I grit my teeth and don’t answer. What he’s saying isn’t wrong, but it isn’t fair either. As if I haven’t gone through enough.
The car pulls off the main road and hesitates outside of a large gate with a call box on the side. The driver pokes a button and speaks, but I can’t hear—the privacy screen is soundproof. The gate rolls aside and we wind our way down a long driveway toward a massive fountain set in the middle of a beautiful courtyard before a gorgeous home like something from a movie.
It resembles a Frank Lloyd Wright structure, made from glass and wood and slate, with turquoise studded throughout and cacti littered along the front, made to look as though it blends into the landscape, like it’s a natural feature of the rock and was always here and would always be here. It’s beautiful, stunningly so, even more beautiful than Papa’s sprawling grounds back home in Mexico, and that’s saying something.
“Try to behave,” Papa says as he opens the door. Those are his parting words for me: a plea to keep my mouth shut and be a good girl.
I’ve never been great at that.
I climb out after him. The sun’s beating on my back and I want to get inside, but the doors open and people step out front like a procession. Men with guns first, guards in black clothes and sunglasses arrayed to show the strength of—whoever these people are. They face Papa and our soldiers without smiling. Next comes an attractive girl around my age in big sunglasses with a little boy at her hip, no older than a year, a cute little thing with big eyes and a smile on his lips. She’s flanked by a massive tattoo-studded man, good-looking but scowling, and my heart does a strange double-beat. He looks familiar, so crazily familiar, he looks like someone I knew a long time ago, but no, that can’t be the same person. That can’t be who I think it is.
The girl beams at me and waves and takes her sunglasses off. I look closer and stop walking, because oh, god, I recognize her now, even though I knew her when she was only twelve or thirteen, still just a little girl and all gangly legs and rebellious glares, and yes, that must mean the guy beside her is definitely Nico, the angry young bastard I knew back when I was a kid. More tattoos, more muscles, a bit taller, but it’s him, it’s definitely him, and that girl, that nightmare of a girl, she’s Karah Bruno all grown up, pretty and petite, dark hair, dark eyes, grinning like we never hated each other with an ugly bitterness.
“Papa,” I say and it comes out like a squeak.
“Welcome to Villa Bruno,” Karah says, coming forward, Nico ghosting at her hip.
Papa goes forward with a big smile, his hands spread wide. “Ah, Karah, hello, how are you? Last I saw, you were so young. This must be your little boy, what is this name?”
“Antonio,” she says. “And this is my husband, Nico. I’m not sure if you’ve ever met.”
“We haven’t,” Nico says and shakes Papa’s hand and I want to scream at him not to touch them, to get away from him, to turn and run for his life. They’re snakes, they’re killers, they’re slithering swamp serpents and they’re starving and we’re their next meal.
“And where is your brother?” Papa asks Karah.
“He’s on his way out right now. He sent me to apologize for the delay, they were in a meeting.” She gives him another charming smile and the sunlight streams through her perfect hair and I want to run. “Please, let’s get out of this heat.”
“Papa,” I say, voice strangled, because this can’t be happening. Karah’s smile falters and she must see my face—I’m staring at them in horror and not trying to hide it—but Nico acts like he doesn’t notice. The only thing he’s paying any attention to is his wife and his child and Papa’s men with their guns.
“Olivia, please,” Papa says and takes my arm gently but firmly. He steers me to the steps as we follow Karah and Nico into the house, and I’m drawn along like I’m being dragged into the mouth of a massive whale.
The first thing I spot is a massive glittering chandelier hanging over the marble-drenched entry foyer like a symbol of this family’s wealth. It’s a mocking, horrible joke, a reminder of what they stole, and Papa walks beneath it as though the money means nothing and all that blood is dried and gone. When he knows damn well nothing ever stays completely dead.
Oil paintings, golden frames, like my father’s house but everything cleaner, sleeker, modern. Karah chatters about the stress of raising a little boy with Papa and he laughs, doing his charming gentleman act, even though Papa’s little boy is buried because of these people, and I notice that our soldiers were left outside. Meaning we’re trapped and at the mercy of this brood. How Papa can stand it, I have no clue. My skin’s crawling with anxiety, fear, rage.