Ruined Kingdom Read online

  2

  Amadeo

  Vittoria Russo is shell-shocked. It’s the only way I can think to describe her. She’s pretty, even scared as she is. Grown into those big blue eyes I still remember so vividly and wearing an expensive dress, expensive shoes, and carrying an expensive bag. All designer. Money. She has plenty of it. I’d expect no less from daddy’s little princess.

  She immediately tries to climb out the other end of the SUV, but my brother, who had just reached to open it from the outside, climbs in beside her. He gives her a wicked grin, and she scoots farther from him only to press her thigh against mine. I close my hand over her leg.

  “Relax. You’re not going anywhere.”

  She freezes between us, somehow still clutching her bag. I take that, toss it into the front seat as we set off for the cemetery where Geno Russo will rot. It’s about a twenty-minute drive along the outskirts of town.

  I put a new magazine into my Glock and tuck it into its shoulder holster. Emptying my gun into Geno Russo’s body was satisfying. Not half as satisfying as it would have been had he been alive, but it was something.

  No one speaks, and once we arrive, the girl resists when I tell her to climb out of the vehicle, so I take her arm and slide her across the leather seat. She clutches the headrest of the chair in front, but it’s little effort to get her out, and once I do, I let her drop onto her ass on the ground.

  Men start arriving in the other SUVs, and the pallbearers are already carrying the casket toward the hole in the earth.

  “Don’t you want to see Daddy buried? Isn’t that why you came all this way?” I ask her.

  We look at each other. I can’t quite see her face behind the net of the hat, so I reach down and tug it off.

  She cries out as the pins pull her hair. I toss the hat aside. She rubs her head and meets my gaze with those blue eyes that burned themselves into my memory so many years ago. It’s strange seeing her in person. I’ve watched over the years mostly online or in magazines. Russo was trying to go legit, to untangle himself from his ties to the mob, and his beautiful daughter was a part of that. But he never could quite clean the dirt out from under his fingernails. He was a thug through and through. Him and his son both. That’s not something you can just wash away.

  “Get up,” I tell her, but when she doesn’t move, I reach down to haul her to her feet.

  She’s lucky it hasn’t rained here in a while, or that expensive dress would be covered in mud. Once she’s up, she slips her foot back into her shoe. It must have fallen off when I let her drop.

  “Where’s Father Paolo?” she asks, looking around. Her first words to me ever. I still remember when she spoke that day so long ago. Holding up a bouquet of dandelions she’d picked from our garden. Weeds she’d thought were daffodils.

  “Father Paolo won’t make it,” I tell her, walking her toward the hole.

  “What did you do to him? We need a priest. The rites…”

  “That priest was getting sucked off by his mistress about an hour before the burial. But don’t worry, we’ll say a few words.” I stop at the foot of the grave.

  “Fucking heavy shit,” my brother complains as he and another man open the lid of the casket. Bastian reaches into the casket, and a moment later, he tosses Russo’s ring with the insignia I remember so well to me.

  I catch it with one hand, take a quick look at it, then tuck it into my pocket.

  “Oh God,” Vittoria Russo says, her hand going to cover her mouth.

  “If you’re going to be sick, do not get it on my shoes,” I say.

  She doesn’t reply, and she doesn’t get sick as my brother, Bastian, looks at me, and I give him a nod.

  “Rot in hell, motherfucker,” Bastian says.

  “Like I told you, we’d say a few words,” I tell her as he and two others tilt the casket and her father’s bullet-riddled body tumbles out and lands with a thud facedown in the ground.

  The girl cries out. It’s somewhere between a, “No,” and a choked sob.

  I put my hand on her back to give a little push, and she spins to shove me away.

  “What’s the matter? Don’t want to go in there with dear dead Daddy?”

  “What the hell is wrong with you? I don’t even know who you are!”

  I lean toward her, towering over her. At five-feet-five-inches plus the heels, the top of her head almost comes to my chin. “Are you sure about that, Dandelion?”

  She blinks and looks at me through thick lashes heavy with tears.

  I turn from her to the grave and give Russo my own private send-off, wishing him an eternity in hell for what he did to our family. Then I face the man holding the camera. It’s one of our guys—I guess theirs got a little squeamish. And now I’m addressing Lucien Russo, Geno’s son. The man who set all of this in motion fifteen years ago.

  “I’m coming for you next, bastard,” I tell him. The camera is switched off then, and I turn to the girl. She is still staring all huge eyes and a face streaked with tears at the grave of her father’s desecrated body as my men begin the task of burying it. “We’re done here,” I tell her and wrap an arm around her middle to take her to the waiting SUV. When she resists, I simply lift her, press her back to my side, and carry her. She’s light. Lighter than I expect. But she’s a fighter.

  “Be still,” I tell her, pausing to jerk her tighter to me when she kicks my shins. “Do not make me punish you. I promise you won’t like it.”

  She rams her elbow into my stomach and spits but misses me and hits the ground.

  I shake my head, carry her the rest of the way to the car, and thrust her up against it. Fisting my hand in her hair, I tug her head backward. She winces but stares daggers at me.

  “I’ll remember that when we next meet.”

  “Let me go.”

  I search her face and watch a tear slip out of the corner of one eye. Her mouth is open, lips a deep red. “Or what?”

  Her hand slides across my chest, slipping under my jacket. I grin and catch her wrist just as she closes that hand over the grip of my Glock.

  “Or what?” I ask again, my voice quiet, forcing her hand away from the pistol and holding the small fist she makes between us, squeezing it.

  “You’re going to break my fingers,” she says, her tone betraying her panic even as she tries to sound angry.

  “Better your fingers than your neck.”

  She swallows hard as I tug her head farther back. I’m hurting her. I see it.

  “Let me go.”

  “Say please.”

  “Please!” she cries. It’s the first of many times she’ll beg.

  I smile, loosening my hold on both her hair and her hand. I let her go altogether but stay close and open the door of the SUV. “Get in.”

  She glances at the vehicle, at the soldiers standing nearby, then back at me.

  “Get in the fucking SUV.”

  She looks over my shoulder at the grave site, then back at me, that panic flickering in her eyes before she masks it. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Be grateful I’m not leaving you here because if I were, you’d be in the ground.” I gesture to the back seat of the SUV.

  Her forehead furrows, she studies my face, then turns to climb into the vehicle.

  Good. She’ll learn to obey. She’s used to giving orders, not taking them, but I’ll break her of that habit. Stepping away, I gesture to two soldiers to sit beside her in the back for the ride to the villa in Ravello. I close the door as my brother walks up to me and sets an arm around my shoulders. We watch the car disappear, the windows too dark to see the girl.

  “We should have dropped her in there with him,” Bastian says.

  “Not yet. You know what we have to do.”

  He doesn’t look convinced.

  “Patience, brother.” I face Bastian. He’s five years younger than me, and although his rage matches mine, he’s reckless. If I’d left it to him, she probably would be in that grave too, but it’s too soon f
or pretty Vittoria Russo to die. “When we’re finished with her, she’ll join her father. But she has a purpose to serve yet.”

  3

  Vittoria

  I can still feel his hands on me, his eyes on me. His breath along my cheek. I try to level my breathing, to count it out. If I had food in my stomach, I’m sure these men would be wearing it now. Closing my eyes, I exhale, telling myself I’m all right. If they wanted to kill me, they’d have done it.

  We drive out of the cemetery and away from the city.

  “Where are we going?” I ask the men although I don’t expect an answer. And I don’t get one. But about twenty minutes later, I see we’re headed toward the Amalfi Coast. It’s a beautiful drive, one my father and I followed online. One I always longed to take. But there’s nothing beautiful about this day.

  “I need my purse. My phone,” I say, leaning forward to take it from the front seat but the two on either side of me stop me.

  “No purse. No phone.”

  “I need to call my sister. She’s only five years old. She’ll be scared. Please,” I plead although I’m not sure why I bother. It’s like talking to a stone wall. I’m not surprised. It’s how our guards are too. I’ve just never been on this end of things. Not that I’ve been very involved with the business. My father always kept me out of that side of things. My brother is the one who is heavily invested. In recent years, I’ve been the face of Russo Properties & Holdings, a company specializing in luxury hotels and residences along the East Coast of the United States. My father was looking into bringing the business to the Amalfi Coast. He was born in Naples, and his family had lived there for generations.

  Although I’ve never been told outright, I know our family has always had ties to the mafia both in Italy and the States. I’m not sure how deep those ties run, but there is no denying that they’re still involved in our lives. Before I was born, my grandfather got into trouble with a mafia boss in Naples. It’s the reason he moved his family to the States, first to Philadelphia and eventually to New York City. I don’t know the circumstances of that trouble, but it must have been bad if he had to move his entire family. My father has always talked about returning someday and showing me his birthplace. Our home.

  I’m not sure if my grandfather planned on keeping out of that world once in the States, but he didn’t manage to keep his nose clean. The mob was in his blood.

  When Grandfather passed away a few years ago, my father began to focus on Russo Properties & Holdings. He wanted to shift the business away from the criminal world but never really could. Not with the ties our family had made. The things he’d done.

  My brother, Lucien, is a different story. He likes the life and loves the power. The money. The fear his name instills. He and Dad were always at odds about this. But my father had the final say, and Lucien somehow always obeyed him.

  My mind travels back to the funeral, the camera. How much did he watch? Did he allow Emma to see any of it? Please, God, make him have sent her away. She’s too young to see this side of a life she was born into. The life I want to get her out of. Because generation after generation seems to get sucked back into it.

  Sadness washes over me. My father is gone. My sister is alone in a house where she is unloved and unwanted. And I am trapped here with enemies. I think about their rage. The way they handled my father’s body. Why? What had he done to them? I know my father’s hands are in no way clean, but what could he have done that would make men do what they did today?

  I take a deep breath in and lean back against the seat. I have to think. They could have killed me, but they didn’t. They need me for something. And I need to remember the most important thing is that I live and get back to Emma. I’m all she has.

  Almost two hours later, we turn off onto a single-lane road that will take us up to Ravello. I know the town. I know all the towns. I’ve studied so many maps of the area I could give directions. I’ve always wanted to visit the small square where Grandfather would reminisce about men gathering to drink coffee and read the paper. Where the church bells ring morning, noon, and night, and the smells of delicious cooking pour from the windows.

  Along its outskirts is a five-star luxury hotel my father had his eye on. He hadn’t gotten around to buying it yet, though. Dotted throughout are private, remote villas with some of the most beautiful views in the world. It’s a place where deep purple bougainvillea grow like weeds, climbing along pillars and snaking around marble balconies and balustrades to provide shade for the patios below and splashes of rich magenta against the lush green and blue landscape.

  The house we pull up to is no exception. Tall iron gates open as we enter, then slowly close behind us. When the house comes fully into view, it steals my breath away. It’s a villa actually, not a house. It’s set at the highest point of the property, centuries old white stone crafted into a majestic mansion. Two stone pillars bookend the large, ornate double front doors of Medieval style heavy wood with ironwork that I wonder the age of. Upstairs along the balcony’s perimeter is more of the same stone carved into an elaborate cylindrical design, and from what I can see, it wraps all the way around to the other side.

  Once the SUV comes to a stop, the men climb out. I follow, not wanting to be manhandled again. The driver carries my small purse in his giant hand, and I walk between the two tasked with guarding me as the doors open, and an older woman stands wiping her hands on a towel. She’s heavy-set and maybe in her early sixties with wiry gray hair pulled into a bun and a bright yellow apron tied around her waist. She watches me approach, and when I get to about two feet from her, another woman just a few years younger than this one comes running out.

  “Nora, you gave me a scare,” she says. “I leave you alone for five minutes and what do you do but go wandering off.” I notice she says all of this in English.

  The woman turns to her and smiles. “I heard the cars and saw the pretty girl.” She turns back to me. “The one with the dandelions.”

  I stop dead in my tracks. Dandelions. Again.

  But before I can think about it, Nora’s face falls. “Where is Roland?” she asks the other woman who gives me an unkind look before turning her away and walking her back inside.

  “Come on, Nora. Let’s go take a nap. The boys will be back before you know it.”

  The boys. Those men are no boys. Are they her sons? They could well be brothers.

  “Move,” someone says to me, giving me a shove that sends me tripping into the house. I barely have time to look around the grand room with its marble floors and twelve-foot ceilings before I am told to proceed up the stairs and to one of what must be a dozen rooms up here. A soldier opens a door and gestures for me to enter.

  “I want to call my sister,” I try once in Italian then again in English. I’m fluent in Italian. My brother was never interested in studying the language and his mother, who is French, made clear she wouldn’t force him to once the trouble between her and my father began. It was in case we ever came home, according to my father. Whenever he said that, Grandfather rolled his eyes. I wonder sometimes if dad was afraid of him. I know Grandfather found him weak at times. I hated that for him.

  The soldier’s response is another shove. The door is closed and locked behind me and I find myself standing in the middle of a large bedroom. There’s a king-size bed in the center with a sheet over the mattress, a single flat pillow, a thin, worn blanket on top. The dresser is empty, as are the nightstand drawers. No lamps even, only the overhead. On the bureau beneath the window is a small vase with a bunch of wilted dandelions inside it.

  My stomach turns.

  Looking away from it, I walk to the bathroom and close the door behind me grateful for the small push-button lock. It’s beautiful, all white, gold-veined marble with a claw-footed tub against the far wall and a walk-in shower big enough for two. The house is old, but the bathroom has been refurbished, the fittings modern although designed to look like they’re original. The cabinets here are bare too. Only a too
thbrush and a tube of toothpaste. A used bar of soap in the dish.

  I wash my hands with that soap then cup them to drink some water. I pick up a towel and straighten to take in my reflection in the ornate, antique mirror. My hair is half in, half out of its chignon with strands sticking out where he pulled my hat off. It had been pinned into place. A streak of mascara smears my cheek, and my lipstick has worn clean off. On the side of my chin is a splatter of dark red which I wet the corner of the towel to wipe off.

  Blood.

  I wonder whose it is.

  I keep my gaze on my reflection as I pull the rest of the pins out of my hair and drop them along the marble counter, long blond hair caught in some. I think about the scene at the church. Think about where our men went during the attack. My brother had sent a dozen guards at least, but no one lifted a finger against the intruders.

  It feels better to have the pins out of my hair, but the headache wasn’t from the tight chignon. It’s everything else that’s happened. And as I finger-comb my rebellious hair, I wonder what I’ll do. How I’m going to get out of this. Get back to Emma.

  It's with her in mind that I return to the bedroom, where I try not to look at the dandelions. I close my eyes against the vision that comes. The same one that had my knees buckle at the church.

  I try the windows, both of which are locked, along with the doors that lead out to the balcony. I’m on the backside of the house, and the view from here is something else. Blue ocean as far as the eye can see. Blue sky meeting it. Not a single cloud. I bet the stars shine bright here at night.

  I walk back into the room, to the bed, and slip off my shoes to stand in stockings that have ripped in the chaos of the day. I slide my hand along my thigh beneath the dress to the small dagger strapped there. It was a birthday gift a few years ago. A pretty, small, opal-handled dagger. An antique, according to my father. Whenever I go out, I take a small pistol in my purse and strap the dagger to my thigh. In the car, when the man with the scarred face had grabbed my leg, I’d been grateful it was the one without the dagger or I’m sure he’d have taken it. I haven’t ever had to use either weapon. I’ve always had guards around me. But a lot of good they did me today.