If I screamed and gave away my position, perhaps they would attempt to shoot me, and my baby was in the next room.
Mia.The thought of her almost made me whimper. At least Brando had gone out to check on her. She wasn’t alone.
The other reason was that Icouldn’tscream.
Panic had seized me and lodged a ball of fear in my throat. I had been in a few dangerous situations before, but this one took the award for the fucking creepiest. It was as if a ghost etched a symbol and my name on a gravestone, forcing me to watch.
Death only bothered me because I wasn’t ready to leave my family. My daughter and my husband needed me. I also didn’t want to know when. There’s a reason why the date of death is kept secret—so it doesn’t drive us insane, wasting our lives obsessing over it. That was what this felt like.
I didn’t have to obsess over it much longer.
In a streak of black and rust, Ruby went for the window, snarling and snapping, her saliva dripping down the pane, rolling over the fog she was creating with her mad breath. Her teeth and claws savaged air and glass and wall.
She had been creeping underneath the window, and when the hand came up again, she had attacked without warning.
Three things happened at once.
Mia started to wail.
I threw myself over the tub, crawling on the floor like a crab out of water, snatching my robe from the counter before I made it out of the bathroom.
Brando came charging in, as silent as Ruby, a gun in his hand. He was still naked.
Snatching Mia from her portable crib, I held her close, rocking her on the floor. The bed was tall enough to cover us, and we kept low. She wouldn’t settle, though, until I offered her my breast. She held on to my chain, her nails grazing my chest, breathing out of her nose. The gulping noises she made were a comfort in the uncertain night.
Her eyes started to droop again, indolence sweeping in, her suckling gradually lessening with the need for sleep. Even after she quit, I kept her close, tucking her into my warm robe against my heart.
Ruby had gone silent. The entire villa seemed too quiet.
Then in a flash of flesh and black sweatpants, Brando moved like a piece of the night that had detached itself and was going after the enemy, his sidekick on his heels. Opening a drawer next to the bed, he handed me a gun. I set it beside me, tucking it close to my leg, hidden underneath the flap of the robe.
Before leaving the room, he pointed toward me and Mia on the floor, gave Ruby a whispered command to stay in German, and then left.
Circling us three, four times, she finally settled in her bed, though “settled” stretched it. The dog was on edge. I patted her head, attempting to let her know what a good girl she was. But she refused to calm. I had a feeling she didn’t think her duties were over for the night.
Whatever Brando was doing out there, he was taking his sweet time. I expected shouting, grunts, perhaps even gunfire. Nothing came. Just the normal sounds of a house that had settled into sleep. An occasional creak, a sigh during dreams, the rustling of blankets as one turns to find a more comfortable spot.
Goosebumps prickled my arms. A shiver shook me bone deep. Crawling out of the bathroom soaking wet and without drying off had given the cold air something to cling to, but that wasn’t the reason I felt cold. Silence was as bad as noise. Worry for Brando had reached a crescendo inside of me.
Whoever was outside of the window carving my name into fog had gone to an awful lot of trouble to get to me. Which meant either this place wasn’t as safe as it seemed, or someone patrolling these grounds was pretending to be a solider for the Faustifamiglia,being dishonest about his loyalties.
My feelings told me it was the latter.
When it came down to it, there was always more than one rat on a ship—this lifestyle lent itself to snitches. Though it was beyond me why anyone would want to take the chance of finding out whether the idiom “snitches end up in ditches” or “to the grave without a heart” was true.
From hearsay, the entire “to the grave without a heart” scenario was saved for personal vendettas. The others were meant for business.
In this life, there was a separation between the two.
It’s not personal; it’s just businessmeant something. Sure, they’d still kill you, but it wasn’t personal. Not sure how that made much a difference in the face of death, but I gave up long ago attempting to make sense of the laws of this world.
Perhaps personal made it worse—the suffering, I mean.
What I found to be the most terrifying of all was that Brando never needed an introduction course. He faded in without effort. Set the lion back in the wild, and he’ll do as instinct dictates. Before long, the others are bowing down and calling him king of the pride.
One thing I felt for certain, though, in the face of Luca’s sudden appearance, was thatthatking was not giving over his kingdom anytime soon.
“Amen,” I whispered to myself.
