28. BRIDGE TO VEGA
SILVINA
I’m in a floral getup. It’s white with red and black flowers, a one-piece with a long skort flowing over those golden wedges he loves so much.
The pain is everywhere. A constant thumping in my lip, my eye, my ribs, and the soft middle of my stomach where he’s kicked me.
His mother would be back later, she said, bringing me relief in the form of sharp pencils. You find hope in the improbable when you’re as far down as I am.
“I can’t have you look like this,” he said with contempt. “You look sick.”
I couldn’t have it either if I wanted to survive a little longer. He likes to dress me up. He likes summer clothes. So I lifted my arms and let his leeches fold this outfit around me.
“Much better,” he says, voice more peaceful. I try for a smile, but it sends another sting through my lip. Sitting on my bedside, he’s holding my hand, twisting it for a better view of his ring on me.
“Crescent moons become you.” He puffs humor out through his nostrils. “Who knew you’d look better under the crescent moon than the silver Nascimbeni wolf?”
I’m glad when he doesn’t expect an answer.
“You know what’s interesting?” He’s speaking to the ring, gaze languidly caressing it. “My father was right; when you find the woman you want, you’ll do anything to keep her. That moment when you accepted my ring and I put it on your finger, I knew I’d tied you to me forever. You’re mine, now. You know?” Celestially blue, his gaze floats to my face and rests there. “Say it.”
“I’m yours.” Regretfully yours.
“Yes. No one else can touch you. In three days, you’ll transform from Silvina Nascimbeni to Silvina John Ulrich Himmel.”
I want to jab your Adam’s apple out. The thought flares brightly through my mind. A spur to who I am, it comes with a crackle of energy, a reminder of me before him.
“It’s like that. It’s why we guys put rings on you, to trap you. I know that sounds brutal, but we’re biologically predestined to make and execute ideas, while women need guidance. Look at you, for instance. Sometimes, you want it all with me. Other times, you whine and have no idea what you want.” He shrugs as if he finds this funny. At any moment he could rage over it.
Slowly, his eyes still on me and remain there, and I know what he wants. I’m to meet those eyes until he decides the stare-down is over.
“Sit up and give me a kiss.”
I’m prone against the pillows. Broken and haphazard, my ribcage is a card house with missing pieces. If it’s my death, I need to get to where he wants me, positioned next to him on the bedside. He won’t tolerate any whimpering. Deceptively angelic eyes would go muddy with anger, he’d send me right into unconsciousness, and… would he ever let me wake up again?
Rigid, he sits there, assessing my awkward moves. Derision slides over his features when my mask slips and the pain becomes too much.
It’s impossible to sit upright, but anyone would forge impossible to remain alive. He doesn’t lean toward me. He doesn’t repeat his command either, another test. I need to get to him asap, or else—or else.
Jolts of pain rage through my torso. They steal so much energy that breathing isn’t an option. To live, air has to wait.
Majestic in his lack of mercy, he stares down at me. I bend at the waist, press beyond agony until I find his mouth. My lips are cold. They’re wet against his dry ones, and my kiss trembles. It’s odious. I wish he didn’t taste like pine.
When I draw back, his eyes have softened. The cruelty has vanished from them, and it’s a blast of violence avoided.
“You want to see something?”
“Yes…”
He stands abruptly, walks to a corner shelf, and pulls out what looks like an old photo album. When he comes back, he bounces on the mattress when he sits. Then he opens the album.
A few pages in, he stops. He smoothens the page even though there are no irregularities in the cardstock. “See how it’s black? It was Father who got me a black album. Mother wanted me to have a reminder of Agata, and he was okay with that. But he got me this one so I wouldn’t forget: the black is for sorrow since she’s gone.”
He does a playful tilt of his head as he looks up. “She was perfect. But then, she went ahead and drowned. What the hell was that?”
“Too bad,” I whisper. For a second, I’m afraid I’ve offended him, but he only sighs, shoulders curving over his memories. On the next page, the same girl appears again. In a light blue dress that reaches her mid-thigh, dark braids down her back and a wide smile, she looks about eleven.
Blown up, the picture fills the somber background. John runs a finger over the girl’s face and down the outline of her body. As he graces her form, the familiarity of her clothing hits me. The dress is several sizes too big, but it doesn’t take away from her lithe elegance. Because this is a flapper dress. With a simple neckline and loose at the waist, peacock-feathered accents in bright turquoise and greens make the fabric pop. She wears it with ease, though the sleeves almost reach her wrists—
Where the very same dress reached me mid-arm!
I can’t stop my gasp. John’s attention skids to me, interest brightening his gaze at my reaction. “She found it at a Salvation Army. She discovered the place a few months before the accident and was so excited that she could get ‘all kinds of cool clothes’ just with her allowance. I’d go there with her. Agata, she didn’t like to go places alone.”
A smile chases across his face as he moves on to the next page. The same girl stars in this picture too. She’s on a pier, dark hair wild in the breeze. With her arms raised toward the sky, her grin is high and her hip popped in the little-girl version of a model. The dress she wears is too big. It’s short, yellow, a sundress with a bouncy skirt that almost reaches her calves. It has a sweetheart neckline and is… the exact dress I wore to breakfast at Damiana’s.
“I had to help her with the buttons in the back. I told her she could’ve just pulled it on over her head, because it was that wide. But she said, ‘Stupido. I’ll look really good in this dress in a year, and you’ll be looking at me like you look at the baker’s daughter.’”
“How old was she in this photo?”
“Eleven years and three hundred and sixty days.” Heavy, his palm rests over the picture. “And she was right. I would have too, you know. She was my beautiful, beautiful...” Tears coat his fingers as he presses around the bridge of his nose. When he lowers his hand and turns the page, it’s to reveal Agata in the outfit I’m wearing right now.
“She should’ve turned twelve the day after she bought that.” He circles his index finger over her frame. “I complained when she wanted to go back to the Salvation Army. It had only been a few days since the last time, and I had stuff I wanted to do. But I went anyway. It was simple: no one said no to Agata, least of all me, and it made me so damn stoked to see her as happy as she was here.
“Look at her. She walked out of the store dressed like that. They didn’t have changing rooms, but they couldn’t say no either, so they let her use the employee bathroom. Mother had hired a photographer for our birthdays, you know.” He lets out a chuckle that’s breathy with sadness. “Unfortunately, this is the last picture of her. I took it, just some twelve-year-old amateur. There were so many photos that weren’t taken.”
Wet and drenched with grief, his inhale is sudden. “But you know what? I’m glad she doesn’t have to see what’s going on right now. Your uncle is destroying my family.”
“He is?” Hope. Oh, god, hope is crazy. “I didn’t know.”
“Well, now you do. He’s been attacking our homes in Los Angeles. Blood and intestines and gore and grime.” He lets out a puff that almost sounds entertained. “Doesn’t he see that I’m offering peace? I’m the crown prince of the Santa Colombini marrying the crown princess of the Nascimbeni!”
I swallow, unable to take in the magnitude of his delusion. I’m risking another blaze of violence when I ask, “That was your plan, to create peace between our families?”
“Of course.” He says it energetically, slamming the album shut as he does. He puts it on the night table and rubs his hands up and down his thighs. Up and down. Up and down. “I love you. I’ve loved you for a very long time.”
“You have?” My voice is so small.
“Yes, I’ve loved you since the very first time your cousin brought you lunch to class. The way he looked at you like you were his everything, the way you looked at him, like your heart was broken in a million pieces and you didn’t want to pick them up? I understood you. That’s when I started researching you, and it couldn’t have been more perfect.” John presses his fists against his thighs and stands. Walks to the adjoining bathroom, and with his back to me, turns on the water.
In the mirror, I see him wash his hands. His nostrils narrow with the air he sucks in as he tips his head back and studies his own face in the mirror. The flawlessness of it is cacophonous. John’s reflection throws back an intensity so jittery it could snap at any moment.
“Finally, my father and I were on the same side. He appreciated my imagination. You know? He saw what a genius side step it was, such an awesome, unexpected way of ripping the heart out of the Nascimbeni famiglia and destroying them forever.”
This is more than I can stomach. My physical pain fuses with my grief and pokes at my sanity at the stabs of his words. I cup my mouth over a moan.
“You know who else loved my plan? Zio Randolfo. Especially when I suggested ‘annexing’ Harmony Femme, using them as a disguise while we cautiously started up the sex-slave trade again. And I’d never have come up with it if it wasn’t for your cugino. Just a few at a time, at first. The rooms in the Harmony Femme basement were as good as sound-proofed already. It was meant to be.
“I made a cheap deal with my uncle. All I wanted in return was you. It took some doing to convince him of that, of course. He wanted to extinguish the Nascimbeni, you included, so you better be thankful to Mother. Without Mother, he’d never have understood that you could be her.”
I look up. Blink away my tears so I can see him. Concentrated on the faucet, he lets the water rush down the drain, cuts it off, turns it back on. His back seems to grow with the air he inhales as he continues his loud, pointless game of white noise.
“That I could be who? Agata?” My question is quiet, reaching him through a brief hiatus in the sink. He whirls around and fixes me with his glare.
“No! You could never be Agata.”
“Okay.”
Behind him, the water gushes and gushes. It thunders, the sound growing to a monster-sized waterfall in my ears. Maybe it’s Niagara. Iguazu. Maybe the sink will vomit a flood surge that fills the room. Inundating me, it’d be a cease-and-desist order from the elements. Dear God, make it take John too.
“I’d never love you as much as I loved her. What you had with Gioele, Agata and I could’ve had too. But she died!” He juts his chin high, eyes lethal and burning me. “She bought that dress for me. She was going to fill it out and wear it for me. Because she loved me like I loved her. But the Milky Way came and stole her, see? It threw her out of there, away from me, and bam, she was gone!”
His lips stretch in a tense smile. “But then I found you, my star bridge.” He pulls in a sharp breath. “You know what? Altair was weak. I’m so much more than him! I’m about to prove my divinity, because I can get to Vega.”
“Boss?” Eyes bright with worry, Mazzi pokes his head in the door.
“Get out!”
“But, sir, you’ve got serious—”
In two strides, John’s at the door. With a roar, he shoves his leech out and locks it. He works through loud breaths that expand and shrink the size of his back, until he slowly swings back to me.
“You’re my bridge.” His voice is barely above water.
“I’m just a girl,” I whisper. “I can’t get you to her.”
“No?” Drowned laughter follows. It’s twisted, a robotic response to a reality he doesn’t accept. He thumps down next to me, on his back in manic relief. “Agata is here. All you have to do is open to her, and she’ll be in you.” He jerks is head to the side, staring me down. “She’d never leave me. Not really. Because she knows and I know we can never be apart.”
I’m glued to his crazy, crazy stare.
“Let her in! You can’t be her without receiving her. Capisci?”
I blink tears. Blink and blink them. For a fraction of a sane second, his gaze softens with compassion, and I wish that crazy weren’t stronger.
“I love you. Don’t ever worry about that. I love you as Agata. Just take her in, and you’ll do it. Once you’re her, everything will be okay. I’d never have to beat you again because you would be perfect. You’re so close.”
He lets out a shaky breath, eyes scrunching shut before returning to me. “I’ve never been closer to her. Fuck the Milky Way. And fuck your cousin for standing in her way. That’s it, right? Holy shit, that’s it!”
My heart goes into overdrive as he pulls himself off the mattress and sits up without the help of his arms.
“You can’t let go of him, can you? And because you can’t let go of him, you won’t open for Agata! Well, fuck him, and fuck you for being a deceptive whore.”
He’s up.
Above me.
He slams a heavy hand into my face, and I thump to the mattress. My stomach is too soft for his fists.
“You saw what he did on that video. You were supposed to hate him!”
Those choked groans can’t be mine? He makes them. He’s made them of me. I want to curl up. There’s no curling around my life, and this darkness is too black to breathe. My hands grasp blindly. Sheets. Pillows. Flails.
Something thick and clunky in my fist. I tighten around it, a last lifeline. My stomach hardens. Every muscle tenses in a final effort. I’m adrenaline, fear, determination. I am— Blind. I aim, I—
Hit!
His attack on my body slows. Uncertain, it stops. I squint through my darkness to see, and his lids flutter over me, red streaking his forehead, a painting of violence and anguish. He’s me in his mirror.
Smattering gunshots outside. They’re loud and dark and beautiful, speeding oxygen into flat lungs.
Shouts. Groans. Barrages.
The door slams inward, the lock giving to a blow. It’s the sickening crack of a skull, like a promise of surrender, a call from freedom. I’m keening, clutching my weapon. It’s made of the sharpest gold.
Footsteps thunder over the floorboards. They’ve never been louder. The world must hear them, the Milky Way, even as would-be tidal waves fight a lost man’s war for attention in the bathroom of my cell.
Dazed, John turns from me, the last time I saw his face. I saw his eyes through the golden bars of a shoe. His mamma won’t like how poetic it is when his grip around my throat slackens and isn’t as tight after all.
“You animal!” A predator’s roar. In a flash, John’s weight is ripped off me. One of my arms doesn’t work. I get up on an elbow and grasp how he’s smashed into a wall.
Happiness rolls in waves that are gentle. It starts at the core of your being and soaks every ounce of you with warmth: Gioele, now, here, without mercy. A god of revenge, pounding, pounding while John sinks to the floor below him.
“Wait,” I mouth. “Wait.” I’m so quiet I can’t hear myself.
Brutal eyes go liquid. My bane looks at me as he cocks his gun. He looks at me—me—while John’s face explodes and I have no choice of amnesty. My love makes it easy before the world goes still and he comes to me.
“Cuore del mio cuore.” His kisses are so soft they’re butterflies along my hairline. “I wish away all of this, from the past, present, and future.”
“’Kay, you.” My words are staccato sighs. There’s no air left in my lungs. “You sent him to Vega.”