SWNOVELS Unholy Vows: Chapter 4
After an endless twenty-four hours, I moved around La Leonora like a zombie. For the most part, I didn’t mind my waitressing job at the high-end casino. Sure, the clientele could get handsy, but the tips were great, and security was pretty good about throwing the offenders out.
Growing up at Mercy House, we’d been taught the dangers of gambling and drinking and how that path could lead to a life of sin and burning in Hell. The reality was far less dramatic: Rich people having fun, and poor people trying desperately to catch a lucky break. There were no saints or sinners on the floor tonight. Just ordinary people, as good or as terrible as any people could be.
Tonight, I bustled about the tables in the Atrium Bar mindlessly, handing over drinks and checks for more money than Lucy and I spent all week, distracted and exhausted.
There were a few big shots drinking at the bar, and ignoring their loud, braying laughter was nearly impossible.
“Does anyone really need to laugh that loud? Is anyone ever that happy about anything?” I complained to the bartender halfway through my shift.
His name was Alec, and he was an aspiring dancer. Like all the staff at La Leonora, he was just paying the bills and hustling on the side as he worked toward his dream. AC was full of dreamers trying to become something else. Someone else.
“But how would everyone know they’re having a great time if they aren’t broadcasting it? Though, I think in their case, it’s just the coke talking, or laughing,” Alec deadpanned and sighed. “And just think, that’s our justice system right there.”
“Meaning?”
“That’s Commissioner Reynolds and Judge Ellens. Look how annoying they are, and they’re the good guys.”
I stared at the two bloated older men, laughing, drinking, and winking at the waitresses passing by. Linchpins of the New Jersey justice system. I shuddered at the thought. Any mention of the police had me sweating. Waking nightmares of the cops appearing to arrest me and Lucy filled my head. They didn’t seem like they’d bought anything I’d said.
Even scarier was the thought of the missing drugs and the phone. The cartel had Lucy’s number. Would they come and get her? Would she be on the hook for the drugs or the proceeds? Maybe we should have told the police everything. No. I might be scared, but that would still never be my go-to instinct.
I’d learned how the police could mess up. I’d seen it firsthand. When I’d started nursing school, one of my nurse friends had reported her violent boyfriend for smacking her around at home. The police had barely investigated. Then, after he’d put her in the hospital, they’d taken him in for questioning and charged him with assault. A month later, after a judge had gone easy on him since it was his first offense, he’d come after her and hit her with his car. There wasn’t any evidence to connect him to the hit-and-run, but everyone knew it was him. That was the legacy of the police in my head.
Or take my father’s death. A poor Irish immigrant who had worked a couple of side hustles and hardly been a huge contributor to society. They’d never found the perp who’d gunned him down. They’d barely bothered to look. Our neighborhood wasn’t exactly high up on the cop’s priority list. They didn’t care what the people there did.
I was a person from that neighborhood, and so was Lucy. At the end of the day, the cops wouldn’t care unless we had something they could use against someone important. The De Sanctis family was important. In a clash between them and the police, we would be the casualties. I knew it without question. No one could take care of you except you.
I’d never had any reason to doubt the truth of that depressing statement.
I left work on a cloud of distraction. Soon, I’d have exams coming up, and I had to find time to study. Typical that my head felt like it was filled with swarming wasps. Worries zoomed around inside, vicious and mean.
I waited at the bus stop outside the casino and sank down in a rare seat once it came. The sky was brightening. I’d worked an overnight shift, and my feet throbbed, like I was walking on the bare bones. I was on them for so many hours, it didn’t matter what shoes I wore; they ached all the time.
I dozed off a little and only woke when I realized somewhere in my brain that the bus had stopped for longer than usual. Damn, had I reached the end of the route while I was asleep? It wouldn’t be the first time.
I peered around. It was dark inside the bus, though the sky was shifting from dishwater gray to pale white, tinged with pink. It looked like blood spilling across a new canvas. I wiped my mouth and eyes. They were gritty and heavy. I would wash off my dried-up makeup as soon as I got home. It was always a highlight of my night.
I grabbed my bag and pushed myself up.
The bus had pulled into a place I didn’t recognize. It appeared to be a rest stop. I glanced out the window, wondering why the hell we’d stopped here. In the distance, a few people hustled across the parking lot. I thought I recognized one of them from being on the bus earlier. Did we have to get off here?
The quiet sound of male voices drifted to me. The driver was talking to someone. I peered forward, a trickle of unease working through me, chasing away any remnants of sleep.
Ahead of the bus, a huge black SUV was parked at an odd angle, like it had forced the bus to stop. The bus driver was speaking with someone outside, and he looked pale. He turned and strode away, just as the person he was talking to turned and barked what felt like an order over his shoulder. There were two others with him.
My blood turned to ice. I recognized them.
The De Sanctis men from the warehouse. The killers whose crime we’d witnessed.
Swallowing my cry of panic, I backed up the aisle. There was a door at the back, and it stood open right now. The men moved toward the front entrance; I could just make them out. I reached the back stairs and started down them silently.
My sneakers barely made a sound when I stepped onto the hard dirt of the rest stop, but it didn’t matter. Someone was there waiting for me.
A man dressed head to toe in black stood at the foot of the steps. He wasn’t one of the men from the warehouse. This man was clearly in charge.
“Miss Burke? I’m Elio Santori. There’s someone who’d like to meet you.” His deep voice sent claws of fear raking across my nerves.
In the growing light of dawn, I could make out his blunt features and oddly pale eyes. He held himself like ex-military and had little in common with the other two. This man was tall and powerful-looking. His all-black attire gave off a deadly vibe the other two would never manage.
It was abundantly clear that his request was an order, but I still pretended like my life wasn’t about to end. Miss Burke? He even knew my name. I could bet everything I had in the world, which really wasn’t much, that he already knew everything about me, down to my panty size. Which meant his boss did, too.
Renato De Sanctis. King of AC. In Atlantic City, just the name was enough to get people to drop their eyes and keep their heads down. He was like a specter you could invoke, like Bloody Mary, but you really didn’t want to. People died when they did.
They say an organization is a reflection of its leadership. If that were the case, then Renato De Sanctis had to be one of the most terrifyingly powerful, brutally vicious men on the East Coast –and now, he knew everything about me.
“I’m afraid it isn’t a good time. I have to get home.” My voice barely shook. It wasn’t much to be proud of, but I needed to hold on to all the wins I could get right now.
Elio wasn’t holding a weapon, but I knew instinctively that it didn’t matter. He was the weapon. He stood lightly, like he could spring in any direction at a moment’s notice. He wouldn’t let me past him.
He was quiet for a second and then sighed. “My boss doesn’t take no for an answer.”
“I just want to go home,” I said again, panic edging my voice.
“It’s too late for that, and you know it. Don’t make me force you,” Elio said quietly. His hands were huge and scarred. If he had to, he’d make me, and it would probably hurt. He could have just killed me here. He didn’t have to take me to his boss.
And maybe this was a good opportunity. If the boss wanted to speak to me, maybe I could change his mind about killing me and Lucy. It was a long shot, but it was all I had left.
Then, my decision was made for me. One of the men opened the back door of the SUV, and I saw her.
“Charlie? What’s going on?”
They had Lucy.
We drove out of the city and along the shore. The sunrise reflected off the water, a gentle pink and blue. The scenery was far too pretty for a death march. I watched the sea and wished I could live.
My focus soon shifted to Elio. I watched him like he was a bomb that might go off at any moment. His eerie eyes gave nothing away as he watched me right back. In the light of the car when we’d first gotten in, I’d seen they were a light jade green, and unsettling as hell. The other two men were there as well. Sneering and sullen, they glared at me like it was my fault they’d killed a teenager the other night.
“You haven’t covered our eyes,” I pointed out quietly. It felt like my heart was breaking.
“This isn’t the movies,” one of the men sneered.
“Meaning?”
“There’s no need,” Elio said in a tone that brooked no further questions.
I reached out for Lucy’s hand, but she folded in on herself, her arms snaking around her middle, her face blank.
After about an hour, we reached a set of huge metal gates with a guard station outside. I couldn’t make out the inside of the compound. Dense trees and vegetation crowded up against the boundaries of the massive property. The metal gates slid open, and we drove up a long, winding driveway. It felt like we were entering another world. The veil had slipped on this one, and now, I had one foot on the other side.
“What is this place?”
“Casa Nera, girlie. The last place you’ll ever see,” one of the goons in front snapped. He was the trigger-happy one. He turned a dark look at me. “Serves you right for causing trouble.”
“Basta,” Elio said. The word was quiet but somehow held the weight of a gunshot.
I turned to peer out the window and tried to stop myself from hyperventilating. The compound was filled to the brim with armed men, patrolling despite the early hour. High walls surrounded the entire property from what I could see in the dark, and the tops of them bristled with cameras.
There were buildings of all shapes and sizes grouped in clusters. It was more like a village than a single property. Casa Nera. The Black House. Then again, it seemed fairly obvious that the name had been inspired by the Gothic mansion, perched like a crown jewel in the middle of the site, reigning over everything around it.
The center of the maze. The heart of the labyrinth.
And, of course, our destination.
The king’s castle itself.
“Out,” Elio ordered when the car pulled to a stop. I got out carefully, shivering in my waitress uniform. Elio eyed the crest of La Leonora on my shirt, his face devoid of emotion.
He turned toward the entrance, the imposing stone steps leading in a graceful curve toward huge doors. The kind someone could ride a horse through if they were so inclined. There was no sneaking in the back here. Whatever the De Sanctis family did to people like me, witnesses, they did it in plain sight. That wasn’t nearly as reassuring as it should have been.
“Watch the steps, they get slippery in the fall.”
A humorless laugh left me at Elio’s warning. He was warning me about falling when his boss was about to kill me?
“Something funny?” he asked flatly, shooting me a curious look.
I shook my head, but my mind was already spinning. Get a grip, Charlie. If not for yourself, for Lucy.
Lucy, that’s right. I had to protect Lucy. I had to do something to save Lucy. Lucy was the only one who mattered.
Inside, the house was silent as a tomb. Lucy’s hand gripped mine so tight I could feel the blood leaving my fingers. Only the ticking of an intimidating grandfather clock broke the silence. Dark red wallpaper lined the walls, and black-and-white tiles covered the floor. The farther we moved into the maze of the building, the more opulent the surroundings became. This wasn’t a place of business; it was an inner sanctum.
Home of the boss.
The boss.
We arrived at a huge door, ornate, but somehow also fortified. Elio knocked with a distinctive rap and opened it. The door opened soundlessly and swung inward. Fear worked through me, firing adrenaline through my blood. As a nursing student, I was trained to focus and get the job done in tense, high-stress situations. But this was different. It was personal. It was about Lucy.
Elio touched my lower back to move me forward when I failed to take a step over the threshold. The wallpaper around the door was a rich red brocade, scrolling vines adorned with apples and leaves. The door was old-fashioned, wooden with studs and metal reinforcements.
For a second, I had the thought that if I moved over this threshold, I’d be taking a step into another realm. A world where the rules didn’t exist as I knew them… I didn’t want to go inside. I wanted to hide. But then Lucy’s slight weight pressed into my side, and I knew I had no choice.
I inched forward, shooting Elio a frown so forbidding, he dropped his hand from my back. I took it as a win, even though his subsequent smirk ruined my illusions of power.
“Stay behind me. Let me do the talking,” I muttered to Lucy. The thugs who had started it all crowded into the room behind us.
Inside the office, the feeling of otherworldliness continued. It wasn’t an office from this time, that was certain. A huge leather-bound desk dominated the middle, and oil paintings were mounted at intervals around the room. A real fire burned in a hearth, and one of the walls was packed with bookcases that reached right to the high ceiling, crammed with hardbacks.
A wooden cross was nailed above a portrait of a beautiful woman. The portrait was an oil painting, and the subject was serene, staring at the painter with a wistfulness that drew the eye. The sight of the crucifix was jarring. I wouldn’t have expected something religious from a man who had so much blood on his hands. Maybe he was the type to believe that as long as he confessed to his numerous sins, he was absolved. As a woman who’d knelt before such a crucifix many times at Mercy House and waited for judgment, my life had come full circle.
“Boss,” Elio said quietly, once again pushing me forward when I froze. I had no choice but to focus on the person in front of me. Renato De Sanctis. In the flesh.
It was dimly lit, but that didn’t hide the man who sat behind the desk at all. If anything, he seemed like a creature who thrived in the darkness.
“Well, if it isn’t the woman we’ve been looking for. Welcome to Casa Nera, Miss Burke.” His voice was deep, holding a hint of smoke that brushed through my mind and fogged my throat.
I’d never thought of a voice as intoxicating before, but now I knew that one could be. There was a tinge of an Italian accent, just a touch, and a dryly amused undertone that told me it wasn’t anything unusual to have two people dragged before him this early in the day.
“She was finishing her shift at Le Leonora,” Elio said coolly.
“Was she? Nurse by day and waitress by night. You certainly are a busy little lamb, aren’t you?” The boss’s voice was deep and warm, reminding me of the expensive cognac I served at work. His words elegantly communicated volumes. He knew everything about me.
The lamb comparison didn’t fill me with confidence, considering how wolfish these men were, but when I locked eyes with the man behind the desk, I had no room in my mind to dwell on it.
He pushed all other thoughts out.
Growing up dirt-poor, the child of well-meaning Irish immigrants who had gotten in with the wrong people and died poor and unnoticed, I’d learned important lessons about power. My parents had never had any, and no one had cared when they died, except Lucy and me. The remnants they’d left behind. In the group home, I’d never had any power either. In my hospital work, the doctors held the power, and I’d planned that someday, somehow, I’d work my way up there and be just like them. One day, I’d have power, too. People would listen when I spoke. People would respect me.
Standing there in the inner sanctum of the capo of the De Sanctis family, I realized I’d never known true power until now.
True power was tangible. It radiated off of this man in waves as he watched me with dark eyes. It was present in every line of his body, the arrogant tilt of his regal head, and the curve of his beautiful mouth. It emanated from him as he inclined his head toward Elio.
“Bring her closer.” It wasn’t a request.
Elio firmly prodded me toward the desk, and I twisted away from his touch. If I was going to die here, I wanted to walk toward that fate with my head held high and not stumbling.
He chuckled lowly and gestured me onward with mock politeness. I stepped forward and crossed the distance between the door and the desk. A thick Persian rug muffled my steps. The fire warmed me on my right side. A clock ticked, perhaps the antique one on the mantelpiece. Counting down the last seconds of my life.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Do something, Charlie. Tick-tock. Save Lucy. Tick-tock.
Renato observed my approach. The boss. There was no denying that’s who he was. No one gave off power like that and served another. It just didn’t happen.
He wore a black suit with a red shirt beneath. Red like the wallpaper. Red like blood. If he wasn’t about to kill me, I could have appreciated his foreboding good looks. He looked like he’d just stepped off a runway. He looked sharp, like the lines of his cuffs could give you a paper cut. His olive skin glowed in the firelight like burnished gold. Dark chocolate waves of hair softened his powerful face, dominated by an aquiline nose and slashes of black eyebrows. His mouth was beautiful, but mournful somehow. He was a man more used to frowning than smiling. A hint of silver worked through the dark strands on his head, making him even more intimidating, though his face was unlined.
He studied me just as closely as I did him. His gaze burned hot on my skin.
“Sit,” he commanded.
I swallowed a lump of terror and the annoying urge to comply. I didn’t want to be lower than this man. He was already intimidating enough. “I’d rather stand.”
Silence ensued at my refusal. Slowly, one of those imposing black eyebrows rose. His eyes were beautiful, chestnut-colored and dreamy, fringed with lashes that were too pretty to belong on such a masculine face but somehow, they worked.
“And I’d rather you sat.”
A hand landed on my shoulder and pushed me down into the seat. I shot a glare at Elio over my shoulder, and then turned back to the boss.
“Now, isn’t that more comfortable?”
There was something so unbearably arrogant about his confidence that my roiling emotions got the better of me, and my mouth was moving before I could stop it. “Get off on ordering people around, do you?”
Oh my God. Well done, Charlie. Now, you’re really dead.
The boss merely stared at me. “You have no idea. Do you know who I am?”
I held my tongue, suddenly afraid to admit it. There was no doubt that if this freaky otherworldly office had been a step into another realm, then this man here was the dark prince who ruled it. Admitting that I knew exactly who he was, and what he was capable of, felt like suicide. My mind whirled over possible answers before discarding each one.
He tutted. “I don’t ask things twice. You should remember that, Miss Burke.” His tone was mild enough, but the tension in the room warned me that pissing this man off wasn’t a wise idea.
I found my voice and forced it to work. “It’s just Charlie.” That response was a force of habit. I hated my real name. It sounded too fancy for the reality of my life.
“Charlie? That’s a boy’s name,” Renato said. His gaze slid down my fall of brown, wavy hair. “You don’t look like a boy to me.”
“It’s a nickname, but I prefer it.”
“Charlie.” He mused on it for a moment. “I don’t care for it.”
I blinked at him, feeling far out my depth in this conversation. He was dangerously unpredictable. The meandering confidence of his speech and slow perusal made my skin feel like it was two sizes too tight. There was no way I could handle this man. I had no idea where to start. All I could do was plead my case. Plead Lucy’s case.
“I’m Renato De Sanctis, just in case you weren’t aware.” He paused, letting my mind conjure the specter that his reputation painted.
He didn’t have to try to inspire fear; just his name evoked it. I got the impression that Renato De Sanctis wasn’t the kind of man to go out of his way to scare his enemies. He just killed them. I watched him, and he watched me right back.
“So, what did you see, Miss Burke?” he finally asked.
I shook my head. “I didn’t see anything. Neither of us did,” I began.
A loud snort came from the two men who had started all this. One of them sneered. “They must have seen everything, boss, she’s just lying to stay alive.”
A reluctant laugh left me at his accusing tone. All eyes turned back to me. Renato raised a lazy brow at the sound of my derision.
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out. Isn’t that what everyone wants?” I muttered.
The man behind me scoffed again, this time annoyed that I’d embarrassed him in front of his boss. He stepped forward, hitching his trousers up in a way that felt obscene. “Let me clean up the mess. I’ll put her down, and her little sis, too, get rid of the problem. It’s my mess, so I’ll clean it up…Maybe have a little fun while I’m at it.”
His voice was conspiratorial, like he was expecting all the men to agree with him. Sure, go on and have your fun with the dead girls walking and then get rid of the leftovers. They’d probably all agree. This was it, the end of the line. Our deaths would boil down to inconvenient messes to be cleaned up, then forgiven and forgotten. Our lives meant less to them than the custom paint jobs on their fancy cars.
Renato held up a single finger, and his man snapped his mouth shut so hard his teeth rattled. The boss reached into a drawer beside him and took out a pair of black leather gloves. The sight of them sent a chill through me. He pulled them on slowly, carefully adjusting them so they were a perfect fit.
“Again, I don’t like to repeat myself, but seeing as we were so rudely interrupted, I’ll give you another chance to answer. What did you see, Charlotte?” the boss continued.
I shook my head. “I didn’t see anything. Neither of us did,” I repeated.
“You killed Miguel! Your men shot my boyfriend dead, right in front of us!” Lucy’s violent outburst hit the air like a gunshot. She’d been standing behind me, her arm gripped in Elio’s huge palm. Now, she fought to step forward.
I shot a silencing look at my sister, but she was too determined. She glared at Renato, while he watched her with faint amusement, not so much as flinching when she lunged forward. He almost looked bored by the display, like normal human emotion couldn’t break through his jaded shell. He was a man who had seen the full spectrum of dark and desperate human emotions and found it monotonous.
He flicked a look over her shoulder at his henchman, and Elio reached out and wound a muscle-bound forearm around Lucy’s neck. She was a doll in his brutal grip.
“No!” I shot up and ran toward Elio. He had already lowered Lucy to a velvet settee sitting along one wall, efficiently cutting off her air supply in seconds. “Don’t hurt her!”
I lunged at Elio, scratching and kicking at him. The other men hauled me off, their harsh fingers digging into my arms and chest, pulling at my waist, wrenching me away from my sister. Sobs of terror shook me, and I couldn’t breathe. The sight of Lucy in a killer’s hands, her face turning red as she slowly went under, was more than I could stand.
“Fuck this,” one of the men snarled and wrenched a gun from his waistband. It was the same man who had killed Miguel. He aimed his gun toward Lucy. “Calm the fuck down, or—”
“Or what, Tony?” Renato’s granite tone sliced through the escalating tension like a knife through silk.
Everyone paused, and I took advantage of that moment to break free from the hands that held me and step in front of the gun. Standing on the other end of a point-blank shot was terrifying, but not as terrifying as seeing that black muzzle aimed toward my little sister.
“Don’t hurt her. Hurt me if you need to hurt someone. Kill me if that’s what you need, but let her go. She’s just a kid,” my voice faded away to a whispered plea. My forehead pressed against the end of the gun, the metal cold as ice. As freezing as impending death.
The man holding the gun on me seemed frozen too, unable to move, as the boss stood slowly from his chair. Everyone seemed spellbound for a long, silent moment.
“She’s just a kid? How much older can you be?” Renato broke the silence.
“I’m twenty-six, and she just turned nineteen. That’s just a kid. She doesn’t understand…” I trailed off.
Renato came into view, standing just behind the man who held the gun on me. Now that he was standing, I could see just how tall and broad he was.
“She doesn’t understand what?” He prodded me when I lost myself in staring, fear dragging my mind into lingering pauses.
“Men like you.” The words left me before I could decide if they were a mistake or not.
Renato came closer, and the man holding the gun trembled. He wanted to move, I could tell, but didn’t know if that was a wise move.
“And you do? Tell me, what do you know about men like me?”
“Can you – can he put the gun down first?” I attempted, wetting my lips twice to get the words out.
Renato raised an eyebrow. “But you’re doing so well. Most men would have pissed themselves by now or pleaded for their lives. Most never would have stepped in front of it in the first place.” He stepped closer to me, passing behind me. “Why do you want it moved now?”
“I don’t trust the man pointing it at me. He looks like a coward,” I ground out. The man’s eyes widened, and his grip slid on the metal. “He’s shaking,” I added.
Renato turned to look at the man. His man. He nodded slightly. “Yes, he is, isn’t he? Not a very reliable man after all, are you, Tony? First, you make your own judgment calls, and then, you’re too weak to stand by them. It’s not behavior worthy of the De Sanctis name. Maybe under my father such weakness was tolerated, but that family isn’t this one, as you know.”
Renato took Tony’s shaking hand and slowly pulled his fingers from the grip, and pried the gun away from him. The entire time he did, the pistol was turned toward his chest. He wasn’t afraid of being shot by the terrified man. That was power.
He gripped the gun and looked at me, holding the butt of the pistol out. “Do you want to, or shall I?”
“What?” I asked numbly, my brain too shocked and scared to keep up.
“He pulled a gun in my presence without permission…and he decided the fate of a kid without my input. He’s a dead man. Do you want to do it, avenge your sister’s friend, or should I?”
“I – I could never…” I stuttered.
The hot spray of blood against my face registered before the bang. I brought a hand slowly to my cheek and wiped, barely noticing the blood dripping from my fingers. The man who’d been holding the gun, the one who’d killed Miguel, slumped dead to the floor.
The other guy from the warehouse, the one who’d tried to stop his friend, scrambled back, bringing his hands up like it could stop what was coming. The bullet entering his head sounded wet. It blew out the back like his skull was an overripe fig, and he fell to the side. My head spun, and the room tilted. I couldn’t catch my breath.
“Never say never, bambina. It makes me want to prove you wrong.”
Renato stripped off the gloves and handed them and the gun to Elio, the shadow at his side. He handed him a small towel in return, like wiping up blood from a head shot was just a regular Thursday morning in this family. It probably was. Then he took the gun back, and I knew in my bones, it was my turn.
“It’s a shame that you ended up where you did tonight, Charlotte. You seemed like a good person, and good people have consciences that bother them. It’s a loose end, and I don’t like those.”
Seemed? I was already dead to this man. Fight, Charlie. Fight!
“I don’t have a conscience. I don’t care that you just shot that guy, he deserved it. I only care about my sister,” I burst out. I was dizzy. I could have fainted, if not for the urgency beating through me.
“And she has proven herself to be a liability, I’m afraid,” Renato continued. He looked totally unmoved, blood drying on his cuffs where the gloves hadn’t covered. There was a light spray across one of his high cheekbones. With the light from the fire and his dramatic coloring, he really did seem like a king of the underworld at that moment. A monster wearing a man suit.
“I’ll keep her quiet. She’ll do what I tell her. I’ll make her understand.”
“I’m afraid your word isn’t enough,” Renato continued.
I was panicking, scrabbling like that rat in the maze that I so empathized with. Trying to find an exit, only to keep coming up against obstacles.
Tears rolled down my face, burning hot and desperate. Before I could overthink it, I grabbed his arm. It was taut beneath his jacket sleeve. I held on and met his dark eyes. Behind his head, the portrait of the serene woman beckoned, and the light glanced off the cross on the wall. Without another thought, I lowered myself to my knees and knelt before him, head bowed.
“Dear God, who art in Heaven…” I started, the words of the Lord’s Prayer deserting me when I needed them most. I grasped for the next phrase before changing tack. “Do you believe in God?” My voice shook. I was really scraping the bottom of the barrel expecting this monster to fear heavenly retribution, but I’d leave no stone unturned.
Renato was silent for a long moment. I could tell that the swerve in tone had thrown him. This might be futile, but he hadn’t shot me yet. My time left on Earth had narrowed down to heartbeats. Every single one I could win was a victory.
His voice was mildly curious. “And if I said yes?” he mused.
“Then, I’ll swear on everything in this world and the next, on Heaven and Hell and all the worlds in between, we will keep this night a secret and never speak of it again. I swear to God.”
I held that pose. When I was a child, my parents had taken me to the small Catholic church in our neighborhood. I hadn’t understood much, but I’d gotten that when you wanted something or needed help, you asked God. When my Ma died giving birth to Lucy, we’d had a small funeral at that church. I’d prayed for God to make her welcome in Heaven and to help my Da. He was so sad.
Then, my Da had died, and I’d prayed for him to return every night for a year from my narrow bunk at Mercy House. I’d prayed for him to return when the nuns had disciplined us for impure thoughts with cold showers, or hours of Bible study. It had taken me a while to understand that he was never coming back. I hadn’t prayed since the night I’d realized that if anyone was listening, He didn’t care about the Burke sisters.
But I prayed now, before the man who held both Lucy and my lives in his bloodstained hands.
My new God.
He stilled, seeming fascinated by my approach. I had my eyes closed; I couldn’t look at him as he stood over me, gun in hand, and decided our fate.
Slowly, he crouched before me. “What would you do to save your sister?”
“Whatever I have to,” I said without hesitation.
Renato’s dark eyes stared down at me for a long moment before he spoke again. “I’m afraid I’m not really a believer, Miss Burke. That was my mother’s domain.”
His mother. That had to be the beautiful woman in the painting. I could see a strong family resemblance now that I knew their relationship.
Straightening up, he towered over me, his judgment cast.
“Then I’ll pray to you,” I implored. “Worship you instead…accept your word as my gospel…if you’ll give us a chance to live. Please…please. I’ll do anything, whatever I have to, please.”
Renato was silent. I steeled myself as I raised my eyes to his. He was so close that I could see the sparkling variation of browns in his warm eyes. Really, those eyes were far too soulful and real to belong to a monster. It wasn’t fair at all. His mouth was slightly upturned, like he was amused somehow, by my prostrating myself and begging him for mercy. I had no pride; I had no dignity. I couldn’t even pretend to have any. There was nothing I wouldn’t do, for her.
That was my truth, and I let him see it. Something passed between us in that moment. Something intimate and born from darkness and desperation. It was a second where you could take the measure of a person’s soul and know its worth. It was the most intimate moment I’d ever experienced with another human being, and it was terrifying. I didn’t want to see what he hid in the dark recesses of his black soul, but I couldn’t look away. To flinch meant certain death.
Renato swallowed. I suddenly realized he was as unsettled by my unerring inspection as I was his. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who kept people at a distance.
His eyes fell to the shining pendant on my necklace. “St. Anthony. Saint of the lost.”
I didn’t trust myself to speak, so simply nodded.
“Are you lost, bambina?” His voice was rich.
“I’ve always been a lost thing,” I admitted, letting this man see right inside me, to the deepest darkest corners of my soul.
He took his time measuring my worth and deciding my fate. I held his gaze and didn’t dare to blink.
Finally, he delivered his verdict. “Then, Miss Burke, we have a deal. You keep your sister quiet, and in return…”
“Yes?”
“You’ll do whatever you have to. Whatever I want you to.” He held out a hand to me.
A devil’s bargain.
I had no idea what he’d ask me to do. It might be illegal. It would probably be dangerous. It could be anything. I shouldn’t take that deal. Maybe I was only putting off dying for another day.
Still, another day was another chance to live a little more.
I took his hand and shook it.