“Beats me.” I was already closing the distance between us and sliding my hand over her back. “Let’s just not go.”
Stacy stood up off the bed, so I threw another pillow. She chuckled as she turned to face me, but now all the best parts were looking at me, and I glared at her. “You’re doing this on purpose.”
“Am not,” she said, but she sashayed her hips as she made her way over to a suitcase on a simple table in one corner. “Look, you were the one who arranged this whole family vacation and wanted to do one family breakfast. Your brothers hated you for it, so the least we can do is not be late.”
I kicked my legs, watching the blanket twist and turn around them. “But, I wanna have sex with my hot girlfriend.”
Stacy laughed. “Later.” She pulled a white dress from the suitcase and then lifted out a pair of black slacks and a dark blue tank top and chucked them at me. “Here. You don’t have to be fancy.”
“But I like being fancy,” I grumbled like a bratty child.
She turned and flashed a warning look at me, so I turned and climbed off the other side of the bed and quickly pulled on the clothes she’d thrown over. I slid on a pair of shoes that I had waiting near the sliding glass door across from the bed. I looked out the glass door. Rolling waves turned to white foam at the edge of the beach, and the water carried out towards the blue sky so far that if there was anything else around us, it didn’t exist as far as we were concerned.
Stacy pulled on her white dress and fastened a crown of white daisies in her hair, then she slipped on a pair of thong sandals.
“Ready?” she asked.
I was overwhelmed with a compulsion to kiss her. It wasn’t the amorous feeling I had just a few minutes ago. It was something else. A foreboding, like if I didn’t do it soon, she’d disappear. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her flush against my body. She didn’t fight the embrace and linked her hands behind my head as I pulled her mouth to mine. I expected the taste of something sweet but got a metallic one instead.
I stepped back from her, expecting to see something else, but she was still looking back at me, her head tilted in surprise. “Is everything okay?”
I touched my lip. “Yeah. Am I bleeding?”
Stacy’s hand pinched my chin as she tilted my head this way and that, inspecting for any sort of mark. “No.”
“Oh.” I smacked my lips a couple of times against the taste, but it lingered. “I’ll be right back.”
I walked over to the small bathroom off to the right and reached around the wall to smack on the light. I stepped into the bathroom. I walked over to the sink, looked up into the mirror, and nearly screamed. It wasn’t my reflection staring back at me but the demon himself. Mr. Angelo Varasso.
I shakily lifted my hand to my cheek and watched as one of my dad’s fat hands crawled into the mirror’s reflection to touch his cheek at the same time. I fished my hand up my face to pull at the edge of my curls, and my dad copied the movement, yanking at the tips of his greasy, slicked-back hair. I turned my face to the left and watched as my dad did the same, then I turned my face to the right and watched as my dad did the same. I lifted my head, and my dad mirrored my movements. When I was back to staring directly at him, I frowned, but he didn’t mimic me then. His lips curved into a deep, malicious smile.
“Are you ready to be a Varasso?” he growled at me.
I didn’t get the answer out before a scream pierced my thoughts. I shot out of the bathroom and nearly choked. Stacy was lying on the floor with a large and growing pool of blood beneath her. Splatters of it stained her white dress and drenched the ends of her angelic, blond hair.
“No!” I dropped to my knees in the blood, staring into her now lifeless green eyes. “Stacy!”
“This is what it means.” My dad’s voice was a vortex around me, strangling me with its heft.
“No.” I lifted Stacy into my arms and rocked back and forth as I held her cold body against mine. “No. No.”
“This is what it means to be a Varasso.”
I shook my head and clenched my eyes. It couldn’t really be happening. “No!”
My own voice brought me to consciousness. My heart was pounding so hard in my chest that I thought I was having a heart attack. I looked down, half expecting Stacy to be dead in my arms, but I only saw the fabric of my pants. I breathed in and out slowly, trying to get my bearings. I looked up and realized I was in Luca’s office. Luca was sitting directly across from me, but his head was fallen to one side, and he was out cold with a stream of blood sliding down the side of his face. He was tied in place, bringing my attention to my own restricted movement. I shook against it, trying to get out, but it was no use. I was either too restrained or too weak to break free.
I looked to my left and saw Marco in a similar condition, though with even more bloodied scrapes over him. He was the scrapper in our family, so it wasn’t shocking to see evidence of the fight he’d put up. To my right, I saw Alessandro. I jumped when I locked into his firm gaze. He motioned over my shoulder, and I looked behind me as far as I could turn my head. A shudder ran down my spine as my eyes landed on Molly, Kelly, and Willow, all bound and with their mouths taped shut. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified that Stacy wasn’t amongst them.
“What’s going on?” I dared ask, looking back at Willow. It almost sounded weird to break the silence with my voice.
“Ah, the youngest two came to first, Dante,” Dario’s voice coiled around me. “I owe you twenty bucks.” He was no longer sitting in Luca’s chair, which was turned towards the window again, and I couldn’t identify where his voice was coming from, given the room's total shroud of darkness.
Dante Binachi, the younger of the two Binachi brothers, stepped into my view, looking down at me with an animalistic gaze. “What were you dreaming about, little Gabriel? You were screaming in your sleep. Were you imagining the day we ran through your dad?”
Alessandro fought against his restraints to try and break free, and Dario stepped out of the shadows in the back of Luca’s office. He slammed his gun over the back of Alessandro’s head, and I heard Willow whimper behind me. “Simmer down there, Sandro. We’re not gonna hurt your precious baby brother.” He glowered at me.
“Not yet, anyway.” The new voice sent a wave of fear down my spine and back up again. I looked to my left just in time to see Luca’s chair turn, revealing none other than the Binachi head, Donovan Binachi. I must have shown my shock on my face because Donovan let out a gravelly laugh. “Surprised to see me? You should know I don’t stay down, Varasso. Never have, never will.”