Page 21

Chapter Twenty

Sophia

Everything hurts.

They have been torturing me for hours, asking for access codes, safe codes, the information about various businesses. I don’t know any of the information that they want. I haven’t had time to do anything other than marry Angelo and best Guiseppe at a duel.

It’s ironic that I don’t have the answers they sought. I would have given them up. I didn’t give a flying fuck about my father’s legacy or our family holdings. I would give them all up just to keep the baby in my belly safe and to get them to leave me alone.

I struggle backward to lean against the wall. One of my eyes is swollen shut, and my lip is painfully split. I winced as I breathed. Guiseppe had kicked me in the ribs in a rage when I didn’t even know the gate code to the family estate outside the city. I thought I had a few broken ribs.

Did he think he was going to set himself up at the compound and lord it over everyone from there? He truly was mad. He didn’t need the gate code for the compound anyhow. He could have just gone there and snapped his fingers and gotten inside.

I wasn’t sure if he remembered the good old days with my father in charge differently, or if he just didn’t want to admit that he was beating me for the fun of it at this point. He was so angry that I had bested him and so hurt that no one around him but his few friends seemed to think that he was don material.

I manage an internal smile as I think about the late, great Guiseppe Costa angrily beating a woman because she’s better at being a man than he is. How my father would have laughed at his rage.

I feel an unexpected quiver of sadness wash over me at the thought of my father. I had made sure never to think of him for most of my childhood and then I had almost forgotten about him as I got older. It feels strange to be so sure of what he would have wanted, what he would have thought, now that I was walking in his shoes.

I wasn’t sure if my mother would have been happy that I was so comfortable in the role of female don, but it couldn’t be helped. There was no one left to save us all from Guiseppe. I had to do what my father had not been able to do.

I knew that I was at the docks. I also knew that I was on a ship that was docked there. I could smell all kinds of human smells, all unpleasant, and I had a sneaking suspicion that this was the ship that Guiseppe and his people used to traffic people back and forth from other countries.

I wondered where I was going to be taken to. Russia? South America? Just another port of call in another state?

I didn’t know much about human trafficking. Normally, I would have said thank God to that, but right now, it was an issue for me. I had a large blind spot for the situation I was in and it was making me nervous. I knew that Angelo would have the same blind spot.

My stomach turns over as the fishy smell of the harbor washes over me through the tiny crack in the window well above me. I try to resist, but can’t. I lean over and wretch, my stomach long empty.

I thought I had a concussion to add to my morning sickness and I knew that my dehydration wasn’t helping my cause either. I press an aching hand to my belly. One of my fingers is angled the wrong direction. For a while, they had held my hand down while someone slammed a hammer on the table near my fingers. Occasionally, they had let the hammer smash a finger.

Guiseppe had been cackling and telling me all about how I should be tough enough to handle this because I was a don now. Between the ridiculous stories about his glory days and his enjoyment of my torture, I had come to hate him with an entirely new passion.

He was a disgusting person. My father should have known better.

I slip in and out of unconsciousness now that my head has been injured and I feel a wave of sleepiness pass over me. My mind starts drifting, remembering.

“I don’t like Uncle Guiseppe.” My small voice was tremulous, indignant as I looked at my father.

“Why not, little dove?” my father asked in his deep, velvety voice. He had tweaked my nose in an effort to charm me out of my petulance.

“He gives me the creepy crawlies,” I insisted, stamping my foot.

My father had laughed and picked me up. I stroked a hand over his shiny, dark hair. His eyes were so dark brown that they looked black as he regarded me with love.

“I have to have bad men working for me, little dove,” he told me. “I need their help to do the scary things other men won’t do.”

“I don’t want to marry a man like Uncle Guiseppe,” I insisted.

My father smiled at me. “You won’t, my dove. I have arranged a perfect match for you. A friend’s boy. He’s kind and loves animals. You will have lots in common.”

“Does he have a pony?” I asked, my annoyance forgotten.

“Lots of them,” my father had assured me. “You can ride together when you are old enough to meet.”

“Okay, I guess,” I had replied with a little shrug. “But boys are icky.”

My father had laughed loudly at this. “You won’t always think so, my dove.”

The sound of footsteps jolts me awake. Where had that memory come from? I wonder if it was an actual memory, or just a fantasy my mind conjured up.

I feel a tear slip down my cheek and I dash it away angrily. This is no time for weakness. I need to figure out how to get out of here.

I thought of my father’s handsome face and his strong arms. I could use a little inspiration, papa, I think to myself.

The steps are getting closer and I huddle in on myself. I have to protect the baby at all costs. I cannot let them hit me in the stomach or throw me around. It’s my one, overarching goal at this moment. It’s all I can control.

“Well, don’t you look terrible,” Guiseppe says in a happy tone of voice as he steps into the room. He spits in my direction and says something very rude in Italian.

“Your stupid husband has not found you, yet. How does that make you feel? Do you think less of him? Maybe you could have done better if the roles were reversed. After all, you are your father’s daughter, even if it pains me to admit it.”

He leans down and grabs my cheeks, pinching hard and bashing my head against the metal wall behind me.

I stifle my shriek of pain as I see stars. A flare of impotent rage floods through me, but I just huddle more tightly into a ball on the floor.

“Why do you hate him so much?” I grind out through the pain that clenches my jaw shut. I honestly don’t understand what his problem with Angelo is. I would have thought he would be more focused on hating me than my husband.

Guiseppe looks at me like I’m simple. “I suppose you don’t know the truth. After all, your mother hid you away so long ago. It was smart of her. She was a cunning bitch, that one. Your father knew where you were, but he made sure that none of the rest of us could get to you.”

I feel a jolt of shock at his words. It had never occurred to me that my father would have made sure that we were protected all those years that we were living in the UK. I felt so, so stupid that I had thought that my mother and I had just been able to get away and start over.

It makes me realize that Angleo was right. My father had loved me and tried to protect me despite what my mother had done. Maybe he understood all too well why she had run.

“I can tell you the story, since you are a fool and never realized your true situation,” Guiseppe says. “Really, you should have stayed in England. You were safer there than you ever will be here. Your father and Angelo’s father saw to that.”

That was a new wrinkle. Angelo’s father had also helped to keep me safe? Why?

“You want to know why I am so angry at Angelo? You want to know why I want to kill him? Well, I will tell you a little story about Arnoldo Castiglia. He would have been your father-in-law, you see. He’s been dead some time now, but that’s no loss.” He bares his teeth and then spits on the floor again near me. I eye the spittle with revulsion.

“Your father and Angelo’s father were purists, you see. They believed that the Cosa Nostra could only be strong if full-blooded Sicilians were in charge. They looked down on the rest of us as less-than, all because we were only Italian, or perhaps even worse half-Italian.”

He wanders around the room, his hands behind his back, lost in his memories.

“Your father and mother struggled to have children. You almost killed her and then she wasn’t able to have any more kids. You would have to be the heir to the family, which, as you know, just isn’t how things are done. So those two old men, they got together and made a plan. They betrothed you, just like medieval princes, to Angelo.”

I didn’t know my mother couldn’t have children after she had me. It certainly never came up since she had avoided men like the plague after our escape. She had been chaste as a nun for all I knew for practically my entire life.

“The trouble with Angelo being considered the natural heir to the venerated Castiglia name, is that Arnoldo had another son, an older son, who should have been the rightful heir to his family.”

I squint up at him despite the way that the room spins dizzily around me. What is he talking about?

Guiseppe laughs, a crazy laugh, that frightens me. All the hairs lift on the nape of my neck. “The trouble was, that son was impure, a half-blood, not good enough. Turns out that it is the fault of the child that their father chose to sleep with a maid from Mexico and get her pregnant. To hide the embarrassment of his great mistake, Arnoldo put his half-blooded son into the keeping of a man he could trust to hide his dirty little secret. Your father.”

My brain feels sluggish, but I’m finally catching up. Suddenly, I realize what he means. My eyes pop open and I stare at him as comprehension washes over me like a wave.

“You,” I say quietly, my voice choked.

He nods, the spark of insanity alive in his eyes. “Me. The half-blood, the shameful embarrassment to Arnoldo Castiglia. I was replaced by his full-blooded Sicilian son as soon as possible and was told to never hope to take my rightful place as the heir.”

He paces some more, rage radiating off of him. I shrink back against the wall, scared to death of him. It’s like being caged with a dangerous wild animal.

“So you see why I expected to take over for your father when he died. After all, you were a woman,” he spat on the floor again, “and you ran away. You were not fit to be don. I didn’t know about the betrothal, of course. I figured I would just take over and then I would fight Angelo to the death if necessary. After all, he had stolen my birthright. I deserved to take it back.”

I watch him cautiously, not sure what to expect from him. I knew enough about mob politics to understand what he had been thinking. When great houses didn’t have male heirs, often there was a contest of wills among the men who had served the family and the right-hand man tended to end up on top. But my father had realized what Guiseppe was, knew what kind of threat he was and so he had caged him in quite effectively.

I felt a new appreciation for my father’s plan, alongside a new terror as I realized what the baby I was carrying would mean to Guiseppe. Angelo’s and my child would be able to rightfully take over both of our houses, inheriting a shared legacy that would make them incredibly powerful.

Guiseppe stops pacing and stands next to me, looking up at the ceiling. He sighs and stretches out his arms over his head as if he is welcoming benediction from the beyond.

“Fuck you, father!” he screams out, the shout ringing through the tiny space. “And fuck you as well, Carlo!”

He turns toward me, his stare filled with hate. Like a snake, he shoots his hand out and grabs a hold of my hair, ripping me off the floor. I scream in pain as my ribs protest and my hair feels like it will be torn out at the roots.

He slams me onto the table in the center of the room and slaps me. I taste blood in my mouth, but I refuse to look at him.

“Look at me, you spoiled bitch!” he screams in my face. His spittle covers my face. “Look at me!” he shouts again, delivering another stinging slap to my cheek.

Resentfully, I open my good eye to glare at him. Rage floods through me. I think of sticking my thumbs in his eye sockets and prying his eyes out like grapes. I’m shaking with fury despite my bruises and broken bones.

“Ah, there is the proud Agostini blood singing to life in your useless little body. If only you had been a man.” He sneers at me. “But then again, if you were a man, you would not be able to do the magic of women.”

He grins at me like a jackal and pulls out a large switchblade. He flips it open and raises it over my exposed midsection like some kind of crazed priest.

“No!” I scream, trying to roll up in a ball to protect my womb. “Fuck you, Guiseppe!”

We grapple, and I feel the sudden cold sting of pain that indicates that he has cut the skin on my back with the blade. He’s spitting curses at me, grappling with me painfully, but my fear has made me strong. I punch him in the face, screaming as my broken finger connects with his cheekbone. I will not let him kill my baby.

“You evil creature, Satan’s spawn!” Guiseppe hisses as he struggles with me. He slips into Italian, most of which I don’t understand, which is fine by me. I manage to roll off the table, getting free of his weight. I make a lunge for the door, but he’s faster.

He grabs my shoulder and then wraps his hands around my throat. I struggle, trying to get free.

“Stop struggling right now, or I will give in to what I want most, and stab you in the belly,” he spits at me.

I realize that he still holds the knife, and I freeze. I lock eyes with him, realizing that I’m crying, but also so angry that I feel sick.

“Your husband will be given a time to meet with me,” Guiseppe says. “If he is wise, he will agree. He will give your father’s legacy to me and I will probably allow this devil child to live.”

He jabs the knife forward and I arch backward with a cry. I feel the tip of the knife skate across the surface of my skin, drawing blood.

“But so help me, if either of you double-crosses me, I will come back here and make Jack the Ripper look like an amateur.”

He spits in my face and chucks me onto the floor in a heap. I lie gasping on the rusty metal surface, listening to him leaving. He slams the door behind him and locks it.

Groaning, I roll over onto my side, wrapping my arms around my belly. I barely even feel all my other injuries anymore. I must be going into shock.

“Just give him what he wants,” I murmur to myself, wishing I could talk to Angelo. “I don’t care what you give him so long as he stops hurting me.”

I think of everything that Guiseppe told me. I have a whole new understanding of everything, really. If I make it out of here alive, there are things that I will change, things that Angelo and I can do better.

But I have to survive first.