Page 6 of Impenitent Claim

It was very probable that I was losing my mind. And yet, I could almost feel an otherworldly presence beckoning down the path to the pond. Something was down there, and I very much wanted it to be a certain gentleman, holding court from the VIP section of a club.

And then the memory from the other night, the phantasmal presence popped into my head. What if the spectre returned? That was a far more likely possibility. Someone who could sneak through the house under the cover of night, dodging alarms and guards, could easily move through a crowded party.

I needed to know.

I stepped forward, only to be yanked backward.

“Isabella, come here,” Cecilia hissed. “Congressman Ronald wants to meet you and Alonzo.”

“Ouch!” I jerked away, but her talons were firmly embedded in my bicep. There would be marks under the sleeve when I took off my dress upstairs.

“Here’s my beautiful daughter-in-law to-be,” Don Aldo boomed, making a sweeping gesture at me. “Cecilia, be a dear and find my son.”

“He’ll be here in a moment, he had to run inside.” Cecilia pinched me again. “He needed a mint to hide the booze he’s been sipping,” she hissed under her breath.

Busted. I could take the malicious pinches, I was used to them by now. But poor Alonzo would bruise like a peach if his aunt sank her talons into his tender flesh.

“Congressman, may I present Isabella,” the don said, introducing me.

Steeling my spine, I prepared for the same old song and dance. Between the strega at my side and the slimy, manipulative bastard closing in on me, I was trapped for the next hour or more.

I should have stayed at the bar and had another cocktail. The buzz wore off as I went through the motions of polite conversation. Every few seconds, I swept a look over my surroundings. There was nothing unusual, nor any return of the phantasmal feeling.

Alonzo joined our trio after a quarter of an hour. At least I could carry on a polite conversation. The don’s son said the wrong things and misread the social cues. It was painful. Privately, I wondered if he had some form of anxiety or even some slight developmental disorder. Not that his scheming father ever had such a thing diagnosed or made an effort to equip his son with tools to navigate social norms. One-on-one, Alonzo was intelligent, bright, and even funny in his own way. But in groups? He was a failure in his father’s estimation. If it was possible, Aldo would stick his progeny in the attic, like a tragedy from the Victorian era.

But the don only had one heir, and with the other vultures who would gladly take his throne, he needed to seem strong inevery aspect. I slid a look to the man who’d been underboss for years, who’d been overlooked when a new leader was needed. Tullio Fabrizi knew that he didn’t have enough support to take over after my father, but he’d been involved in every step of the transition of power. That was not the scheming soul I would want a heartbeat away from my throne if it only took a well-placed bullet to end me. Still, Aldo and Tullio had an accord and seemed for all intents and purposes to be amicable.

And they’d both made it very clear what would be my fate if I challenged their partnership.

“That’s why the policy needs to be changed,” Alonzo surmised.

The senator shifted uncomfortably. Being called out for bad actions was never what someone like him wanted to hear. What sweet Alonzo couldn’t understand was that the senator would never want to do the right thing.

As I watched my fiancé, a protective streak flared in my chest for the kid. This wasn’t the time to talk politics even if the agendas being pushed were far from ideal. But as usual, the lad put his foot in his mouth.

“Why don’t we show Mr. Nemmers the Audi, son?” Aldo suggested.

“You two run ahead, I want to ask Alonzo’s opinion of something,” Cecilia minced.

My gut twisted. This was the perfect opportunity to escape, but I stepped closer to my fiancé as the don and the senator ambled off together.

“We have a reputation to uphold.” The strega dug her talons into her nephew’s arm. “What were you thinking, drinking hard alcohol? And then discussing politics with the senator?”

“I was offering him an opinion,” Alonzo explained, confusion knitting his brows.

He doesn’t understand what he did wrong!

“If you can’t say anything intelligent, keep your mouth shut,” Cecilia hissed. Reaching out, she swatted at his wild, woolly hair. “And for heaven’s sake, you look like a mess. Don’t you know what a comb is? People will look.”

After pawing at him for a moment longer, tugging at the thick brown strands that wanted to curl, she released Alonzo and sent him toward the garage to view the car he’d received as his eighteenth birthday present earlier this summer.

I took a quick step back to escape the strega’s biting grasp.

“I’m just going to run up to my room and powder my nose before dinner,” I said, excusing myself.

Ignoring the warning in her eye, I bolted. This was my life. One long evening after another. No adventures, no freedom. I rubbed my growling stomach as I slipped up the back staircase. In this world of madness, I was doomed to be alone. Sorrow panged through my chest. Family was an illusion in our world. They either died like mine, or they were terrible like the Brunos. My fingers slid lower, brushing over my pelvis. The copper IUD was the best purchase right before I left Chicago. If there’d been time, I would have sterilized myself, no matter that someday I wanted a family of my own. I would not bring another human into this world to be used as blackmail against me.

I pushed into my bedroom and firmly shut the door. The silence greeted me with a deafening roar. It was so quiet that my pulse was the only sound. It was like entering another world. A fairy cottage, away from the darkness and demons prowling about the kingdom; I was safe in this space.

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