“We have time, right? Let’s see what all the commotion is about.” I turn and make my way toward the crowd gathered in front of the house.
JT grabs my arm. “I don’t think it’s a good idea, not today. Do you? Come on, you’re moving on, remember?”
“I know. I am.” I’m trying. Not quite there yet. “It’s not like I’m gonna see her,” I tell him. “I just want to find out what’s going on.”
He rolls his eyes but moves in step next to me. It’s too crowded to get very close, but it looks like some sort of ceremony or press conference is either about to happen or has already. The house looks beautiful, completely restored. I think about the night I came to see what was left of the place and can’t believe what they’ve accomplished. Whoever has been working on this project has gotten the job done much quicker than most construction around here. The hotel is massive and isn’t quite finished yet, but it looks like it’ll be quite the production. To me it takes away from the beauty of the house to have that monstrosity of a hotel connected to it, but no one asked me. We wait a few minutes and JT gets antsy.
“We’re cutting it close, man. I don’t wanna be late,” he says.
My heart skips a beat and I look around, eyes scanning the crowd for her tall, slender body, and her long black hair. I feel her. I think she’s here. I want to see her, just one more time. The girl who ripped my heart out and stomped all over it. The girl who nearly cost me my sanity. I think about the day I saw Lili on the news outside this house—the only time I ever saw her here—and I’m overwhelmed with the need to drink. My hands shake and I bend over, taking a cleansing breath. I can’t go chasing delusions.
“You’re right, we better go.” The words rush out.
We turn around and walk away from Maison D’amour and all the lives destined to be tangled in its spell.
Zed calls as I walk into my apartment.
It’s irrational, but I haven’t talked to him since the night Lili left. Logic tells me it’s my own damn fault: we were in bed together and I didn’t even know she was gone. But Zed said he wouldn’t let me down. I paid him to have eyes on the place at all times. I trusted him and should have at least been informed when my wife bailed on me in the middle of the night … in plain sight. Yeah, I’m an idiot. I let my walls down with Lili, got too comfortable, and no one is to blame for that but me. Yet, I still can’t seem to let Zed off the hook.
I pick up the phone.
“Hey, man. I have some news,” he says.
“Yeah?” The flood of dread is instantaneous. I sink into a chair.
“I know I’m the last person you want to talk to, but I think you should know. JT says you’re better but still not the same. I need you to not lose it when I tell you, Soti—can you do that? You’ll stay sober?”
“Fuck, Zed. I’ve never heard you nervous. Spit your shit out.” I’m talking to him, doesn’t mean I have to be nice.
“Right. Okay.” He clears his throat. “I saw Lili.”
My throat shuts off and I pull the phone away and rub my hand across my face. I hear him talking and put the phone back to my ear.
“You there?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say in the calmest voice I can manage. “Where?”
“She was at the ribbon-cutting ceremony of the completion of Maison D’amour and press c—”
His words fade. She was there. I felt it. Did she see me? Has she been right here all this time? What about France or wherever the hell else she was going to see as she traveled the world?
Zed is still talking when I come back to the conversation.
“Nico Santelli is over the entire outfit, and Lili had guards surrounding her every move, at least four on her … I couldn’t get anywhere close to talking to her.”
“Did she look the same?” I don’t know why it matters, but I have to know.
“Her hair might have been longer? I don’t know—something about her looked different.” He pauses and lets out a loud whoosh of air over the phone. “There’s something else … I don’t know how…”
“Just say it,” I mutter. Honestly, I can’t think of anything worse than her leaving.
“They’re married.”
I choke. “Who?”
“Nico and Lili. They’re married.”
I hang up on him, throw the phone and everything else in sight.
Gamo ti zoi mou.
The next morning I’m at the police station before Rudy. When he walks in, he gives me a nod and says, “Come on back.”
I slouch in the seat across from him.
“Coffee?” he asks.
I shake my head. “She married him.”
Rudy’s eyes are uneasy, but he doesn’t say anything.
“Can’t you confront him about it?” I sit up and lean into the desk. Rudy backs away. I don’t give a shit if I’m scaring him right now.
“He’s not breaking the law if she agreed to marry him,” he says quietly.
“You and I both know she didn’t agree to it.” I stand up and shove the chair behind me. “When are you gonna pin something on him? Anything? And what does it hurt to ask him about her? What are you guys scared of?”
“Besides botching up our investigation on him?” He chokes out an uncomfortable laugh. “We’re working on it, Soti. He’s all over the place right now, though. I heard he was in town yesterday, but he goes missing for stretches and as hard as we’re working to get his location, he’s working to keep us guessing. You’ll know the minute we have something solid.”
I lean over and pound his desk. “If he hurts her, you’ll have me to deal with … this is crazy.”
“No need for threats, big man.”
Rudy chuckles, but the steel behind his eyes makes me back off. Not because he scares me, but because I don’t want to be on the bad side of the police department when Lili is out there without me.
I stalk out of there and dial Zed.
“You have to find her,” I tell him.
“I won’t rest until I do, I promise you that,” he says.
“I wish I could count on promises, but they’re feeling pretty damn empty right about now.”
Chapter Twenty-One
LILITH
Not even a puppet can pretend to dance when it’s squashed.
My freedom is cut off as soon as Nico is done with the reporters. He comes to stand by me, taking my arm as the guards make room for him.
“Smile,” Nico says through gritted teeth.
His grip is tight as we walk back to the car. I make a last attempt to look around, but the guards are so close, it’s hard to see anyone around them. When we reach the car, a driver is waiting. One of the guards gets in the front, and the others shut our doors before moving to their car.
“Did you like my surprise?” Nico reaches into his pocket and pulls out the soft mask.
I groan. “I enjoyed getting out, but don’t put that—”
He pushes the mask over my head, lowering it toward my eyes.
“Please let me enjoy being out a little longer,” I plead. I see the covering on the seat by him and he smirks.
“You did well today. Perhaps I’ll allow more next time.” He pulls the mask all the way over my eyes and the covering follows.
I want to scream and cry and punch and bite—claw my way out of this car—but I force myself to go numb. I pay attention to every sound and every turn that takes me further away from Soti.
When we get back to the house and I’m back in the room, Nico paces in front of me like a wild boar.
“I thought you would have more to say about the hotel.” He glares at me. “Do you like how I did all of this right under your nose?”
“How long have you been planning this?”—is all I can say.
“Oh, far longer than you’d think.” He smirks. “Women don’t like when their husbands are messed with, you know.”
“Are you talking about Kell Withers? Is she behind all this?” I wave my hand around my room. “I saw her today.”
r />
“Surely you knew the day would come when you’d mess with the wrong husband…”
So you let a woman pull your strings? I want to say, but I don’t. I need to preserve this hatred a while longer and carry it out when it can propel me forward, not bury me further underground. I need to be quiet, but … I can’t.
“She started the fire, didn’t she?” I turn and watch his reaction. “I saw her watching it burn. Did she want him dead? Were you working together before or after, when she was wrecking your plan with the hotel?”
He rubs his hands together and grins. “She fell in perfectly with my plan—she did not wreck it.” His shoulder lifts nonchalantly. “Bentley betrayed me when he turned you against me, and she had a grudge toward the whore who regularly took her husband away from her. I needed the whore, specifically, the whore’s baby, for the property…” He laughs and rubs my stomach. “The fire helped us both. Killing Bentley was personal. I told him to leave you alone years ago and he kept coming back for more. Kell let me know every time he paid you a visit and when she saw you at his office that day, she let me know that too … but I was always a step ahead of her. She was at the house that night, watching her husband visit his whore. It wouldn’t be hard to make it look like she started the fire, but we’ll never really know, will we?”
I muddle my way through the atrocities he’s just confessed, more than he’s admitted in all my months here. He needed my baby for the property … that takes a moment to register and when it does, I go into a full-out rage. I turn and pummel him with my fists, scratching and hitting, and when he restrains my arms and picks me up, I kick and scream.
“You won’t get away with this. You won’t.” I cry until I’m too weak to make sense.
“You can shout all you want, but no one will save you. You’ve given me everything I wanted, mia piccola puttana. Everything. I’m not letting you go. I even like it when you fight me.”
He shoves me face-down into the mattress as he demonstrates his control over me. I curl into a ball when he’s done and go into my head, but even that isn’t a safe place for me anymore. I’m afraid of where my head goes: Your mom sold you one last time. You’re nothing. You are cursed and will die here in this godforsaken hole. You’ll never get out of here and your baby will be the child of this madman.
Later, he tries to make me eat, all gentleman and sweetness, but I know I can’t keep anything down. My brain can’t keep up with his fluctuating moods.
“I forgive you,” he says, sticking the fork to my mouth, trying to force feed me. “I’m giving you a pass this one time, because you’re carrying my baby, but if you ever hit me again,” he throws the fork across the room when I won’t open my mouth, “you will suffer in ways you’ve never dreamed of, mother of my baby or not.”
The next morning, as he’s sending me back to my room with Louise, he picks up a book and throws it, hitting me in the face. I clutch my cheek but bend down to pick it up, and Louise leaves marks on my arm from holding onto me so tightly.
Ah, The Scarlet Letter. Perfect addition to my collection.
Ignominy. Ignominious. Ignominiously. I don’t remember ever hearing the word before reading The Scarlet Letter. I wish I had a highlighter for every time I find it. Nathaniel Hawthorne either loved these words or was trying really hard to get the message across. Both, I guess. At last count, I think I found ignominy sixteen times, aside from ignominious and ignominiously. I don’t have a dictionary, but it’s not hard to figure out that the word is about shame.
I’m forced to face myself. There’s no escaping it. Sometimes one hour feels like a day, the time passes so slowly. But seeing Maison D’amour has made it worse. When I try to muster up a little faith, maybe think about what I would do if I could ever escape Nico, I come up empty. My body is all I’ve ever had to offer anyone. I’ve slept with hundreds of men and never felt the full shame of it until I met Soti. And now that I know I’m bringing a child into this world, I feel really hopeless. What can I possibly give a child? What chance does he or she have of a future with me as its mother and a mobster for a father? It’s too terrifying to imagine.
The book hits all my weak spots, strengthens my insecurities. I was already teetering on the bottom rung and this spirals me down further. For a few days I fall headlong into that web. Exactly what Nico meant by giving me this book, I’m not sure. Maybe to show me that I’ll never be released from my past. That even with his child, I’ll still live under the shroud of dishonor. Or maybe it’s simply to put me in my place and extinguish the heart of who I am … I can’t pretend to understand his thinking, as hard as I try. I want to. I need to understand him, so I can outmaneuver him.
I finish the book and start back at the beginning. Each time I go away with something different, but the bottom line is: Hester Prynne is a badass. At every cost, regardless of how she might feel about herself, she protects her child.
Will I always be a victim of my circumstances? First it was my mother, then Nico, the countless men, and now, Nico again. Where is my backbone? If my calculations about the baby are close, I have thirty-two or thirty-three weeks to find one.
I need to go back to reading The Count of Monte Cristo. It will serve me better.
I never want to be blindfolded again.
“I thought about what you said, about needing to see the grass and trees,” he says, lifting my mask. “I want you to be healthy for the baby.” He steps back and waits for my reaction. “The only step up from this is moving into my room.” He smirks. “You know the spiel … if you keep cooperating.”
This latest room has windows—a vast improvement over the other rooms. I plan on never fully cooperating so I can stay right here until it’s time to go. I rush to the window and take it all in. Sunshine. Blue sky. Pineapple sage—that’s what I smelled that day. Bentley once gave me a pineapple sage plant to enjoy on the balcony off of my bedroom. I wish I could smell the fragrance of the blossoms. The red flowers serve as a reminder that Bentley could be alive if it weren’t for me. I left him drunk and alone when I should’ve been protecting him from Nico. He was nothing but kind to me, and I let him down. I can’t let his death be in vain. I pat my stomach and watch the flowers dance in the breeze.
A large body of water surrounds what I can see of the property—maybe Lake Pontchartrain? I’m not positive. But I can already breathe easier.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
Nico’s eyes soften and for a moment I see a glimpse of the man I used to know.
A few nights later, as I’m turning off the lamp next to my bed, Nico comes into my room. I’m exhausted and the last thing I want is to be manhandled by him, but when I look over my shoulder, he’s in a tux and has a gown draped over his arm.
“It’s a little early for bed, isn’t it?” he teases.
“I don’t pay much attention to time in here,” I tell him.
He sobers and for a moment something like pity flits across his face. It’s gone in the next second.
“Get up. I’m taking you out tonight.” He holds up a beautiful red gown.
“Tonight? What’s going on?”
“It’s time for a little test,” he says. “Louise will be here in a few minutes to help you get ready.” He lays the dress on the bed and walks toward the door. “Don’t be long.”
I get up and quickly freshen up before putting on the dress. The front is fitted on top with a plunging neckline and flared bottom. The back has more personality with a cut out just above the waist and a ruffle that flounces down the middle of the dress, all the way to the floor. I’ve never worn anything this expensive and wonder where he’s taking me with so much of my skin exposed. I try to tuck my breasts in further, but to no avail.
Louise comes in and motions for me to stand in front of the mirror. She goes to work on my face and must agree with Nico about my hair because she leaves it alone.
It’s then I notice the sparkly shoes, but when I put them on they don’t even show underneath the dress. I
get a second burst of energy, excited in spite of myself, wondering where he’s taking me. I didn’t expect to get out of the house again so soon, but you won’t find me complaining.
Nico taps on the door and has the mask in his hands. I roll my eyes and he grins.
“It’s dark out there. How am I going to see anything?” I ask, as he ties the cloth over my eyes.
“No backtalk out of you,” he whispers in my ear.
“You used to like it,” I mutter.
His hand traces its way down my throat, to my cleavage, and he places a kiss there. “You look stunning.”
He leads me out of the room and once again I try to memorize the feel of the path. We get in a boat again and he puts something on my wrist before we move.
“In case you feel sick.”
I thank him and he pats my arm. His sweetness is grating on me. He’s up to something and I’d rather he just tell me than pretend this is a cozy night out.
When we reach land and get off the boat, we drive for a few minutes. The car stops and he puts his hand on my face.
“I’ll have eyes and ears everywhere. One wrong breath and it’s over. When anyone asks, you’re my wife. We had a private ceremony several months ago and couldn’t be happier. We’re here to support the community and are glad to be contributing toward such a worthy cause.”
My heart skips over itself.
“Yes, Soti will be here,” he answers as if I’ve spoken, “and you’ll talk to him. Let him know you’re happy and in love with me.” He pinches the inside of my wrist until I yelp. “If you so much as give him a fleeting hint about your circumstances at the house, his life will be over. I don’t care if it looks suspicious or not. I want you to leave no doubt in his mind that you’ve moved on, whatever you have to do to convince him. Am I clear?”
“Yes.”
I would agree to anything. Anything to see him. And everything to keep him alive.