Femme Fatale Read online

  ***

  I’m woken to my sheets being ripped away for my body. The chill hardly sets in when I’m yanked from my position in the middle of the bed and trapped in the arms of someone. I don’t see much of my captor, but I don’t need proof with the way he holds me.

  “Papà wants to see you,” Giovanni whispers into my ear. His breath heats my skin, the feeling rolls down my neck and goosebumps rise on my skin.

  “Let me go,” I grind out, yanking away from him as much as I can. However, Giovanni’s hold only tightens.

  “No way,” he tells me and pushes me out of my bedroom and into the hallway that runs across the back of the house. “Daddy’s princess has to get there quickly. I know how you love to drag your feet, Amelia. I’m not allowing you to get me into trouble.”

  I snicker. “Scared to piss Daddy off?”

  “Shut up,” he sneers and gives up being nice. He all but drags me through the darkened house.

  I’m still struggling for freedom from his hold as we enter the grand room. When I stop, I look to the grand meeting room of my father’s to find him standing before a gang of menacing-looking men. Immediately, the hairs rise on the back of neck and all the sleep that didn’t want to leave my body is quickly replaced with the terror that I had suppressed when I was rudely awoken. Pushing me further, even though my feet have seemingly cemented themselves to the ground, I see the greediness in all the men’s eyes – my father’s included.

  “So, I’m sure you’re wondering why you’ve been woken up past midnight, Bambina?” my father asks as Giovanni closes the distances between all of us in the room.

  “Well, yeah,” I snap back, trying to hold onto the ferocity I met my father with earlier. It’s only a bravado; my smart-ass behavior is meant to shield the fear.

  “These men are here to see if you’re worth as much as I seem to have you priced at,” my father announces, and he’s all smiles. The aggression I fired up in him earlier is diminishes, and he’s here for showmanship. He’s presenting himself as the businessman. The face of the Dio Lavoro is full of omnipotence and supremacy. The Dio del Sangue is here with intent now more than ever. “One of them will be the lucky man to walk out of here tonight with you, Princess. After all, you’re clearly not prepared to respect your own father and the life he sets at your feet. Why would I want such a delinquent in my house, in my family, when I can sell her? Sell her, might I add, to someone who would give you a far more horrifying lifestyle than this one!”

  The realization hits me like an icy cold bucket being thrown over me. Hell, I think I would rather the latter! I feel the dread boil in me, my heart clenches, my lungs lack the ability to inhale air, and I find fear wrapping around me like tiny snakes, rendering me useless and ready for a suffocating death. My own father is prepared to sell me to men who find great delight in trafficking defenseless women to whatever hell will pay the most. In that instant, Giovanni’s hold onto me tightens, and I fruitlessly fight him. I pull down, bearing down with all my weight and then start to yank away, vying for my release. As every male’s eyes land on me, I feel violent panic rip through me and I’m alarmed at how they all stare at me with such want.

  “It’s good you dressed up for the occasion,” Giovanni remarks and I loathe the sound of glee in his voice. He’s happy this is happening. He’s pleased I’m the one being presented and hopefully gotten rid of before sunrise. A few men laugh with him, and my brother’s ego gets a stroke. “Gives them an idea of what you’re prepared to wear when you’re theirs.”

  My brother ends his spiteful comment by throwing me in the direction of my father, and I land before his feet, slammed down onto my knees by losing my balance. I have no time to recover. My father’s the one who grabs my hair and roughly pulls my head back. I look up at him, and I don’t see my doting father. He’s transformed into a truly humanized Satan. There are no sharp talons or horns, or fire billowing around him from his portal up from hell. He’s still my father. He’s still the man who raised me, loved me, and created me into enough of a monster to do his deadly deeds. He’s supposed to love me, but he’s willing to do this to me. He’s shaped my entire life into something I never wanted, and I still expect him to love me.

  He never fucking loved me. I was just another worker for him. My genetics never were my saving grace from any of this. I’m granted no penitence or leeway. I was always a target for my father to get his own way. Now he’s willing to sell me to a gang of sick, perverse men who will defile me and destroy every last shard of my being just so he can say he taught me a lesson.

  “You want to argue with me, I’ll show you how expendable you are, Princess.” He leers down at me as he speaks, and I’m quaked with fear. “You want to question me and defy me over and over again, and I will show you how I play. I am the one who runs this house, this family, and you.” He grips my hair tighter, lifting me up some, and forces my body to twist behind the horde of disgusting men vying for a piece of me. “We’ll start bidding, at least, at one hundred and fifty grand,” my father announces, his hand still on me as he looks away and at the men before us. “She is Italian royalty, after all.”

  The moment seizes at that point. My heart explodes with rapid terror, and I’m in no mood to submit to whatever cruel punishment my father has planned when it’s this. I begin to shake my head, not caring at how my roots scream in protest at the gesture. He can’t possibly do this to me, can he?

  “Papà,” I feebly beg. My vision blurs as I look up at him, wishing for a better outcome than the one he’s presenting me to. “Please, Papà, don’t do this. You don’t want to. I’m sorry. Papà, please. Anything but this.”

  He lifts me entirely to my feet as I plead. He only loosens my hair to put his face into mine, and I’m met with eyes filled with fire. He’s in no mood to bargain and let me go. He’s really doing this and no one in the room will save me. I feel my sheer silk dress lift and I imagine it only pleases the men before us.

  “You have got away much too lightly,” my father alerts me, all his intention oozes out of him, highlighting that he means business. “It’s time you learned the way we Abbiatis really work.”

  “Papà!” I scream as he throws me into one of the men’s arms, and he’s immediately touching me. I feel the dirt scar across every trail he leaves and implement itself for life. I close my eyes, force myself back into a distant memory, and conjure a new world where I’m nowhere near this danger. I whimper as more hands grab onto me, all trying to get their piece of what could be theirs.

  When a gun goes off, I jump and feel the warmth of blood splatter across my face. All of the strangers’ hands fall away quickly followed by a resonating thud directly in front of me, and I feel free. I open my eyes to find the space he occupied empty and everyone horrified around me. I look down and see a hole in the man’s forehead, his cold eyes staring unblinking. I look over my shoulder and see my father with a gun. He places it back into the back of his pants and steps forward, pulling me out from the perverts who he almost sold me to. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a handkerchief. I stand before him numb as he begins to clear the blood from my face, but I feel myself repulsed by him. He’s so gentle with me, I barely have time to register that it was he who threw me for the dogs. He did this and rendered me a begging mess, and now he’s being soft and kind.

  Slowly, I raise my eyes to meet my fathers. The devil has reverted back to his lair and left my father’s body. He stands before me, the dutiful father. He’s the father who loves his own and would never do what he just did to prove a point. I’ve known for years about his hand in trafficking girls, but I just never imagined that I would be his latest.

  “Now are you aware of why you don’t defy my plans for you?” he asks me gently. There’s a certain calmness to him that was lost before. He’s snapped back to his stoic fatherly ways, but I can’t forget how he became only moments ago. He might be able to switch it off, but I know all the sides to my father’s personality, and I have yet to forget
one. This one is one I will have nightmares over for life. “Never let me get that far again.”

  “Don’t blame this on me,” I whisper to him, unable to raise my voice higher than it is. “You’re nothing more than a murdering monster. You’re poison to all of us.” I shake my head in dismay as I finally find some sort of voice to speak up to him with. “You’re going to destroy us all.”

  “I am your father,” he asserts sternly, the power begging to become unbidden in his tone. “You will obey me.”

  “You’re nothing to me,” I tell him, my tone tainted by my dying proximity to breaking.

  I leave no room to be stopped. I flee from the room and only stop to grab my car keys before I escape from the confines of my own home in nothing but my pyjamas. I don’t look back. With a pounding heart, I allow fear let me run from my home.

  I run to my only sanctum – Bruno.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Here you go.”

  The comment is accompanied by a large steaming cup of coffee being presented to me. I take it and smile with appreciation as I look at my brother. He let me into his house at nearly two AM, held me when I cried, and left me to sleep. He also gave me fresh clothes and left me to work through the demons my father pressed upon me only hours ago.

  Bruno Johnson – aka Bruno Abbiati – is the one who got away.

  One night, he had just vanished by the time dusk broke. We didn’t hear from him for five years after¸ and when we did, he became our little piece of normalcy in an otherwise crazy world. He’s married, has three children, and lives a perfect life – no Italian baggage to drag around with him. Our father never took kindly to Bruno’s disappearance, but it worked in the long run – my father wants nothing to do with Bruno, and Bruno wanted out of the family. However, he still comes to the house, much to my father’s chagrin, just to keep up appearances and put the fear of Christ in our father. Bruno knows too much to be eradicated; he made damn sure that if he ever died, the world would still know everything, so he gets the deal of exoneration. Bruno involves himself in what he wishes to, not what he’s told to.

  Although, Bruno rekindled relationships with myself, Manuel, and Carlo, his relationships with Giovanni and Enzo are either non-existent or rocky. Enzo took Bruno’s leaving hard because they’re twins. It’s understandable. They went through everything together. The firstborn children were twins. It was like a glorious start to Salvatore’s bloodline. Why have one prince when you could have two? The only thing that caused a problem was the fact that they were not identical twins.

  Even though they look very little alike, Bruno is much like Enzo in his protectiveness of myself and Manuel. However, unlike Enzo, Bruno cannot stow away a clenched hand and not react with physicality. If something angers him, he will go in all guns blazing. Giovanni likes to think he’s the first tough guy in the Abbiati family, but Bruno was and always will be.

  It’s one of the many reasons he had to get out.

  “I didn’t pressure you last night, but do you want to tell me what the hell happened?” Bruno presses lightly for details as he takes a seat opposite me as we sit on the front porch of his house. “You’ve got until Allana is done feeding the little monsters.”

  I give myself a silent pep talk to garner confidence together. “Papà set up a guise to use against me.” I wrap my hands tighter around the cup of coffee. I swallow around the lump in my throat and look at him. “He tried to sell me.”

  “What?” Bruno’s voice bounces back, captured in a whisper while his face darkens and contorts with confined anger.

  “He presented me to a gang of men and offered the starting bid at one hundred and fifty grand.” I don’t stop the tears from falling. At first, I had been so numbly hit that I hadn’t released any sort of cathartic cry, but now it’s all bubbling below the surface. “I’ve never been so scared in my life, Bruno. I know what those men do to girls they buy. I don’t want to be one of them.”

  I watch an array of emotions flood my brother’s face. There’s such a range that it’s hard to depict what he’s truly feeling. In one instant, he looks so enraged I’m scared he’ll show his roots, but in another, he looks ready to just hide me away and never let me go because his concern for my welfare is his utmost priority.

  “Giovanni was so ready for that to be it, too,” I speak, reminding myself of my own brother’s excitement at what could become. I flash my gaze to Bruno and bite my lip before I say another word. “Why did you ever have to leave?”

  Bruno looks taken aback, and I don’t actually blame him. But he needs to realize that life took another dive after he ran. Our father grew darker from the betrayal, and Giovanni saw it his place to step up. Life altered into this hellish reality where we feared more of what could be done to us and how it’d be condoned. The biggest problem of all is that there is no escape. We had lived so long under the same roof that only one showed the strength to leave, and now no one does.

  “For reasons like this,” Bruno states solemnly. “I wanted a life, Amelia. I wanted a life without having to see what heinous crime our father could do next. I didn’t want to have to worry about the job placed upon me.”

  “But you left me behind!” I selfishly exclaim. “And Enzo can’t fight Papà alone. Carlo’s barely around and Manuel isn’t able to deal with it. It just leaves me, but I can’t do a thing. Last night was proof of that. I fight back, and I get punished! At least you and Enzo scared him!”

  Bruno releases a sigh and sits forward in his seat. I know I’m not going to like anything he’s about to say, but I need to realize that Bruno cut away because he had found someone to run away with. Allana was the one who introduced him to humanity and removed every chinked piece of armor he wore in the battle we’re presented with. She saved him and gave him the fight to flee the only family he has.

  “Remember when Mamma died, we all changed after that.” His statement sits between us for a moment. “It really opened my eyes to what Salvatore would make you watch and not care about your mental health.” He looks at me more fiercely, keeping his gaze upon me entirely. “My plan was always to leave, get established, and come back for you. That was always the plan Allana and I had.”

  “Then what changed?” I ask him. My request is point blank and given with an icy coldness. “It took you five years to come back to us, so what changed?”

  “Your first kill happened,” Bruno states blandly, and he releases a sigh of disappointment. “I failed you, Amelia, and that was the proof. I had left it too long for the scent to die down and the suspicion to go. Salvatore has his claws so deeply into you; I’m scared what it will take for you to be free.”

  I feel like my brother’s already given up on me. I understand that the manhunt my father wrangled together was fierce and sent Bruno into deeper hiding, but however I look at this, I cannot stop the feeling of abandonment. Bruno broke free and now we’re all trapped. He demonstrates that his freedom gives him total control – he’s a flippant being who chooses when he wants to come back to the family home. My heart falters upon a few beats, unable to capture a fresher routine.

  “If you want to get away from him, I will try everything to make sure it happens,” he quickly adds in. “Enzo and I have had a few conversations regarding it. Amelia, I might think it’s too late, but Enzo is convinced we can get you away from Salvatore.”

  The way Bruno states our father’s name hits me square on. There’s a reign of bitterness to it and an overdosing ebb of anger that only steadily grows with the passing years. I know he sees my rescue as dangerous – even he knows all eyes are constantly on me – but he still has this underlying fight in him to get me away from the curse of our family.

  I go to answer when I’m interrupted by the sound of a fast approaching car. I watch as Enzo’s car pulls up into the drive, parking behind my own. Immediately, Carlo’s jumping out of the passenger side, Enzo not far behind him. I sit up, worried they’re going to drag me back.

  “You’re not going back just y
et,” Bruno notes. He begins gesturing for me to stay seated as he moves to stand up. “Well, I’d love to say it’s lovely to see you, but after what I’ve heard, I’m guessing this isn’t a social call.”

  “I’m not here for you, Bruno,” Enzo spits out and makes a direct beeline to me. “I’m here because I was woken up to absolute anarchy at home in the early hours of the morning. I get there to find my sister’s fled the house because our fucking father tried to sell her!”

  “Watch your language!” Bruno bites back. “My kids are inside eating breakfast.”

  Enzo tries to deflate his anger but finds himself flexing his palms. It’s a bit harder for him to do. He looks at me, and his face softens immediately. I can feel him and Carlo looking at me with confusion at what really happened. I feel myself begin to well up under their gazes and want nothing more than for them to wake me up and tell me it was all a nightmare.

  “Lia,” Enzo calls out softly, using my nickname to keep himself calmer than he actually is. “Lia, I wish I had been there. I would never have allowed him to get to that point.”

  “But you weren’t,” I state, and the tears begin to freshly betray me. I feel the traitorous trail crawl down my cheek, and I close my eyes to still anymore from doing the same. “He didn’t want you to disrupt what he had planned for me.” I can feel myself breaking furthermore, and I’m at a loss. “Enz,” I barely manage and put my drink down before I get up and run to my brother.

  The moment Enzo wraps his arms around me, I cave all over again. He is my protector. Enzo Abbiati is the one, in our deranged family, who has brought me up to have at least some sort of heart within me. He kept our mother’s essence alive in us when my father paid homage to her at her funeral and forgot about her. If it weren’t for Enzo, I would have let my father tear my heart out completely and force me into becoming a true monster.