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“Wake up, girl.”
“I’m trying to sleep.”
“I don’t care!” He tore the blanket off me.
I obeyed Dad’s command and climbed out of bed in a huff. I wished I could have told him to leave me alone, but it was easier to stay quiet.
“Hurry up.” Blinking rapidly, he watched my every move and picked at the open sores on his face and arms.
Moonlight poured into my room, allowing enough light for me to find jeans and a sweater. I hid inside the closet to get dressed and cried quietly. I could hardly keep my eyes open, and Dad was on his third day of sleeplessness. He rattled the door handle to remind me to hurry.
Drying my face on a hanging shirt, I stepped out of the closet. “What time is it?”
“Shut up. No questions,” he said, squeezing my wrist and leading me outside into the cold night.
I sat upright in bed and blinked through the darkness. Why were disturbing memories tryna pry their way through the surface of my mind, memories I needed to forget?
Tiptoeing into the kitchen, I filled a glass with water and jumped at the sudden movement in the darkened living room. Instinctively, I grabbed a knife from the knife block on the counter and tiptoed closer to my stalker.
“You couldn’t sleep either,” Mom whispered.
My glass quivered against my lips. Sipping the water, I lowered myself rigidly onto the couch cushion and set the knife on the table.
“Did I wake you?” she asked.
“No. Dad did.”
“I’ve been thinking about him a lot too.”
“I’m not trying to.” I took another sip. “What about his warning? Do you believe it?”
She glowed in the orange light beaming through the living room windows. “I don’t know.”
I knew by that subtle tone in her voice she was living in the past again and waiting for the right moment to drag me back there too. I wanted no part of it. Swallowing the last of the water in one gulp, I stood.
“Joy—”
“He’s ruined our lives enough! He’s not relevant to us anymore, and if you disagree, go on and bail him out...like you do every time. I’m not gonna sit by and watch. I won’t.”
“I wasn’t talking about bailing him out, but he’s been going to meetings. What if he’s changed?”
“For how long do you think it’ll last this time? A few weeks ago, Storm was still alive. How much do you think he’s changed since he killed her...since he stabbed that guy? I know you’ll always want him, but do you remember the last time he beat you in the middle of the street with the neighbors watching? Do you remember what I had to do to get him to stop?”
The change in her breathing between sniffles told me she remembered it well.
“That’s what I see when I think of him,” I added. “Not romantic dates to the theatre or him walking me to school when I was little. That person doesn’t exist anymore. You wanna give him another chance, then that’s on you. I won’t be there to knock him out before he kills you. I won’t live like that ever again.”
Leaving my glass on the counter, I returned to my room and buried the memories of my father even deeper.
I ROSE EARLY TO WORK at Mr. Quaid’s. It took five hours of cleaning, grocery shopping, laundering a mound of clothes, getting Mr. Quaid’s lunch and dinner ready for the day, and prepping meals for the following two weeks. And I could’ve sleep-walked through Selena’s door when I got home.
“Giovanni came by about an hour ago.” Mom carted a tall basket with clean clothes down the hall to her room.
A long bubble bath called my name, but Giovanni had called me first, six times. His knock at the door sounded before I could dial his number.
We hadn’t spoken since the night before. Being apart for most of the day had offered hours of deep reflection. Perhaps it was knowing that Mariah would never leave us alone, or maybe there was something about his face when he thought I wasn’t looking that raised new doubts and reinforced the old ones about us. In my experience, happiness was always a short vacation, a break from life’s miseries once every seven years. Did Giovanni and I have an expiration date too? If so, how close were we to the end?
My pessimism fed on those questions throughout the day.
He knocked again. Stalking him from the peephole, I waited until he turned to leave to unfasten the locks and held my breath for the first few seconds we stood face-to-face. His red, bloodshot eyes watched me with relief. He pulled me into his arms.
“I tried to call you,” he said.
“Sorry. I had to work today.”
Looking around the apartment behind me, he whispered, “You said that you would help me with my parents.”
Stepping aside, I let him enter. “I didn’t forget.”
I led the way to my room. “I looked up the numbers you gave me last night, but I couldn’t find anything. We’ll have to call ‘em and find out who they belong to. I also made a list of ideas for what to do next since I couldn’t sleep. You can look ‘em over while I shower.”
“Joy.”
I quit rifling through the closet for my slippers and inched my way around to meet his gaze. He lingered in the doorway. “I have something for you. I wanted to give these to you a long time ago, but...” Giovanni slid a bulging envelope into my hand.
“What is it?”
“Letters I wrote to you with everything I wanted to tell you since we meet.” I finally mustered the courage to peer into his eyes and swallowed my tears. “You can read them later.” He pressed a tender kiss to my cheek.
“Thank you.” I set the envelope on the nightstand, handed him my notebook, and carried on with my task with a heavy heart. “I’ll be quick. I promise.”
I WANDERED INTO THE room, working a comb through my tangles. When I let my weary arms fall to my sides, Giovanni dismounted the bed and stole the comb.
“I’m not done with that.” I reached for it, but he jerked away.
“I know. I want to do your hair again. Please.”
I settled onto the bed and waited for the laptop to boot up. After a few rips of the comb through my locks, I stopped his hand. “You don’t have to do anymore.”
Giovanni held the comb hostage. “But I want to.”
“It hurts, and I don’t wanna be bald by the time you’re done.”
“Tell me how to do it.”
This boy was not giving in without a fight. With a shaky sigh, I granted his request.
I perused Mrs. Vitali’s social media profile on the laptop while Giovanni worked.
“You lose a lot of hair.” He stared at the strands that clung to his fingers.
“I always do when I’m stressed.” My mouth watered with every one of Mrs. Vitali’s decadent dessert posts. “I think I need to get a job with your mom.”
Sweeping the hair over my shoulder, he made way for a trail of kisses down my neck. “I missed you so much today.”
I shut my eyes and shivered as his lips discovered a weak place at the base of my neck. “Me too.”
He laughed and tried to replicate my reaction a second time.
“What did you do while I was away?”
“I played basketball with Kai and the guys.”
“Did you have fun?”
“Eh, it was okay.” He hummed against my skin. “You smell so good.”
I twisted around to greet his lips with a warmer welcome and let the laptop slide off my lap onto the pillow. Giovanni kneeled onto the bed slowly with his lips still attached to mine when Mom caught us.
“Uh-uh! Y’all better make room for Jesus.” She separated us by force and glared at Giovanni. “Keep your lips and anything else that belongs to you away from my daughter. Don’t make me send you home, little boy! Get off her bed and get a chair.”
Mom was so embarrassing. I missed Selena keeping her busy, but Saturday nights were club nights.
Giovanni stood rigidly and smoothed his dark blue T-shirt. Reaching for the comb from my nightstand, he gripped it tightly. And like a baby deer, he stalked the trigger-happy huntress watching him with contempt until I returned from Selena’s office with the rolling computer chair to accommodate him.
Giovanni balanced himself self-consciously onto the chair’s edge, and Mom backed out of my room.
I played Giovanni’s favorite upbeat song to cheer him up.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, rolling his chair closer to reach his lips from my perch on the bed. The poor guy kept his eyes glued to the doorway the entire time. “Do you wanna take a break? Are you hungry? I can make us something.”
Finally, the fear melted away from his face. “Yes.”
Giovanni helped me cook his first Bajan (Barbadian) meal—shrimp and rice. It was one of my favorites Dad used to make when I was little, and the first dish I ever learned to cook.
Giovanni deveined the shrimp while I husked and washed the tomatillos, then popped them in the oven to roast. “Are your grandparents still alive?”
“Yes. We are really close to my papá’s parents, but I never meet my other nonnos before.”
“Are they still alive?”
“I do not know. My ma never talks about them,” he said, adding a cleaned shrimp to a glass bowl and reaching for another.
Mom kept a watchful eye on us during the commercial breaks of her murder documentary.
I tossed bacon into a heated pan when an idea struck me. “You know what we should do? We should look for criminal records on your parents. That’s public record, right?”
Giovanni gulped and lowered the paring knife to the cutting board. The furrow in his brow called me out for my insensitivity.
“Sorry. I just—”
“No. It is a good idea. I never thought of it.” Avoiding my eyes, he finished with the last of the shrimp. “I bought the cameras last night.”
After washing my hands, I put a pot on for rice and prepared the spice blend for the shrimp. “Good. When do they arrive?”
“On Tuesday.” Giovanni paused at the sink and exhaled a deep breath before scrubbing his hands clean.
“So, what are your grandparents like?” I asked, hoping to divert his mind to happier thoughts. “Is your dad a lot like your nonno?”
He grinned and shook his head. “My nonno makes jewelry. He is very quiet, but he likes to laugh. My pa makes him laugh...a lot.”
“And your nonna?”
Washing the knife and cutting board, he started on the onion and green bell pepper. “My babbo is like her. You would like her. She can dance.” I smiled to myself at his words. “When I was little, she used to take care of me and let me play with the baby goats. I miss the baby goats.”
“They keep goats in the city?”
He smirked. “No. They lived in Chianti, in Toscana. She and my nonno would sell the goat hair for cashmere before they moved to the city.”
I gave the bacon a stir. “Did they cut off their hair like they do with sheep?”
“No. When it is loose, they brush it. Then, they sort it and prepare it to sell.”
“Is that what I remind you of whenever you comb my hair?”
He laughed. “No. I think your hair is more soft and nice.”
“You’re so lucky. I’ve never met my grandparents. All I know about them is what my parents have told me.”
“You can share my nonnos with me,” he said. “I want them to meet you.”
“Do they know any English?” I turned the bacon over.
“They know some words, but I can translate for you.”
With a sorrowful sigh, he said, “I wish now I could live there and here at the same time.”
AFTER DINNER, WE RETURNED to my room to search every online Italian database for criminal links or arrest records for Luca or Francesca Vitali with no results.
“Hey. Did you find out anything about your mom’s sister?”
“I asked my papá. She died very young. He told me not to ask my ma because it would make her sad. Maybe it is not important since she is dead.”
If it was so long ago, why wouldn’t his mom want her son to know about his aunt, her only sibling, or his grandparents?
I folded the pillow behind me and straightened my legs. “What kind of work did your dad do in Milan?”
Giovanni twirled in the chair. “He was an accountant for a lawyer and a modeling agency.”
I stifled a laugh at the vision of his dad surrounded by models, photographers, and fashion and fake-coughed it away. “Really? Do you remember anything else?”
“No.”
I tapped the pen against my chin. “Tell me about the person who called. What did their voice sound like? Did he speak in English or Italian?”
“English,” he said with a shrug. “I cannot describe his voice.”
“Okay.” I glanced over my list of questions to determine where to begin. “Do you remember the name of the law firm and modeling agency your dad worked for?”
“The law firm, no, but the other place is closed now.”
“What was the name of it?”
“Astro.” His bouncing leg shook the bed and the laptop. “It was the last place he worked before we moved here. Astro Management,” he corrected, stopping his anxious foot thumping under the insistence of my hand on his knee.
Giovanni was right. It had closed and due to a scandal so shocking that not even Giovanni could have anticipated it. Taking control of the mouse pad, he clicked open an Italian article and read as much as he could stomach. It wasn’t until I noticed the paling of his skin, the distress in his eyes, and his fingers anxiously twisting the hair at his temple that I realized we’d stumbled onto something serious.
“What does it say?”
“It is not good,” he said. “It says it closed for prostitution and human trafficking.”
Needing to understand what he’d read, I translated the article into English. I regretted instantly allowing my curiosity to get the best of me. The details of the allegations launched at the former agency’s owner and employees turned my stomach upside down.
Hundreds of children and teens were transported globally and exploited under the guise of modeling, some lost forever. They would organize photoshoots, runway shows, and fashion events, advertising their merchandise to potential pedophile clients while maintaining the front of an honest business.
How long had Giovanni’s dad worked for the company before he found out? Had he taken part in the abuse? If so, why wasn’t he in jail? Was the law firm he once worked for connected to it somehow?
I added each question as it came to mind, unable to wrap my head around his dad working for a criminal organization that trafficked human beings, other people’s kids. I shuddered inside when I recalled our first meeting. He said I was pretty. I was freaking out, and he wasn’t even related to me.
Sucking in a sharp breath, my eyes inched their way to Giovanni. His disturbed gaze locked on the computer screen.
I willed myself to console him, to say something, anything. My brain failed me. I squeezed his chilled, clammy hand. “We don’t have to keep looking into this if you don’t want to,” I said once I recovered my voice. I closed the pages and logged off. “I bet your dad had nothing to do with this. I mean, he was an accountant, right? He probably didn’t even know anything about it. If he had, he might be in jail right now. This gives us a clue. That article was written four years ago, so the blackmailer has to know your dad from that time, right? You said they were speaking Italian. That proves it...I think.”
Giovanni nodded stiffly.
“It’ll be okay. We’ll keep looking,” I assured. My imagination conjured up somber-eyed children and teens, sinking me deeper into the quicksand of despair he’d already surrendered to.
I embraced him as much to comfort myself as to comfort him. Giovanni pulled away and rose from his seat, his forlorn gaze searching my room for relief. But we were powerless—powerless to unlearn what we’d discovered, terrified to uncover more, and devoured by a never-ending stream of uncertainty.
I couldn’t stop cringing at the thought of his father being a sex offender, a rapist.
Had I not suggested we look into his dad’s old job, he could have been spared the burden of a mind loaded with shock and repulsion. I wished I would’ve investigated on my own and somehow eased him into it.
Standing up, I hugged his rigid body.
“Jubilee, it’s getting late,” Mom said from the hallway.
I separated from him and pulled on my shoes.
We boarded the elevator. An awkward silence electrified the atmosphere until we landed on the lobby floor. My heart buckled under the pressure I’d loaded onto myself—to come up with some magical explanation for what we’d found before we had to say goodbye. I wished it were that easy.
“Giovanni.” His gloomy eyes met mine for an instant before falling to the sandy-tiled floor. “If–If you need to talk it out, I’m here. Just call me.”
“What do we do?” he asked, crossing his arms tightly around himself.
“I...can keep looking into it without you, if you want.”
“No. I want to continue together.” He swallowed away the tears on the brink of exposure and hugged me for a long time. “Thank you for your help.”
The lobby door opened. Giovanni released me.
I waited for the young Indian couple to board the elevator behind us. “Do you wanna take a break from it for a little while?”
Giovanni’s skin took on a greenish hue at the thought. “I do. But I need to know who my father is. What if he knew about everything? What if he did something to those children?”
“Maybe your dad could tell you. Maybe you could tell him you’re interested in the modeling industry. That could at least open the door to get him talking.”
Giovanni frowned. “I cannot look at him, Joy. How can I talk to him about it?”
“Give the shock a few days to wear off. Your dad is innocent until proven guilty, right? So, let’s focus on proving his innocence.”
Giovanni’s face reddened. “I do not want to go home.” His voice shook.
A cramp paralyzed my heart at his words. I wished he could have stayed. I wished I could have wiped his memory. I wished we had the answers. I wished the truth would come to us quickly and wash away the guilt from his father’s name. All I ever did was wish for the impossible. I knew, as well as Giovanni, that if his parents were being blackmailed, the secret had to be horrific, or else they would have sought police help already.
I threw my arms around Giovanni and held him as he shattered into a million pieces. I cried with him, ignoring the other tenants coming and going.
I feared for the dangerous disconnection his heart was already making from the man he loved and admired. Once those links were broken, reconnecting them again wouldn’t be easy.
Giovanni’s phone rang. Unearthing it from his pocket, he said, “It is my ma.” He sniffed. “Goodnight, bella.”
I kissed his lips one last time.
Answering the call, Giovanni pushed open the door and made his lonely journey home.