CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“BACK FROM THE DEAD?”

SCARLETT DEL GATO

I was dressed in the burgundy dress Giovanni had bought for me the next day after the entire shopping mall debacle and I finished my outfit off with a pair of slip-on sneakers and a white hoody seeing that the clouds started to gather in the sky again.

I don’t want to take any chances if it rains.

I left my brown hair loose but kept a ribbon in my hair to keep the strands away from my face. The ribbon was the same colour as the burgundy dress and it complimented my hair while the dress complimented my green eyes.

I smooth down my dress, liking the feel of the soft material against the palms of my hands and thighs as I walked.

I grab the tote bag with the notebooks and pens inside of it up from the floor and pull it over my shoulder.

I was ready for the day despite me feeling a little nervous.

I don’t know how anyone would react to my sudden reappearance. I don’t even know how Eden would react, and that, right there, scared the living shit out of me. I don’t want my best friend to hate me for being gone and only to return after a few weeks of being missing, without any contact whatsoever, so I was quite nervous to see how everything would play out.

I make my way to the kitchen, frowning when I didn’t see Vito drinking a cup of coffee or playing on his phone. The kitchen was entirely empty, but I think Amelia was here because the kettle was busy boiling on the stove and the cups were ready as well as the sugar cubes and spoons, sitting on the kitchen island.

I sit down on my usual seat and was greeted by Amelia who sauntered into the kitchen with a big grin on her face. She takes the kettle off the stove and pours the water into one of the cups resting on the kitchen island, and pushed the cup toward me. “Good morning, Miss Scarlett.” She smiles.

“Morning, Amelia.” I return the smile.

Mikael, one of the guards around the mansion who was about Giovanni’s age also comes into the kitchen. He had his phone glued to his right ear while he was muttering profanities under his breath like someone pissed him off. By the look of the frown between his eyebrows, I’d say someone definitely pissed him off.

He mutters another curse word under his breath before ending the call. He props the phone in his jean pocket and grabs an apple from the fruit basket also on the kitchen island.

“Is everything okay?” I ask him.

Amelia watches him carefully too, wondering what his problem was.

He grunts in response, taking a bite out of the green apple before he storms out of the kitchen again without answering my question. I shrug, throwing a few sugar cubes into my coffee cup before I started to stir the coffee.

“Are they always this angry when picking up a phone?” I ask Amelia who nods.

“I’m afraid so, Miss Scarlett.”

“I already told you not to call me Miss!” I tell her, chuckling. “I’m not older than you and even if I was, I prefer Scarlett, please Amelia.”

“Apologies, Miss, uh, Scarlett.” She apologizes, smiling sweetly at me. “I’m not used to calling anyone by their names so it would take me a while to get used to it.”

Amelia was a pretty woman. She has freckles on her nose and it spread across her light pink cheeks. Her hair was short and blonde. She didn’t even have one single flaw. She was perfect. But why was she carrying around a tray of food and not modelling like I thought she would with her beauty?

“How did you end up working for the Castigliones, if I may ask?”

She smiles sadly my way before she started to wipe the kitchen island with an old but clean cloth. “I was working in a bakery an hour away from here but the Don saw some potential in me.” She says, tucking a strand of her luscious blonde hair behind her ear. “He took me in and let me be a chef for everyone here. I’ve been working here for about five years now.”

If she was working here for five years, why did it look like she wanted to be anywhere else but here? Surely they treated her with respect and they paid her well enough seeing that she still had that diamond necklace around her neck, hiding behind that apron of hers. So why did she look sad?

“Why do you look so sad then?”

She stops wiping the counter and looks at me. “Because the bakery I mentioned has been completely ruined. People who worked with me have been hurt and some have been slaughtered. It’s not nice seeing the place you loved for all those years just being ruined like it didn’t once matter.”

My heart stops beating inside my chest. That was the same bakery Giovanni mentioned the other day. The one Vincent and his gang broke down.

“What if your parents were sitting in that bakery and they just massacred them all like that? Would you have let it slide without any revenge whatsoever? Would you have gotten coffee with Vincent if you knew that he was the one who pulled the trigger on those people?”

I would’ve died if my family was hurt in that bakery. I can’t imagine what Amelia must be feeling right now. She knew people there and now the place is just remnants of what it used to be—ashes, if not anything less.

“Amelia, I am so sorry. I didn’t know.” I tell her, feeling my heart break for her when her eyes started to tear up. I wanted nothing more than to shoot up from my seat to comfort her, but Vito enters the kitchen before I could get a chance to do so.

He smiles at me, greeting me under his breath before he plops himself down next to me. He had his phone in his hand and once the cup of coffee Amelia made for him was in front of him, he started to twirl his finger around the rim again.

“Is it school that has you so worried?” Vito asks me.

I shake my head, seeing Amelia wiping away her tears with the back of her hands. She turns around then, wiping her nose with a tissue she had stuffed in her apron. I felt for her. I really did.

No wonder Giovanni wanted to kill Vincent. They murdered innocent people. It also occurred to me that it wasn’t the Castigliones who caused the massacres in Old Bob’s. It might have been the White Pistols.

“Not really.” I tell Vito, looking at him so he won’t notice Amelia’s tears.

“Why does that not sound so convincing?”

“Okay, fine.” I start, thinking of a lie I can tell him and fast. I don’t want him to scold Amelia for showing emotion in front of me. “I’m worried that I’ll be the talk of the town today seeing that I’ve literally risen from the grave.” I take a sip of my coffee, scrunching up my face when it was a little too sweet today. “Eden is going to be so confused and maybe even angry…”

Vito smiles apologetically at me. “I unfortunately can’t help you there.” He says, putting his phone face-down onto the kitchen island. “You are going to be looked at and talked about today, but it’s up to you to ignore them and to tell the only person you care about that you’re okay. No one else has to know what has happened to you except for Eden.”

I nod, biting my lip. “I’m still nervous though.”

“It’s okay to be nervous, Scarlett.” Vito says, looking at me. “You’re going to school after your brother died. They will be sceptical at first, wondering how you survived for so long without making contact with anyone, but once the shock of your return subsides, you’ll not be considered as the talk of the town anymore. Just give it a few days and it will blow over.”

I nod, thinking about Jason when he said that Jeremiah would be there too. It made me feel somewhat at ease knowing that I will at least have someone to be with if Eden and everyone else wants to avoid me.

“Jeremiah’s going to be there too. I think I am going to be okay.” I tell him.

“Yes. He’s going to be there too and if you ever feel the need to come home, jus ring me up and I’ll send someone to pick you up. Don’t hesitate to call.”

I smile thankfully at him, twirling my finger around the rim of the cup too just like he did. “Thank you, Vito.”

He only smiles, going back to playing on his phone again.

I didn’t hear or see Giovanni this morning so I asked Vito if he was going to be the one to drop me off. “Are you going to be the one to drop me off?” I ask him after I finished my cup of coffee.

I was walking over to the sink, setting the cup into it before rinsing it out.

“Unfortunately not.” He says, shaking his head. “Giovanni will be doing that once he gets ready. He’s always late on Mondays. He’s not very fond of them.”

“Oh wow.” I mutter. “Just when I thought that my day couldn’t get any more stressful.” I chuckle.

Vito chuckles, running his hand through his tousled hair. “You’ll be okay.”

I make my way around the kitchen island again, grabbing my tote bag up from the floor. “Can I ask you something Vito?”

“Sure.” He says, setting his phone down onto the kitchen island.

“Do you think that your, uh, dad would like me?” I ask him, feeling nervousness bubble up inside me. “Or do you think he would chase me away when he finds out about my brother and what he did?”

I hated to stress over things I couldn’t control, but the question had to be asked to the most loyal brother out there. Giovanni soft soaps things and Vito… He says a thing like it is, without soft soaping anything.

Vito shrugs at my question. “I don’t know what would happen.” He answers truthfully. “But know this: you won’t have to worry about it. I will personally tell him that I was the one who brought you here. He’ll understand that and if not… he’ll just have to live with it because you are not going anywhere, Scarlett.”

Giovanni said something similar yesterday when we were sitting on the edge of the pool. He said that I wasn’t going anywhere, so I took that as a promise, hoping that their father wasn’t as bad as I thought.

Giovanni then saunters into the kitchen, his eyes locked on the tie that was undone and wrapped around his neck loosely. He curses under his breath, nearly pulling the entire thing off his neck before I stopped him.

“Let me just help you before you’re going to hang yourself with your own tie.” I chuckle, walking over to him.

I had to stand on my tip toes just to see what I was doing with his tie, but after a few folds and twists, it was around his neck in no time at all.

“How do you even know how to tie a fucking tie and I can’t even do it myself?” He groans, shaking his head at himself. “Ties suck.”

“I used to do it for my brother.” I tell him, forcing a smile when I talked about my brother like that in front of Giovanni. “I became a pro at it.”

Giovanni nods, his lips set in a firm line. “Shall we go before? I don’t want you to be late on your first day back.”

I nod and follow him out of the kitchen. He grab’s his Maserati’s keys from the bowl and leads me out of the house just like the last time—when we went shopping and the day ended up in a bloodbath.

Giovanni starts the Maserati once we were strapped in and ready to go and his car roars to life, sending that same jolt of electricity through my veins at the sound the car made.

“No guard today?” I ask Giovanni, looking in the rear-view and seeing no SUV following us today.

“You’ve got me.” He says with a smile. “You don’t need another guard.”

I turn to look at him, shooting him a dirty look. “Shall I remind you what happened the last time when you said that you had it under control? It turned out to be a freaking blood bath!”

His smile falters and I see his knuckles turning white around the steering wheel. I didn’t mean to lash out on him the way that I did, but the words just slipped from my mouth faster than I could prevent it. I felt bad.

“It won’t happen again.” He says, his words barely above a whisper. “But one thing I can promise you is that I will not hesitate to protect you when you are in danger. I won’t just shoot someone without a reason like I did with, uh, Vincent. But I will protect you when it’s necessary.”

I nod. “Just don’t forget to pick me up after. It’s a long walk from the school back to the mansion and not to mention that I am not very good at directions.”

I stare up at the sky, seeing more and more darkened clouds start to gather in the sky. It won’t be long before the first raindrops would start to fall. I feel a chill running down my spine at the thought.

“You don’t like the rain?” He asks, eyeing the darkened clouds too through the windshield.

“It’s not that.” I shake my head. “I always get this weird feeling that something bad is going to happen when it gets dark in the sky like that.” I explain to him.

He nods and looks at me briefly before his eyes go back to the road in front of him. “I can assure you that nothing bad is going to happen to you.”

“That’s kind of hard to believe seeing that whenever you’re around, something bad happens, like people getting shot.” I huff bitterly, but when I see his face pain, I immediately feel bad for being rude to him.

He straightens in the driver’s seat, clutching the steering wheel extra tighter as he focuses on the road in front of him.

Everything was getting to me: having to tell Eden that I am alive and I have to endure people’s stares and gossip today, and now the weather was acting up too and I can’t believe for a second that today is going to go as smoothly as Vito and Giovanni both assured me that it would be.

“I’m sorry, that was uncalled for.” I apologize to him. “The weather is just getting to me.” I avoid looking at him because I know if I do, I’ll feel bad all over again.  “The whole entire thing; going to school and telling Eden that I am alive, everything is just getting to me.”

He shrugs, smiling at the road in front of him without looking at me. “It’s okay.” He says. “I deserved that. Bad things happen when I’m around you.”

I wanted to tell him that it wasn’t true, that bad things don’t happen when he’s around, but I also couldn’t open my mouth to object.

A part of me knew that bad things only happened when he was around like Vincent getting shot… but he also protected me that day from Vincent and what might’ve happened if he wasn’t there.

I should’ve thanked him for protecting me, but my mouth was glued shut.

Nobody said a thing after that.

The rest of the drive to school was completely silent except for the rumbling roar of the engine and the wind flying past us as we drove.

I release a deep breath when Giovanni’s Maserati drives into the parking lot of the school. And to make matters worse, Eden was already there, standing against a pillar and smoking a cigarette.

“And that sigh?” Giovanni asks, talking for the first time since our awkward encounter a few minutes ago.

“That’s Eden right there.” I tell him, pointing to where Eden was standing, leaning against the pillar of the school.

Her blonde hair was now cut shorter than her usual long hair she always had, and gushed about, and she was wearing a short-sleeved shirt despite the cool breeze today.

“Will you be okay?” He asks me and I shrug.

“I don’t know, but if I don’t at least try, I will never know how the outcome will be.”

Giovanni stops the Maserati in an empty parking spot and turns off the ignition. I grab my bag from the backseat of the car and place my hand on the door handle without opening it just yet.

“I’m really sorry about what I said earlier. It was harsh and rude, and I feel really bad. It’s just my nerves getting to me, and—” I pause to take a breath and I feel him squeeze my free hand.

“It’s okay.” He says, ever so gently. “Just have a nice day and try not to be nervous.”

“Okay.” I mutter before getting out of the car.

I look at Giovanni through the window and see him flash me a reassuring smile before he starts the car and driving out of the parking lot.

My stomach churns when I realise that the roar of the engine made everyone turn to look at me, including Eden from all across the parking lot.

She frowns when she sees me standing with my hand clutching my school bag tightly, but when she realises that I’m alive after all, her cigarette drops to the ground and the next thing I know, she rushes to me before pulling me into a death-grip.

“Scarlett?” She questions when she pulls away. “How are you even here right now? I thought you were gone!”

“I’m sorry. Things are just very hectic. I should’ve called, should’ve explained where I was…”

She shakes her head furiously. “I don’t even know what to say. How are you here right now? When I heard on the news that you were missing, I died a little inside because they never mentioned something about you being alive, just missing without a trace. I attended your memorial for crying out loud, and now you’re here in front of me like I’ve lost my damn mind!”

“Well, I’m here now. Safe and sound.” I tell her, squeezing her hand. “Can we go; I don’t like the looks I’m getting.”

She nods, and pulls me into the school building, out of a lot of peering eyes.

Once we were inside the building, Eden leans into me and whispers; “you need to tell me everything. And I mean everything.”

“I know, and I will.” I promise her. “Let me just survive the first day, first, before I tell you everything. I reckon you’ll need popcorn and a lot of time, because what I’m going to tell you…”

“I’m prepared for anything.” She says, leading me to the office so I can grab my subject list and the things I already did miss this year.

The first person I saw when I entered the office, was Jeremiah. He notices me and bows his head towards me before he leaves the office.

He was here after all, just like Vito said he would be.