35. Trilby

T rilby

Awareness comes back to me in dull waves.

I feel heavy, as though I've been asleep for days. My eyelids are fused together, so I focus on the sounds around me.

There's beeping close by and in the distance. People speaking in hushed voices. Faint footsteps. Someone breathing not far from my body.

A wave of sadness grips my chest. It's so tight and so acute I choke on it.

"Trilby . . ."

Someone's fingers brush my cheek. Papa? "Nurse?—"

"God, is she okay?" Sera.

"Let's sit her up." This comes from a voice I don't recognize.

I sense two people, one either side of where I'm lying, cradling me as I'm lifted a little more upright. Where am I?

"Trilby, can you hear us?" Sera asks.

The coughing just killed my throat, so I nod.

"Oh God, love. You had us so worried." I smell Allegra's perfume close to my nose.

"Don't crowd her, Alli," Papa snaps.

"I'm not crowding her," Allegra hisses. "I want to make sure she can hear us is all. I've been just as worried as you?—"

"Quit arguing," Sera says. Someone's fingers slip between my own, and they feel like my sister's.

I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out.

"Shh." It's Sera. "She's trying to say something."

"He—" I start, then I swallow. My mouth is dry and scratchy. I try again. "He left."

"Who did, sweetie? Savero?"

My head hurts when I shake it, and I close my eyes. I can't say his name, because then they'll know.

"Savero will be here soon," she says.

I lie back against the pillows and turn my head to one side. Sunrays beam through the window, lighting up the darkness in my heart. I close my eyes against them.

"Cristiano has gone to find him."

What?

My lids pop open, and I turn my head.

"Cristiano found you on the floor of the kitchen this morning and brought you here. He said, um ..." She looks at Papa and Allegra.

Cristiano came back?

Allegra leans forward. "He thinks you were poisoned, Trilby."

My eyes widen. Poisoned? My gaze flits across all of them. The words "I don't understand" come out croaky but clear.

"That's all we know." Sera bites down on her lip. "I'm sure Cristiano will tell us more when he gets here."

Cristiano. The beat of my heart is fast and loud. He's coming here?

Hope swells inside my chest at the thought of seeing him again, but the threat of Savero walking in here is like a pin poised ready to pop it.

A shadow falls across the room, and although I feel as though I've been punched repeatedly in the chest, the skin all over my body sizzles. I look up to see Cristiano standing in the doorway. I can't hear much above the loud thump of my pulse, but my gaze is drawn to a box in his hands.

Papa stands impatiently. "Well? Did you speak to Savero?"

Cristiano's gaze finds me, and shadows fall from his face.

"It's been hours since you left for the port. What happened?" I can hear impatience bubbling beneath Papa's words, but it doesn't seem to affect Cristiano at all.

He walks a little closer, still looking only at me.

"Was it ... him ?" Papa asks, his words gritty and his teeth clenched.

Without saying a thing, Cristiano drags his gaze from me to Papa, takes the lid off the box, and tips it toward my father. I've never seen Papa go as pale as I do now. He swallows and looks up at Cristiano, then he silently makes the mark of the cross.

"What is it?" My voice is half-croak, half-whisper. "What's going on?"

Cristiano looks back at me. Part of me wilts a little at seeing him so soon. It means I'll have to say goodbye to him again, and I thought I'd already lived through that torture.

I stare at him. I need answers. "My family says you brought me here. You think I've been poisoned?"

He steps forward again but remains at arm's length. "That's right."

His voice seeps through my consciousness and lights me up inside. It's a reaction I don't want but can't control.

"But you left . . ."

"I came back."

His sharp response narrows my eyes. I'm not in the mood or any fit state to play games. I want— I need —the truth.

"Where's Savero? Where is my fiancé ?"

I hope the last word wounds him, because I can't have this man in my life if he isn't going to stay. It's simply too hard. The pain it inflicts on my heart is worse than the pain of poison. And I can say that now from experience, it seems.

I take the exact same power his presence wields over me, double it, and channel it through a glare. "Will someone please tell me what is going on?"

And when I say "someone," I mean the man my gaze is burning holes in.

Cristiano lifts the box and tips it toward me.

It takes a few seconds for me to comprehend what I'm seeing, and even then, I can't make sense of it. "Isn't that?—?"

Sera leans over to look and then promptly sits back down, retching into her hand.

It's the Di Santo crest. A dove in flight amid a tongue of fire.

Tattooed onto a slice of flesh.

I recoil slightly while my eyes catch on mundane things. Blood streaking across the bottom of the box. A piece of cloth doing a poor job of soaking it up. It's like my awareness wishes to acknowledge anything but the thing right in front of me.

"That's Savero's tattoo." My whispered words come out all dry.

Cristiano bites out his words. "Savero didn't deserve to wear it."

"But ..." I can't get past the fact it's in a box. "It was on his chest."

I glance at the expanse of purpling ink, its flesh-colored edges curling.

"There's only one way you could—" I look up sharply.

Cristiano looks different. He's wearing the same suit he left the house in earlier, but he seems taller, sturdier. His features are sharper. He's watching me not with the apologetic expression of someone who might have had a minor argument with my future husband, but as someone who shot a man twenty times over and meant every single bullet.

"You killed him." My gaze slides down his jacket and his slacks to his shoes, and there my stunned eyes stare at the floor.

I can't believe it.

Suddenly, he's somehow inches from my shortened breaths, blocking out everyone else in the room. Hot breath grazes my cheek. "He almost killed you . He didn't deserve to bear the family crest. So I cut it off his body, the same way we denounce any undeserving member of the family."

The fact settles in my chest like the ash from a flame.

"I don't understand," I mutter. "This doesn't make any sense."

A whisper of air brushes my arm, and he settles on his knees beside my bed. "It wasn't his intention to poison you, Trilby," he says. "The poison was meant for me."

"Why?" I whisper. Poisoning anyone is nonsensical, but to poison your own brother ...?

"He found out Father wanted me to succeed him as don, not Savero."

My mind whirls. Now it makes sense. This is why Savero was so intent on establishing that he was the don, not his brother.

"But your father let you go ..."

"He did. He asked to come back many times, and I always said no. He never said why he wanted me back here so badly, but now I know it was because he wanted me to succeed him."

"And you didn't want to?"

"I didn't want to work with Savero."

"And now? Do you want to lead the family?"

He reaches for my hand. "I want to be honest with you, Trilby. I don't know. I haven't decided yet."

My mind feels fuzzy. I haven't long been awake, and this is information overload. "So let me get this straight. Savero, the same brother who saved you from drowning when you were eight, has just tried to kill you because your father, who is no longer here, wanted you to succeed him?"

Cristiano bites his bottom lip. He looks almost proud of me for thinking this through. "That's almost correct. I've come to learn he never saved me from drowning, Trilby. He was the one holding me under."

A gasp makes my chest ache even harder. "So, if he wanted you dead back then, why did he wait so long to try again?"

He shrugs. "I moved away. I was no longer a threat to him."

"And now?"

"I was getting in the way of his alliance with your father."

Alarm and realization halts my breath. "And he suspected there was something between me and you…"

"Yes." Cristiano grazes his thumb over the top of my hand, sending tendrils of fire along my arm. "Enough that he began to see me as a threat to your wedding."

"Why did he care? Surely, if the wedding didn't happen, he'd have taken the port from under us anyway."

Cristiano sighs and stares at the movement of his fingertips curling around and across my palm. "It was the principle. He was already pissed at finding out Father's plans. For me to be the one you wanted, not him, was another nail in the coffin."

"How did he find out your father's plans?"

Cristiano reaches into his inside jacket pocket with his free hand and pulls out a dog-eared piece of folded paper. He sandwiches it between his forefinger and his middle finger and waves it in front of me.

"He found this in Father's office." A dark emotion crosses his features like rolling thunder.

"What is it?" I ask quietly.

"It's a letter Father wrote begging me one final time to reconsider coming home. In it, he lays out his plan to announce me as his successor. It's dated three days before he died. It was never put in the mail."

Shock renders me breathless. "You think Savero killed your father?" I whisper, bracing my shoulders.

"I know he did. He told me."

"What?" I mouth in disbelief.

"Right before I put a bullet in his skull." Cristiano's grip around my hand tightens. "There's more."

I swallow, because I don't have any words right now for anything.

"Savero was planning to traffic people into the country via your father's port."

"He was what ?" My hatred for the man grows overwhelmingly.

Cristiano's tone is grave. "I overheard him talking to associates of the Mexican cartel."

My eye sockets are starting to ache from staring in disbelief.

"I shot them all."

My chest braces, and he sees it.

"That deal will never happen."

I may loathe violence, I may hate everything Papa's involvement with the Di Santos has stood for over the years, but that doesn't mean I haven't learned a thing or two.

"At what cost?"

"I don't know yet. But it won't be long before the cartel discovers their associates are dead. Then we'll find out."

His words settle on me like acid rain. I know what this means. It means war. And Cristiano will believe a war is his doing. He won't want to return to Vegas now and leave the rest of the family to pick up the pieces.

He sighs. "I swear, this couldn't have happened any other way. The second I heard their conversation and figured out what they were planning, I had to stop it from going any further. I had to kill my brother."

Then he leans in, his long lashes fanning my hot skin. "But let me be clear, Trilby. That wasn't why I killed my brother." He moves closer, so I'm certain no one else in the room can hear, then he cups my chin and lifts my gaze to his. "I killed him for you ."

I do my best to stare into his orbit, but the vision moves in and out of focus, my peripheral blurring into something I no longer recognize.

I close my eyes and feel his forehead resting against mine.

"I know you hate this," he whispers. "I know you hate the violence, the death—all of it. But I know you, Trilby. I see you. Think back to the person you were before your mama died."

I try to shake my head, but he reaches up and holds me still.

"Remember how you'd run into the sea in all weather? You'd dive off the rocks. You'd camp in the forest without telling anyone where you were. You had no problem visiting the shooting range and being a better shot than guys twice your age."

His words spin around images that fly at me—slowly at first, and then thick and fast. Images that depict me throwing myself headfirst into freezing-cold waves, sleeping alone under the stars, firing bullets with absolute precision into targets designed for men and women much older and more experienced than I was.

"You were wild once. Untethered. Unashamedly courageous."

I nod. I remember.

Then something jolts me out of the memories.

How the fuck does Cristiano know who I once was?

I jerk away from him, and his expression shifts. His eyes flit from side to side as if anticipating my reaction.

"How do you know?"

"Know what?"

"How do you know I used to do those things?"

"I grew up around here."

"But I don't remember you." I feel almost ashamed to admit that, because even as kids, the Di Santos were practically royalty on Long Island. But I was only ten when he left.

"Maybe not." He rubs his chin, drawing my attention to a layer of stubble. "But I remember you."

My brain scrambles around for a memory, a fragment. "Were we ... friends?"

"Not exactly."

"Cristiano." I drop my head wearily. "Now is not the time for vague answers. Can I please just have a straight one?"

"We met once. You were about eight years old. You'd found a dead bird, and you were trying to nurse it back to life." He wipes the smile from his face with a thumb. "I sat with you while you operated on it with sticks and grass, then you sang it a lullaby."

I blink. "Did we talk?"

"Kinda. I was your consultant, really. You asked me for my professional medical opinion on a couple of matters. I gave it. But you went ahead and did your own thing anyway. I was just amazed at how you were able to lose yourself in that tale. I envied your ability to transcend our lives and embody this character and this purpose you'd created in your head." He bites the inside of his cheek.

"So then what happened?"

He glances over his shoulder. Papa, Allegra, and Sera are speaking with a doctor. Then he drops his gaze to the floor.

"Your mama saw us talking, and she pulled you away."

"Why?" I say, breathless.

"She didn't want you talking to a Di Santo I expect."

I narrow my eyes and try to remember.

"You weren't happy about it. You were beside yourself at having to leave the bird behind. I promised to look after it, and I did."

"You did?" I whisper.

He shrugs. "Yeah, as well as anyone can look after a feathered corpse. I found a box in my grandfather's boat shed, and I gave it a proper burial service."

I can't help my smile. "Really?"

"I'd just helped you perform extremely intense keyhole surgery under highly pressurized conditions—I was pretty invested by that point."

His expression is so earnest it squeezes my heart, then my smile fades.

"I'm so sorry about Mama ..."

"Don't be." He wraps his hands around mine. "She was trying to protect you. And she did—for a long, long time. I'm grateful to her."

"But you ..." I rub my eyes. "You hadn't done anything wrong." I gaze at him, my eyelids heavy. I've just taken in a mountain of information in a small space of time. A lot of death and a lot of violence.

"You need to rest," he says before I can suggest it myself. "We can talk more later."

He doesn't wait for a response. Instead he stands, turns to my family, and announces they're all to leave me alone for a few hours.

He places my hand back onto the bedsheets and trails his fingers along the top. "Rest, Trilby. I'll be back in a few hours."

I don't appreciate being told what to do, but right now, I'll gladly surrender to his instructions. I let my eyelids flutter closed and listen to the slow, methodical beeps of the heart monitor as I drift into a dreamless sleep.