My name was a horrified screech uttered by a poleaxed Ciara, who held up a glowstick she’d evidently conjured up from somewhere so she could locate me in the dark.
Every organ in my body threatened to shut down as my brain screamednoooooo.I half-toyed with the possibility that he wouldn’t have recognised me if Ciara hadn’t said my name right after his. That he would’ve simply snarled at her to fuck off as he so often did with girls he deemed beneath him. But everyone knew Ciara Paolini’s one and only friend at Calmonte Catholic Academy was Maddelena Mancinelli.
Cesare’s head swung sharply from Ciara back to me.
He jolted like he’d been shot. Then he turned into a column of steel.
I didn’t even recall when I’d unwrapped my legs from around his waist, and I deeply resented the wall for holding me up when I wanted to sink through it and disappear to the bottom of the world.
The click of a lighter sounded far too close to my face a nanosecond before a flame danced into life three inches from my nose. My yelp of fright was ignored as the flame zoomed closer. For a terrifying second I was paralysed by the notion that he intended to set me on fire. To watch me burn just for shits and giggles. I pressed my spine into the wall but even that infuriated him.
His free hand slapped the space next to my head, his body now half-caging mine. I could’ve wriggled away but I knew in my bones I was better off not setting him off harder than he already was. That, like captured prey, I needed to remain still, if not play dead.
Three feet away, Ciara was equally immobilised, but not by fear, although there was plenty of it in her wide eyes and her gaping mouth. But it was another Salvatore brother holding her still as the firstborn held the lighter in front of my face, his piercing eyes searing unholy fire at me.
‘What. The actual. Fuck?’ The flame was dangerous enough, but his voice was an acid-drenched steel blade held against my skin. Burning and flaying.
His eyes scoured my face, dropping repeatedly to the mouth he’d just ravaged, the swollen mouth now throbbing in sync with my frantic heartbeat as disbelief built and built and built in his face. And alongside it, an emotion that terrified me even more. Pure, unadulterated loathing.
‘I’m going to ask you once. Do not even think about lying to me. Understand?’ The blade cut deeper. There were a thousand ways he could slay me with that voice alone.
I swallowed and nodded, aware that the burning lighter had caught the attention of the clubbers. That an audience was forming around us as people nudged each other and pointed.
‘Did you know who I was?’ Cesare breathed.
Every vital organ in my body dropped to the floor then slithered out of harm’s way. My gaze darted to Ciara, whose eyes were now plate sized. She started to shake her head at me, urging me to deny, but Rafaelle dropped his head and whispered something into her ear. She swallowed audibly and froze in place.
‘Hey!’ A single snap of fingers close to the flame made it dance. Made me jump. ‘Don’t look at her. Look at me,’ he ordered. ‘Answer me.’
Fear and regret drummed through my veins. ‘Yes.’
Cesare Salvatore didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Didn’t speak right away. But I felt the weight of generations-old condemnation slam into my shoulders, then drag me down until I was splayed in the filthy warehouse floor at his feet.
Then, from a great height, I heard him speak. ‘You just sealed your fucking fate. One way or another, you’ll pay for this.’
5
MADDELENA
Present Day
The knock when it came on my hotel room door almost two weeks later wasn’t surprising. I’d been expecting some form of contact from Cesare since he dropped his ultimatum in Monza.
I was worn out from waving away questions about what I was doing talking to the Salvatore heir in the nightclub that night. Only years of practice had saved me from crumbling beneath my grandfather’s third degree once Stefano had snitched on me at the first opportunity.
I didn’t divulge that Cesare had accused us of sabotaging or that I was expected to hand over the culprit in a matter of days. Years of watching my family’s hair-trigger response to even the most benign threats had taught me the men in my family were very much cut from the all-haste-no-brains cloth.
Telling my father and grandfather would be the same as brandishing a red rag in front of a bull. Bonafacio lived, breathed and salivated at the smallest chance of bringing down a Salvatore in whatever way, shape or form he could turn fantasy into reality.
Ordering a handful of our soldiers to take down one or two of theirs for the insult of accusing Mancinelli Racing of underhanded tactics – although he would proudly crow about it himself with zero shame were that the case – would be as easy as tossing back a shellful of his favourite Sicilian oysters.
Things had been relatively calm since we started winning races. The ticks were in our favour, and for now Bonafacio was happy just to rub his success in his enemies’ faces, something he’d been doing in our private clubs back in New York City.
While I knew it wouldn’t last for much longer, I was reluctant to upset the status quo. I’d needed to be meticulous in my investigating. Which regretfully meant that it’d been treacle-slow going.
Even as Nonno’s consigliere, a role he’d handed reluctantly to me as a show of power and in direct response to Orazio Salvatore naming his only granddaughter a chief strategist and accountant for the Salvatore empire, I was mostly a figurehead, given information on a need-to-know basis. If Bonafacio had deemed it prudent to win Formula One races through subterfuge, bribery and sabotage, I would be the last one to know.
On account of my flaws.
