CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
LILA
The next day, I visited Mama in Long Island. I decided to skip my daily dinner with Tiernan. Punish him for his behavior. For that reason, I didn’t bring Tierney along. She’d adhere to her brother’s rules and drag me home kicking and screaming before seven. Not because she wasn’t loyal to me, but because he was the head of the Callaghan clan. His word was gospel.
I went alone, braving the proximity to Tiernan’s men. They appeared too fearful to look in my direction, let alone touch me. My husband’s mere existence was an invisible cloak I wore at all times that made the few people I came in contact with petrified.
I’d never punished anyone in my life. Never spat at anyone. Never flipped them the bird. I tried to figure out why I felt comfortable doing it to someone so violent and bloodthirsty. I came to the conclusion that I felt confident taunting my husband because no matter how awful things were between us, he never physically hurt me.
He was supposed to kill me that night on the fountain. Rape me the night of our wedding. Or any other night thereafter.
Yet, he never did.
His careful, indomitable control meant I was always safe from his wrath. He kept himself on a leash.
When I made the journey back home at ten at night, Mama joined me to help me feel safe.
I’d been trying to patch things up between us, but my anger and disappointment still lingered.
“How come you didn’t come to my appointment?” I signed to her. “I know it wasn’t migraines. You always have them and never cancel your engagements.”
“You know how difficult your pregnancy has been for me.” Her lips curled petulantly. “I’m still coming to terms with it.”
Fury boiled inside me. I was pretty sure my husband also wasn’t a fan of the situation, yet he showed up and walked me through it.
“Anyway. I think I’m getting closer to convincing Luca to sabotage your marriage.” She patted her silver updo. “He promised he’d talk to Tiernan.
See if we can negotiate a way out.”
“Papa would never let me have the child out of wedlock.”
“You wouldn’t be unwed.” A sly glint lit her pupils. “When I was in Chicago, I spoke to Angelo. He said he’s willing to step in and marry you.
Good man, Angelo. He impressed me with his business and character. He’ll be better for you.”
A bone-chilling shiver rolled down my spine.
“Papa wouldn’t let me divorce. It’s against his faith.”
“He might not have a choice. Luca and Achilles are taking over, and they have other ideas on how to run things.”
As much as my current husband drove me to the brink of madness, my instincts told me Angelo would be a trillion times worse. I had nothing to back up this notion with. It was a pure, primal gut feeling. One I knew better than to ignore.
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea,” I admitted. “Tiernan is a jackass, but better the devil you know.”
Yesterday, I disrespected my husband in front of his soldiers, spat in his face, and he still fed me an Italian dinner and sent my clothes to be drycleaned along with his own batch.
“Don’t tell me you’re warming up to him.” My mother’s hands flew about wildly. “You belong with me at the estate, not with this stronzo.
Angelo said he’s willing to lend his last name and that you can live with me most of the year. He wants nothing to do with you. It will be wonderful!”
Was this plan about my well-being and my baby’s, or about her? I
couldn’t tell anymore.
“I don’t want to marry Angelo, Mama.”
Her face hardened. “Are you letting that dirty man touch you, Lila?”
I shook my head, so disappointed I could hardly breathe.
“Why did you never buy me any of the life-altering devices for the hard
of hearing?” I changed the subject.
“What?” Her eyes flared.
“Why did you keep me from the internet?”
“What is this man filling your head with?” She scowled. “I did it for your own good. And you will marry Angelo if I can make it happen, because I still know what’s good for you better than anyone else.”
When the vehicle stopped in front of Fermanagh’s, I itched to warn her not to make any plans before discussing them with me, but knew there wasn’t any point.
My mother could move mountains and tear the moon from its place, and still, she wouldn’t be able to release me from Tiernan Callaghan’s clutches.
He didn’t let anyone touch what was his.
Even if he didn’t care for it one bit. _______
Four soldiers escorted me into the pub and up the stairway to the apartment.
When I reached my door, they stayed in the corridor. I recognized a Camorra soldier outside of Tierney’s apartment, Marco, surveilling her on Achilles’s command. I sent him a dirty look, fed up with anyone and anything with a penis.
I pushed the door open, tugging my jacket off and hanging it on the hanger. The place was dark. It was approaching eleven, and even though I was the one who didn’t show up to dinner, the fact Tiernan had left gnawed at the corners of my stomach.
I pushed the door to my room open, stepped inside, and stumbled back in shock.
The world blurred at the edges, and a red mist of fury tainted my vision.
On my bed, with the pink satin covers and fluffy pillows, was my husband, sitting next to the gynecologist’s receptionist, holding her by the hair.
They were both fully clothed, and she was stomach-down on my mattress, staring dumbly up at him. He held her at an arm’s length, far enough that they didn’t touch, close enough that I still wanted to kill him.
My sketch of Tate Blackthorn was on the floor, ripped into minuscule pieces, his piercing eyes staring back at the chaos unfolding.
Something tangible snapped inside me. I felt it crack my chest open,
and all the anger rushed out like pus.
I’d had enough.
“Go ahead. Fuck her.” I shaped my lips around the words, knowing they were understandable enough, after years of clandestine speech therapy. “I’ll go find myself a plaything, too.”
Swiveling on my heel, I stalked toward the door.
Tears flew from my cheeks, hot and angry and utterly unstoppable.
He wanted to break me, and he did.
I spoke.
I spoke.
I practiced with my speech therapist, but not enough that it felt natural.
It still felt like I was trying to chomp rocks between my teeth, and I never attempted to do it with anyone else. Not even Mama.
He’d taken it too far and broke the fragile trust between us. This absolute hussy of a woman, on my bed, on my sheets.
He’d smirked when he saw me. Like he wanted to get caught. But, of course he did. He did it in my room.
Yanking the door open, I shouldered past the wall of Tiernan’s soldiers and took the steps down. The men were so stunned, they just stood there and watched. I didn’t make it four steps before my husband scooped me up by the back of my dress, boxing me against the wall between his huge arms.
He still smelled of her. A mixture of cloying, flowery perfume and a Victoria’s Secret body mist.
“She speaks.” He looked like the least surprised man on planet Earth, grinning devilishly. “What a fucking miracle.”
I slapped him hard, glad his soldiers witnessed it. Maybe he’d finally hit me back.
I hoped he’d hit me, and I’d be able to tell my brothers, and they’d kill him.
His face didn’t budge a millimeter, his good eye didn’t flinch. He was immune to pain, to emotions, to humanity.
“I figured out what it is,” he said conversationally, scooping up a tear on my cheek with his index finger and popping it into his mouth.
I stared at him with faux boredom, my heart nearly racing out of my chest. Every muscle in my body screamed at me to hurt him back.
Tiernan leaned forward, his lips moving slowly. “You’re deaf.”
All the air left my lungs.
No one knew this. No one but Mama and Imma. How did he figure it out?
“Your speech was the final nail in the coffin,” he explained, watching me watch his lips. “Though I had my inkling for some time now. You never seemed to acknowledge me unless I was right in front of you, where you could read my lips. I tried dropping shit whenever we were in the same room—mugs, hardcovers, small furniture—waiting for a reaction that never came.”
I gulped. I always found his clumsiness to be out of character whenever I found a shattered glass in the kitchen.
Did he find my speech funny? Weird? I wished it didn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter to me. Yet it did. Because, as much as I hated it, I cared what he thought about me.
“I speak ASL,” he said after a beat. “Tierney, too.”
I reared my head back, surprised.
What were the odds? And why on earth did the twins learn ASL? I was starting to suspect they weren’t with their father and older brother the entire length of their childhood.
He snapped his fingers once. His soldiers evacuated the hallway. The Camorrista hesitated for a moment, deliberating, before Tiernan shot him a glance that sent him stumbling downstairs.
We were alone.
Tiernan signed to me, “Tell me something. Anything. Now.”
His movements were smooth. Confident. It was the last nail in my lie’s coffin. The temptation to speak with someone who wasn’t my mother was too great.
I raised my quaking hands to answer him. “Go to hell.”
“Grew up there. Never going back. Let’s try again.”
“I hate you.”
“I tolerate you.” The admission seemed to slip from him without permission, because his jaw locked in annoyance. “And I don’t tolerate people very often. Third time’s a charm. Say something.”
“Get rid of your whore.”
It was the first time I saw him smiling with mirth, not sarcasm. All the other times, his smirk was tainted with darkness. Still, he didn’t blink. I wondered if he closed his eye when he slept.
“That’s better, Gealach.”
He marched back into the apartment. I followed him. The receptionist was standing outside my room, reapplying her lip gloss, using her
smartphone as a mirror.
I wasn’t a violent person, but she knew he was married with a baby on the way. I was pretty sure I could kill her and get acquitted by the jury.
“Brandy?”
“What’s up?” She clicked her small mirror shut, batting her lashes at him.
“Get the fuck out. You’ve served your purpose.”
Her jaw hung open in shock. “Are you serious right now?”
“I’m always serious.”
“You didn’t even…we didn’t even…wait.” She held a finger up. “What was my purpose?”
“Making my wife yell at me.” He tugged his wallet out of his breast pocket, pulling a wad of rolled cash and patting her cheek with it. “Here.
Use it to buy some self-respect.”
“I thought you said you aren’t together.”
At this point, I lost my patience. With a huff, I wrenched out Tiernan’s gun from his holster and pointed it at her.
She shrieked, stumbling backward and hitting the wall. For the first time in my life, I was glad I couldn’t hear.
“Stop this nonsense, Lila. The paperwork would be insane.” Tiernan
touched my shoulder.
I gave him a shut-the-hell-up look.
He sighed. “If you want to kill her this much, at least let me drive us somewhere secluded.”
I swiveled toward him, pointing the gun at his face.
“Care for a rerun of our wedding night?” I spoke out the words.
He arched a sardonic eyebrow, posture as languid and laid-back as a big cat. “Don’t mind if I do. I’m not picky with the way you touch me, as long as you do.”
When I turned back to Brandy, she wasn’t there anymore. Probably ran off while I was contemplating blowing my husband’s head off.
“My gun?” He opened his palm for me to dispose of the weapon.
“No.” I tucked it into the waistband of my pink ensemble. I raised my hand to sign to him. “Next time you bring your whores to my apartment, I’ll just assume I walked into a suicide pact.”
He studied me with an approving sparkle in his eye, a wolfish grin on his face. He almost looked…proud.
“I mean it, Tiernan. No more sluts.”
“How about you sit your ass down and answer all my questions? If I find them sufficient, I might grant you your wish. If not, get ready to see me fucking the entire Northeast population.”
Even though he deserved his other eye plucked out for this answer, I did acknowledge he was entitled to some explanation. Deceiving your lawfully wedded husband wasn’t an ethical thing to do. Even if he was a bloodthirsty murderer.
I walked over to the couch and perched myself on its edge. He joined me on the opposite recliner.
“How do you compose music if you’re deaf?”
His question surprised me. First, because there were so many bigger questions to ask. Second, because he wasn’t supposed to know that.
“You’re going through my things?” I scowled.
“At least once a day,” he said easily.
“Why?”
“You fascinate me.”
I contemplated arguing with him, but that’d be hypocritical of me. I did the same thing. Came with the territory of living with a complete stranger.
“How did Beethoven?” I signed. “He was deaf, too.”
“He lost his hearing gradually. Did you?”
I shook my head. “No. But the principle is the same. You study the patterns, follow the cues, and come up with sequences that seem in sync.
Writing music is analytical, more than anything else.”
“Do your brothers know you’re wicked smart?”
He thought I was smart?
I licked my lips, ignoring the heat spreading behind my rib cage. “Only
Mama and Imma know the truth.”
“Why?”
“It’s better this way. I’ve been deaf since birth. When I was two, they started running some tests to eliminate issues. I didn’t respond to my own name and didn’t speak a word. Their initial diagnosis was that I was on the spectrum. It was extreme medical malpractice and completely changed the course of my life.”
Opening up felt like stepping out to the sun and feeling its rays on my skin for the very first time. Oxygen hit the bottom of my lungs. There was freedom in claiming who you were.
“Mama and Imma loved me all the same. Mama took me to classes and therapists. She dedicated her whole life to taking care of me. Imma taught me how to cook, how to knit, how to bake, how to suture.”
Our eyes met, and something behind his mossy pupil softened.
“I was six when they found out I had been misdiagnosed. By then, I had taught myself to read, write, do a three-hundred-piece puzzle; Mama kept it all hush-hush. She and Imma were livid with the injustice and initially wanted to sue. But by then, people started noticing me. Powerful men in the underworld came knocking on Papa’s door, looking for an arranged marriage when I turned eighteen. The Cosa Nostra. The Bratva. La Eme.
Mama realized my fate would be as bleak as hers if I went that route—a cheating criminal husband with blood on his hands. Someone who would bring me nothing but trouble and heartache. She decided to spare me the woes of matrimony, so we kept my abilities a secret.”
Tiernan’s face remained unreadable. He continued staring at me silently, fingers laced together.
“Because my brothers compete over the don’s throne, Mama said they couldn’t be trusted with my secret. She worried they’d sell me out to our father to win points with him. At some point during my adolescence, the lack of intellectual stimulation became too much for me. That’s when Mama started taking me to Ischia. It was close to our home base of Naples, but still far enough from Camorristi eyes for me to do the things I couldn’t do at home. I learned Latin and math and physics every summer. Attended soccer games and played tennis. Ischia holds my only good memories,” I admitted.
“I want to go back. Maybe with the baby. I wouldn’t mind living with security, if that’s your requirement. And we wouldn’t have to put up with each other. I just want to be free.”
He flicked invisible lint from his charcoal slacks, ignoring my words completely.
“Your mother wanted to spare you marriage with a mobster. That ship has sailed. Why did you keep pretending?”
I pressed my lips together, wondering if I should be completely honest with him.
Yes. I was so tired of keeping everything inside.
“She said if you found out that I’m sentient, you would insist on consummating our marriage. And that you’d try to extract Camorra secrets from me. I don’t know any, by the way.”
Tiernan stroked his chin.
“Will you?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. A born strategist, and he still hadn’t made up his mind.
“Are you in love with Tate Blackthorn?” he asked out of the blue.
“No, but I’m fond of him.”
“Why?”
“He gave me a dance. My first taste of normalcy. My dream is to listen and dance to music. And he made a part of it come true. Whether he knew how much it meant to me or not, I’ll never forget his kindness.”
“That’s your dream?” he asked. “To hear music, and dance to it?”
I nodded. Surprisingly, I wasn’t shy or embarrassed about it. Even though it felt like stripping my soul naked, for him to know something
intimate about me.
“And your art?”
Another rush of heat spread across my chest.
No one had ever referred to my sketches as art. Mama called them my little doodles.
“I sketch because it passes the time. But I’m no artist.”
“To define is to limit.”
Tiernan stood up and strolled to the alcohol cart, flipping two tumblers and pouring brandy into them. There was a real bullet in the decanter. He returned to our seats and handed me a drink.
“I’m not twenty-one,” I signed, which seemed ridiculous, seeing as giving an underage person alcohol was the least of my husband’s
lawbreaking history.
“But you’re eighteen.”
“Yes.”
“Legal in Italy. You’re Italian. I see no flaw in this logic.”
“I’m pregnant.” I stared at him in disbelief.
“You don’t have to be.” He took a sip of his brandy, studying me hawkishly. “I won’t stop you from getting an abortion. We can tell your father it was a miscarriage. It will free you from the burden of motherhood.
From doting over your rapist’s bastard. The only thing you need to be aware of is that you’d still be bound to me by marriage. I won’t let you go. Too much is riding on my Bratva operation to give up the Camorra’s alliance.”
I swallowed hard as I considered his proposition. There was room for deliberation. The baby belonged to a violent rapist. I was too young… “If you keep it, I’ll never love it. Never regard it as my own.” His lips moved, piercing through my thoughts. I swallowed hard.
“I want to keep it.” I placed the brandy on the coffee table between us.
“I’ve always wanted a child of my own.”
He shrugged, tossing his drink back in one gulp and staring at the bottom of his empty glass.
He seemed lost in thought for a moment, and I wanted to draw him back to me. As much as his attention unsettled me, it also reminded me I was alive in some strange, amorphic way.
“How am I supposed to sleep in my bed after you screwed someone inside it?”
Tiernan threw me a distant glance. “I didn’t fuck her. Didn’t even touch her. She was an interrogation device, and it worked. As for your question— as a matter of fact, you shouldn’t sleep there at all. Your place is in my bed.”
“You cheat on me and you want me to sleep in your bed?”
“You cannot cheat on someone who isn’t yours.”
“Do you want me to be yours?” I blinked in disbelief.
“Not particularly.” His words dripped pragmatism. “We’re not sexually
compatible.”
“Why?”
“You require tenderness and warmth. I only fuck women in the ass and, if I’m feeling benevolent, let them blow me instead.”
“Does this mean I can take a lover, too?”
“Sure.” He motioned with his hand to the door. “Knock yourself out.”
I scowled, realizing his game.
“No one would touch me because I’m your wife.”
“I wouldn’t count on it. The world has no shortage of idiots.” He stood up, unbuttoning his shirt. “But you should know that there’s a bounty on the head of anyone stupid enough to look in your direction, your own bodyguards included. Six million dollars, to be exact. Now, I suggest you move your shit to my bedroom if you want to sleep anywhere untouched by other women. I never let my hookups into my bed. Or.” He peered around us. “You can sleep on the bathroom floor again. Avoid the sofa, though.
Some heinous things happened on it.”
“Aw.” I stood up quickly, scrunching my nose in disgust.
With that, the bastard sailed toward the hallway. He stopped before disappearing inside the corridor, snapping his fingers as he glanced at me over his shoulder.
“Oh, two more things. One—you’re never to miss dinner again without a good reason. This is a sacred time between us.”
Sacred, my ass. We spend the entire duration of it every night trying to
kill each other with hate glares.
“And the second thing?”
“Don’t feel so sorry for yourself. Tragedies are excellent teachers, Lila.
Learn, absorb, and conquer.”
