“Or Skype,” I say. “You know, like video chatting. Some of the other teachers do that.”
“Skype,” he muses. “With a guard, of course.”
“Of course,” I scowl.
“So be it.”
“There’s something else,” I add.
“Oh, certainly. Do tell.”
“Wipe that grin off your face,” I snap. “I’m not your prize poodle.”
He nods soberly, but says nothing.
“I need to be able to walk around the mansion,” I tell him. “I can’t be locked up in here anymore. I’m going crazy. I need to be able to use the gym. To walk around the garden. Or I won’t stop. I mean it, Carlo. You fucking—you fucking shadow.”
“Shadow?”
“The way you move, the way you’re always there, looking over me, that dark look in your eyes. You’re a shadow, Carlo. Like the boogeyman.”
He steps back, making me glad and disappointed at the same time. With a shrug, he says, “There’s no way you’re escaping anyway. Go where you please. But try to scale the walls, or hoodwink—”
“Hoodwink?” I laugh. “All right, Mr. Nineteen-Fifties.”
That smirk again. I like that way too much, also.
“Try anything, and you’ll be back in here.”
He stalks away.
A few hours later, the guard with the crooked nose brings me a laptop. His name is Ubert and he turns out to be quite friendly for an accomplice to kidnapping. He asks about my work and tells me about his wife, Cecilia. He says she’s pregnant and they don’t want to know the gender.
“Boy or girl, as long as it’s healthy,” he grins, stroking a hand through his receding hair.
Once, I catch Carlo watching us from the doorway, his face deepened into a frown. Almost like he’s jealous of how easily Ubert and I get along. Which is hilarious, because Ubert is married and fifty-something and respectful at all times.
But I still take a dark satisfaction from it. Let him be jealous, the gorgeous, hateful, intoxicating prick. Let him bubble over with rage, because, despite this pathetic leeway he’s oh-so-benevolently granting to me, this whole freaking situation is still fucked beyond all recognition.
Control—it always comes down to that with men like Carlo. I remember sitting at the dinner table with Dad eyeing my closely, watching to see what fork I would use, narrowing his eyes to make sure I was sticking to appropriately ladylike topics of conversation. They are not the same—Carlo, as far as I can tell, is not nearly the same league of monstrosity as my dear old Pops—but still, the not-so-subtle edge of control bothers me.
When I promised myself that I had changed, I meant it. So I’ll bide my time. I’ll wait for my chance. And I’ll try, no matter what, not to let these confusing feelings for Carlo grow.
He’s a beast, nothing more. And once I get out of here, I’ll never think of him again.
8
Carlo
Sole Nero is a different place in the day. A ghost town.
I stand looking down out the window of my office. Below me, the cleaners move around like a swarm of ants. I let out a sigh. I’ve been handling business all morning, arranging beefed-up protection for our convoys heading in and out of the city: electronics, weapons, the usual. The Irish are getting too brave.
I turn to find a figure watching me.
It startles me. I’ve half drawn my pistol when I realize it’s Nario.
“Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
“I knocked.” He looks at me closely. “Twice.”
I walk to the table and drop down into a seat. He sits opposite me, letting the moment pass. Nario is good like that. He has not mentioned how distracted I’ve seemed lately, which even I’ve noticed. It’s Hazel and those piercing eyes that seem to see right through my bullshit. The way she moaned when I spanked her. The tight clutch of her warmth around me.
“What is it?”
Nario places his phone on the table and presses a button. It takes me a moment to pick out Santo’s voice in the crackly recording.
“Yeah, he’s taken a liking to some redheaded slut.” He’s laughing. “Fuckin’ fool, thinks he’s a don and then does a thing like that.”
“Most Italians are idiots,” an Irishman cackles. “Present company excepted, of course—”
Redheaded slut.
I clench my fist under the table, somehow angrier at that slight than the fact that Santo is talking with the Irish. Why should I care? I don’t have feelings for her. She’s nothing to me.
“There’s something else,” Nario adds. “You know how paranoid I can get.”