Page 10 of Damiano De Luca (The Five Syndicates)
A girl could hope.
That had been three days ago. Days passed, and tense silence thickened each time I heard him walk by my door. Thing was, I knew the heavy footsteps held intent. Syndicate royalty didn’t make noise as they walked. Training took care of that.
But each firm step Damiano De Luca took was deliberate. Like a move made on a chessboard, thought ten steps ahead. In fact, life in the De Luca household felt exactly like a chess match, in which I held no control over the board.
Maman always had the Vienna match laid on the chessboard in her library. Every now and then, she’d move a piece. Sometimes, a week apart; sometimes, a year apart. The dark king never sees his demise coming, she’d tell me each time I noticed a moved piece.
But I’d spent enough time looking at that chessboard to see my demise coming. Heard the breaths of impending doom each time I left the confines of my room. Felt the ironclad fingers of vengeance wrap around my neck whenever I dared to sneak food from the kitchen. Smelled the metallic blood of ruin trickle down my body whenever I dodged across the hall to use the bathroom.
I sensed it now as I grabbed a change of clothes and darted to the bathroom I shared with Damian. Like the other houses in Devils Ridge, Texas, the De Luca household was antiquated. Built in the 18th century, the house had been renovated only twice—once during the Victorian era, so it matched the aesthetics of the other Victorian-style homes in town, and once again a few years ago when the contractors had decided that introducing anything more than the minimal number of modern amenities would jeopardize the historic integrity of the home.
Historic integrity, my ass.
The East Wing bathroo
m had three rooms—a toilet room, a vanity room, and a bathing room. The door to the bathroom led to the bathing room, where a small bathing pool laid in the center, like I was on the set of Game of Thrones.
It occurred to me what a waste of water filling and draining this pool was, but I wasn’t going to bathe in Damian’s soiled water. I slid my silk robe off my shoulders and hung it on the hook beside the door, along with my change of clothes.
One of the maids had warmed the pool and filled it with bubbles earlier, and I dipped a toe into the water, exploring the temperature. My waist barely kissed the water before the door swung open.
I moved quickly, covering my breasts with the bubbles as I plunged fully into the pool. My eyes met Angelo De Luca’s as he stepped past the threshold, busting every myth about evil being incapable of entering a room uninvited. Or was that vampires?
“Miss Vitali.” He took a step closer, and I forced myself not to move away from my spot against the closest pool edge to the door. How someone so slimy and decrepit could spawn someone who looked like Damiano De Luca was beyond me. “My sources tell me you turn seventeen years old today.” The gap between us lessened. “Another year closer.”
Another year closer to what?
Goosebumps traveled across my skin, and I forced myself not to eye the open door. It was late. The last of the East Wing staff had retreated to their quarters after drawing my bath. I trusted Angelo De Luca like I trusted a jock to do his own homework. I was alone with this sinister excuse of a man, and though calm had nestled itself inside my body from a young age, it burrowed deeper, hiding somewhere between apprehension and concern.
Still, I didn’t allow my anxiety to manifest. I ignored him, reached for the shampoo, and formed a lather in my hair. A gust of wind flew in from the open door, chilling the exposed skin on my neck. I wanted to dip lower into the water, but being vulnerable in front of a man who enjoyed feasting on prey wasn’t an option. Instead, I continued washing my hair.
His jaw ticked as I ignored him. “You are a guest in my household, Miss Vitali. You will not disrespect me.”
“You’re right.” I tapped my foot beneath the water, hoping to expend the energy of my anxiety and replace it with amusement. “A person’s a person, no matter how small.”
Pretty sure that wasn’t what Dr. Seuss had meant when he wrote that.
Oh, well.
Hard eyes burned my skin as some of the bubbles covering my breasts fizzled and died. “Careful, little girl.” He crouched and reached out. I forced myself to act aloof as he cupped the side of my face and shut his teeth with an audible snap! “I bite.”
During my boarding school’s unit on Irish literature, I’d come across a Laurence Sterne quote: “Respect for ourselves guides our morals; respect for others guides our manners.” Clearly, Angelo De Luca had neither, but it dawned on me that if I stayed here long, perhaps that would be my fate, too. I begged any higher power to not let me succumb to the De Luca madness.
Angelo's palm wandered down my cheek, past my collarbone, and toward my left breast. Goosebumps met his touch, and he cackled near my ear. “I scare you, don’t I?”
He did, in the same way I feared poisonous spiders and walking home alone late at night. Logically. Clinically. And entirely detached. These things could hurt me if I let them, but I wouldn’t let them.
“While we’re exchanging fears, yours is my family.” I stepped into his touch, enjoying the way his eyes flared in surprise. “I may fear you, Angelo, but I’ll still face you. The fears we don’t confront grow into limits, and I have no limits. But you?” I taunted him with my laughter. For a split second, I felt less like Harry Potter and more like Draco Malfoy. “You’re bound by them each time you move.”
“I could kill you right now, and we’d see just how scared I am of your family.” Angelo’s grip on my flesh became brutal, and his hand rested beneath the water, just short of reaching the top of my breast. Figured that’d be the time Damiano De Luca chose to enter the bathroom we shared.
His eyes took us in, narrowing on his dad’s hand beneath the water for a split second before a sneer twisted his lips. “I put up with you fucking the help, Angelo,” he spoke as if he owned the household, “but I will not put up with you further threatening the De Luca name by fucking the Vitali child.”
The Vitali child.
Good grief. I’d asked the housekeepers for Damian’s age. As of today, we were the same age, yet that was what I was to him. A child. Somehow, those words were all I could focus on. It wasn’t lost on me that he may very well have just saved me from his father, but something I would come to learn about Damiano De Luca was, his presence crippled my logic. It didn’t just cripple it. It nuked it, then buried it six feet under until I wasn’t sure my logic had ever existed.
Angelo stood from his crouch, and I’d never seen so much hate a father held for his son as I saw in Angelo’s eyes. “Finally home, son?”
