Seven weeks later
Breathe in. Breathe out.
That was the mantra I repeated every morning. I’d wake up from troubled sleep and struggle to leave the bed. Almost two months ago, I grabbed a chance for a new life. I left Harriet behind, knowing I couldn’t take her with me in my fragile condition. My mind and body were in a state of numbness; even taking care of myself was a chore. The woman who cut me a deal assured me that Harriet would be cared for. I didn’t feel guilt. I was too numb to feel anything. Her deal seemed the easiest, and that was to stay away from the upper East Coast for two months. Specifically, no contact with the De Luccis and, by extension, the Rossis. I was never to step foot in Manhattan again.
I didn’t even ask her why.
Get up, sis, Billy said.
“Easy for you to say. You’re dead.”
I wasn’t actually hearing Billy’s voice, nor did I see him. The isolation in this beach town at the Outer Banks fueled imaginary conversations. I remembered little about the time I was taken, but I remembered in vivid detail my brother’s dying moments in that dungeon.
“Wake up.”
My brother’s voice was like an annoying mosquito in my ear. It was like I was eight again, and Billy was eleven. He and Harriet took turns getting me ready for school and feeding me breakfast, especially when Mom had been working late, exhausted, and fast asleep. As usual, Dad was drunk on the couch or hadn’t come home from a night of gambling.
But it was the painful cramping in my stomach that finally roused me to my dark and dank surroundings. I had difficulty opening my eyes, as if someone glued my lids shut. I pulled my knees against my chest and wished I was eight again. When nothing mattered but sleep and school and playing and eating the buttered biscuits Harriet used to make. “Ahh…that hurts.”
“She’s bleeding between her legs.” Grigori’s voice. “What did you guys do?”
“We didn’t do anything!” That was Anton.
Their arguing sounded far away, sometimes muffled, my comprehension of their words going in and out of my hearing like a poorly tuned radio.
“Sis, wake up,” Billy said again.
This time I pried my eyelids open with whatever willpower I had and stared at him. He was sitting against the wall. Hands tied behind his back, but he was looking pale, his mouth almost bloodless. Eyes sunken.
“Am I dreaming?”
He chuckled painfully. “‘Fraid not.” He scanned my body. “You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”
That was when I realized I was on the floor and the ice-cold concrete against my cheek felt soothing. I tried to push up, but the stabbing in my belly restricted my movements. Warm blobs of blood gushed out of me like the heaviest of menstrual flow.
“Maybe I am.” Dom’s baby. My heart clenched. I was losing his baby, and he didn’t know. But my mind focused on my brother.
“You’re dying,” I croaked.
“It’s okay, sis,” he said.
“What?” I tried to push up again but failed.
“I’m tired,” he said.
“That’s because you’re losing so much blood.” Somewhere I found the strength to power through the cramp twisting my lower abdomen into a constricting knot. I got on my knees.
“You can’t save me, so listen.” His breath rattled.
I could have saved him. For the first time I asked for someone’s help—Dom’s—and he turned me down, ridiculed me even, and shattered my heart.
I scrutinized Billy’s face. Without even looking, I knew his wound was infected. He was probably septic, not to mention his blood loss. He looked gaunt and feverish, almost like a person in a zombie movie before they turned.
“It’s okay,” he said when my face must have shown my morbid assessment of his condition. The ketamine Anton injected in me muted my emotions. Otherwise, I would be bawling my eyes out right now.
“Billy, I’m sorry,” I whispered.
You couldn’t have saved me. Billy in my head said, I have to go. I’ve had a death wish for a while and you can’t keep saving me.
“So your answer was to take yourself out?”
If you don’t get up, then I’ll have wasted my life.
“Fuck you.” And that was usually when I’d ignore the aches in my muscles and roll to my side, sit up, swing my legs over, and plant my feet on the floor to get up. I’d started going to a therapist three weeks ago, and I’d been taking medication. I had done enough clinical rotations in the psych ward to know that I was falling into depression over Billy’s death and losing the baby. The catastrophic combination of the events and the imbalance of my hormones had consigned me to this state. Still, the idea of asking for help after Dom rejected me almost prevented me from seeking therapy for my mental state. Because to reject help meant that I was strong. And I wasn’t fooling myself into thinking I was strong enough to survive this without assistance. So I forced myself to talk to someone. A stranger without preconceived notions of who I was, where I was from, and what I had done.
I stared at the ocean, convincing myself once again that I was not weak for seeking help. Grim thoughts languished in my mind. Was it a coincidence that I woke up in a pretty cottage on an isolated beach? Had the woman who paid for me to leave hoped that I would end my life on my own?
It would be so easy.
The ocean was right there.
In my drugged-out state after Grigori surrendered me to that woman, I remembered being taken to a hospital or a clinic. After that, my mind was blank. I woke up in this house with a note and specific instructions, along with bottles of pain medication and sleeping pills. I could stay in this beach house until the end of summer to recover—or join my brother.
The ocean was right there.
But after witnessing Bianca almost drowning, I shuddered to entertain that idea. Plus, I intended to check on Harriet eventually after I’d forgiven her for the secret she shared with Billy.
Phil Harding lived. I found an obscure news clip about a man falling from my apartment building and surfing the fire escape. There was an odd reference about an orange cat being taken in and adopted by a Good Samaritan. I was keeping my fingers crossed it was Ginger, and she was okay.
My van was parked in front of the cottage. I didn’t know how it got here. It needed maintenance, but I used it to go into town for groceries. It was the middle of summer in the Outer Banks. The enthusiasm and carefree life of college kids slowly rubbed off on me, giving me a shot of levity during my darkest days. Normally, I’d be resentful that they got to do their vacations in between semesters while I slaved away as a cleaner, but now I was paid to take a break. Little by little, with the sun on my skin giving me a shot of serotonin and with the meds, it took the edge off the feeling of drowning.
Fifty thousand in cold hard unmarked bills didn’t do it.
But talking to someone who didn’t judge me for my past did.
Grief and loss were irrevocably intertwined.
All I had to do was continue breathing.
In. Out.
After coffee, I walked along the beach. The sound of the waves calmed my senses and infused my system with a rush of energy that seemed to desert me each time I woke up from a restless sleep.
The vastness of the ocean made me feel small and big at the same time.
My heart rate sped up. Yesterday, I finally swam in the sea, trusting myself not to let myself drown.
Taking a dip in the ocean and breaking to the surface was cathartic. It made me feel alive.
I peeled away the sarong around my waist and dropped it on the beach and waded in.
The surf rushed around me.
I laughed. For the first time in weeks, I laughed. And that made me cry.
Face it, Sloane, you’re still a wreck.
Against the backdrop of a clear blue sky, I focused on the sailboat a few hundred yards out. I thought I heard my name. A rough echo in the wind.
The feeling of sand sinking around my toes. The heft of the water as I moved against it. I soaked up every sensation, reminding me I could feel. That I wasn’t numb. Enjoying life’s simple pleasures was a start. It was a matter of coaxing one foot in front of me and forcing the other to follow.
Then I stepped into nothing.
The ocean swallowed me up. After my initial panic, I calmed enough to let buoyancy do its job. But then I wanted to experience the deep again and dove back in. A glimmer of sunlight illuminated the sandy and rocky terrain, beckoning me to swim toward it.
Can you hear me down here, Billy?
I stayed suspended in the ocean’s depths.
You need to head back, he replied.
Back where? I have nowhere to go.
I’m sorry, Sloane. Forgive me.
Powerful bands clamped around my body and hauled me upwards. I struggled against the tentacles gripping me tight. I choked on salt water.
My eyes watered.
Panic seized me.
Lungs. Heart. They jump-started my survival mode.
I kicked.
I broke the surface, spitting water. My nostrils burned.
And then I realized what was happening.
Some idiot thought I was drowning. Infuriated, I let my body go limp and let him perform his heroic duty for the day.
“Goddammit, Sloane! Goddammit!”
Wait. Dom?
“Let me go!” I only managed a croak.
“Fuck that!”
My feet dragged along the surface of the sand, letting me know we were back in shallow water.
Before I renewed my fight to be free of him, he swept me into his arms and I was staring into his furious eyes.
“I wasn’t trying to kill myself,” I informed him.
His eyes were too dark for the morning. He was angry.
Well, I was angrier. How dare he infiltrate my newly found peace?
“Could have fooled me,” he gritted.
We were back on dry land, and he set me flat on the warm sand. And before I could jackknife into position, he flung his body on top of me, trapping me on the shore.
His chest flattened my breasts while his hands cradled my face.
I glared at him. “I was just taking a swim.”
A muscle pulsed at his jaw, and his gaze studied me. I discerned a softening in his eyes and the shuddering of his body before his forehead dropped to mine. “Thank God.”
“Get off me,” I snapped.
He raised his head to look at me, regret etched on his face. “I’m sorry, Sloane.”
I wasn’t even going to pretend not to know what he was sorry about. He obviously found out I never betrayed him. “If I give you blanket forgiveness for all the nasty shit you said to me, will you leave me alone?”
He sighed and rolled off me to stand up. He extended his arm to give me a hand up, but I ignored it and pushed to my feet on my own. I grabbed the sarong and tied it around my waist as I started for the house.
“That right there says you’re lying,” he said, following me.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I worried about the deal with that woman. It wasn’t any written contract, but the fact that Grigori gave me up to her meant she could return me to Grigori any time. And the efficiency at how she got me medical help, took care of Harriet, and transported me while unconscious told me everything I needed to know. She was a pro at relocating people. Maybe she was a branch of witness protection.
Did I break our unwritten contract if it was Dom who followed me here? I didn’t even question how he found me.
“What do you think?” he responded as if him being here was the most natural thing in the world.
I walked briskly to put distance between us, but his long easy gait kept pace with me.
When we reached the white picket fence of the house, I spun on him. “You’re not coming inside.”
His gaze shot to the beach cottage behind me and then shifted to rest on my face with a longing that made me squirm with the first hint that this was once a man I was strongly attracted to.
But he cut me off so ruthlessly when I asked for his help.
My eyes swept him from head to toe. His shirt and shorts were plastered to his body as if he hadn’t been expecting to take a dip in the ocean. They also revealed how he seemed to have lost weight. The blades of his cheekbones were starker as was the hollow within them. “Have you been watching me?”
“Maybe.”
“Dom!”
His lids slammed shut and his body shuddered with his inhale and exhale as if he was a man given oxygen after being starved of it. But when he opened his eyes, anguish flooded the darkness within its irises. “I missed my name on your lips.”
“What are you doing to me?” My voice cracked out of fear. Because I couldn’t go through what I did with him again, but Dom was the mafia. What would stop him from taking me from here by force? So I appealed to whatever empathy was within him. “I’m doing fine. If I ever meant something to you at all, you will leave me in my peace.”
He took a step forward. “I can’t.”
“Why? Because you feel guilty?”
“Because I don’t think I can survive without you.” He said those words without blinking, staring straight at me as if he believed them.
But I’d lost belief in everyone including myself. Dom was not good for my recovery. He didn’t directly cause my problems, but he couldn’t upend my life again if I had any hope of moving on with it.
“That’s just guilt,” I scoffed. “You have a need to take care of everyone. Remember what you once told me…you don’t have room to worry about me too. Well, I absolve you of all responsibility.”
He took another step. I took three steps back.
“Don’t run away, please.” His throat bobbed. I had never seen Dominic De Lucci this vulnerable. Despite my enmity toward him, it was uncomfortable to see him this way. This was not him. Dom was self-assured and in control. This reiterated just how bad we were for each other.
“I’ve said some awful shit to you and I’m sorry. I wasn’t going to rush you, but I was terrified when you went into the water.”
“How long have you been watching me?” My eyes flared. “And don’t deny it.”
His eyes dropped to the ground before looking at the beach house to the right. My jaw dropped. I stared at him, and then at the property beside mine. “Do you live there?” I pointed to it.
“I’m renting it,” he mumbled.
“Unbelievable.”
I spun around and ran to the door. When I reached the top of the stoop, Dom called out, “I know about the pregnancy.”
My stomach dropped. I was unprepared to discuss it. Even my therapist didn’t know about it yet. I’d skirted around my miscarriage because I’d known I was pregnant only for a fleeting moment. But maybe I was lying to myself. The signs were there. I avoided confirming the pregnancy because I had no business bringing a baby into the world, but if I had taken the test sooner, maybe I would have made different choices.
I turned around. “I didn’t know I was pregnant.” My voice came out eerily calm. “If I did, I would have told you.”
“I’m not accusing you of keeping—”
“I know you’re not,” I cut him off. “Because it’s my baby I lost.”
“Sloane…please…can I come in?” I couldn’t stand the longing in his eyes any longer. The bleakness in them was threatening to shatter me inside.
“No. We’re over.”
I ran into the house, shut the door, and leaned against it. Dom wasn’t one to go away easily, but I didn’t know the Dominic De Lucci I just witnessed. I couldn’t allow myself to believe he was as broken as I was. He was simply feeling guilt for treating me unfairly.
I peeked through the window and saw him staring at the house, but he hadn’t taken one step farther than where I’d left him.
I reminded myself that he didn’t give me the benefit of the doubt. That he accused me of being a rat. That hurt the most. Everything that followed resulted from my choices. I didn’t blame him for Billy’s death. I didn’t blame him for Anton hurting me. I was finding out I wasn’t blaming him at all for the miscarriage.
But an old festering wound from my past was bleeding on my present, on the people who were innocent of inflicting that damage.
You’re nothing but trash.
I thought I’d buried it. Apparently not. What happened with Dom only amplified my delusion that I’d moved on from it.
I rifled through my drawer of things, looking up briefly to see Dom walking back to the beach house. I found the notebook of phone numbers. Two weeks after I’d healed enough, I drove to my storage unit on the outskirts of New Jersey and grabbed my trunk of things. In it were my passport, money, a spare burner, and phone numbers stored the old-fashioned way—in a little Moleskine book. Technically, I violated my agreement with the woman. I have no doubt she was tracking either me or my car, but so far, no one had come after me.
I entered Bianca’s number and called it.
The first call went to voicemail and I left a message.
“Hey, it’s Sloane. Answer the next time if you forgive me for disappearing.”
Walking to the window, I watched Dom’s figure recede in the distance. The nerve. The utter nerve of him. Didn’t he have a criminal empire to run?
My phone started ringing. It startled me because it was the first time in months someone had called me.
I barely said hello when Bianca started shrieking. “Omigod, Sloane, omigod. Where have you been?”
“Dom didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what? Wait…is this the reason he’s taken a leave of absence?”
At this, I laughed. “What? I didn’t know bosses could take leaves of absence.”
“Well, he did,” Bianca told me. “From the company. He put Sonny in charge. I can tell you Aunt Lottie is fuming.”
“How long has he been gone?”
“Two weeks and…I’m confused. I thought he was with you?”
“No, he’s not. He’s renting the beach house beside me, and I need for you to fetch your cousin. Bring your scary husband if you must.”
“Oh thank God,” Bianca rushed out. “I wasn’t sure if I was glad or mad that you forgave him so quickly.”
I laughed again, the tightness in my chest easing. Maybe I was ready to see my friends and rebuild bridges. I might not step foot in Manhattan again, but I was sure there was a workaround.
“Dom told you about our affair?”
“Yes, and that he fucked up.”
I could argue that I wasn’t totally innocent, but our short time together was a long story to relay over the phone.
That was why when Bianca asked, “Where are you?”
I responded, “Outer Banks.”
“I’ll be there this evening. Drop me the location.”
I didn’t say no.
