Shattered Loyalty, A New Beginning Blooms novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Under the Floor

Santino hides her under the bed while Lucio's men search; afterward they kiss, and Carlo calls to ask whether she said anything about the books.

"Under the bed," Santino said. "Now."

He had the lamp off before I could answer.

In the dark he dragged the rug back from the foot of the bed and pulled up a square of floorboard.

There was a space underneath, a crawlspace for the river pipes, barely wide enough for a person lying flat.

"Get in."

"I'm not going into a hole in the ground."

"Livia."

I got in.

The wood was cold and damp against my cheek.

He lowered the board over me, and the rug scraped back over the top.

I lay in the dark with my own heartbeat loud in my ears.

Above me I heard his boots cross the floor.

Then I heard the bed creak as he sat down on it, and the creak was so close to my head that I flinched.

A car door slammed outside.

Two men came up the steps and knocked.

Santino took his time answering.

"It's two in the morning," he said, in a voice that sounded half asleep.

"Lucio wants to know where you went," a man said. "You left the house with the girl."

"I left the house and did the job."

"Where?"

"Pier 40. Where I always do it." Santino yawned. "You can drag the river if you want, but it's cold."

The second man laughed nervously.

The first one didn't.

Boots crossed the floor, and a drawer opened.

Something scraped over my head, and a thin line of lamplight cut through the crack in the boards.

I held my breath.

I could see a pair of shiny brown shoes, three feet from my face.

"You always keep a bed made like this?" the man said. "It's neat for a bachelor."

"My sister does laundry."

"Lucio says the girl might've had a gun."

"She didn't."

There was a silence.

Then the shoes backed away, and a hand knocked once on the wall.

"Sorry, Santino. Just doing what I'm told."

"Everybody is," Santino said.

The door shut.

An engine started and faded down the river road.

I stayed where I was, listening, until the board above me lifted away and Santino's hand came down into the dark.

I took it.

He pulled me up out of the floor and held on for a moment longer than he needed to.

I was shaking all over.

"How did they know to come here?" I whispered.

"They didn't. This was the third place they checked on my list."

"And if I'd been in the bed?"

"Then I'd have been in trouble," he said.

I looked up at him in the grey light from the window.

He was so close that I could smell woodsmoke and cold air on his coat.

I had known this man eight years and I had never once noticed his mouth.

I noticed it now.

"I was lying under your bed for ten minutes," I said stupidly. "My father would be so ashamed."

"Your father carried a man out of a fire for his enemy," Santino said. "Valentini told it at his funeral. He wouldn't have been ashamed of anything tonight."

I didn't know he'd been at the funeral.

I'd been twelve years old, and I remembered nothing but the sound of the organ.

I put my hands flat against his chest because I couldn't stop looking at his mouth.

He didn't move.

"Livia," he said, low.

"Don't say my name like it's a warning."

"It's a warning."

I kissed him anyway.

It was a stupid, furious kiss, with all the night in it, the ring and the espresso and Lucio's bowed head.

For one second he went still, and then his hand slid into my hair and he kissed me back.

My back hit the wall.

His beard scraped my chin and his mouth was hot and he made a sound low in his chest that went straight through me.

I got my fingers into the front of his coat.

I had stopped thinking.

Then a phone rang on the table.

It was a cheap flip phone I hadn't seen him take out, lit up green in the dark.

We stopped, breathing hard, foreheads almost touching.

He looked at the screen.

The color left his face.

"It's Carlo," he said.

He answered it and put it on speaker so I could hear.

"Santino." Carlo's voice came out warm and tired, the way it did after a long Sunday. "Is it finished?"

"It's finished."

"Good. Good. God forgive me." He sighed. "One more thing. Before you came out here, did she say anything about the books?"

I stopped breathing.

"The books," Santino said.

"The ledgers. Anything she kept for herself. Her father kept them, you understand, and she learned from him. Did she say where?"

Santino looked at me.

I shook my head, slowly.

I had never told anyone about my father's second set.

I hadn't known Carlo knew they existed.

"No," Santino said. "She didn't say a word."

"Then she's gone with it," Carlo said. "Come see me in the morning, son."

He hung up.

The boathouse was very quiet.

"Why would he ask that," I whispered, "if he thought I was a spy?"

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