Page 209 of The Enslaved Duet

“Your eyes,” he explained. “Though I couldn’t find a diamond as warm as your golden eyes.”

“Stop it,” I ordered as more tears sluiced down my face. “You’re making me cry.”

Alexander grinned wickedly as his hands tightened and he sent me careening onto my back on the bed. Before his mouth sealed over my own, he growled, “Don’t you know, I love to see you cry.”

Cosima

There was a little deli on the edge of The Bronx that Mason and I had discovered one day while walking aimlessly around the city.Ottavio’swas smaller than the bathroom in my mid-sized apartment, lined in cracked linoleum tinged yellow from cigarette smoke and stained pink in places from spilled marinara. The hum of the refrigerator filled with Italian imported sodas underscored the loud, tinny music from a portable radio Ottavio kept perched on one of the two glass display cases. Umberto Tozzi crackled through the air as I pushed through the glass door, and it reminded me of so many years ago when Seamus had driven me in our old Fiat up the Aventine hills of Roma into Alexander’s arms.

If pressed, I couldn’t exactly express why I enjoyed the dingy Italian deli so much. The air was stale, the prosciutto tough as shoe leather, and the ambiance entirely sad, but I loved the community of it, the way Ottavio knew everyone by name and that people came from all over town to get the one delicious thing produced in his kitchen, homemade tiramisu. It reminded me in good ways of Napoli, the run-down, nasty stretch of it filled with enough good people to make the urine shine and the stench of it a pleasant enough place to call home.

I didn’t know why Mason liked it as much as I did, probably because he was Italian on his mother’s side and he liked to play at being more than white, rich, and American.

I called out a loud, happy greeting to Ottavio as I swung through the door and headed straight for the fridge to grab my San Pellegrino and Mason’s favourite Chinotto Neri. After ordering a huge slab of tiramisu, I claimed one of the two tiny round tables to the left of the door and settled in to wait for Mason. It annoyed me that he was late, but only because I wanted to get back to the apartment to Skype with Alexander before he left for a day of meetings in London. He had been gone for less than forty-eight hours, and I missed him so acutely it felt like a knife wound in my chest.

The door jingled open as the soft croon of Nancy Sinatra’s “Bang Bang” spilled like fuzzy yarn through the radio. His wide forehead was dotted with beads of sweat so thick they looked white as pearls, and his mouth was an open, wet puncture in his creased face. There were large sweat marks bracketing his underarms through his blazer that he didn’t try to hide as he powered through the door like a lost man seeking salvation in the warm shop.

“Mason?” I asked more than called out because I was confused by his uncharacteristic disheveled appearance. “I ordered the cake already, come sit.”

He hesitated, looking out the door, up at Ottavio, and then back at me as if we presented a terrible conundrum. I patted the uncomfortable metal chair beside me and offered a small smile of encouragement.

“I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for ages,” he told me as he took the seat.

I winced. “I know. I’ve been a bad friend to you the past two months, but believe me, I had good reason. Now, grab a fork before I eat all this goodness and fill me in on whatever has been going on. Did you meet someone?”

It was Mason’s turn to wince, and he didn’t reach for a fork, instead grasping for one of my hands to clamp between two of his clammy ones.

“Listen, Cosi, I don’t know how it got to this point, I really don’t. At first, it was so simple, you know? They just wanted me to be involved in your life, this innocuous spy. It was easy because, well, you know, you’re you, and you are beautiful.” He licked a pearl of sweat off his upper lip and then wiped his damp cheek against his suited shoulder. “I mean, I started to love you, and I got why they asked me to watch you. Youaredangerous because you’re a flame to the moth of men. Really, you have to believe me, it didn’t seem like I was betraying you in doing what I was. It was just reporting to them, making sure you stayed away from the Order and from the Earl of Thornton in particular…”

There was a strange ringing in my ears, as if I’d been hit upside the head and my brain clanged between my ears. I wondered if words could concuss someone because those sentences spilling out of Mason’s familiar mouth felt brutishly weaponized.

“Your mother’s family?” I asked even though I already knew the answer.

The uncle he always spoke of, the one who hated homosexuality so Mason had to hide who he was, the one who ran the family with an iron fist.

Mason’s chin dropped to his chest; a dead weight filled with shame. “Yes. Uncle G.”

Uncle G.

Uncle Giuseppe di Carlo.

There was a series of clicks as everything slotted into place. Noel had clearly sponsored di Carlo for entry into the Order, gifting his old slave Yana to the new Master in exchange for a simple favour. Keep an eye on his eldest son’s runaway bride and make sure she stays away.

But I hadn’t stayed away and now…

My head snapped up, the back of my neck tingling as the door’s chimes sounded again. I looked to the right, but I already knew instinctively with the well-honed senses of much hunted prey who would stand in the doorway.

“Di Carlo,” I greeted mildly because perception was power, and I didn’t want him to know how utterly disconcerted I was by this reveal, by my friend’s years-long betrayal. “What brings you out into the light?”

His flesh face parted with a slick lipped grin as he rounded the table and took the seat perpendicular to me. He wore what I guessed to be his customary suit, a pinstriped dark grey with broad shoulders that harkened make to what I was sure he thought were the “good ole days” of the late 19thcentury when the mafia was in its heyday. There was a gold chain at his throat, nestled in the hairy hollow between his collarbones and three thick gold rings on his fingers that gleamed in the artificial yellow lights. He seemed like a caricature of a mobster, virile but past his prime, expensive but with cheap taste.

I knew better than to take the front for granted. He was danger wrapped up in a tawdry package, but dangerous all the same.

“My nephew speaks so highly of you, Miss Lombardi,” he spoke through his smile, but his eyes were black, wet and mean. “Or should I call you, slave Davenport.”

“You can call me whatever you wish,” I told him graciously even as I frantically tried to find a way out of the situation. “Just don’t expect me to answer to it.”

Giuseppe laughed, a throaty, phlegm-filled sound that made me want to gag. “The duke told me you were a spitfire, but fuck, no fear in the face of the most powerful man in New York City is pretty fuckin’ admirable or pretty fuckin’ stupid.”