Page 15 of Souls and Sorrows

“I’m going to ask one more time.” His hand leaves my hair, dropping to wrap around my neck, stealing the breath from my body. “Where thefuckare my parents? You were the last one with them, last one to see them alive. Your DNA is probably all over them, so if I find their corpses, you have to know this won’t end well for you.”

Rage pulses in my blood, and red splashes across my vision, blotting out everything else. Bracing my weight on the twisted leg, I lean forward, pushing off the wall and swiveling around, using my elbows to break the hold he has on me. My skull whips against his jaw as I turn, and he stumbles back, momentarily stunned by the sudden movement—just long enough for me to disentangle my leg and dive to my purse on the floor.

I cry out when I feel his hands on my ankles, dragging me across the hardwood toward him. My fingers feel around inside my bag until they graze plastic. Wrapping around the canister, I pull it out and roll just as Vitus looms over me. Unlatching the lock, I push down on the release button.

Pepper spray paints his skin, the orange liquid assaulting his eyes and nose. He screams, immediately reaching for his face, and I scramble out from beneath him, hobbling to my feet and keeping as much weight as possible off the leg he’s injured.

Vitus falls to his knees, using his white T-shirt to rub his face, and I spray another time for good measure.

He sobs on the floor, and I just stand there, watching him. Wondering if it’s just the spray causing such raw emotion or something more.

The man’s taken bullets before, so I have a hard time imagining a little capsaicin is making him react so strongly.

On the other hand, Vitus has always been close with his parents, especially his father. If not for the stroke the elder Tallerico had a few years back, they’d undoubtedly be running Ricci Inc. together.

Maybe I went too far this time. My relationship with Vitus, for the better part of the years we’ve been together, is one marred by mind games and paybacks, neither of us very faithful to anything, except the idea of us.

Maybe I shouldn’t have gone to his parents at all.

But I did, and that isn’t something I can take back.

Not that I would want to anyway.

* * *

Papà dropshis head into cuffed hands, threading mangled fingers through his overgrown salt-and-pepper hair. Caverns hollow the swells of his cheeks, and dark purple bags puff up beneath his dark eyes, aging him significantly.

He no longer resembles the terrifying Mafia don I grew up wishing for crumbs of affection from. I guess two thirty-year sentences for money laundering, racketeering, and domestic terrorism will do that to you.

But I still yearn, especially as the same old lines of disappointment crease his features.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done, you stupid girl?” His head lifts, and he glances at the closed door.

His visitation allotments are short and heavily monitored by officers just outside, so we can’t exactly talk specifics, but clearly, word travels fast in prison.

“Why are you here instead of at St. Leonard’s, marrying the Tallerico boy and tying yourself to him before he figures out what you did to his parents?”

As if they were blameless, unsuspecting victims. Just because Fiero and Cosetta didn’t do anything directly to me doesn’t mean they were innocent and didn’t deserve what they got.

“Obviously, I no longer want to.”

“Sei un rompicoglioni,” he spits, though the verbiage is lost on me. “You don’t get a choice.”

“Elenagot a choice.”

Years ago, my older sister was betrothed to the heir of some big media company, an alliance Papà had secured before she was even born. But then his in-house physician and hit man stepped in, swooping her away to his cushy little island to be his wife, and my parents barely did anything to stop it.

“You are not Elena.” The observation, though one I’ve heard many times, stings. He continues, “And she might have gotten a choice, but not oneIgranted her. Do you understand the strings I had to pull in order for Vitus to agree to take you on in the first place?”

I make a face, crossing my arms. “Gee, Papà, maybe if you’d left me alone to live my life, I wouldn’t have had to take measures into my own hands.”

His fist comes down on the table—gently though, so he doesn’t alarm the guards. “You are aRicci, Ariana. Your entire purpose on this earth is to do what I fucking say. It’s not to go around…”—he pauses, lowering his voice as his eyebrows draw in— “screwingyour fiancé over when he pisses you off.”

I glare at a spot on the metal table between us that’s been warped from sunlight. “So, he can cheat on me, but I can’t cheat back? I can’t retaliate? Wasn’t that the little arrangement you and Mamma had?”

Grunting, he leans back in his chair, and his stare bores fiery holes into the top of my head. I can feel his judgment, but when I look up, his eyes are turned down. Almost… softened, as if in understanding.

My parents didn’t like me, growing up, but I always wanted to believe that Papà loved me in his own distant, abnormal way. That maybe he just didn’t know how to express it and didn’t know what to do with people who didn’t serve a direct purpose he could exploit.

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