Page 45

Said together, they make sense, but only on the page.

“Tommy and Orlando…” Carmine breaks in, pointing toward the younger, bearded guy with the utility knife in his belt. “Represent a pack.”

“Of cigarettes.”

“Of werewolves, darling.”

I don’t want to be rude. I don’t want to ask what the fuck he’s talking about because this man who owns me is a literal vampire. I shouldn’t be surprised werewolves are coming out of the woodwork.

“She is adorable,” Tommy says. “Look at her. You can see the gears working in there.”

“Don’t get too attached,” Carmine says. “They’re leaving.”

“We are.” Mom grabs my hand.

For a moment, my vision goes a little whiter, as if I’m looking through a bridal veil. Then it’s gone and all I see is Mom’s stricken expression.

“You have enough juice to get yourself downtown,” the old lawyer says as if he’s so very sorry to deliver such bad news. “Not enough to get the both of you to California.”

“And who are you?” Mom asks.

“I’m not important.”

She doesn’t believe him, and I don’t blame her. She turns to me. “Give me time.”

“Okay—?”

In a blink, she’s gone. We all stare at where she was, but she really did it again.

“That’s the show, folks,” I say while doing jazz hands.

The younger redbeard laughs. He’s leaning on a cabinet with his arms crossed and his blue eyes sparkling. When Tommy looks back at him, he straightens and smiles.

“Take her home.” Carmine says it to Nunzio with an undercurrent of threat in his voice, as if they’re going to discuss what he did later. “And that snake.”

That is not how this is going. Nunzio will try to take me back to Naples, where Silvia and Etta will drag me to an island, unless my mother finds me first and takes me to California.

I get in front of Carmine.

He’s closer than ever. I want to crawl inside him.

Fuck .

He is a magnet and I am a bag of iron shavings. I am a planet the moment before it loses its own gravity and hurtles into the sun.

“Snowbird.” He shakes his head slightly. “Do what I say.”

My body moves to obey, while my heart lurches in despair. My face twists into a rictus of confusion. This isn’t me. I am not a malleable child anymore. I am not subject to his pain, his pleasure, his voice, his vulnerability. This is not why I left a trailer in the desert.

Do you have a plan if you stay? You can escape if you get away from him.

Nunzio’s hand finds my bicep again. Carmine’s not going to tell him to stand down. Nunzio’s going to pull me away. I will let him. I will go as far as Carmine wants him to take me, and I will resist in my heart and wear away this need.

Yes. I will do that. I have no choice. My body will obey what my heart adores, but my mind is still my own.

Then, Carmine swallows. The soft inside parts of him make a lie of the hard outside, and I remember that there was a time, before thrall, when I was falling in love with him.

Not for his beauty or his command but the tiny light of his humanity.

He is not a god or a king. He is not the law, or power, or dominance made real.

He is only a man.

“I made you fall in love with me.” My thoughts spill from my lips. “That’s what you crossed out of the letter.”

Orlando Lugano stands abruptly. His eyes go as wide as his nostrils as they take a breath so deep, his chest expands into a low growl. His emotional shapes shift around him. He isn’t aggressive or threatened… just heightened, as if every hair on his body has gone erect at the sight of his future.

A door opens and we all turn at the sounds of feet shuffling, then a woman’s voice calling my name.

“Luna?”

At the doorway, Sam, the blond lawyer I met in Beverly Hills ages ago, stands next to my friend—open-armed, bent-kneed, smiling. She’s wearing perfectly pressed black trousers and a cropped V-neck sweater that I’ve never seen before, but that doesn’t matter. She’s my chosen sister.

“Serafina?”

The only thing my body will allow is obedience. Carmine told me to do what he said, and he said to go home. I’ve already started walking away with Nunzio, but my arms stretch in Serafina’s direction and my eyes cannot leave hers.

“Let me, please,” I plead with Carmine.

His fists are clenched. His mouth is tight.

“Please,” I beg again. I’ll beg until Nunzio drags me out of here.

“You may,” Carmine finally says.

An invisible cord tying me to his will snaps, and I am free.

Serafina and I rush into an embrace, and I am happy. For that moment, my blood is calm. Gravity releases me. I am a planet orbiting the people I love.

“You dumb American bitch,” she says into my shoulder with deep affection.

“I am so sorry.” We talk over each other in a patois of regret and joy.

“This idiot strigoi, ” she sobs into my ear. “He said they were family.”

“I thought the most terrible things.”

Things like—she knew she was going. She had time to pack trousers and sweaters. But maybe not. Maybe Carmine took her shopping the way he took me.

No. Not like that. Please not like that.

“I don’t even know these people,” she whispers.

“I’ll never let you go again.”

But the earring pressing against my cheek. Is it new?

Stop it. I can’t doubt her like this. Forget it. Her clothes are not important. She is.

“I’m not a monster.”

“You’re not a monster,” I say.

“I don’t want to be traded to them.”

“What?”

“I don’t want to go with them.”

“Traded? Like?—”

“You smell like blood.” She pushes me back by the forearms and looks right at the wound healing on my neck. “He got you.”

“It’s okay. It barely hurts. But can we talk about this trade?”

“You’re in thrall.”

“Well, yeah. That actually hurts.”

“That’s why you had to ask to hug me.” She looks over my shoulder at Carmine. “Why did you do it? You made her into a zombie, you strigoi monsterpig fuckass. Why?”

Carmine sighs. Serafina’s worn him down to a nub, and I love her for it.

“None of your business,” he tells her almost kindly, as if it’s just a fact and it’s another thing on a long list of things that aren’t her concern. “Luna, Nunzio will take you home. On a plane this time.”

Serafina is my friend, and if I look like a zombie, she looks like she’s been crying every day for a hundred years. She hasn’t been shopping with Carmine. She didn’t pack for a vacation and get on a plane with a smile on her face. She’s hurting.

Something happens that I didn’t think was possible.

My brain takes full control of my mouth. I look that magnificent, otherworldly creature dead in the face and speak my mind without my heart’s interference.

I have to do what he says, but I can say whatever words I want.

“I’m not going anywhere.”