"Padre," I say over the phone to my father.

Roberto Cavalli must be pacing back and forth because I can hear the rhythmic cadence of his steps. "Antonio. What is it now?"

He thinks there's some disaster. There often is, but the last one involved Sebastian, some illicit substances, and several trays of desserts at Cavalli's, and this one is of a far more serious nature. In fact, the last one seems more of brotherly hijinks than any genuine crisis. "I know who the leak is."

"Who is it?" he demands. "Who tipped off the feds about the shipments?"

I pause. If I tell him it's Christina... I had been so prepared to take out my wrath on her. Yet I never paused to confront her about it. "Meet me at the house at noon tomorrow. You know the lines aren't secure. The feds could hear that we know and whisk their informant away."

An irritated sigh, but he acquiesces nonetheless. "Very well. Arrivederci, Antonio."

"Ciao." I hang up the landline, putting it back in its cradle. The compound is big enough - and old enough - that the sound echoes through the room. Who still uses landline phones, with cords nonetheless?

Then I assess my plans. Guards are always patrolling every corner of this estate, an old hideaway in upstate New York that my father doesn't know about. He thinks it's a run-down storage warehouse and I'm content to let him keep thinking that way. It makes for a nice lair to escape his wrath sometimes.

Christina is here. The thought keeps popping up in my head, though I haven't seen her since I ordered Paulie to deposit her in a room and then report back to me. Her presence haunts this place, and I swear I can smell her floral perfume. I should talk to her. But how would I explain what I've done? How would I explain the person I have become?

Katerina Devereaux - or Steele, I guess she is now - is here, too. But I can't dwell on that. I can't dwell on the way I said I would never involve myself in kidnapping women or children and have now essentially done both.

It's not a kidnapping. It's a bargain. A deal... with human lives as bargaining chips. Am I turning into my father because I want to be, or because I have no choice in this life to become anyone else?

The thought sickens me. Yet I know nothing else but this life. Where could I go?

"Signor Cavalli," Zia Maria says, barging into the kitchen with a broom. "This place looks like it hasn't been cleaned in weeks."

I glance at the calendar hanging on the wall. "You would be wrong about that, I just had it cleaned yesterday, so I don't know what you're doing here."

She puts the broom down next to a dustpan that looks like it's seen better days. "I came here because I heard about who else is here."

I sigh. "News travels fast among the Cavalli's, I see."

Zia Maria is my father's younger sister. He has a soft spot for her, even though she's not technically in the family business anymore. She married out to an accountant and they live a humble life in New Jersey with three children. Since her children are all grown up now, she sometimes likes to come to New York to harass - I mean, show her concern for - us.

"Of course it does," she says with a huff. "You think your Auntie Rhea doesn't gossip either? She tells me everything. And I mean everything. Far too much."

I almost laugh. "So what, did you come here to stage an intervention?"

She rolls her eyes. "I've long given up on telling grown men what to do. In my experience, they are too bullheaded to listen, anyways."

She isn't wrong, really. I won't deny that most of the men in my family lean towards the stubborn side. "You're right about that."

"Have you eaten yet?" Now that what she and I would consider niceties are out of the way, she cuts straight into the meat of the conversation, behaving in the way of any Italian aunt by pressing food and drink onto me whether I say I'm hungry or not. "I made some lasagna. It's heating up in the oven."

"Really?" My stomach growls as if on cue. Traitor. Here I thought I could leave, but not after the mention of my Zia Maria's lasagna. Never after that. "What about cannoli?"

She shoots me a look like, do you have to ask?

"Right," I say. "Lead the way."

She huffs and goes toward the kitchen. As we walk through the halls, I hear two women's voices. Something clenches in my gut, at the sound of Christina's laugh, and it's not just hunger pangs. But a deeper sort of desire, a more vital sort of appetite.

Somehow, I have the feeling I won't be hearing her laugh again, for a long, long time. Not if this plan works, and not even if it goes sideways.

When I enter the kitchen, my suspicions are confirmed. The room falls dead silent as Zia Maria busies herself with sweeping the floor, humming an old Italian operetta to herself and giving me absolutely no help.

Christina's eyes meet mine, a mixture of confusion, vulnerability, and defensiveness swirling in those brown irises. "Antonio."

The woman next to her is Katerina Steele. I can tell that not just from the fact that she's heavily pregnant -- really, the longer I look at her the worse I feel about having gotten her roped into this whole mess in the first place, she looks like she might give birth at any moment and there is only one doctor here -- but from the emerald ring she wears on her finger, next to a wedding band. She carries herself like a princess: shoulders back, spine straight even with the added weight she's carrying, and her voice and gestures are prim and proper, her hands neatly folded in front of her as she looks between me and Christina. A hand lifts to play with the cross necklace at her throat, the diamonds shining on the pendant. Pretty enough, with her hazel eyes and chestnut hair cut at shoulder-length, but... she's no Christina.

"Christina." I glance at the counter to avoid meeting her gaze, seeing two mostly eaten bowls of cereal there. It will break me. She will destroy me, ruin me even more than I have already been, and it will be the end of everything I have worked so hard for. Everything I have worked so hard to build, to keep, to kill for and fight for. Yet was it even worth the effort? Am I losing it or rejecting it? "There's a lasagna in the oven."

"I know." She folds her arms across her chest and angles her body slightly in front of Katerina though they're roughly the same height and build - or would be if Katerina wasn't over eight months pregnant. Protective, even of new friends. Another reason we wouldn't be suited for each other. "Your aunt told us."

Zia Maria continues her humming and sweeping as though nothing is happening. "So there's an 'us' now, is there?"

"Yes, the two prisoners have formed a mutiny," Katerina says from behind Christina's shoulder, her pretty smile tense. She's lovely in a delicate, fragile kind of way. Christina, on the other hand, appears far less breakable yet the look in her eyes suggests otherwise. It suggests that something I've done has pushed her beyond the edge of repair.

"You're not a prisoner here, Christina," I say, ignoring the frisson of guilt wrapping around my heart, weighing it down.

"Really?" Her brown eyes widen and she gestures around her for dramatic effect. "Because this place sure looks like a prison, Antonio."

I fold my arms across my chest, unable to handle the truth that she flings at me like a dagger. "You're mistaken."

"No, I don't think I am," she says, and tears spring to her eyes, her voice thickening with sorrow. "I think that I've always been exactly right about who you were, and I refused to see it. You told me you didn't kidnap people! Well, who is this right here, in your kitchen, of your freaking compound? Katerina Steele. Here against her will. Tell me that there is some kind of explanation, Antonio!"

My arms drop from my chest. I want to embrace her and tell her lies that will make this all better. But we both know that it won't happen. We both know too much for us ever to be together. It's not the truth that binds us together, but lies. The truth just gets in the way, piling up between us like bricks in a wall. "I can't."

Christina looks like she wants to spit in my face, but instead, she just pushes past me and storms out of the kitchen.

Behind me, Zia Maria takes a lasagna out of the oven. My stomach has knotted into a tight fist, and I follow Christina outside.

"Did I not make it perfectly clear that I don't want to talk to you?" she says, her voice brittle, each word sounding like it might snap into broken glass and cut me.

"No, you never said that. You just left," I say, my fingernails digging into my palms.

"Screw you." She's crying in earnest now, and yet all I know is that if I tried to embrace her, to wipe her tears away, I would only be digging the knife in further. This is what I've known all my life, isn't it? That I'm unwelcome? Unwanted? Certainly not loved. "You told me that you weren't like Lucas. But at least Lucas is a good guy, even if he did lie to me!"

That was a low blow. I feel it in my gut, as harsh as any sucker punch. Our voices ricochet and echo in the hallway, before being muffled by the heavy tapestries and carpeting. I say nothing, unable to stomach my own presence, my own thoughts. Drowned in self-loathing.

"What is this place anyway?" she asks. "A prison for all the women that you use and discard?"

"I never laid a hand on Katerina," I respond. "She got tangled up with the wrong family, that's all."

"I'm not talking about Katerina!" Christina shouts. "I want to know what I did that was so wrong that you threw me in here."

"You want to talk about wrongdoing and lies, Christina, go ahead. Tell me why you're in contact with Priscilla Martell." I point one finger at her and she flinches.

She flinches. Like she thinks I'm going to slap her across the face, or grab her arm so hard she bruises. Why should I be surprised? She just found out I'm capable of kidnapping and holding a pregnant woman against her will. What else does she think I could do?

"I... I was scared," she says, the fight leaving her body. Somehow, the vulnerability in her gaze, in her slumped shoulders and curved spine, makes me feel even worse pain than any of her severe words. "She threatened me. She promised to ruin my life if I didn't..."

"If you didn't betray me," I say flatly. "Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you come to me?"

The silence hangs in the air, filling with all her possible answers.

Because she was never mine. She was never loyal to me, to begin with. She had no real reason to trust me other than my own wish that she would, and I was so blinded by that desire and desperation that I thought it counted as reality.

"I could have helped you," I whisper, but it rings hollow as we both turn and walk away. Would I really have done it?