Kiss Me in the Dark Anthology - Monica James Page 0,100

himself to leave our sisters and mother alone, I chose to believe my fantasy.

Just as I hoped that the money would continue to go toward the education of my prodigal younger sister, Giselle, so gifted with a pencil or brush that she could render whole people on a page with their emotions and blood trapped beneath the surface of her painted strokes. I’d been practically living in Milano and Roma for the past year working any gig I could get in order to send back money for Giselle’s education at L’École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She was too talented to be held back by our poverty, and too pretty and soft at heart to deal with the shark-infested waters of Napoli. I knew last year when Elena’s older boyfriend began to take undue notice of our shy sister that she had to leave. Her education was funded on my ability to provide for it with my modelling, and now that I was being sold, I needed to assure she would have the means to continue without me.

Ideally, funds would be left over for my smartest sibling, Elena, so she could attend a real school and earn a real degree. For Mama, a new home with a kitchen well equipped to deal with her delicious fare. And for my father—the man who just then was driving me towards my future as a bought woman? Well, for Seamus Moore, I could only wish for the best his soul would buy him in this life. A quick death.

Nico, one of Abruzzi’s men—not much older than me and the only man in the Camorra who I had any sort of good feelings toward—had shown up at the house last week with Rocco and some others. I was home from Milano for the week to celebrate Sebastian’s and my eighteenth birthday, and I’d been hoping to avoid the Camorra. Mama had been at the market with my sisters, and Sebastian was working at the factory in town, so the men had been able to retreat inside for some grappa, and Nico had stayed outside. “To keep me company,” he had explained, but I knew now it was to keep an eye on their investment.

I had continued to read, my hair falling between us to create a thick obsidian curtain, but the well-loved, well-worn book shook slightly in my hands. My heart seemed to balance on a wire that thrummed dangerously with a staccato beat.

“What’s happening?” I finally asked, unable to maintain the pretense of reading when my body was so attuned to the finality in the air.

The house felt like grounds for a funeral, only I didn’t know who had died.

When I turned to look at Nico sitting beside me on the front step, he was gazing down at me with warm brown eyes. I only allowed myself to like Nico a little because his eyes hadn’t yet turned wet and very, very black.

He spoke in the Italian of Napoli, filled with slang and more Latin notes than other dialects. His voice was hoarse and warm, like the sound of a well-fired furnace, and when I think of my home, my native tongue, it’s Nico’s voice I hear.

“You are the most beautiful girl in Italy.”

I wasn’t supposed to roll my eyes, but growing up with beauty, I got away with more than most girls, and a lifetime of favour had taught me bad habits. I was lucky that Nico only smiled in response.

“I’ve heard that one before, Nicci.”

He shrugged his hulking shoulders. “Doesn’t make it less true.”

“No,” I agreed and collected my rippling mass of waves into my fists. “You know, one day I am going to cut it all off.”

He shook his head, and I wondered if he knew I wouldn’t, that it was my security blanket, that I slept with it draped over my arm like a child with a stuffed rabbit.

Instead, he said, “It wouldn’t make a difference.”

I looked across the street at the yellow grass and glaringly bright yellow house under the yellow sun. Yellow was my least favourite colour, and sometimes it seemed that Napoli was soaked in it. Not burnished in gold but drenched in something hotter, a shade with a stench, like urine.

“What are they talking about today? More debts?”

Nico was slow to shake his head, but then again, Nico was slow to most things. His stature made him the perfect thug, but the goodness in his heart and the methodical pace of his thoughts made him a