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“I’d love one.” I chose a dark chocolate and thanked her. Izzy declined, and Effie shrugged a shoulder and helped herself to a third.
“How are you doing? You didn’t answer any of my messages. I thought he wasn’t letting you use the phone!”
I shook my head with a weak smile. “No, it was just drained. I only checked the messages a few minutes before you got here, actually.”
“Well, you’re going to have to answer next time. I got worried.”
I nodded.
“You okay?” she asked quietly.
I shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t know. I don’t want to cry.” As I said it, the first tears wet my lashes.
“Shh.” Izzy dug for a tissue in her bag.
Rainey walked out of the kitchen and toward us just then. I turned my face away.
“I’m getting ready to bake cookies in the kitchen. Maybe Effie would like to help?” she asked Izzy.
Effie’s eyebrows rose, and she bounced up to stand. “Oh, can I, Mommy?”
“You sure?” Izzy asked Rainey.
After a glance and a small smile at me, she nodded.
“Sure,” Izzy said. “Thank you.”
Effie took Rainey’s hand easily, and they walked off.
“That was nice,” Izzy said.
“I haven’t yet figured her out.”
Izzy took my hands. “Are we okay, Lucia? This is important. I know we haven’t talked about it, about me leaving. I was wrong to just take off. I know that. I’m back now, though, and I’m not abandoning you again, okay? You’re not alone, even though it may feel that way right now.”
I smiled. More tears fell. “We’re okay, Izzy.” It felt good to say that. Felt good to have my sister back, actually.
She hugged me tight to her, then whispered into my ear. “Are there cameras? Listening devices?”
Her question surprised me. “I don’t know,” I whispered back. “I haven’t seen any but can’t say for sure there aren’t.”
She pulled back and looked at me. “The pool looks amazing.”
I knew what she wanted. “Let’s go check it out.”
We walked outside and away from the house toward the swimming pool.
“How is he? When no one’s around, I mean?”
“Bossy.” I couldn’t tell her about earlier. About any of it. “And gone, mostly. He just got back from wherever he was, actually.”
“He looks at you like he wants to eat you alive.”
He scared me, but I didn’t want to say that out loud, and not to Izzy. “I can’t figure him out. He’s horrible one second, then nice. Almost…caring. Like he gives a shit what I feel or think.” I picked a single dandelion growing in the otherwise immaculate lawn. “But then he’s a jerk again, and then he disappears.”
“Is he making you…” she hesitated.
“Sleep with him?” I thought of what I’d found in his bedroom and felt my face heat up.
She nodded.
“Not yet.”
“Good. Are you able to come and go?”
“I don’t know. Not on my own, I think.”
“Okay, that’s fine. I’ll just come get you. If he wants to send someone to follow us, we’ll deal.”
“It doesn’t matter, Izzy. I’m stuck here.”
“Luke and I…We’re not going to sit back and let them have everything. Let them have you.”
“Luke?”
“Just because we lost one war, doesn’t mean we can’t start another.”
“Izzy.” Even in the heat of the day, a shudder ran through me. “You can’t. We lost once, and we had an army to back us.”
“We don’t need an army. We’ve got access now.”
“What?”
Izzy suddenly laughed out loud as if I’d told a joke. It was then that I saw Salvatore standing in the window of his study, watching us. “By access, you mean me.”
“It’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes.” It was all I’d thought of for the last five years and for good reason. “I want my freedom. And I want Franco Benedetti to pay for what he did to us. For what he made Papa do.” I remembered the last time I’d seen my father. It was in that horrible room when I’d signed the contract. Why had I refused to talk to him all these years? He’d tried. He’d come to the college once every month. He’d call once a week. But I blamed him for my fate. And he was to blame, but I also understood he had no choice.
I should have been more understanding of the strain he was under.
“And what about him?” she asked, cocking her head in the direction of Salvatore, who’d turned away from the window.
“I want my freedom.”
“Well, that’s a start. Let’s go inside, before he gets suspicious.”
“Cookies are ready!” Effie called out as soon as we got into the house.
“They smell amazing,” I said.
She watched proudly as Rainey carried a plateful of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies into the living room.
“I’m packing up the house,” Izzy said. “Effie and I are moving in.”
“You are?” I was surprised. Papa had still lived in the house we’d grown up in. I didn’t think she’d want the house but was glad she wasn’t talking about selling it. I wasn’t ready for that yet. The thought—it was just too final. I wasn’t ready to say good-bye to it, ending that chapter of my life so permanently.
