Clean, bandaged, and awake, she barely resembled the woman who had trespassed onto my boat. She had appeared like an avenging Joan of Arc. Bloodied but ploughing on with singular focus, ready to thrash her enemies only to crumble in my arms at the promise of a safe haven. Now she was frailer yet stronger at the same time. A paradoxical blend.
Her skin reminded me of coffee watered down with too much milk, holding the promise of a golden color. She still appeared sickly with green tinges of lingering bruises speckling her lower face. Her bones were small and fragile with little muscle, but her mind made up for it. Quick-witted despite the shock of her situation, she didn’t break easily under pressure.
I reached my office on the other side of the mansion and shoved the door open. It smacked against the wall and rebounded in time for me to shut it behind me.
I circled my desk and tapped my fingers one after the other along the furniture. Three weeks of researching her yielded nothing, and with her injuries, facial recognition failed. It was unacceptable.
I pulled my pocketknife out of my pants. My fingers swept over the engravings on the antique wooden handle. The scene of the Bastille being stormed during the French Revolution remained, despite the number of hands this knife had passed through over the last three generations of Caïds of the Côte d’Azur Milieu. Only the blade changed in the last fifty years, though it, too, received the same engravings on each side. “Liberté. Egalité. Fraternité.” Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood, the founding values of the French Republic, on one side. “Le Jour de Gloire”, the Day of Glory, on the other to symbolize that great things happened to those who charged forward.
With a twist of my wrist, the blade flicked up and out. A quick shove of my thumb, the blade and handle snapped shut together. Another flick of the wrist, it jerked open and in place once more.In, out. In, out. The repeated snaps broke through the quiet in my office. Normally, they helped me calm the constant burning unease in my head. They made me focus.
It did nothing to rid me of the memory of the stranger’s touch. Innocent. Delicate yet sure. None of the revulsion I normally felt with unsolicited touch was there. No nausea. No itchiness. No sweating. Her fingers dug into my skin for only a few seconds, yet I felt calmer than I had in years.
I hadn’t felt such a reprieve since…I collapsed in my seat and tossed my head back against the headrest. My eyes immediately caught on the cabinet in my bookshelf that hid certain memorabilia. No matter how many months went by, I just couldn’t make myself get rid of any of it.
Mon papillon. My butterfly. Persetta haunted me. Her smiles. Her friendship. If I concentrated enough, I still remembered the soft press of comfort her innocent hugs lent me. That was all it ever had been. Innocent, despite the contractual engagement between our families since I was eleven and she was six. That held for nine years until Yannick’s death almost five years ago. As children, our friendship brought me a measure of peace I had never found again. But we grew up, and reality bit us both in the ass. All good things come to an end.
I rarely thought of her anymore.
Almost five years since we last saw each other, over three since we last spoke, just under three since I received her last letter, still unopened and untouched on that blasted shelf. My mysterious guest was shoving mypapillonto the forefront of my thoughts once again.
How was she doing? Did she still smile the same way, with wild abandon? Was she still shy and demure around strangers? Did she enjoy playing music just as much? With her mother dead, how was she coping?
Compared to her bastard of a husband and her rash son, Alisea Iannelli had been a sweet woman who baked the most delicious zeppole, a worthy rival to beignets.
Her death must have tormented Persetta. She always was a sensitive soul, one of those rare, volatile creatures who survived unblemished in the underground. First her mother, then her father, killed by his own son, who now led the Californian syndicate of the Italian mafia. I gritted my teeth at the thought of that smug bastard. Overbearing asshole. Despite our close age, Renzo and I never got along. Was Persetta safe with him?
“She hasn’t stepped foot outside of their family home in months. Nobody has heard from her. Nobody has seen her,” Erel had said, and I hadn’t cared enough to know. I actively avoided asking after her.
I reached for my phone before I could stop myself and dialed the American phone number I still knew by heart three years later. Pathetic, I chastised myself.
The phone rang and rang until her voicemail came up. Her voice was just as I remembered it. Chipper and self-assured, I could almost imagine her bouncing in place after sneaking a latte out of the kitchen. That girl never could handle her caffeine.
“Hey, you’ve reached Persy. Not here right now, obvs. But you know what to do so I can call you back. Laters.”
That giggle at the end, light and frivolous. It came so easy to her. I had never been that way. And that nickname, Persy. I used to call her that when we were kids. She would be nineteen now, twenty in less than a month, but she was still a child at heart, it seemed. A soul far too young. Far too innocent for me, no matter who her family was. Good, she deserved as much.
My cell vibrated in my hand. No caller ID, but it was her. I just knew it. Fuck, I shouldn’t have called her. I couldn’t quite click that red End Call button either.
“Yes?” I answered blandly.
Cursing met me on the other side of the line. Male cursing.
“I knew it. I knew it was you,pezzo di merda.”
I recognized Renzo’s cocksure, assholic voice. With the West Coast American accent flattening his words, his added Italian made more of a brash statement than his tone. Five years, and I still wanted to bleed the assholedry. All it would take was one good stab to bring him down a notch. For Persy’s sake, I would even purposely miss vital organs.
“Did you do this?” he barked at me.
“Hello to you, too, Iannelli.”
“That’s Don Iannelli to you,stronzo.” I rolled my eyes. “I swear, if you had a hand in this, I’ll gut you. I’ll cut your cock off and feed it to you. Maybe I’ll even fuck you with it first.”
“Careful, Don. You forget who I am. You wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“Yeah, hide behind Endgame, you fucking coward. You were never worthy of my sister. You’re nothing but—”
A knock against my office door spared me more of Renzo’s pointless vitriol. Muting the conversation, I called out to whoever was on the other side. Erel confidently strode in, and I stifled a chuckle.
