Page 39 of The Enslaved Duet

Telephone call home.

Home.

I lunged for the phone and ripped it out of the maid’s hands, feeling like a beggar faced with her first meal in weeks.

My finger was rotating the ancient dial before I had even taken a seat on the soft bed. Distantly, I heard Mrs. White usher the other woman out of the room before closing the door behind the both.

But I was preoccupied by the utterly melodic ringing of the phone in my ear.

My heart was suspended in my throat, blocking the passage of my breath, but I didn’t care.

There was a pause in the ringing and then a brief click before, “Pronto.”

A sob bubbled up through my lips before I could clamp my hand over my mouth to contain.

“Patatino, sono Cosi,” I half hiccoughed into the phone. My heart seemed to break and reform against the familiar Italian of Sebastian’s childhood nickname ‘little potato.’

“Mia bella sorella,” he said after a weighty pause. “My Cosima.”

We breathed through the phone line for a long moment as we both digested the enormity of our feelings. I cradled the phone against my cheek and closed my eyes against the burn of tears that spilled beneath my lashes. It was too easy to picture Seb’s handsome face, the strong bones in his face that hollowed out his cheeks and the square point of his chin contrasting the fullness of his mouth. I knew the exact shade of black in his hair and the thickness of the eyelashes cresting his cheek because I’d grown up staring into his face almost more than I had my own even as a model.

No sight in the world was as dear to me as my brother; not even my sisters, as treasured as they were in my heart.

There was a unity to twins that was impossible to explain to others. I felt a fundamental lack of ease if I was separated from him for too long even though I was all too used to it after the last year I’d spent mostly in Milano.

To simply breathe in tandem through a phone line was an intimacy we craved.

“How is everyone?” I asked finally, suddenly nervous Mrs. White would return to cut my conversation short.

“Missing you, always,” he responded instantly. “Even when Salvatore came calling to wish me a happy birthday, he seemed miserable that you weren’t in town.”

I bit my lip at that because the Camorracapowas the one who signed the dotted line of my terms of sale.

“Did he ask where I was?”

“No, he only stayed to have another rousing fight with Mama and to give me a fine bottle of Tuscan wine as a birthday present.”

“Seb, don’t you think it’s odd that he does that?” I asked.

I’d never put much thought to it before then. Salvatore’s infrequent but influential presence in our lives had seemed ordinary in the smaller context of my life in Italy, but now that I was away and I’d learned the manipulation and games men played, I couldn’t help to wonder what Salvatore’s end game was.

Sebastian snorted. “I don’t think mafia men are exactly known for doing the obvious sorts of things, Cosi. I think he’s a man without children who discovered us through Seamus and took a shining to our family. He dotes on Mama just as much as he does us, when she lets him.”

That was true, though Mama would sooner bite the hand that tried to feed her than accept what he was offering. To say she was not fond of the Made Man was putting it mildly.

Another puzzle I’d never thought to piece together.

“Anyway, his gift was the highlight of my day. So much for celebrating our birthday together.”

I winced even though I’d known he would say as much. “It was too good an opportunity to pass up, but I am sorry I missed it. Sorrier than I can really say.”

“You sound very unhappy,” he noted.

In some ways, as happy as I was to hear my male voice echoed back at me, I wished it was one of my sisters or Mama who had answered.

“It’s been grueling work,” I admitted. “I’m not sleeping enough, and the man I’m working for is a monster.”

“Well, if the money you are sending to Mama is any indication, it’s worth your sacrifice. Cosima, we have more than we know what to do with,” he said before gifting me his bold laugh.