“Not much of a whiskey drinker?” His deep voice asks me.
I lick my lips of the after taste from the bitterness and I cannot help but watch his gaze track my movements.
“No, that was my first one.” I say lightly.
His full lips pull into a smile. “Glad to have been your first.” His fingers play with the rim of the glass.
I straighten my back as I say, “You can tell a lot about a person on what they choose as their drink of choice.”
“Oh, and how is that?” His voice lowers as he leans in a little closer.
I raise my shoulder and say, “Well, if you’re a beer kind of a guy, then you most likely are chill. You watch and play a ton of sports.” He nods that he agrees. “A margarita will give off the vibe that you tend to want to party, have a good time.” He chuckles a little. Holy shit. Its deep and sends a shiver down my back. “A gin and tonic, you want to come across that you have your life together, but really, you’re a mess and have no idea what you’re doing in life. The ones who drink wine, like most of the people here, well women want to seem together. Proper. Sophisticated. But they are just playing a role. Acting the part. A ghost of themselves.”
He reaches out to tuck a piece of loose hair behind my ear and asks, “What about the ones who drink whiskey?”
My skin breaks out into goosebumps when he lightly touches me.
“They seem to have a lot of secrets.”
He leans in, kisses my cheek softly and whispers, “Happy Birthday, Isabella.”
Then he leaves as if he was never there. I’m left standing at the bar alone. Realizing that I was just lusting over a man and it’s not the one I’m set to marry.
Angelo meets me in the hallway inside the house letting me know that he was able to get Isabella’s phone to place the tracking device on it. For a powerful man like Costa, he sure lacks the security in every crevice of his home. Angelo was able to move like a panther to grab it from her purse at the party.
“She is too trusting to be leaving her phone and her small bag thing out in the open like she did. Made my job a thousand times easier.” Angelo tosses her phone to me and I catch it with one hand.
I roll my eyes at him. “Well, it seems that Costa’s men were more focus on him rather than his family or anyone else for that matter.” I click the button on the side, the phone lights up with a picture of sunset. “Now, we can hope that this tracking app on her phone will give us more insight to what the Di Marco’s are up to with Costa and if Isabella knows of anything.” Though something is telling me that there is more than I’m missing. “You test it too, right?”
He looks at me with a blank stare. “What do you think?”
I’m already irriated after my conversation with Isabella. The way she looked at me was if she could see through me with no fear. There was a hint of a fire in her deep blue eyes that is begging to be set free.
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Angelo, I’m not in the mood. Just answer the fucking question.”
He tucks one hand in his pocket and the other rests on the middle of his suit jacket. “Her passcode is zero-four-zero-two-one-one. And take a look for yourself.”
My thumb presses each number to unlock her phone. The home screen comes to life, and I swipe to find the app stored in a random folder. I press it and pull out my phone to open the same app to see if it works. It does. I slide my phone back into my pocket.
“Meet me in the car in five minutes.”
Angelo smirks and turns around to head to the front to retrieve the car.
I spin on my heels to find my way to Isabella’s room to leave her phone. There is no way I can go back out to the party to place it back in her bag. That would be to much and give myself away. There are a set of stairs at the backside of the house that seem they lead upstairs. I climb two at a time as quietly as I can not wanting to risk anyone finding me.
The smell of lavender hits my nostrils the moment my feet touch the landing, and they carry me in the direction to her room. I pause at her door letting her scent in gulf me. My hand reaches for the doorknob, push the door open and the light from the party mixed with the music pours into her room. I look around to see what it would be like to be inside Isabella’s head.
Cream colored walls, with a black iron rod bed fame in the middle of the room. Creamed colored curtains hang from the ceiling to the floor next to each side of the windows. The fabric dances in the air with the gust of wind coming through the cracked window. I walk over to her vanity and take in each of her products that she favors. The variety of perfumes, makeup, skin care and more are neatly organized. She has little decorations on her walls with only a few photos of herself with her siblings.
I drag my fingers along the vanity and pick up one of the perfume bottles she has. I bring it to my nose and smell the intoxicating scent of lavender. Fuck. My dick is hard from just smelling her perfume. I reach inside my pants to place the phone on her vanity.
I come out of the bathroom after applying my skin care when I find Lucia sitting on my bed in her pajamas. I reach up to fix my silk scrunchie and redo the pineapple bun before I plop down next to her.
“Sis, you know that you don’t have to go through with this. There is always a way out of Dad’s barbaric tradition,” she says as she plays with the decorative pillow on my bed. My gaze falls to the new item that is weighing down my hand.
There is a nagging in my stomach about this whole situation seems off, but I know what would happen if I decided to grow a backbone. Lucia would be next. And I’m sure my father would replace me with her to save face.
I turn to face her and say, “Lucia, you know what would happen if I did not and I will rather die than to let that have you be in my shoes.”
