CHAPTER FOURTEEN
LILA
I was wilting.
Like those white pretty roses I wore as a tiara at Luca’s wedding. The ones that were tainted by my own blood.
I couldn’t chase away the hazy memories of the night I was attacked.
No matter how hard I tried to outrun them, they always caught up.
The pain. The humiliation. The faceless man grunting, leering, taking.
And it wasn’t just that. The time was approaching when my pregnancy would be announced. Doctor appointments would be booked. It would become real, and I wasn’t ready to be a mother. I wasn’t even ready to be a wife.
Not that my husband was interested in one.
Then there was my sleep deprivation. I was exhausted and agitated, prone to making mistakes. I should’ve never smiled at Tiernan spitefully.
That opened a Pandora’s box. Now he suspected I was spying for my family. And he told me exactly what punishment I’d receive if he deemed his suspicion to be true.
Mama was in Chicago. There had been some issues with Luca and his wife. Sofia left the house, and Papa sent Mama to Sofia’s parents to try to calm her down. Mama wanted to bring me along, but apparently my stronzo of a husband denied the request.
Now I was stuck in the Gothic cathedral-turned-tavern, all alone and with nothing to do.
I didn’t have my Kindle nor any physical books. Mama said it was too much of a risk, in case Tiernan found them. I was running out of pages in my sketchpad.
I had a little money. Cash. But I couldn’t leave the apartment. Guards were swarming all over the place. A part of me wanted to knock on the door opposite ours. But ultimately, I was too scared to find out who awaited behind it.
What if it was Becky? Or another mistress?
In lieu of entertainment, I started toying with my phone. I familiarized myself with the settings. With the different icons that seemed to yield to my command each time I touched them. There were a lot of options to choose from. Books to read, games to play, articles to explore. It appeared that the entire, whole wide world was sitting in my palm, just waiting for me to discover it. The same message kept popping up, though, infuriating me to
no end.
No internet connection.
No internet connection.
No internet connection.
A frustrated growl tore out of my mouth. I shook my head, tossing the phone onto my bed beside me. A tremor shot up my spine. A sign of the entrance door slamming shut. I froze.
It was only four in the afternoon. Tiernan should be at work, probably checking on his gambling joints and whorehouses.
Who the hell just walked in?
Maybe one of his guards decided to take a spin on the helpless girl.
I jerked open my nightstand drawer and pulled out a butcher knife.
Tiernan had forgotten to hide it when I first moved in. Rookie mistake. He had cleared out the apartment of everything else lethal. I tucked the phone into the waistband of my sweatpants and advanced toward the hallway.
My heart dropped at the silhouette of a long-legged woman in knee- high Louboutin boots and a black faux fur coat. Huge Miu Miu sunglasses covered her face.
Lovely. Another one of my husband’s sex workers, I thought before she spun toward me, her marvelous bloodred hair flinging in slow motion
across her shoulders.
Tierney.
“Oh, good. You’re still alive.” She tore the sunglasses from her face, tossing them onto the kitchen island along with her Chanel bag. She strutted to the fridge. “Tiernan asked me to check on you.”
He did? Why? He was perfectly happy to let me rot here alone for two weeks.
“Is that a butcher knife in your hand?” Her face popped from the fridge, which she closed with a kick of her stiletto, hugging fresh eggs and a jar of olives to her chest. “Can’t blame you, girl. I want to kill my brother at least five times a day.” She rolled her sparkling emerald eyes. “The only thing stopping me at this point is selfishness. What if I ever need a kidney donor, you know?”
I placed the knife on the counter, watching her in fascination. I’d never met a woman who was so unapologetically herself. Every Camorra woman I knew tried to fit into the mold the men in her life created for her.
“Jaysus, it’s boiling in here. He lets you put the thermostat on seventy- six?” She peeled off her coat, revealing a burgundy evening dress, almost the color of her hair. “He has it bad for you, girl. In the twenty-eight years we’ve spent together, he hasn’t once let me close a window to fight the chill.”
I did change the thermostat on my third day here. It was originally set to forty-two. Even two pairs of socks and a puffy sweater couldn’t ward off the cold. My guess was he hadn’t noticed. He was barely home, anyway.
Also…twenty-eight? That was his age? I was only eighteen. He already had an unfair advantage over me without adding life experience into the mix.
Placing my elbows against the kitchen island, I studied her, waiting for an explanation for why she was here. Tierney arranged the food items on the other side of the island, extracting tiny ciabatta buns from a paper bag I hadn’t noticed before.
“Tiernan said you’re losing a bunch of weight. He wants the deal with the Camorra to be fruitful, so he asked that I make sure you eat. Don’t worry. I won’t force you.” She flashed me a smart-ass smile. “You’ll want to eat my Tunisian fricassee. It’s decadent.”
I noticed she had a tattoo running from the side of her neck to her
shoulder.
Oderint Dum Metuant.
It looked faded, blue, and uneven. The kind of tattoo you’d get from an amateur in prison.
Tiernan had the exact same one, I realized. They probably got it together.
“My God, look at you.” She reached across the island, snatching my jaw between her black almond nails, angling my head left and right.
“You’re breathtaking. You look like a younger Doutzen Kroes.”
I had no idea what she just said. Maybe I misread her lips. The sleep deprivation was really taking its toll on me.
Tierney continued chatting away, not letting the fact that I didn’t respond to her stop her or even slow her down.
“My secret ingredient is this.” She drummed her fingernails over a small glass jar with a red paste inside it. “Pilpelchuma instead of harissa.
It’s a chili garlic paste. I think your Italian palate will appreciate it.” She winked, then went on to drain a tuna can and dump a few eggs and potatoes into boiling water. “Tiernan and I spent a few months in North Africa hiding from…oh, let’s call them eager friends.” She chopped parsley and red onion thinly. “We were in hiding, fourteen, and school wasn’t on the menu, so I had a lot of spare time to learn how to cook, ride, drive, survive.” She hitched a shoulder up. “We’ve become very good at surviving, by the way.
In case you want to kill him.”
My brain screeched to a halt. Something didn’t add up. Before our nuptials, I oversaw Enzo and Luca discussing Tiernan. They said he lived in Ireland until he was fourteen, which was when his father moved him and his siblings to New York. No one mentioned anything about North Africa.
I knew next to nothing about my husband’s background. Shame Tierney couldn’t be trusted. I’d love to pick her brain.
“But enough about my glamorous life. What’s going on with you? How are you settling in?” Tierney licked the sharp knife in her hand, tongue lolling across the green-leafed edge. She slapped a generous amount of the red paste onto the now deep-fried bread. She then filled the bread with soft- boiled potatoes, tuna, sliced boiled egg, parsley, and prune-like black olives dripping oil. The sandwich overflowed.
She turned to face me, sighing at my stubborn silence. “You can trust me. I have no loyalty to T. Not since he let your cunt of a brother dictate my love life. Do you know Achilles makes me walk around with a chaperone to keep me from screwing people?”
I didn’t, but it sounded exactly like something Achilles would do. It did surprise me that he bothered in the first place. Unlike Luca and Enzo, Achilles never took an interest in another human seriously enough to make an effort.
I winced sympathetically. She caught the gesture, her pouty lips quirking to one corner slyly. “My day shift bodyguard is waiting outside the apartment right now. A Camorra soldier. Do you happen to know how to get rid of those?”
I almost shook my head. Almost. I’d never gotten rid of a bodyguard before. Never tried.
“So far, I’ve only managed to make their time with me miserable but not shake them off completely. I drag them for days-long shopping sprees and gossip sessions with the most boring socialites I know.” She plucked a spatula from a cabinet, pointing it at me. “I used to strip in front of them and make them watch. Drove them nuts. The entire exercise was to keep me from having sex with other men. So I blue-balled Achilles’s staff. I’m sure they told him, because they’re no longer permitted to enter my bedroom.”
She stopped, beaming conspiratorially. “Or apartment, for that matter.”
She pressed the spatula to the top of the sandwich, locking all the juices and ingredients in. I rounded the island so I could stand next to her and see what she said.
“My brother is more toxic than a king cobra. Unfortunately, you can’t choose your family and metabolism, so this is what I have to work with.
But I’m only loyal to myself. If you want to be friends, we can be friends.
I’ll keep any secrets you have. And if you help me get rid of Achilles…”
She trailed off. “We could help each other, you know? We women have to stick together. Especially in the chauvinistic underground world.”
Her offer was tempting. Almost as much as the mouthwatering sandwich she slid onto a plate and dragged in my direction. She also made me a smoothie from frozen mango, banana, strawberries, and Greek yogurt with a dash of date syrup. Maybe it was because I finally had company, or maybe it was because I hadn’t eaten properly in weeks, but I ravaged the food and smoothie in four minutes flat. She stared at me like I was a forest animal making up for lost time after months of hibernation.
I sat back on the chair at the dining table, filled with gratitude. I wished I could thank her, but I didn’t trust her enough. She sat opposite me, watching me intently. I liked her a lot, despite her affiliation with my husband. And I was horrified by what my brother was putting her through.
“Hey. Let me program my number into your phone.” She reached for the cell phone Mama gave me, which sat at the table between us. “What’s your passcode?”
Shit. Shit. Shit.
The phone was supposed to be a secret. I wasn’t supposed to know how to have one, let alone know how to operate it. I charged it in my walk-in closet, under layers of clothes, and only brought it outside because I thought Tierney was an attacker who broke inside.
There was no point denying I could operate it at this point. The lie would only be more glaring, since I obviously walked around with it. I pried it from her shiny nails, punching the four digits and handing it back to her. She frowned as she programmed in her number.
“Why are you not connected to the internet? Did Tiernan not give you the Wi-Fi?” She laughed, swinging her gaze to me.
Her smile dropped when she saw my face. The mixture of desperation and hope that shone through it. She licked her lips.
“Want me to give it to you? I steal his Wi-Fi on the daily. Eat the rich, right?”
I knew what she was doing. She was trying to lure me into showing her I understood her. I shouldn’t play along. It was dangerous. And yet… Digging my fingernails into the skin of my palms, I nodded slowly.
She sucked in a breath and quickly clicked a few things on my phone,
giving it back to me.
“Done.”
I smiled a thank-you, hoping I wasn’t going to regret putting my trust in her. I’d never had a friend before. But if I could have one…I wanted it to be her.
“I better head out.” She peered around. “I’m going to an Emilia Spencer art exhibition.”
My face lit up at the mention of the artist. I loved her work. Mama even bought me a cherry-blossom painting of hers for my seventeenth birthday. It fit my old room nicely with all the pink.
“What, you like her?” Tierney drummed her nails on the table. “She’s supposed to be good. Honestly? I know jack shit about art. But her husband’s a bigwig, and I promised Frankie I’d try to get him to endorse Wolfe for a second term.”
Frankie, as in Francesca Keaton. Wife of President Keaton. Papa always went on about how unfair it was that the Irish were good friends with the president, even though his wife was Italian American.
“Hey, you wanna come?” Tierney frowned. “I can introduce you to Emilia. Super sweet lady. Can’t say the same about her husband.”
I hesitated before shaking my head in response. If I came with her, it’d be an admission of what I was—and what I wasn’t. I wasn’t ready for that.
Tierney sighed, stood up, then leaned to squeeze my shoulder. “I’ll come again soon. Eat.”
She departed, leaving me with working internet and a lot of free time. _______
Three hours later, I was sitting with my back pressed against the wall of my walk-in closet, my phone plugged into its charger, reeling.
I could barely breathe.
The internet was full of things. Helpful things. Terrifying things. So many inventions I didn’t know existed.
Smart gloves that help hearing-impaired people speak.
Vibration bracelets to alert you to different sounds around you.
Robotic translators.
Transcription apps for phone calls.
Even a cinema app that tells you about films playing in your area with subtitles and audio descriptions.
I was floored. The options were infinite, and all of them could help me in my journey as a hearing-impaired person. I wondered if Mama knew about all these things. If so, why didn’t she say anything?
The only constant in my life, the sole thing keeping me grounded, was the knowledge that Mama would always do the right thing for me.
Now, I wasn’t so sure anymore.
A quick search showed me so many options and shortcuts to make my life more enjoyable. And yet, I was never made aware of them. Moreover, Mama actively forbade me from using the internet. Why?
It only further fed the flame of my rising anger.
Funny, how I used to think I was content. Safe in my little bubble of security.
The last eighteen years felt like a lie, a sham.
A cage my own mother shoved me into, then locked the door, and threw the key into the ocean.
The bubble had burst, the bars melted, and I could now see clearly into the future.
Either I showed people who I was and demanded to be treated with
respect.
Or I’d end up exactly like my mother.
Invisible, inconsequential, and bitter.
