Page 69 of Sinner's Vows

Vincenzo grunts as I put more pressure on his foot.

“I dunno. Franco planned to marry her at some point, when they were much younger.”

This makes me reel back on the pressure a bit. Imagine the life Ariana would have led as that maniac’s wife. “What happened?”

“She ran away.” Vincenzo breaks out into a grim chuckling fit, one that shoots the hairs on my arms up in chills. “But he found her.” Now he laughs out right. “Funny thing, he said he always knew exactly where she was, but he waited for the right moment to strike. Like a snake.”

He looks up at me, and the admiration in his eyes for Franco Fiore is too much. How could this man be Gigi and Carla’sbrother? Just imagine if Franco got what he wanted. And he so almost had.

I can see it now, how Franco was literally living in an underworld until his time had come. And then he messed with the wrong people. I reach for Vincenzo’s throat and circle my hand around it. With a little squeeze, I choke the laughter right out of him, and he starts to wheeze in desperate breaths.

“And when was this?” I ask, letting go just enough for him to answer my question.

“Fuck, man. Weeks ago,” Vincenzo croaks. With a shrug, he drops his head back, preparing to spit on me, but I close his throat again, and it’s a battle for air. Human nature dictates you’ll always breathe first.

“And then?” I ask, less kind in my prompting now as I step with both feet on his, not sparing him any of my weight.

“We made the deal that made Ariana Morelli obsolete,” he croaks. “Gigi.” He laughs again, sinister and cruel. “Franco brought me to see her, to offer her to me…but he was just fucking with her. She was his prize. He was going to kill her as soon as his ring was on Gigi’s finger.”

His prize…

“Good thing that never happened,” I hiss. “Tell me, you piece of shit, now that Franco is dead—” I break off, because this would be news to him. Vincenzo has been locked up for some time in here. I feel the change in his pulse where my thumb is pressing against it, speeding up. “Yes, you fucking prick, Franco is dead by our hand. What are the consequences for Ariana Morelli?”

He stares at me, the life seeming to drain out of him. “Franco? Dead?”

I don’t bother to answer, just firming my hold. “Answer the fucking question. What hold does he have on her? What would happen on that side when he dies?”

Vincenzo closes his eyes, and I know this move. Resignation. Nobody is coming for you. This is really the end.

“I don’t know.”

Which is the standard answer when you’re dumb enough to beabove the fucking frayin this world we rule.

“In my opinion, we’re done here,” I say as I look toward Matteo for authorization to end Vincenzo once and for all.

“What about a Gabriella Scalera?” Matteo asks now as he steps up.

It takes a full minute for Vincenzo to come back to life. He takes in Matteo and then shakes his head. “Never heard of her before.”

“We’ll let you think about it for a day or two,” I say, letting go of his throat where days of beard must be itching like a motherfucker. My finger’s imprints have discolored the skin already. He will die with those bruises. All I want is to wash his filth off my hands now. “Do yourself a favor and think over those two last questions carefully.”

37

ARIANA

Portia reaches into the hole between the exposed floorboards and pulls out two packets of sealed moleskin notebooks. At a quick glance, I’d say there must be at least twenty of them.

“To think she still did this, wrapped them carefully just like they are now and sealed them herself.”

With reverence, she wipes the dust off the plastic Ziplock bags, but there’s more. Ribbon with a wax seal that has never been tampered with. Portia kept her word.

She hands me a packet, and I’m suddenly weak with the weight of secrets carried between these pages.

“These are the older ones,” I say, noticing a small square of discolored paper with the years written in pencil on it. “You must have the more recent ones. Where do we start?”

“Ideally, we need to read all of them to get the full picture. Right from the beginning,” Portia says as she forces a nail between the ribbon and the wax to rip it apart. “But let’s just figure out what was going on in her mind during that last trimester.”

She rips open the Ziplock and pulls out a stack of moleskins. They seem to be ordered by date, because she hands me one andkeeps the one right at the bottom of the stack with her. Even from here, I can see the journal she’s holding was never fully used. Where all the others show signs of complete wear with all the pages flipped and written in at one point, the one she’s holding looks almost new.

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