the balcony was a thick lattice of vines, making the journey from the second to the first floor almost easy. Those vines had been strong when I’d climbed them as a child; they would have only gotten stronger in the past decade.
I wasn’t sure whether courage or stupidity brought the words to my lips, but I voiced them before I could choke them back. “I want to live tonight.”
I WAS GOING to die tonight.
I knew it. Why had I let Serena talk me into this insane idea? Oh yeah, that’s right, because I’d felt a spark of something I’d mistaken for fire. As Serena sped toward downtown in her sports car, I checked my pulse just to make sure my heart wasn’t about to explode. When Serena caught me with my fingers at my pulse-point, she heaved a sigh and punched the car into another gear. Now we were moving at a Holy Shit! pace instead of just the Holy Shit one.
“It would be a serious shame if you died en route t
o the first good time of your life,” she said over the music. “If you’re going to have a heart attack, at least wait until you’ve tipped back a few drinks, ground your ass against a few guys on the dance floor, and made out with a few more. Capiche?”
I rolled the window down a crack. “Is capiche the only Italian word you know?” I sucked in deep breaths of the cool night air.
“I know a few others,” she said, a sly smile settling into place. “But I only say them when I’m with a guy.”
If my eyes hadn’t been clamped closed, I would have rolled them. “I can’t believe we just did that. I didn’t think we’d make it over the balcony without getting caught.”
Serena checked her reflection in the rearview mirror. She fretted over a few wild curls before paying attention to the road again. “Oh, please. Those guys with guns are only looking for other guys with guns. They’re trained to notice threats, not a couple of harmless girls dodging shrubs.”
“Look at what we’re doing. What we did. What we’re about to do.” My voice went up an octave as my hands flailed. “You are not harmless.”
Serena’s only reply was a laugh, followed by dialing up the volume of the music. I let her carry on with her one-woman party while I concentrated on not hyperventilating. After I’d agreed to her insane idea, she changed into something that wasn’t quite provocative and tossed a few things from her suitcase at me. The instant I felt leather and saw black, I pitched them all back. She argued one round with me, but after I told her the only way I would sneak out was in my standard pastel skirt-and-sweater combo, she relented with a sigh. I might have been ready to run, but I wasn’t ready to cartwheel.
I’d kept my hair down, applied a light coat of lip gloss, and slipped into my favorite ballet flats. To make sure we didn’t alert anyone’s suspicions, we ordered pizza and picked out a few movies. Once the pizza was delivered, Luca ate a piece to make sure it wasn’t poisoned—yes, I realize my life is crazy—and I told him we were going to watch some movies and then call it a night.