“Tonight,” I tell her.
“Are the Rizzos bidding?” she asks.
I nod. “As is your father, and several families that hate yours.”
“I wonder if my father will come through for me. Then again, I suppose it doesn’t matter since he plans to marry me off to The Cleaver anyway.”
Her face shrivels in disgust. She doesn’t know about the confrontation her father had at the Rizzo estate, nor that he called off the wedding after The Cleaver shot one of his dogs. I wonder if I should tell her.
I study her and brush a stray lock of hair from her face. I expect her to get angry, given the topic of conversation—her sale to the highest bidder—but she lets me do it. “You really hate Vittorio Rizzo, don’t you?”
She shakes her head. “Never thought I’d be forced to marry a man who goes by the nickname ‘The Cleaver.’ You know how he got that name, right? I had to do some digging to find this out, because no one in my family would tell me, but The Cleaver used to work in a slaughterhouse, which his family uses as a front for drug running. He got pretty good with a cleaver. Anyway, when the Namibians began encroaching on his territory, he rounded up their leaders and chopped off their hands with, you guessed it, a cleaver. When some of them still didn’t get the message, he tracked them down and butchered them with the same weapon, hanging their bodies on meathooks in the neighborhoods the Namibians thought they controlled. He’s a horrible, terrible man.”
I study her. “But the Namibians never encroached on Rizzo territory again I take it?”
She makes a face. “Yeah, but the way he achieved that is just horrible. Nobody should behave that way. I could never marry a man who did something like that. Unless forced to.”
What if she knew of the terrible things I’ve done in my time? The thought gnaws at me.
If only she knew what kind of a monster she’s slept with.
“Anyway, you know the story about my arranged marriage, right?” she asks. When I don’t answer, she continues: “The Cleaver’s brother jumped Michelangelo—my brother. He was beaten up pretty badly. I don’t know, it was another territorial dispute or something I think, though I’m not really involved in the family business, so I can’t be sure about the particulars. Whatever the case, my brother pissed off his brother.”
I nod. “That happens a lot in this business.”
“Anyway,” she says. “My other brothers were ready to kill him. But before our two families started an all-out war over the incident, The Cleaver’s father called mine and negotiated a deal. I’d marry The Cleaver, tying our families together and ending the conflict. I hate the fact Papa used me as a pawn. There’s no guarantee this pact of ours is going to work, either. Our families are supposed to become great friends, but I have a feeling the deal is balanced on the head of a pin. Especially now. My father probably thinks the Rizzos were involved in some way.” She glances at me as something occurs to her. “It’s funny. Is it only coincidental that you decided to kidnap me shortly after the wedding announcement?”
“Purely a coincidence,” I lie, though make it obvious with a smile.
“Seriously,” she says. “Tell the truth. Did you plan to kidnap me before the announcement?”
“The plan’s been sitting on the back burner for a while now,” I admit.
She nods. “So the engagement only accelerated those plans.”
I purse my lips. “To be honest, I guess I always thought I’d find a way back to you. But time chipped away at those thoughts over the years, and I’d forget you for months, thinking about you only occasionally, and when I did, it would always be to tell myself ‘someday, I’ll be with her. Someday, I’ll find her again.’ Just like the vengeance I planned on your father. It was always something I was pushing off into the future. And whenever an opportunity came, I always shrugged it off, telling myself I’d wait for a better chance. The truth is, I didn’t want to confront him, I realize that now. I guess a part of me didn’t want to hurt him, because it would hurt you, indirectly. I don’t know. Either way, I didn’t act.
“And then, when I heard the engagement announcement, something broke inside me. I was going to be damned if I allowed another man to marry you. Truly and utterly damned. The thought of that Rizzo bastard taking you, the woman who was meant to be mine, sent me into a tailspin I still don’t think I’ve recovered from. I swore one day I’d get revenge on your father, and I decided that then was the time. So I gathered my brothers and finally made good on my plans to make your father pay, and to make you mine. If only temporarily.”
“And so here I am,” she says. “Yours, at least for the time being. You still intend to make my father pay, then? Knowing that it would hurt me, like you said?”
I look at her. “I… don’t know anymore.”
When I see the disappointment in her eyes, I lower my gaze. I spot the cherub pendant around her neck and I grab it, smiling. “I still remember when you gave me this.”
She ignores the comment and says: “When are you going to tell me what my father did to you? You said you didn’t run. So what did he do? Order you not to see me anymore?” When I don’t answer she pleads: “Will you tell me, please, so I understand? I need to know what happened to the boy I used to like.”
I let go of the pendant as if it burns me, and feel the anger rising as I tell her: “You called your father a good man? Does a good man order the death of a sixteen year old?”
She stares at me. “I don’t believe it.”
I close my eyes for a moment. “You thought I ran away. But I didn’t. Your father tried to kill me for seeing you, Angela.”
She’s still shocked. “No. My father wouldn’t…”
“He ordered his men to do the deed,” I insist. “They hauled me onto a boat, drove it out onto the ocean, tied four weights to my feet, and threw me overboard. I survived only by killing one of the men, and hiding from the other.” I nod toward her throat. “Before I left his presence, your father ripped the pendant you’re wearing off my neck. Probably told you he found it in the gutter, am I right?”
She shakes her head, shocked into silence for several moments. When she finally speaks, she reveals: “He told me some kid buzzed the gate and returned it. I thought it was you. I thought you’d changed your mind about me, or found someone else. And I never saw you again until that day at the Ippodromo. I’m so sorry for what he did to you, Massimo. No one deserves that. Especially not someone so young. I’m not sure I can ever forgive my father for this. Though I still don’t want him to die. Is that wrong of me?”
