Page 2 of Devil's Vows

She reaches for my hands and clenches them tight.

“What’s wrong?” I croak, squeezing her hands back, my heart causing a racket in my chest.

“Cara, it’s time. It’s finally happened. They’re coming for you.”

My legs want to cave in. Surely not both of them? Franco Fioreandthe Russian?

I should have run, not wasted time waiting for Mother Lucia to set things up for me. Or thinking Chiara will hold to her promise to fetch me. But I have no money, no clothes other than what the convent provides, no birth certificate, and therefore no passport. The way I need to disappear demands, at minimum, one of those.

They’re coming for me.

If only she’d let me go, but Mother Lucia would never allow me to face the world outside. I’ve been in hiding for years, in the safest place, for what it’s worth: God’s hands, apparently. I know better, and now, it’s too late.

“Are you sure?” I ask, dreading her answer.

If the Russian with the tattoos on his hands is here—mygroom—or Franco Fiore, stepping in as a fake Don, claiming to have the same right to me as Randazzo, I’m done for. I’d rather die?—

Those devils have been looking for me, seeking through the slits between God’s fingers, waiting with bated breath for one gap to become just wide enough so they can find me.Randazzo’s girl.His heiress. The last thing I ever want to be. I want to vomit at the thought of Randazzo’s plans for me barreling toward their conclusion.

“Faith is a funny thing, isn’t it?” Mother Lucia whispers as she holds me at arm’s length, studying my face in the soft glow of theoil lamp as if she’ll never see me again. “As soon as you feel tested to the extent that you almost freefall into denial, God sends you a sign, literally answers your prayers in the nick of time.”

I suppress a groan. Preaching has its place and time and now isn’t it. In fact, I lost all interest in what priests had to say when I turned thirteen. Hell is just the place for them. “Just tell me already. A sign? Nick of time?”

“God knows how I’ve prayed?—”

“What’s happened?” I ask, too anxious to be polite. “Is this about Randazzo’s death?” And the contract he signed with that vile Russian, on my body no less, me the bargaining chip to be claimed when the time was right?

“Do you ever wonder how I knew you were the Gabriella I’ve been looking for?” Mother Lucia’s voice ruptures through my thoughts.

“No?” We never speak about any of this, and I don’t understand why she’s going there now. It doesn’t matter if we need to drop everything and run.

“For seven years, I waited for your arrival in Italy, and when I saw you, I just knew.”

“How? What do you mean?”

“I knew you on sight because you look just like your mother. Just like my childhood friend who lived with me on the streets of Napoli.”

What is she on about? This is the first I hear of a friend. From Napoli. One who is a carbon copy ofme? Now isn’t the time for either of us to lose our minds.

“Mother Lucia,” I start. For the love of God, if you please, stop stalling. “Tellme?”

She lets go of me and reaches into her pocket and pulls out a stack of letters. Her hand is shaking so much, the whole lot quivers. This close, the soft glow of the oil lamp highlights every wrinkle. How time has aged her. It’s more than time. It’sme. Looking after and hiding a notoriousMafioso’sonly child would take its toll.

“Read this tonight, in preparation,” she whispers, her voice breaking. “Everything you need to know is in there.”

I take the letters from her, with a trembling hand. Whatever this is, it’s not dire, is it? If it had been, she would’ve gotten my small suitcase ready. No. The clue is here, in this stack.

A woman’s elegant handwriting. Stamps. From America. I stare up at her, stunned, but she’s already crossing the short distance to my small desk where I’ve been drawing and painting for the past months, working on a new set of illustrations to keep busy and sane while locked up.

She reaches for my completed book, my first fairy tale—the one she told me again and again to calm me as a child.

“The Princess and the Six Princes.” She bites her bottom lip, tears quietly streaming down her cheeks. “This was never a fairy tale. I couldn’t tell you the outright truth, because it was simply too dangerous. This is the story I told you to hide but reveal the truth at the same time, praying—waiting and begging—for fifteen long years for it to become real one day.”

How weird. I always thought six princely brothers would be very welcome and very handy, too, to come and save me from this shattered life I’ve been living. A dream, a wish. A coin tossed over my shoulder into a fountain in Potenza.

Brothers would mean family. Safety. Protection. Love.

How could a fairy tale hold the key to my past? Then it dawns on me. This isn’t about Randazzo or Franco Fiore at all. This is about something else. These letters have postage stamps from America, where I was born. The story is about six brothers…