Make Me: Manhattan Mafia - Book Two Read online

  I lock my eyes on hers as if I can use that connection to tell her it’s okay, that I adore her and she’s the only woman I want. But that’s too stupid to even be a wish.

  “Jesus,” Oria mumbles like some disgusted and shocked innocent who doesn’t know a goddamn thing. She knew everything from jump. Everyone knew but Sarah because that was how it had to be.

  “Yes or no!”

  How do I explain this, and why the fuck do I have to right now?

  “Yes or no!” Sarah’s fists are balled, white-knuckled, tight enough to crack walnuts. I taught her to expect something from me, and now here I am, betraying her in front of Oria and Willa.

  How did I end up surrounded by so many women?

  “Yes and no,” I say. “Now give me a god damn fucking second to explain.”

  Less than a second passes.

  “No.” She moves for the elevator, but I block her way. “I’m tired of your explanations. They’re just piled on top of lies and excuses.”

  “You’re my wife.” Truth weighs my voice. “You.”

  Willa scoffs, and suddenly, I’m nothing. The wedge of fact will not be used to displace the stone of truth.

  “What have you done?” Willa asks. “What did you become while I was gone?”

  “He’s a monster,” Sarah answers. “It’s what he’s always been.”

  She slips away to the only exit I’ll allow, walking into the suite at the end of the hall. I bark her name like a sergeant who expects obedience and discipline, but she doesn’t even look at me before closing the door. I rush to it, but as I push against the wood, the latch snaps.

  “Let me in!” I pound my fist against the door, expecting her to open it because obedience is the rule, along with truth and loyalty. But the lock snaps with a gentle crack. “Do you think this door’s going to stop me? This is my door. I own it. I can open it any time I want.”

  “Leave her be,” Willa says from a mile down the hall. “She’s traumatized, and all you’re doing is making it worse.”

  “Open up.” Cheek and shoulder to the wood, I smack the door. “I can get in, Sarah. I have every code and key to every lock in this building. I don’t want to do that. You need to let me in because you want to.”

  My ears are ringing, but I can just hear the sound of something heavy against the floor. A piece of furniture being moved. She’s barricading herself in. I punch the code, but it’s too late. The door won’t budge.

  Willa lets out a half chuckle that turns into a scoff.

  I turn away from the door. Life in the Caribbean sun has made Willa’s skin darker. Richer. Her light brown eyes are as clear and incisive as ever—taking no bullshit from me or anyone.

  Good. I have no bullshit to offer.

  “Who called you here?” I ask.

  Willa answers by turning to Oria.

  “She wasn’t going to St. Eustatius on her own.” Oria’s bent into a curve of regret, shifting her body and gaze like a defendant who never bothered to plead innocent. “Not with you doing…” She waves in my general direction.

  “Doing what?” Willa asks.

  My wife of the law came here for Sarah, my wife of scars and blood. Willa does not like having her time wasted. Messes are dealt with. Glitches are stamped out like roaches.

  We had this in common, and I appreciated it. Now I’m the hiccup in the plan. If she tries to brush me aside or wipe me out I’m going to regret hurting her, but I’m not sure I’ll have any choice.

  “Your apartment’s empty,” I say. “If you need a new key—”

  “I have it, but I—”

  There’s a deep scrape, then a thud from the other side of Sarah’s door. Furniture.

  “When I need you, I’ll call you.” I rap on Sarah’s door, speaking sweetly enough to attract a swarm of bees. “Let me in.”

  Silence. I can’t sense her. How is that possible? How can I not know what she’s feeling at this very moment? How can she be so quiet when the noise in my head is so loud?

  There are too many distractions. The questions and the looks. The intonations in what’s said and the clarity of what’s unsaid.

  “What is wrong with you?” Willa’s brow twists in confusion. She’s living the reality of weeks ago, when we agreed to take certain risks and not others. I can’t pretend she’s not there.

  “Sarah Colonia is staying with me. Period. You can get on a plane now or you can go downstairs, to your studio, and rest first. You can eat raw meat and spit nickels for all I care. Just get out of this hallway.”

  “Give her time,” Willa says.

  “Fuck off,” I murmur when I can’t shout.

  Oria rests one hand on Willa’s arm and hits the elevator button with the other. “I’ll fill you in.”

  The elevator slides open. I want them to get sucked into it and be gone. I want to be left here waiting for a sign that I’m not alone. None comes. It’s just me, this door, this hall, and the inaccessible woman close enough to touch.

  “It’s not what you think.” My fingertips stroke the wood as if it’s her skin, and my forehead leans against it as if I’m sharing my mind with her. “Willa is… she was…”

  The wall next to me rattles and hisses as if a nest of snakes is trapped behind the plaster.

  It’s the pipes.

  She’s in the shower.

  I’m talking to a slab of wood, not a woman.

  My forehead’s pressed to the door as I consider whether I should saw off the knob, pry away the jamb piece by piece, or go down to the garage and grab the chainsaw in the storage cage. I don’t think it has any gas in it, but I have cars I can siphon from.

  Sarah now knows what I’ve pretended wasn’t true. She’s not my wife and never was. I started out fooling her and ended up fooling myself.

  I close my eyes and replay the moments before Willa walked out of the elevator. Tamara is worried about the NYSD swatting greenhouses, and Oria’s worried about Nico. I’m worried about both, but I can’t think around this. Fucking. Door.

  With Oria and Willa gone, I am left alone—worshipping an unseen goddess, waiting for a sign.

  And it comes.

  Tamara opens the door on the other end of the hall, and that sign arrives with the whistling speed of a missile.

  Chapter 3

  SARAH

  I don’t know how I had the strength to move the armoire, but no one’s getting in until I move it again. It’s turned the long way so that it’s wedged between the door and the wall of the front closet.

  My prison.

  This shower. This suite. This building.

  My prison is only a prison because I believe I’m married, which I’m not.

  Without the marriage, the suite is a residence and the building is a shelter. Dario can hold my body, but my heart and mind are free.

  But… no. I keep thinking with the facts of the past. There are new facts now.

  He has no claim to my body. He belongs to a woman with an aura of conviction and a voice that can’t possibly waver or sound unsure.

  Of course, he married her out of choice. Who wouldn’t? She’s magnificent. Confident. Whole. Unbroken. She exudes a kind of competence that I’ve associated with men. I can’t compete with someone so beautiful and strong. I’m her exact opposite. Weak. Ignorant. Compliant.

  Under lukewarm water, with my clothes sticking to me, Dario feels like the source of my terror. I’ve been deeply betrayed by someone I’m sure I love. I am torn to pieces, set on fire, ashes blown to the winds.

  What’s left?

  Dario.

  I can smell him on my skin. It’s a scorched memory of his touch. I hear his voice. Feel that first kiss. His smile, so elusive and hard-won. His story—not the events, but the telling of it on a trip to the south and east.

  I want him so badly it hurts. Another minute of thinking of his sweet cruelty and I’ll crack. But what will I do to stay whole? What’s the story of the next hours? The coming days? How long can I guard my heart?


  Can I imagine a future without him?

  I can’t, but that’s because I was never allowed to imagine a future for myself.

  I don’t want to be Schiava, or principessa. I don’t want to be a Colonia or a Lucari.

  I want to choose and be chosen.

  I want to be Willa.

  The ash of who I was may be in the wind, but Dario Lucari is still deep inside me. All the water in the world won’t wash him off.

  Willa is the best thing that could have happened to me. If she’s his wife, then I’m just a woman.

  Just a woman.

  Not the princess of Colonia—an asset to trade for territory. I am not hindered, owned, promised, or betrothed.

  I get out of his shower, dry off with his towel, dress in the clothes he chose for me, and sit on the bed he bought for the women he valued.

  The wood box of art supplies sits on my dresser. Did I almost forget it? He got it to please me—and that makes it the only thing I own that’s truly mine.

  I am not his. I never was. It was always all a lie.

  And since I’m not Dario’s wife, I have no obligation to him. I do not have to please him, or obey him, or split my loyalties. There are no more rules. No more boundaries. No more husband.

  I’m just me, alone, floating unanchored in a nameless void. The feeling of being his wife was terrifying. Not being connected to him is scary, but something in me has changed. Under the fear is a current of possibility. Hope. But for what?

  At the kitchen counter, I eat with the art box at my side and a pencil in my hand. I draw landscapes and skylines. What’s in the window and what I imagine beyond it. The boundaries of the copy paper frustrate the expanse of what’s in my mind.

  Dario’s in my mind.

  I can’t see past him. He’s too close to me and this paper is too small to contain him.

  Asking for something bigger is out of the question. Everything I need is right here, and when it’s not—when this space runs out of necessities—I’ll have to leave knowing who I am or die like a branch cut from a tree.

  So I move the couch away from the wall, revealing a lighter space. I move the end tables away, leaving one close enough to hold my supplies… and I draw.

  Mountains. Seas. Boats. Clouds full of rain and lined in silver. My arms are too short for a single line, so I walk along the wall. I stand on a chair to find the upper edges of my dreams.

  They’re not defined in words, but I find them—and yet I find myself lost in small things.

  His chin and lips at a mountain’s peak.

  His hand on me.

  The outer edge of his eye.

  What I see when I kiss him. His sliced-off ear, the back curve of his neck.

  I love this shape. This scar.

  No. I won’t break for him again.

  But what will I do instead of crack? What’s the story of the next hours? The coming days? How long can I stay in this suite?

  Can I imagine a future without him?

  I can’t, but that’s because I was never allowed to imagine a future for myself.

  He’s lied to me and betrayed me. He’s worse in my eyes today than he was the first time he pointed a gun at me. I thought more of him when he put dirt in a water glass and made me drink it.

  All that disdain will go away in time, and I’ll fold under the pressure of his touch. I’ll forgive him and I’ll come out… maybe in that order… or maybe not. But I’ll make peace with him on my terms, in my time.

  These are my choices to make, and I won’t be rushed.

  Chapter 4

  DARIO

  “Broken traffic light,” I say, looking out the window.

  Connor’s on one side of me. Oliver’s on the other. Tamara’s behind us, decoding the dispatcher’s messages into a coded shorthand, and Sarah’s still behind a door.

  Pedestrians make slow, steady progress below us as if everyone isn’t separated from everything they love in the world, but the car traffic isn’t doing as well. The light at the corner of Ninth and 47th blinks alternating flashes of red in both directions. The intersection is snarled with people who don’t know how to manage a four-way stop.

  “There was a broken light reported right before the last three greenhouse SWAT hits,” Oliver says. “Could be coincidence.”

  “It ain’t,” Connor says.

  “How long do we have?” I ask, knowing full well it won’t be enough time to gently coax Sarah from hiding.

  “Forty-five,” Tamara confirms what I already know.

  Forty-five minutes isn’t enough to earn Sarah’s forgiveness… but it’s enough to escape and live to fight another day.

  “Everybody out.”

  The chainsaw’s tank has about a quarter cup of fuel in it. The way it stinks up the storage area in the garage, a guy could think that gas has been evaporating since it got those pine chips in the blade, years ago.

  The red milk crate with the safety goggles and gloves sits on the floor under a sagging shelf of who even knows the fuck what. The single bulb hanging from a wire is so bright it hides details in hard shadows.

  Behind me, the scrape of footsteps on the concrete is soft, but calculated not to frighten me into alertness. Careful and sure. Respectful but confident.

  The gate is open, chain dangling with the open padlock at the end of it. Anyone could just walk in while my back is turned, but it’s Willa, and she doesn’t need an open lock to be dangerous.

  “Dario.” She uses her social worker voice. There was a time when it soothed me. Now the bite of saccharine opens to a bitter aftertaste.

  “Go home.” When I yank the chain, the motor spins and coughs. “Not to your apartment. Home, home.”

  “When Sarah Colonia agrees to come with me.”

  Never. My mind screams, but my lips stay shut as I yank the chain again. Any harder and it’s going to snap, but the motor doesn’t catch.

  I pull the chain again. Same result. This ignored, unused machine knows better than to start. This little cage isn’t the place to run a chainsaw. What am I going to do? Bring it upstairs with a roaring motor? I might open a wall in the elevator. I might cut the building in two. New York City is too fragile for me right now.

  “She stays here with me.” I drop the chainsaw back into the crate and dig to the bottom of the one next to it, finding a little cardboard box.

  “Why?”

  “Because at some point, soon, I’m going to have to explain to her who the fuck you are.” I read the printing on the box. Wrong. I toss it and hunt for another. “And I don’t want you around, complicating the conversation.”

  “About me being your wife?”

  “Yeah.” Another box. Wrong again. “Sarah doesn’t have a nuanced idea of marriage.”

  “None of them do. What I don’t understand is why it matters to you.”

  The last box is labeled with the right size. I open it. Three spark plugs. I pluck one out and pocket it.

  “I don’t have time to explain it.” Opening the motor cover, I find the old plug, and grunt as I remove it with my fingers. I have a wrench somewhere, but this is faster. “But having you around is going to hurt her, and I don’t want her hurt. So, good-bye.”

  I grab the chainsaw and stand, facing her.

  A light flashes from the parking lot behind her. Car headlamps. My team is doing what I told them and getting the fuck out of here.

  “You don’t get to decide what hurt she bears. Not after what you did.” Willa steps forward, completely blocking the way out of the chain-link cage, touching nothing, hands folded in front of her, manicured thumbs tapping. The approach is utterly non-threatening and fully assured. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall give me a fucking headache.

  “What I did was set us up to win a war you chose to fight with me.” I approach the exit with a chainsaw in my hand and she still won’t budge.

  “While I was down there getting complacent, you were up here acting like a damn vicious monster.”

&nbs
p; “I did what had to be done.”

  “Bullshit. You changed. You’re regressing.”

  “I want to protect her!”

  “If you want to protect her, you’ll send her with me.”

  Willa’s right.

  I have fucking changed.

  The man who kidnapped Sarah would use her as bait. He’d throw her back to the pack of wolves he stole her from. She’d return home a broken woman with horror stories bad enough to force them to pause, and in that pause, I’d attack.

  None of that is going to happen.

  Willa’s always right, and fuck her for it, but she’s only seen a slice of the truth.

  Everything’s changed.

  “Lock up on the way out.” I brush by her as I leave.

  She’s perfectly capable of locking the cage, since she helped build it.

  Breathless from running up the stairs, I burst into my apartment with the chainsaw.

  We don’t have much time.

  Crossing through the living room, I slide open a hidden door.

  On my wedding night, Sarah heard Nico and Oria in his old apartment, which can only be accessed through mine. I’d walled it off from the hallway until he comes home. Matter of security. Didn’t stop them from walking through my residence to get to it.

  I enter Nico’s bedroom like a hurricane and yank the bed away from the wall.

  I put my ear against the cool plaster and hear a scratching sound from the other side, as if she’s clawing her way out, but gently.

  Crouching, I open the chainsaw’s motor door and snap in a new spark plug. As I do this, I realize the gentle scritch-scritch is her drawing on the opposite side of the wall.

  “Sarah.”

  “Dario.” Her voice sounds far away.

  “We’re leaving.” I close the motor cover.

  “I’ll leave when I’m ready,” she says.

  “Step away.”

  “Why?”

  I yank the chainsaw cord and it roars like a bear poked with a stick.