by Kitty Thomas
Whatever sexual needs or desires he might have, she knew he’d taken her primarily to keep her safe, and then that started to make her feel guilty. And selfish. After all, she wasn’t the only one whose options had been cut off. What about his right to choose an appropriate wife? Someone who was wired like him, who liked the same sexual things he liked? What about his right to have children? What about him not having to keep someone locked away like a household pet to keep them from the barrel of Angelo’s gun?
All fair questions.
Leo leaned in, his lips and warm breath brushing her ear. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” she whispered.
He squeezed her arm. “Good.”
He turned back to his cousin while Gina engaged Faith’s attention to discuss… what else? Weddings and babies. It was pointless for Leo to have bothered to learn anything on the questionnaire. The family’s biggest concern about her past was her Irish heritage, which they were working to overlook. The only other thing that mattered was being a good wife to Leo and breeding good quality Italian-looking stock. They’d overlook the lack of pure Italian blood if she could give them enough tiny dark-haired babies to admire and coo over. They were nice enough people. A normal family like everybody else’s—if you turned a blind eye to the crime, but it was still unnerving how fixated they were on this one subject.
In Catholic wedding vows, women promised to accept children as they came from God. And yet, this obsession with procreation went above and beyond standard Church doctrine.
By the time everyone moved on to dessert, Faith was ready to hit the panic button.
“Leo?” she said, low enough that she didn’t draw too many curious stares.
“Yes, sweetheart?” he said with practiced precision. She could almost believe the ruse. Something inside her twinged and ached at that moniker, wishing it was real instead of an act for his family.
“Can I go to my room for a few minutes?”
“What’s wrong?”
“N-nothing. I’m overwhelmed. T-too many people here.”
Concern passed over his face, then flitted away. “Be back soon. We still have to go to Mass.”
Of course. Christmas Eve. Midnight Mass. She hadn’t been to church in so long that she dared not participate in the Eucharist, lest some angry lightning bolt strike her down.
***
Leo watched Faith’s slight body disappear through the doorway. He pierced Angelo with a glare when his brother’s predatory gaze went after her. In Angelo’s mind, Faith was always going to be a loose end. Leo could almost see the thoughts tumbling through his brother’s head. What if she talked? Even inside Leo’s house, there was family here, and not all of them knew what was what.
The women, particularly. They may suspect something wasn’t quite right, but they were wise enough to never ask questions, to always carefully skirt around topics that might prove their worst fears. So the family ran some casinos in Nevada? It was honest work. It was legal. No reason to suspect anything. Or so they kept telling themselves.
And if any of them were uncomfortable by the quick migration half the family had taken across the country five years ago, they told themselves a comforting story that made everything feel better again. After all, weren’t their lives better? Weren’t they stronger financially? Didn’t the kids now have a brighter future out west? If Grammie and Papi could cross the Atlantic, surely they could cross the country. It’s who their family was… the brave ones who traveled to new opportunity when they found themselves stifled in their homeland.
Angelo settled back into his dessert after another short glare at Leo. Leo raised an eyebrow as if to say: “You gave her to me, what are you so pissed off about?” Being twins, the two of them could have carried an entire telepathic conversation without much trouble, but Angelo’s gaze went back to his coffee, and Leo allowed Fabrizio to pull him back into talk of the sandwich shop.
Angelo’s internal morality had come into the world broken, and the examples he’d received from the men in the family hadn’t served to straighten him out. He’d always been too observant. That, combined with his willingness to cross lines, made him ideal for grooming into his current position of leadership over the Brooklyn crew. Meanwhile, Uncle Sal oversaw both Vegas and Brooklyn and reported back to Papi, who had stopped taking an active role years ago but still liked to remain informed.
Once upon a time, Leo had been offered a chance to climb the ranks. Sal liked him, trusted him. Would things be different now if Leo had chosen that path instead? Could he have managed to keep any integrity or sense of identity that wasn’t covered in blood? He feared had he chosen that life, it would have unlocked the kernel of evil inside him, allowing it to bloom into something truly gruesome.
Fabrizio continued to go on about the sandwich shop while Leo half listened, his attention now turned to his sister, Gemma: the reason he knew about covering bruises. She shot him a disgusted look and went back to her cannoli, coffee, and conversation, pretending he wasn’t there at all. If there was an easy way to be with the whole family where Leo wasn’t involved, she would have taken it in a heartbeat.
He couldn’t blame her, but he’d done what he’d had to do. Her husband had been beating her and nobody had stood up to protect her. It wasn’t their business. It was between Gemma and Emilio. But she was his kid sister and he couldn’t follow the unspoken rules.
Emilio’s body now rested in pieces in some garbage bags in the bottom of a harbor three states over. Leo’s handiwork. If the body were to be discovered, there was unlikely to be enough evidence left for an ID. It had happened more than a decade ago, after all.
Leo had been a week outside taking his final vows and being inducted into the order when he’d found Gemma, standing on the doorstep of his small apartment, trembling in the middle of a harsh winter snow, with mascara trails going down her cheeks and those angry bruises and fractured jaw. He’d taken her in and cared for her like a broken bird. He’d given her sanctuary from Emilio.
Six days later, the man was gone. No one suspected Leo, despite the scar Emilio had given him. Leo had explained it as a freak gardening accident, and the family accepted it. Maybe they accepted the story so readily because it was what they’d been trained to do: accept ridiculous lies to keep their delusions safe, to believe their men were good.
Or maybe it was the fact that he’d been practically a man of the cloth, and no one had seen the darker edges inside him that he kept carefully under wraps. The priesthood had been meant to divert his urges. The fantasies that twisted and gnarled inside him to own a woman, to dominate and subjugate her, to watch a whip make a bright red line across her flesh and the strange sense of serenity the idea brought him as it took him over the edge to orgasm. He’d been disgusted with himself. The priesthood would lock all that up in a cage and keep him from doing damage to anyone or to his own soul.
But Emilio changed that plan. Leo had caught him alone, knocked him out, and taken him to an abandoned warehouse where he’d spent the next forty-eight hours torturing him. Leo had taken the once powerful bully and turned him into a quivering lump of terror who could barely speak his own name. He’d finally killed him and taken apart the body piece by piece with a kind of glee that had scared him.
Once the evidence was gone, he’d locked himself away in his apartment. He couldn’t finish taking his vows. He was no longer a potential monster who hadn’t yet attacked. However he might justify it, he was tainted beyond the repair of the priesthood. And nothing could have convinced him otherwise. It had taken years for him to go back inside a church. He’d gone to medical school, intent on making amends, healing instead of harming. And along the way, he’d found healthier outlets for his sadism.
Most of the family still didn’t believe Leo had done it, but Gemma had seen the look in his eyes that night when she’d come to him. She knew, and no matter what Emilio had done to her or the terror he’d kept her in, she’d never forgive her brother for taking her husband f
rom her and their small boy. He didn’t much blame her. If she’d seen the damage Leo had done to the man before he’d allowed him the sweet mercy of death, she wouldn’t be able to be in a room with her brother at all.
The women started to clear the table, taking Leo’s plate right out from under him.
“Ma, we’ve got people for that,” he protested, knowing as he said it that it was wasted breath. Gina would do what she would do, and God help the poor fool who tried to stand between her and washing the dishes.
“What am I supposed to do until Mass? Huh? Watch the television? Teach Max to roll over? You won’t let your poor old ma do anything for you without complaint, will you? It’s not enough that you haven’t given me grandchildren yet, you can’t let me take care of you, either.”
Leo wisely shut his mouth and let the women do what they were going to do. There were perhaps some Italian families where everybody was a chauvinist, where the men kicked off their shoes and watched sports while the women unhappily slaved away before and after dinner. But if you knew a family, you knew this was as much the women as it was the men. Should an enlightened male make his way into the family, he’d quickly be shooed away and shown his place in front of the television.
Leo suspected the women didn’t just cook and clean and wash dishes. They gossiped about the men. While the men in the family had their secret crime meetings and cues and signals, the women were just as bad. What they did or didn’t know about anything, no one could be entirely sure because they couldn’t get close enough to the kitchen to ever find out. The women had untapped potential. Who knew how brutal the mob could be if it had been run by women instead.
Chapter Nine
Faith had gone straight to her room, Max following behind her. It was night, but with the outdoor floodlights she could see giant puffs of snow drifting down in a steady pattern.
While she’d been at dinner, one of the servants had started a fire in the fireplace. Moments like this obscured reality as if she were visiting royalty instead of a prisoner.
But she was trapped inside a Christmas card. What could be wrong with that? What kind of idiot complained or felt sad about that? She was still waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Leo to come blazing in to claim what was his, to make her pay with her body for all the kindnesses he’d bestowed. After all, she was his property, his ill-conceived early Christmas gift from his psychotic brother.
Max laid his head on her lap, and she absently stroked the soft, gold fur. He’d become her shadow these past few weeks, as if checking to make sure she was okay and then reporting back to his master with a daily status update. It had taken awhile for the cat to accept the dog’s presence, but now Squish was an expert at ignoring him. She’d briefly hissed when he’d entered the room before snuggling back into Faith’s pillow. In another week, he’d be beneath her notice entirely.
Half an hour or more passed like this when the doorknob jiggled. Before she could ask who it was, Leo stepped inside. He returned the key to his pocket and shut the door behind him. Since the last time she’d tried to lock him out, he’d taken to carrying the key with him. It was a reminder that she couldn’t keep him away from her. This house and everything in it was his.
“Are you okay?” He must not have believed her excuse about all the people.
Faith shrugged and turned her gaze back to the window. “It hurts. This lie. Pretending I’m your fiancée while I’m really your prisoner. They think I have this great life and everything is normal, but I’m like a captive animal. I don’t know if I can stand a week of this.”
She chanced a look at him in time to catch his wince, and immediately felt guilty.
“I told you, you can have whatever you want here. I can’t let you go. I can’t risk that you’d go to the police about Angelo.”
“He’s a monster,” she said, barely above a whisper. “I can’t understand why you’d protect somebody like that.”
“He’s family. I won’t choose a stranger over family, so drop it. We’re leaving for Mass in an hour; be ready.”
He left and locked the door behind him. Leo was right. He owed her nothing, but it still hurt. And yet, if she was only a stranger and family meant everything, why had he protected her from Angelo in the kitchen? Why had he given her this room? Why did he care about her comfort at all?
***
The drive to the church was silent—at least in Leo’s car. Faith’s body angled away from him in the passenger seat. They hadn’t spoken since their conversation in her bedroom, and now she was somewhere far away, staring out the window at the snow. He imagined she was contemplating the possibility and opportunity for escape. After all, it was her first time outside the house since he’d taken her.
A pang of guilt stabbed him. She was right. She was a captive animal kept in a cage, presumably for her own safety. But Angelo was the criminal, and she was the innocent—no matter how much Leo might wish to ignore the truth.
Gina sat in the back, squeezed between Uncle Sal and Aunt Lily. There was a loud sigh from the backseat. It had to be Sal, because nobody else in the family could sigh in such a heavy and all-encompassing way.
“Lily wasn’t Italian,” he said finally, as if he’d been brooding about Faith’s Irish blood since dinner. And probably he had. His quick dismissal of the Irish Problem betrayed how the thought dominated his mind. At least he was now acknowledging his own hypocrisy, given how his wife had been as fair as a Nordic princess. Maybe not Irish, but not Italian either. He’d suffered his own share of ribbing when he’d brought her home—if the family stories were to be believed.
Leo caught Lily’s reflection in the mirror as she made an annoyed look and flipped her blonde hair. “I’m still not Italian, Salvatore.” It had been a long time since her hair had naturally been that color, but she’d maintained it in the fight against the encroaching gray army with the help of a salon professional.
“Yes, dear,” he said, humoring her. The truth was, once they’d had kids, and they had come out of the womb all shiny black eyes and hair and olive complexion, her ancestry had been forgiven on the spot. Though, one of their grandchildren was fair like Lily. Surrounded by everyone else’s dark looks, Angelica looked as if she’d been kidnapped. But if the family noticed, they didn’t mind. After all, looking like Lily was far from a criminal act.
His Ma started to go on about weddings and babies and how long before she could have grandchildren. She made it a point to note that she didn’t care if they came out polka-dotted. All she wanted was babies to cuddle and coo over.
Leo winced and glanced over at Faith, who had gone stiff. He’d promised her she wouldn’t have to have children for him. And he meant it. He wasn’t about to violate her to keep up family appearances, and a turkey baster was too crude even for him. Either way, forcing her to incubate his progeny would be almost as bad as rape. In some ways perhaps worse. They’d invent a story of infertility.
This whole thing was spiraling too far out of control, far beyond the scope of his original intentions. Locking Faith in the dungeon each year for the holidays would have been less trouble. But then he came back to himself. As long as Faith was in his home, no matter where she was, he couldn’t have a normal life. These were things he hadn’t paused to consider when his concern had been keeping his brother from killing someone Leo could save.
Angelo had given him an obligation, not a gift. A package of guilt and frustration. All he wanted was to take Faith and fulfill his every twisted fantasy with her, but his brother had gotten all the sociopathic genes. Leo didn’t have the heart to follow through with an unwilling victim.
He parked the car on the far side of the church and growled in annoyance as he observed the bundled people rushing for the door. The Christmas Eve late-night Mass was always crowded. Although it was midnight and most people were tucked in their beds dreaming of sugarplums and fairies, for the faithful of St. Stephen’s, Christmas Eve was the longest night of the year. Even the New Year didn’t inspire staying
up so late. It was countdown, kisses, champagne, and then passing out.
He came around to let Faith out of the car as a doting fiancé should. She blushed and looked away when he took her hand and helped her out, catching her as she stumbled in the three inches of snow. Did she feel the spark between them? It would be safest for her if she didn’t. If she gave any indication she wanted him, her protected bubble would burst. He wouldn’t be able to make any promises about what he would or wouldn’t do with her then.
***
Faith sat in the pew toward the back of the church, sandwiched between Leo’s mother and Leo. She felt Gina’s shrewd eyes on the two of them, and God knew what the woman was thinking. She was probably fantasizing about baby outfits. The thought made Faith recoil. On the other side of her, Leo’s hand squeezed hers. She was so fragile sitting next to him, with her tiny hand trapped in his larger one.
They were in the last row of the benches the family had taken. Angelo and Davide sat two rows up, practically cuddling. Angelo had looked back and shot her an evil look once or twice during the service, but each time, his attempt at menace was interrupted by standing or kneeling or reading or singing.
When it was time for the Eucharist, Faith didn’t move. Leo’s mouth brushed next to her ear. “Are you not going up? It’ll look bad to the family.”
“I can’t,” she whispered, “I haven’t been to confession in a long time.”
“I can’t imagine how you could have offended God.” The sincerity of his statement caught her off guard.
“I wouldn’t feel right about it,” she said, hoping that would be the end of the discussion. She didn’t know what she’d do if he tried to make her partake.
He nodded and disentangled his hand from hers to make his way to the line with the rest of the family. Caprice waited for him in the aisle with a man-eating look on her face. She looped her arm through his, guiding him toward the line and flashing a smug look back at Faith.