“I already told you, I’m not letting my brothers down.” I hold her gaze. “I don’t want to letyoudown. Besides, as I mentioned, she hates me, so I highly doubt she’d choose to run away with me.”
Rosa smiles wanly. “You never let me down. Never have, never will. If you decide not to go through with this, I’ll support you. We all will. We’re family, and like you said, family always comes first with us. And even if you don’t want to run away, you can still let her go.”
I rest my glass on the coaster. “Actually, I can’t. Angela has seen my face. I have to go through with this now. If I let her go, she’ll tell her father everything and we’ll have a war on our hands. I’ll have to kill her father and her brothers anyway in the end. If I don’t, they’ll come after us. So you see, I’m doomed no matter what I do. I have to see this through.”
Rosa finishes her bourbon, then turns her glass upside-down to let the ice cube fall to the floor. It hits with a solidTHUDbut doesn’t break. Doesn’t even chip.
“You see that?” Rosa asks. “This ice is us. The Moretti family. Unbreakable. Resilient. We take whatever the world throws at us. We’ve been taking it since we were children, and we’ll continue to take it. If you let her go, and her family chooses to hunt us, then so be it. Even I will be a part of that fight. But at least we’ll have done the right thing.”
I purse my lips, then smile sadly. “See, Rosa, that’s where you and I are different. You’re always looking at everything as right versus wrong, whereas I approach things from a cost-benefit angle. I park my emotions at the door. I have to be cold, analytic in this business. What is the cost of an undertaking, versus the value of the resulting benefits? We’ve already kidnapped Angela. There’s no benefit in letting her go if the cost is we’re going to have to fight the Amatos anyway. We might as well extract as much money as we can from her family in the process. Otherwise, their deaths provide no value, and are for nothing.”
Rosa retrieves her ice cube from the floor. “You’ve made your choice, then. I hope you’ll be able to live with yourself after taking this vengeance of yours.”
“So do I,” I mutter softly after she’s gone.
10
Angela
After my pretend piano session I return to bed and try in earnest to sleep, but can’t. I can only lie there, restless throughout the remainder of the night, my hyperactive imagination running on overdrive.
Finally about an hour before dawn Massimo decides to make an appearance.
The door opens and he stands at the entrance to my bedroom, his muscular frame silhouetted in the doorframe.
“Get up,” he orders.
No good morning, no how are you. He’s fully embraced his kidnapper role. That kiss we had last night was an aberration. Something that will never happen again. He lost control, as did I, the two of us giving in to the desires of our bodies, our minds momentarily lapsing into who we were eight years ago when there wasn’t such a vast chasm separating the two of us.
I rise, rub my eyes. “What’s going on?”
“We’re moving,” he says.
“To a different room?” I ask.
“Different vineyard,” he replies. “Gather any of the clothes you like, and the toiletries, because there aren’t any extra where we’re going.”
When I don’t obey, he mutters something under breath and then stalks across the room. I think he’s going to grab my wrist and force me toward the wardrobe, but then he changes his mind at the last second, almost as if he’s afraid of touching me.
He opens the wardrobe and begins grabbing the folded dresses and other clothes. Since his back is to me, I make a run for the door, not really sure what I’m hoping to accomplish, only knowing that I have totryto escape, but then I see the other kidnapper standing there in his balaclava, watching from the hallway beyond with his arms crossed, and I freeze.
Massimo takes the stack of clothes to the bathroom and shoves them into the laundry basket along with the toiletries, then he gestures for me to walk in front of him.
The balaclava-clad kidnapper leads the way, with Massimo pressing in from behind, and we make our way through the main hallway. I notice most of the paintings I saw yesterday have been removed. Interesting. My family must be close to hunting them down. That’s the only reason Massimo would collect the paintings and move me.
I consider running away again, but when I see the dogs waiting in the kennel outside, lit up by outdoor floodlights, I decide that’s a very bad idea: the animals look quite hungry today.
My kidnappers lead me to a different vehicle, a piano-black SUV that blends in well with the night. Massimo opens the back door and beckons for me to go inside. When I do, he leans his body over me to place the basket on the seat beside me. He’s not so near that I can touch him, but close enough that his scent fills my nostrils, and I can’t help the nervous flutter I feel in my belly. A flutter I used to feel around him all the time in my youth.
I smile sadly when he retreats and shuts the door, and I wish I was that young, naive girl again. Wish I could go back in time and fix things somehow. But there’s no such thing as time travel.
No such thing as true love.
I know that now. I’ve known it for a while, ever since my father made me get engaged to The Cleaver.
The door slams opposite me and I start. I realize Massimo has loaded into the seat beside me. His musky scent drifts my way once more.
He lifts a black bag toward my head. “Sorry.”
