Page 23 of Renata Vitali (The Five Syndicates)
Love meant jumping off a cliff and trusting that a certain person would be there to catch you at the bottom.
Jodi Picoult
“I think it’s unrealistic. Impossible, even.”
Who knew, between the two of us, Princess would be the pessimist and I, the idealist?
I eyed the article of great-great-grandfather Ludovico on the wall, careful to keep my eyes off of Ren. I was well aware that I enjoyed our nightly literary debates way too much. “You don’t think people have the innate goodness in them to rally for a common goal?”
The magazine felt heavy in my hand. Not because it was an issue of Playboy, nor because it was a limited edition 1984 run, but because it was the only thing keeping me from striding across the library’s timber floors and kissing Princess. Vitali blood or not, I wanted her. Craved her in ways I’d never allow myself to pursue. She was, after all, a Vitali. And I was, after all, a lowly De Luca prince.
“Think about it like this. Decent people don’t commit hardcore crimes, nor do they always follow the rules. They sneak into the carpool lane or speed when they shouldn’t, but they’re not out there murdering people. They don’t go out of their way to donate all their non-basic essentials, but every once in a while, they’ll volunteer at the local animal shelter. They’re just… normal. Balanced. Trying to live their lives as best as they can, but sometimes their best isn’t the best.” She sat on the divan across from me and set her copy of The Toynbee Convector down.
Her eyes darted to my Playboy, which held the original copy of the short story we were discussing. “Say there’s a normal distribution of goodness in the world, and the average person, at 50%, is a decent person. That would mean there are 34% of less-than-decent people, 13.5% of bad people, and 2.5% of awful people. That’s billions of people that aren’t even decent. You think they could muster up all that gushy goodness to create a utopia based on the crazy rantings of a self-proclaimed time traveler?”
“Fucking hell.” I shook my head, ignoring how hot her arguing made me. I wanted to pry that paperback from her hands and replace it with my body. “Did you really just ruin Ray Bradbury for me?”
“Maybe you should learn to debate better.”
“Maybe you should learn to—”
My dad’s voice rang in the hallway as he yelled at one of the maids. Ren’s disappointed eyes met mine before we both scanned the room. She scrambled upward and slipped behind the nearest floor-to-ceiling drape, hiding like we were doing something wrong by spending time with each other. Maybe we were, but it didn’t feel wrong until someone invaded our bubble.
“Ah, there you are, my prodigious son.”
I turned to Angelo as he swung the double doors open, and they struck the doorstoppers. “Obviously.” I paused a beat, a carefree smirk I didn’t feel curving my lips. “I didn’t think you knew what ‘prodigious’ meant, but hey, I didn’t think you could find the library either.”
“Shut your fucking mouth or your biggest life accomplishment will be cleaning toilets at The Landing Strip.”
My dad owned The Landing Strip,
the one and only strip club in Devils Ridge, but he didn’t know I frequented the place. Not for enjoyment, but to network. To show the De Luca soldiers and caporegimes how they could be treated if they supported me.
And I had cleaned the toilets there. I helped the staff, got my fucking hands dirty, made jokes with them on their breaks, asked them about their sons and daughters, and showed them just how much more I cared for them than my father did. Just one of my many steps to dethroning Angelo.
I dipped a hand into my pocket and leaned a hip on one of the divans. “What do you want?”
“You see the Vitali girl lately?” He sneered and whistled at the same time, which was kind of impressive if you thought about it. “She’s growing.”
I leaned further against the cushion and forced myself to remain impassive. “You’re sick.”
Angelo took a seat on the divan closest to where Ren hid. “There’s an opening at The Landing Strip.”
“And?”
“And it’s time we made that Vitali girl earn her keep.” Behind my dad, the drape shifted. Ren must have been pissed, or creeped out, or both.
“Earn her keep? You’ve been cooped up in this town too long, old man.” I eyed Ren’s copy of The Toynbee Collector beside him. “That idiom no longer refers to room and board.”
“What?”
“Never mind.” I ran a hand down my face and contemplated the millions of things that could be running through Ren’s mind right now. “Seriously, what do you want?”
“The Vitali girl working at The Landing Strip.”
I couldn’t be related to Angelo.
Just fucking couldn’t be.
