Take Me Capo, page 5
“Do like the doctor’s office. Knock and open at the same time.”
“That’s my point. Doctors are fucking scary.”
Are they trying not to scare me?
“Jesus fucking…” The rest sounds like a litany of curses in Italian until he raises his voice and calls clearly through the door. “Uh, Miss Colonia, we got your lunch.”
“See,” says the other voice. “Now you’re asking permission.”
“Porca miseria.” The door gets three hard pounds. “We’re coming in.”
The deadbolt snaps, and I realize I’m going to get hit by the door just in time to get out of the way.
Two men in suits enter. Both of them are looming and intense—men who know violence intimately, who take it into their beds each night like a beloved wife, and yet they’re more human than Dario. Fallible. Flawed. One is middle-aged with a receding hairline and a growing paunch. He holds a lunch tray with another clamshell-encased sandwich, a bottle of water, and juice box. The other is in his thirties, over six feet tall with a full head of black hair and large brown eyes. He closes the door and stands in front of it.
I must look a sight because the younger man shakes his head in pity.
“It’s all right.” He holds up his hands to show me they’re empty.
“Says you.” The other one scoffs. “We brought you lunch.” He puts the tray on a table. “It ain’t much, but pretend it’s something because you got five minutes to eat it.”
“Why?” I look from one to the other.
They don’t talk like they’re from here, yet there’s something familiar about them.
“‘Cos the guy paying us says you gotta eat, then come downstairs. No trouble or there’s gonna be trouble.” He leaves the tray and stands at the door.
I approach, open the water, and put it to my lips. They’re watching me. Drinking in front of them is uncomfortable, but I’m parched and finish the bottle.
“You both were there when he took me. You were outside—”
“Yeah,” the tall one says. “We were there.”
“We’re sorry about how that went down.”
Tall elbow-jabs Short in the arm hard enough to send him off balance, then says, “Eat up.”
I crack open the clamshell. “You have names?”
“I’m Gennaro,” the short guy says.
“Give her your address, why don’t you?”
“Like I’m the only Gennaro.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“She’s not gonna believe your mother named you that.” Gennaro addresses me, “This asshole’s name is Vito.”
“Nice to meet you both.” I’m only half lying. These two are not soft. I’m sure they’d hurt me at the first sign of trouble, but they do not belong here. “I… um… all that water? I have to use the pot.”
“We’ll wait outside,” Vito says. “Two and a half minutes, then we go. No trouble. We’re not gonna like dragging you down the stairs, but we will.”
I have no doubt he’s telling the truth, and I nod my understanding. They leave.
As I squat, I realize the door opens inward. When they almost hit me as they entered, I dodged right. If I’d dodged left, I would have been hidden behind the door.
If I just had a way to draw them in, I could slip behind them.
With little time to waste, I reach under my skirt, grab the lining, and bite the edge, creating a little notch. I rip along the weft, then the wale, ignoring the voice that asks what I think I’m going to do on the other side of that door. The rest of the building has to be guarded. I’ll never make it to the first floor.
As I rip off the last few inches of fabric, there’s a soft knock.
“Ms. Colonia,” Vito says before the deadbolt snaps open.
I throw the white silk to the center of the room and run behind the door.
It’s going to work. It’s stark white, and for a split second, a decent person could think I’ve collapsed.
“What the—?” Gennaro runs in. Three steps in, and he’s halfway there.
Vito has his gun out. He doesn’t rush in as fast. Half a step and I slip behind him, clutching my bodice closed so the entire dress doesn’t fall away, into a windowless, beige foyer.
I’m relieved by the change in scenery and terrified, lost, hopeless as I grab the painted pipe handrails and aim my feet for the grip tape on the edges of the concrete steps.
“Come on, man.” Vito’s voice is so close to me I know I was never even close to escaping.
Gennaro arrives in the background, clutching a handful of white fabric, and jokingly asks, “Where did you think you were going?”
Besides these stairs, there’s nowhere to go. I was going wherever they were taking me.
“You coming or not?” I ask.
Vito jogs ahead, Gennaro stays behind, and we descend the stairs.
That escape attempt was a disaster, but it won’t be my last. I will not go quietly.
The stairs end at a hallway floored in rich, dark wood and lined with sconces. To the left end of the hall are grand double doors of carved wood. To the right, a white single-width door and in the middle, a narrow brushed-metal door with a keypad lock.
I’m led to the white one on the right.
The front guard steps out of the way, indicating I should walk into what looks like a living room with an open kitchen separated by a bar and stools. It’s plain but clean and well kept, with large windows and a few pieces of nicely made furniture in squared-off edges and flat, inoffensive colors. The woods are warm, and one wall is exposed brick. The paintings are generic and abstract. There are no photos.
No one lives here.
A woman rises from the sofa—older than I am, with long yellow hair pulled back into a chignon, her face an indifferent mix of features that make her plain in a way that isn’t unattractive, just nonspecific.
Why am I disappointed it’s not Dario waiting with his cruelty and heat? Is it the challenge I crave? The potential? The sheer vertical drop into the unknown whenever I’m in his presence?
She stands and nods in my direction. The door closes behind me.
I do not move. I can’t stop staring at her. She doesn’t look generic or nonspecific. She’s a jogged memory of a woman standing in front of a black slate background.
“Miss Tamberi?” I whisper. “Is it you?”
When she smiles in a way that goes all the way up to her eyes, I know it’s her. She takes my hands and steps away, holding them as if we’re dancing. She’s a little rounder and has more lines in her face, but she’s my grammar school teacher, and the only reason she’d be here is to take me home.
“You can call me Dafne now,” she says. “Should we get you cleaned up?”
“I’m sorry,” I say, pulling my hands back. “I’d rather just leave now and clean up at home.”
I’m bouncing on the balls of my feet at the thought of the familiar scent of my own soaps bubbling in the safety of my own bath.
“Oh, Sarah,” she says, squeezing my shoulders. “You’re not going back.”
There has to be another sentence, so I wait for her to say, “You’re going right to the church to get married,” or, “The authorities want to see you, so you need to be cleaned up and coached in how to be silent.”
But she adds nothing and tries to tug me across the room. I resist.
“Where then?”
She nods slightly, fluttering long lashes covered with powder-dusted mascara. “I know you remember me from… my Lord, how many years ago?” She makes herself laugh a little. But it’s not funny. “I’m not teaching anymore.”
“What are you doing?” I ask suspiciously—not just about her vocation. What exactly is she doing here?
“I work for Mr. Lucari.” She says it with a lift at the end as if her job isn’t disgusting. “Come. You’ll feel better when you’re clean.”
My feet won’t move. I’ll never be clean after what’s happened to me.
She tries to take my hand, but I snap it back. “Get away from me.”
“Come,” she says more firmly, with the voice of a teacher.
My school was in the basement of Precious Blood. It was the only school we knew, and you didn’t disobey the teachers. Ever.
So, I come like a dog, following through the living room and past a paneled door. The bedroom’s made up with a burgundy bedspread and drapes drawn over the huge windows. The oval wool rug is the only curve in the room. Everything is straight lines and right angles.
Dafne turns on the light in the suite’s washroom, where she’s drawn a bath. The mirror is already steamed up, and the air is thick with humidity. She leaves the bathroom door open.
“Let’s get this gown off.” Dafne tugs at the fabric.
I go limp. The silk falls away like meat off the bone. Wordlessly, she helps with the underwear, the shoes, every last scrap, until I’m as naked as Dario commanded the day before.
The open door has defogged the mirror, and I see my reflection. Even past the dust and dirt, I look frightened and frightening: shell-shocked and haunted, my eyes too big for my face, my cheeks and lips pale and chapped.
I’m led to lie in the steaming water, where she soaps and rinses my body.
“What’s happening?” I whisper as she drops shampoo into my rat’s nest of hair. She wouldn’t clean me up for more torment even if she does work for a monster. Maybe I misunderstood her when she said I wasn’t going home. “Is Daddy coming for me?”
“Not today,” she says. “Lean forward.”
She dumps on more shampoo and massages my scalp clean. My mother used to bathe me. But Grandma never did. I’ve never been so grateful for a rough touch.
“Please help me,” I say when she’s silent for too long. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Whatever Mr. Lucari says to do.”
“No!” I shoot to standing in the tub, dripping soap bubbles and sheets of water. “He’s a monster.” The shampoo clouds my vision, and the sting in my eyes enrages me enough to raise my voice. “I don’t want to listen to him. He’s an outsider. He’s a bad person. He made me naked in front of him, and I don’t want to see him ever again.”
“Sarah,” Dafne says, pressing a towel to my burning eyes.
“No!” I snap the towel away and immediately see a change in the room—a splotch of darkness through the haze.
“Get a move on,” Dario says from just inside the doorway. I cover myself with the towel, but it’s too late. He’s seen me naked again. “Or you’ll do this dressed in foam.” He pauses to look me up and down. “Which could be interesting for all concerned.”
“That’s enough!” Dafne barks, getting in his line of sight. “Everyone will wait as long as it takes. And you…” Her arm shoots straight to direct him out. Though Dario doesn’t seem frightened of the woman, he’s somehow deferential. “You have no business walking in here like a pervert who can’t reach his own dick to relieve himself.”
He raises an eyebrow as if he’s impressed with her command of language.
“I can reach,” he says. “And my brain works. I don’t need the visual stimulation.”
“Out!” She pushes him—literally pushes him out.
He goes without a fight, giving me a glance in the split second before she slams the door behind him.
Chapter 9
Sarah
My grammar school teacher, who now somehow works for my kidnapper and is fluent with the word “dick,” dresses me in cotton underwear, high-waisted pants, and a long-sleeved, button-front shirt fastened to the collar. I tuck it in myself.
“Good.” She drops a pair of flats in front of me. “You look ready for anything.”
I slide my feet into the shoes. “But what am I ready for, Miss Tamberi? Why won’t you tell me?”
She holds my shoulders and leans down so her gaze can bridge the few inches of height between us.
“The goal,” she says with low seriousness, “is for you to be safe.”
“That’s a lie.” I reply with the same depth. “I was starved for days.” Her eyes and hands disconnect from me, but I’m not done. “He made me drink fouled water. Naked. He pushed my face into his crotch until he came.”
“The details aren’t important.” She’s ashamed, and she should be.
But instead of addressing how I was treated, she leads me out of the suite and into the hall, where Gennaro and Vito wait. They take us to the double doors, which open at our approach.
We enter a waiting room done in the same smooth, modern woods and right into a conference room filled with men and women talking, standing, sitting, leaning on the windowsill until I enter—then all of them cut to silence.
Dario is at the center, and when he turns, the heat of his attention consumes me. I’m naked in the tub again, with a towel he sees right through.
I’m transfixed for a moment, but then there’s movement behind him, and I become aware of the huge television screen. On it is the image of my father.
He doesn’t look nearly as shaken by the last few days as I am. In fact, if you didn’t know him, you might see a man entirely self-possessed. But I know better. The cuffs of his shirt aren’t properly pressed because I’m not there to do them.
My heart hurts to see him this way. I want to throw myself against the screen’s glass and crawl through its wires. I would do anything, I think, to be where he is—with my father and in safety.
“Daddy!” I cry like a child, not a woman of marriage age. “I’m here!”
He doesn’t respond. The crowd cleaves itself as I rush to the screen.
“Please! I’m right here!”
I reach up to touch him, but Dario stops my hand.
“He can’t hear you,” he says. “He can’t see you either.”
“Why?” I can’t work out the benefit of even having me in the room, then.
Dario turns crisply away from me and back to the screen. A woman in a business suit presses a button on the black plastic unit in the center of the table.
“Tamara,” Dario says to the woman at the controls.
She’s all business. Hair cut to the bottoms of her ears, parted in the middle, with a black clip holding it off each side of her face.
“Thirty seconds,” she replies robotically.
“I can’t see you,” my father says, his eyes unfocused. So, we can see him, but the favor hasn’t been returned. “You there? You got her?”
I stand electric with relief. I exist again.
The woman uses her fingers to count down from five, and Dario speaks.
“We have her. She’s alive, more or less.”
“Show me,” Daddy demands.
“Oliver?” Dario says to a man at a laptop.
“Visual control over to you.”
“And audio,” Tamara adds.
Dario turns to Vito. “Get her out of camera range.”
Vito pulls me back, and I disappear from the narrow attentions of the camera.
Then Dario addresses the rest of the room. “Everyone. Before we go visual.”
People shuffle to the corners of the room. Dario holds up the back of his wrist, swipes the surface of his watch, then taps it. On the television, my father occupies a tiny corner window, and a new image fills the screen.
Me, naked before Dario, practically in his arms.
The camera angle leaves nothing but the wall behind us. No indication of our location.
Another tap and the video starts.
On screen, his lips brush my neck. My head tilts back in what looks like ecstasy. There is no sound, and I can only imagine the silence on my father’s end as he watches me drop to my knees.
Even though I know what’s coming, I’m shocked by it.
Dario takes me by the back of the head, undoes his fly, and forces me to suck his cock.
I know it’s a pantomime.
Despite that, I am humiliated.
And despite both the farce and the disgrace, I’m tingling and wet with the memory of it.
I shouldn’t be this aroused. Shame curdles in my stomach and spreads through my limbs. Until now, all of my miseries have been between me and my own weaknesses, but now my father is seeing me at my lowest. Even if I get to explain why it looks like it does and what I had been actually asking for, he will always have the image of me allowing a stranger to not only witness my nakedness, but also get his dick in my mouth.
Maybe it would be better if I had just refused, even if it meant my death.
Greenhouse Dario presses my head into him with both hands.
The video freezes there, and a little box with Dario inside appears in the corner. The greenhouse blinks back to my home, where my father stands, but now he has company.
Massimo, my darling brother and protector, has his arms crossed and his mouth set in a line of disgust. My father looks humiliated and furious, which doesn’t surprise me. He saw what he saw.
“What do you want?” Massimo asks.
Dario smirks. He’s been waiting for this moment.
“Leave New York. All of you. Go far away and hide. Take nothing with you. Leave it to me, and I won’t chase you to the ends of the earth.”
“You fucking nuts?” my father says, rigid and unyielding. “Our asses were here when StuyTown was a swamp. We built this entire city.”
“Sure you did,” Dario mutters.
“You’re the one who needs to run and hide,” my father continues, and that’s when I realize I’d hoped he’d take the stupid deal to set me free, because he won’t, and the death of that hope means I’m alone. I have to get out myself.
“Then I will take everything from you,” Dario says. “Piece by piece. First, your daughter will be my wife.”
“You will never,” I vow to the back of his head.
“Hush!” Dafne hisses, grabbing my arm.
“Can someone shut her up?” he says flatly.
I’m yanked back by strong arms, and a hand covers my mouth from behind.
“I’m gonna use her body like a toy every night,” he tells my father. “She’ll swallow my cock and beg for more. She’ll debase herself over and over again until I fuck the memory of you right out of her. She’ll have my sons. Then I will take your money. Your assets. Your life.”
