Arcadia Burns

FLIGHT


OUT ON THE RUNWAY, a plane began its ascent into the sky, and the world around Rosa fell silent.

No sign of Alessandro anywhere.

As she walked through the departures hall and past the panoramic window, she blocked out the voices of her six-man escort. For an endless moment she saw only, in slow motion, the aircraft taking off, the midday sun sparkling on its white fuselage, and behind it the majestic cliffs of the Bay of Palermo.

Where is he?

She knew the six men weren’t going to take their eyes off her. They were trying to force her to listen to their advice and questions and warnings. Rosa heard nothing but the beating of her own heart, the blood pulsing in her temples.

Hair flying behind her, she raced ahead while her advisers followed close behind, talking, gesticulating, pestering her. Ticks in the thick protective coat she’d wrapped around herself these last few months.

Half a dozen men in expensive suits, handmade shoes, and silk ties, with their hair well cut and their hands manicured—conventional businessmen, and cleaner than clean to any stranger who happened to set eyes on them. But in reality just six of the countless criminals who looked after the fortune of the Alcantara clan.

Rosa’s fortune.

She should have taken an interest in it. Instead she met her advisers’ questions and demands with indifference—as if she had nothing to do with her own money. Anyway, what the six of them cared about most was their own share. For reasons that irked them, they were now, for better or worse, at the mercy of an eighteen-year-old girl’s whims.

At least Rosa knew what to make of that. Refusing to talk was a little like stealing from them. She knew about stealing things—it was difficult to break a habit you’d come to enjoy. Silence equals stealing equals an adrenaline fix. That was about as much math as she could cope with in an overcrowded airport.

Her blond hair cascaded in wild confusion over her slender shoulders. It resisted brushing the same way her pale complexion resisted tanning. Nothing would take away the shadows around her eyes, and they’d become even darker in the last year. Some people thought it was makeup, kohl for a moderate Goth look, but Rosa had been born with them. They were part of her, like so many other things that she couldn’t shake off. From her nail biting to her neuroses. And her origins, along with the addictions that came with them.

Where the hell was Alessandro? He should have been here. I’ll come see you off, he’d said.

One of the men caught up and tried to block her way. Block him out; act deaf. His efforts to attract her attention made him seem like a ridiculous mime. She dodged him and hurried on.

Damn you, Alessandro!

It was four months ago, last fall, that she’d come to Sicily to escape the past. And now, in mid-February, she was taking off again. This time to escape from the present, from this island.

By all appearances, she was the heiress to an empire of companies. Since her eighteenth birthday two weeks ago, she had also become legally responsible for what her business managers did. It made Rosa’s head spin to think what it meant to be head of a Cosa Nostra clan.

Security was coming up ahead of her. No Alessandro anywhere in sight. The bastard.

She quickened her pace, ignoring the piece of paper that one of the six men was holding in front of her. At the last moment she murmured something like “Back in a few days,” and breathed a sigh of relief when she had left the six men behind on the other side of the security gate.

Rosa looked around her. The six of them were retreating toward the exit, swearing. She was searching for one person in particular among the crowd in departures. A face that she had come to know better than her own.

Had she passed him and missed seeing him in her haste? Surely not. Had he hung back when he saw her escort? That was more likely. A Carnevare in a relationship with an Alcantara—many of the other clans still regarded that as a declaration of war. Rosa and Alessandro knew that plenty of members of their own families were saying, off the record, that both their corpses should be sunk in the sea. For Rosa, this could have been an exciting game—exactly the element of risk that she needed for an adrenaline fix—if she hadn’t been keenly aware that, as the two of them walked their tightrope, they could fall to the depths below. In the end either they would have to break up, or she would have to risk everything for love.

The six men beyond the barrier put up with Rosa’s disinterest in them because they knew that, in the long run, they would derive greater authority from it. But her relationship with a Carnevare was a black mark against her. The Alcantaras and the Carnevares had been enemies forever, and only a mysterious pact between them, dating from ancient times, had kept them from wiping out each other’s families long ago. Out of necessity, the two clans managed to coexist. But most of them would never tolerate an alliance made by two teenagers in bed.

How long are the others going to stand by watching? Rosa had once asked.

Until we can force them to close their eyes to it, Alessandro had replied. And then hope they never open them again.

It was Alessandro who really understood what it meant to be capo of a Mafia clan. Rosa had become head of her family against her will. Alessandro, however, had fought for his position. He had killed his parents’ murderers, and over the past few weeks other enemies had fallen silent one way or another. He was keeping his options open through self-protection. While Rosa was on the run from responsibility, Alessandro faced hostility, warnings, and threats with determination.

Shit. He really wasn’t here. She fought off her disappointment with a mixture of anger and anxiety. It made her stomach ache.

Calm down. It’s not like you’re addicted to him.

She adjusted the strap of her shoulder bag. As she did so, her black turtleneck stretched taut over her breasts—which, goodness knew, wasn’t an everyday event. They’ll get bigger, her sister, Zoe, had said once, and Rosa used to pray that they would. Now Zoe was in her grave, and Rosa’s chest was still nothing to brag about.

Whenever Alessandro was late, or didn’t call to say he’d be late, she feared for him. What they were doing was crazy. They had discussed going away together, leaving Sicily and everything else behind them. But Rosa didn’t want him to give up anything for her sake. She would never make demands. If she really did want to go someday, she certainly wouldn’t make him go with her. That wasn’t her way. She’d rather be miserably unhappy without him than see him regretful. There were some risks even she wasn’t willing to take.

There was still a good hour left before her flight. She showed her ticket and went into the business-class lounge. It had armchairs and sofas arranged in groups, a lavish buffet with options for vegetarians like Rosa herself, and rows of computer terminals with online access. Loudspeakers in the ceiling played classical music. And there was coffee, of course.

Several businessmen sized her up. Her turtleneck came down to her thighs, and she wore it with black jeans. She must look as if she’d rattle if anyone shook her, she thought, with her hip bones sticking out and her legs so thin—far too thin. But obviously some of the management guys in the armchairs didn’t share her opinion. Rosa’s lips formed a heartfelt, silent Pedophile! and then gave a sweet smile.

A young man’s head appeared above one of the partitions dividing the groups of seating. It turned in another direction, disappeared, came up again. He was looking straight into her eyes. His own were green and bright. If she hadn’t known him already, she could have invented a whole life for him at the sight of those eyes.

His dimples deepened, his wide smile as infectious as the day they first met. His face made the world a better place.

“I don’t believe it!” She flung her arms around his neck; her bag jammed between them, so she wrenched it free and pressed close to him again. In fact, a little closer than before. Might as well give the others in the lounge something worth seeing.

He kissed her, looked at her, beaming, and kissed her again. He often did that. A short kiss, a smile, a long kiss. Like a secret Morse code.

“What are you doing here?” She sounded more breathless than she would have liked.

He waved a ticket in the air. “I bought this.”

“But you said you weren’t coming with me!”

“I’m not. But I wanted to see you. Without those hangers-on out there.”

She stared at him. “You mean you paid four thousand euros for a ticket just so they’d let you into the business-class lounge?”

“My father paid three times that for a set of golf clubs. This is a brilliant investment by comparison.”

She pressed her lips to his and felt for his tongue until they were both out of breath. A woman on the sofa near them got up and made her husband move to a seat farther away.

Rosa felt a cool tingling inside her, glanced at her hand, and saw reptilian scales forming on her fingers. Her skin looked translucent as the transformation began under it. Startled, she pulled back, saw concern in his gaze, and knew what he had just seen in her blue eyes. Her pupils would have narrowed to slits.

Not now, she thought in alarm.

Damn hormones.