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And where would I go? Unlike last time, I have no money and no fake ID. Nowhere to run.
All the emotion I’ve been holding inside since I walked into my apartment building in Cleveland and saw those rings on the bathroom counter suddenly comes bubbling up from where I’ve held it deep inside. The only advantage of being trapped down here alone is that no one is around to witness my increasingly hysterical ugly crying.
* * *
Rio
I don’t seeBianca for the next several days, not simply because I am a busy man, but because she creates unfamiliar emotions in me that I don’t know how to deal with.
From the moment I was born, I was raised to be the head of this family. My father was a hard man, difficult to please, as he had to be to run the organization as successfully as he did. He instilled the same cold and dispassionate ruthlessness in me.
And he was proud of me for that.
He took me with him once to a “negotiation” the day after my thirteenth birthday. Said I was now a man and needed to understand fully what that meant. There was no negotiation that day. He killed every one of his enemies in the room, except one.
Then he handed me his gun and said, “Finish the job, Gregorio. Be a man.”
I did, and he looked at me with approval for the first time in his life.
I never told him that I threw up when we got home, after I managed to get to my room. I never told him that I didn’t sleep for many nights after that, reliving over and over the moment when the victim stared at me with terror in his eyes and pleaded for me to let him live. The smell of death. The look of it. The sheer messiness of it.
I couldn’t get any of it out of my mind.
My mother knew of my struggles, and she told me to lock away the darkness in a box deep inside my heart, and to never let it out.
But the darkness is still there, buried so deep it has become part of the fabric of my being. It is always there, threatening to rise up and take over everything in a black haze of rage.
My father taught me that to be soft, is to risk death.
Biancasoftensme. And as the head of the Agosti cartel, I cannot afford soft. I willnotallow it.
And so, she remains in the bunker suite under lock and key, just as the darkness that coats my soul remains locked deep inside my heart.
8
“…the amount of love you feel for someone and the impact they have on you as a person, is in no way relative to the amount of time you have known them.”
Ranata Suzuki
Rio
I want to keep away,but thoughts of Bianca fill my every waking moment. Finally, I give in to the urge to check on her. I head for the elevator and see the housekeeper waiting there with a dinner tray, the button already lit.
When I take the tray and dismiss her, she shoots me a shocked look, as if seeing me undertake such a menial task hurts her sensibilities. The woman is not as efficient as Francine was at running my household, but she is a fast learner and I am certain, now we are in residence at the estate once again, that things will soon run as smoothly as they did in the past.
“It is fine,” I say. “I am heading down anyway. I must speak with my wife.”
“Yes, sir.” She scurries away, leaving me to deliver the food Bianca’s obstetrician insists she needs—steak, vegetables, and orange juice to help with the absorption of iron.
“She seems well overall,” Doctor Conner said before she left on that first day. “But I don’t think she’s been eating as well as she could. Make sure she gets fresh fruit and vegetables daily, and I would suggest red meat at least a couple of times a week to ensure she’s receiving the iron she and the baby need. Walks in the garden, too, so she can get some sunlight, gentle exercise and fresh air. Not in the heat of the day, of course, but perhaps mornings or evenings. I will return in two days’ time to check her again… unless you need us sooner?”
“If I do, you will be notified,” I told her. I am paying her a fortune to be on call twenty-four seven, along with her nurse. If Bianca needs them, they have been contracted to be here within ten minutes. I chose her because she was on a list of the best three obstetricians in the city. The other two were men, and I will not tolerate another man getting anywhere near my wife’s vagina, even in a professional, medical capacity.
When I enter Bianca’s suite, she is curled up on the white settee in front of the electric fireplace. She’s wearing a loose gray T-shirt that falls to her mid-thighs, her legs bare. Her feet are tucked up beneath her with only her toes peeping out, and I make a mental note to arrange a beautician for her nails now that she’s back.
Not that she needs anything to make her more beautiful. She has always had a natural beauty, even before I brought her here. Though right now, her face is blotchy, and it’s clear she’s been crying.
“I know it’s summer up there in the real world,” she says, “but down here, it’s the same temperature day or night. It could be any day of the year, and I felt like staring into the flames.”
