Page 105 of Vicious Behaviors
“You will never touch my child, or any child, for that matter, ever again,” my mother warns, nostrils flaring. “Get out of my house.”
“Mrs. Romano…please…let me explain.”
But my mother won’t have it. “Oh, you will have much to explain to me and my husband, I can guarantee you that. Run. Hide. Do what you will. But hear me when I say that tonight will be your last on this earth. That I promise you.”
The nanny’s eyes widen in horror at the furious threat. Having worked for other families in the Outfit, Ms. Rinaldi knows exactly who she’s working for. This means my mother’s threat isn’t an empty, throwaway remark. She knows who my father is and what he’ll do to her when he finds out what she did to Stella. People have been killed for less.
Without a second to spare, Ms. Rinaldi bolts from the garden like a bat out of hell. It’s only when the wretched woman is gone that my mother helps Stella to her feet.
“Come, Piccolina. Let me take you up to your room so you can rest.”
But just as they pass Anna and me, Stella stops, turning toward me, hurt and betrayal etched on her face. “You just stood there and watched her. You didn’t move. Didn’t even so much as curse at her. You just watched. You didn’t do anything to protect me.” I open my mouth to explain, but no words come. “Coward,” she mutters, turning her eyes away from mine, as if looking at me sickened her. Confused, my mother guides her back inside, her full attention now on Stella instead of the guests.
The rest of the day is a blur. Guilt and shame make the hours slip past until I find myself hiding in a corner of my bedroom, my chest tight, my hands trembling. I feel like I’ve failed everyone. My parents. My siblings. Especially Stella and Jude.
Why didn’t I do something? Why did I let her touch Stella like that?
Jude would be ashamed of me. My father will be ashamed of me. I was supposed to protect my brothers and sisters, and instead, I just stood there, watching.
Tears stream down my face, choking my breath, until the soft creak of footsteps in the hallway breaks through my melancholic state. Everyone is still downstairs, lost in the party. No one should be up here. My father always has a security detail downstairs to ensure no one ventures upstairs, especially when his children are sleeping up here.
I pull myself up from the floor, my legs moving on their own, and creep to my door. The familiar shadow of Ms. Rinaldi passes by, slipping into Stella and Anna’s room.
My throat tightens, and my heart jackhammers in my chest. Half of me wants to stay hidden in my room like the coward that I am, but the other half screams to make sure that neither of my sisters is in danger.
On feather-light feet, I push my door open and move toward theirs, finding their door cracked ajar. Inside, I see Ms. Rinaldi cursing under her breath as she glowers at Stella, who lies asleep with her headphones clamped over her ears. Anna’s in her bed opposite Stella’s, curled in her blanket with her own headphones on, both starkly oblivious to the looming presence in the room. My mother must have put headphones on them to shield them from the party noise downstairs, but that only leaves Stella vulnerable to the mad woman in her room.
“Devil child…because if you, I’m as good as dead. But if the Capo dei Capi thinks he can kill me without me taking one of his own, he’s dead wrong,” the nanny mutters, eyes landing on a pillow that Stella must have pushed to the floor.
I feel my soul constrict with every move that she makes.
She’s going to kill my sister. She’s going to take Stella from me. And I’m going to watch it happen.
My hands push the door farther open, my body frozen, my heart hammering. And then I see it. One of Stella’s daggers on her dresser, Dom’s present for her eighth birthday last year.
“Let them mourn you before my family ever mourns me,” Ms. Rinaldi spits with a menacing look in her eyes.
As she walks closer to Stella’s bed, my fear rises tenfold. I feel it crippling me, freezing me in place. I want to move, but I can’t. I want to shout, but nothing comes out.
Hot tears begin to blind me as she takes another step closer to my sister—my best friend. She’s going to kill her. And I can’t move. I can’t move. Please, God, make me move. And just as my crippling fear becomes too much to bear, I hear a soothing voice whisper in my ear.
‘She’s going to kill Stella.’ I nod in reply, my entire body shaking manically. ‘I can help you. Let me help you.’
Tears burn my cheeks, watching the scene before me play in slow motion.
When I beg the voice to keep Stella safe, the world around me fades in an instant. It all goes black. As if someone had pulled me out of this nightmare and taken over my body and mind, leaving me in the sweet darkness of an abyss. For what feels like just a blink of an eye, I don’t feel fear anymore. No suffering. No pain. I can breathe again. I feel safe.
When the light begins to trickle back, I force myself to open my eyes and confront an entirely different nightmare. Only this one is of my making. Ms. Rinaldi lies at my feet, a lifeless heap,her face frozen in terror. As my eyes take in every cut and slice all over her body, they finally drift to the dagger clutched in my blood-stained hand. That’s when I realize that Ms. Rinaldi isn’t the only one covered in her blood—I’m drenched from head to toe in it.
Still, I don’t have time to fully process what I’ve done when the door bursts open and my father, Vincent, steps in, probably checking on the girls. He looks at me, then to the dead nanny lying just a few inches away from me. He doesn’t say anything as he quickly steps over the bloody corpse to check on my sisters, still asleep and safe in their beds. Once he ensures they haven’t been harmed, he turns to focus on me.
“Marcello?” he asks, his voice taut and eyes wide as they take in the scene. “Why…why are you smiling, son?”
And that’s when I feel it, too—I am smiling, wide and unapologetic. I’m smiling because I didn’t freeze this time. I didn’t let fear take over me. The voice helped me. It helped me to protect my beloved sister. To make sure that no harm would fall on any of my siblings. Just like I promised Jude I would. I kept my promise.
“I kept my promise,” I repeat on a strangled whisper, still kneeling at the altar long after spilling my sins, my fingers gripping the fabric of my pants to keep me anchored. I force myself to continue, even as my chest aches, and my mindfeels like a storm that won’t let up. “Aside from my father’s bodyguard, Bruno, no one else knows what happened that night. All I remember was sitting there on the floor watching them take a sleepy Stella and Anna to my parent’s bedroom before Bruno came back to clean the mess I left behind.
“I remember my father lifting me in his arms and walking me back to my room afterward. He then placed me in the shower and washed the blood off me, shoving my blood-soaked pajamas in a trash bag. Before he tucked me into bed, I remember promising him that I wouldn’t say a word of what happened to anyone. To pretend it was all a bad dream. And for a while, I actually started to believe that maybe it had been. A lucid nightmare caused by my earlier cowardice. But then the devil spoke to me again. And again. And again. Until all I heard was his voice instead of my own.
