She’s My Queen

30. Who are you?

30

WHO ARE YOU?

CRISTINA

A t this time of day, only a few tourists attend church. I sit in the very back and fold my hands in my lap, allowing the peace and quiet to wash over me. There have been so many changes in my life in such a short period of time that I haven’t been to church in a while.

I’d forgotten how helpful just sitting here quietly can be. Thoughts don’t swirl in my head like a jumbled mess, but peacefully present themselves as facts for me to unpack.

Severio wants to marry me.

He seemed genuine, but one never knows with Severio. Although, an alternative motive he could have for wanting to marry me seems unlikely because I have nothing he wants. Since he’s a man who has everything, I can’t imagine he’d want anything from me.

Not to mention, he’s taken my properties, my money, and even the house that Mom and I tried salvaging in the aftermath of my dad’s death.

Severio also owns my heart, which is stupid and naive and, well, as inexperienced as my body was before, he took that too. He really owns me and anything that has to do with me.

Thinking about him and his body and how he stroked my clit, how he sucked my nipples, how he kissed and fucked like a man obsessed, makes me flush with heat. I straighten my dress a few times. It’s not wrinkled, but the movement helps distract me from my naughty thoughts in church.

I’m being a bad girl again. Why is this so exciting?

A man walks up next to me.

I cross a leg over my knee, sending a subtle signal I don’t want to move from my aisle seat. He can slide into another empty bench. There are many available.

But he remains standing there, a little too close for comfort, his jeans almost brushing my elbow.

I uncross my legs and slide away from the aisle.

He sits down in my place.

I slide over some more, my gaze on my breasts, making sure the black scarf I’m wearing covers the modest cleavage the dress allows.

“Issi, don’t run,” a man’s voice behind me says.

My back locks, my hands fist in my lap. “Dear Lord,” I whisper. “This cannot be.” I squint my eyes, willing the voice to be a fragment of my deep thinking or stress or anything besides real.

“Issi, my baby girl.”

He’s touching my hair! I cannot move. I cannot move . “D…Daddy?”

“It is me, darling.” The man beside me slides out, and another man slides in. I presume it’s my daddy, but I keep my head down, hands clutched in my lap. I’m not prepared to look at him yet. Or at least not fully.

I glance at him, terrified of what I’ll see. He appears younger, different, so I look up.

A blond man’s face with Daddy’s green eyes meets my gaze. The voice is the same, and nobody calls me Issi besides my dad.

“Who are you?” I ask, just to be sure I’m not imagining things.

“It’s me, Issi. I had facial reconstructive surgery.”

“Oh God, Daddy.” My gut starts to rise. “I think I’m going to be sick.” I cover my mouth with my hand and swallow hard.

He tries to hug me, but I slide away. I want to hug my dad, but he’s also been dead for over a year, and now this man with this face and this voice wants to touch me. No. I can’t.

My father shakes his head disapprovingly.

I huff out a breath. What did he expect?

“We don’t have a lot of time, so please listen to me.” He looks around nervously, as if someone’s about to grab him.

Maybe people are after him. Who knows? Not me! I’m freaking out. “I can’t listen to the dead,” I hiss.

A tourist walks by us and turns to look, but the man standing in the aisle barks at him. The tourist scurries away.

My dad grabs my hand. I try to pull away, but he holds on firmly. A little too firmly.

“You’re hurting me.”

“You need to listen,” he says.

“I am. I promise.”

“They think you’re Severio Mancini’s fiancée.”

“Who are they ?”

“The people I’m working with.”

Oh no. Oh no. “Who are you working with?”

“You know better than to ask.”

“You’re right, Daddy, I do know. It’s just that I don’t know what kind of trouble you’re in that made you disappear on us in the way you did.”

“Severio Mancini made me disappear.”

My body turns toward him as if I’m the needle on a compass. I look him in the eye.

“What do you mean Severio made you disappear?” If Severio made my dad disappear the way he did and he’s been lying to me this entire time, I don’t know if I will ever forgive him. I anticipate the answer, and when my dad rears back for some reason, likely because I’m glaring and I’ve never glared at him before, I hiss, “Tell me!”

The tourists in the church start to watch us, inching closer, trying to scope out the situation. They ought to mind their business. The men with my dad look dangerous.

“Severio made it clear that my place in the Order was unwelcome and unprecedented. If I were unwelcome, then I couldn’t bring in my business partners, the ones I promised I’d bring into the Order. When it became clear my partners were going to kill me for lying, I did what I had to do. The idea was that we’d reunite when Gio took over.”

Severio didn’t make him disappear. “Severio is the Head of the Serpentine Order. You should’ve contacted him. Instead, you got involved with God knows who doing God knows what, and you left Mom and me at Gio’s mercy. At Severio’s mercy, and let me tell you, he is not merciful.”

“Fucking Mancinis.” Daddy sneers. He looks around again as if someone’s following him, growing more on edge as time passes. Maybe someone is following him. I wouldn’t be surprised if Severio has people watching me.

Daddy has at least two men. One beside him, the other on the other side of the aisle.

“What do you want?” I ask. Inside, I hurt over my dad and the stranger he’s become.

“Watch your tone, young lady. That is no way to speak to your father.”

“You’re not my father.”

Daddy backhands me.

I grab my cheek, tears filling my eyes, not because the slap hurts, even if does, but because this man, this person claiming to be my father (and is my father) is soiling the memory of my daddy for me. “Severio will kill you for touching me.”

“Not if I kill him first.”

I swallow. “And how do you propose you’ll do that?”

“I’ll use a rocket this time.”

This time. “You were behind the drone attack on the villa.”

“Not me. My partners.”

“Did you know I was there?”

He shakes his head. “They told me after the fact. They said you spent the night with Severio instead of with your husband.”

“Oh, Daddy, I spent the night with both men.”

He balls up his fist, clearly trying to restrain himself. I don’t recognize this man’s character. Has my dad always been this violent and I never knew? Did he ever hit my mom? “Go ahead and hit me again. I don’t care.” I slide toward him, ready to leave the pew. “If you don’t let me out of the church, I’ll scream at the top of my lungs.”

“If you scream, Cristina, this man here will put a bullet in the head of everyone in this place.”

Most of the tourists are in the front facing the altar. None of them are paying attention back here. “Nice company you keep.”

“Yours is no better, so don’t you fucking judge me.”

The man on the side of the aisle squeezes my daddy’s shoulder. “It’s time.”

My dad slides out, and the man reaches for me. Even though I don’t scream, he covers my mouth. I kick him, struggling against him as he moves me toward the side exit just as Father Thomas walks out from his chambers.

“What’s this?” He walks toward us, long gray robes fluttering around him.

The man reaches for the back of his pants, and I use the opportunity of his distraction to knee him in the groin. He bends over in pain, momentarily stopped.

Father Thomas charges toward us, but the other man gets in the way. My daddy grabs for me as I make a beeline for the exit.

I trip over someone’s leg and fall onto my hands. I get up right away and glance back. I tripped over the leg of a man dressed in black and looking very dead.

My dad grabs my arm and yanks me up. “Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be. Severio’s guards are all dead.”

On the street, there are people—kids and mothers and grandmothers—and I can’t start screaming for fear my crazy father and the people who are not from our island will start shooting at them.

He pushes me up the street, toward a large white van. The moment he puts me inside the vehicle, he’ll hold me for ransom for whatever they want Severio to do. They’re gambling that I’m worth that much to him. That I’m his fiancée.

In the van, the woman sitting in the driver’s seat widens her eyes as if surprised. A boy next to her turns and asks her something. I was wrong about the van. A mother and a little boy aren’t going to kidnap anyone.

But when Daddy drags me around to the back of the van and opens it, he proves me wrong. They are going to kidnap me, and they’re already holding another person. Another boy, a teenager, this one with dark hair and blue eyes that remind me of Severio. He’s sitting in the back, hands tied behind him, duct tape over his mouth.

This can’t happen to me. It can’t.

“Get in,” my dad says. When I don’t, he starts to plead. “Issi, get in, please. It’ll be okay. Severio will give them what they want and get you back.”

The man from the church is jogging toward us, and I know he’ll force me into the van. I elbow my dad in the ribs and run into oncoming traffic.