Five days, six hours and fifty three minutes. That's how long it had been since I last saw either Scott or Jenny. But this wasn't the time to think about that. I was about to surround myself with my old life and then some. Don Angelo would no doubt be coming out for this thing too.
I remembered the day my mom and Jenny left home like it was just yesterday. My mother, Collette, was from a wealthy family. She ran away at a young age to be Don Angelo's wife. An event she would regret very early into her marriage.
Unlike me, my mother was indifferent to what Don Angelo did for a living. If anything, she probably even liked it. The danger, the risk, the money. All of it appealed to her. Ultimately what broke my parent's marriage was the mistresses Don Angelo had. By the time the affairs started, my mother's whole life was Don Angelo. She fell into a deep depression, slitting her wrists when I was ten.
"If you want to die so badly, it can be arranged," Don Angelo thundered, pulling a gun on my mom.
Now I was pretty smart for a ten year old. I understood the implications of what was happening. I knew there was no coming back from death.
"Daddy, stop," I begged, running into the room and throwing my little body in front of my mom.
Kids are little psychopaths, they say. I certainly felt like one around my father. No tears, no discernible fear when you make demands. Especially not before Don Angelo. I had learned that being groomed to be Don Angelo's heir.
"Just let us go. You have your whores. You can have more children. Let us go, you bastard," my mom pleaded, her bandaged wrists in front of her face as she covered her face to shield herself as she sobbed.
"You think I'll waste my heir on you? You think you get a say in what happens with my little genius? Savant, that's the word they use when talking about her. What are you going to do with a savant, Collette? Eat tea and crumpets?" Don Angelo taunted her.
If it was possible for Don Angelo to love, I'd say the one person he loved, was proud of, maybe even more than his criminal empire, was me. Maybe love was the wrong word. His obsession with possessing me was toxic. Even at age ten, I knew I would die in that house as a result. Maybe, just maybe, they didn't have to though.
I left my mother's side and walked over to my father.
"I swear allegiance to you. I'm yours, eternally, but only if you let them go," I said to my father, biting back the tears as I kissed his ring.
At first, Don Angelo laughed his head off. To be honest, I don't know what it was that made him agree. After the next few hours of him beating my mother to a pulp and berating her, I honestly don't know if anything I said had done it. Maybe he was just sick of having a suicidal wife and a daughter who was "less than." Jenny wasn't special like me. I envied that every day of my life.
"Very well, erde. You shall have your wish. So long as you never see these people again and devote yourself only to me, I don't care where they go," said Don Angelo, wiping his bloody hands off on his pocket square.
That was the story of how my mother abandoned me. How I had let her abandon me. To this day, I wondered how Joey had lasted this long without getting a bullet put in his head. Maybe he gained Don Angelo's favor purely because he was a man. It certainly wasn't intelligence or any other discernible talents that did it.
When I saw my mother again eight years later, happily remarried and now living in New York, I made my peace with it. That was just how it had to be. But seeing Jenny made me realize that things were different now. Against all odds, I had made it out too. At least that's what I told myself as I stared at my mother's face from across the room.
"Bella," I heard Luca's voice call out to me.
He pulled himself out of a crowd to come over to say hello to me.
"My condolences," I said, when he sat down next to me.
"I'm so glad you came," he said, sounding too chipper for a man who had just put his father in the ground.
I opened my purse, pulled out the keys to my apartment and pressed them into his palm.
"The deed will be in the mail. I have no interest in whatever game you're playing. If I wanted to be in a cage, manipulated and controlled my whole life, I would have stayed with my father," I said frankly, looking straight ahead.
It took me some time to see through Luca's bullshit, but in the end he was just another Don Angelo with a much better looking face. He didn't want me, he wanted the status, prestige and power that came with having me.
"Aah. Where did I overplay my hand? The flowers? The apartment?" Don Luca asked.
We both knew the answer, but he was going to make me say it.
"Jenny. You insulted me by trying to use her to make me jealous. What was I supposed to do, be so hopelessly distraught at Scott not choosing me that I ended up choosing you? I don't take kindly to being manipulated. What did you promise her?" I asked, a slight edge in my voice that I hadn't intended to let slip out.
"A meeting with your father. Unlike you, she's quite keen to see him. I was merely trying to show you the big picture. When he gets tired of you or someone he knows gets hurt because of who you are, you'll come running back to this life, to your padre, and eventually to me," Luca said calmly. "Jenny might have gotten us there quicker."
"You are wise to try and trick me instead of threatening me. I'll give you that. But using my family to do it? Bad move. No man controls what I do or don't do. Not you, not Don Angelo, not even Scott. Whom I will fuck if I so choose. Never make the mistake of thinking you are any different to me than Don Angelo. I did Cattaneo's books for the last seven years. What can I say? Daddy was a show off. If I can feed my own father to the wolves, I can just as easily do it to you," I finished in a huff.
"Did you just threaten a don in his own home?" Luca asked, his voice dangerously low.
"I don't make threats, I make promises. If you wanted me dead, I would be, but like I said, you're just another Don Angelo. If you want to keep entertaining delusions of us riding off into the sunset together, that's your prerogative, but don't ever, ever come after me using my family again," I said, rising to my feet. "Always a pleasure, Luca."
It took effort to walk away in a straight line. My hands shook and I felt light headed. I hadn't intended on the speech. Getting emotional in a situation like this was beneath me. Having my suspicions confirmed about Jenny threw me for a loop, such that the whole plan went out the window. I had just threatened a brand new don, on his premises, with a shaky bluff at best.
While it was true that I did do the books for the Cattaneos and could likely reproduce every detail I had taken in over the last seven years due to my photographic memory, I had not come prepared to make that threat. It was never my intention to make an enemy of Luca, or anyone other than Don Angelo.
Still, it was too late to take it back. The only thing to do now was get the hell out of here before Luca realized I was full of shit. I didn't think I was in any mortal danger. That would start an instant war. I did, however, not want to stand up to what Luca and Don Angelo would be willing to do together to get their way.
Heartbroken about Jenny's reason for showing up at my doorstep, I decided to leave without meeting my mother. Little did I know that Jenny had other plans.
I kept my head down as I headed for the front door. It was for this reason that I didn't see her coming.
"You can make this happen. You can get me an audience with our father," Jenny cried, grabbing onto the collar of my suit.
If that wasn't enough of a kick in the teeth, my mother showed up shortly thereafter, prying Jenny's body off of me.
"Come to your senses, child. You can't be here," said my mother.
Unable to contain myself at now being with both Jenny and my mom, I felt myself tear up.
All that came out of me was, "Mom."