PlotlumeWith a fever of a hundred and four, I went up to the penthouse card room of Carlo, heir to the Mafia family, to bring him something for his hangover.
The fireplace had the room at a hundred and twenty degrees. I went to push open a window for air, and his personal dealer, Bev, stepped in to stop me.
"Ma'am, I have a phobia of drafts. Wind makes my heart race. That window can't be opened."
I was afraid I'd collapse from heatstroke right there. I pushed her aside and threw open the French window.
In the middle of the night, back from inspecting the docks, Carlo kicked open my bedroom door and demanded answers.
"Bev has a phobia of drafts. Do you know that forty-two minutes and eight seconds of night wind put her heart into arrhythmia and sent her to a private hospital?"
"Carlo, do you think my life is worth less than paper? Fifty minutes baking in that heat and I nearly passed out. Have you lost your mind?"
Carlo rolled his cigar between his fingers and laughed.
"I didn't think it through. You were treated badly, my dear."
That night Carlo gently coaxed me into drinking a glass of warm milk to help me sleep.
But when I woke up, I was locked inside a transparent bulletproof glass water tank in the middle of the estate.
All around the tank stood the family's capos, champagne in hand, enjoying the show.
Carlo had his arm around Bev's slender waist. He raised his glass to me through the glass.
"Too hot for you? Today we'll fill it with cold spring water, and you can soak as long as you like!"
I switched on my waterproof watch, panned it slowly across every face in the room, and then connected to the Godfather's private line in Sicily.
"Papa, before dawn, I want every one of these people at the bottom of the sea."
1
I ended the call on my waterproof watch.
The dozen capos outside the tank roared with laughter.
A capo with a full beard pressed his glass against the bulletproof glass and pointed at my face, jeering.
"Look at that, everybody, the stray's gone crazy from the cold!"
"The old Godfather in Sicily got blown to pieces on his yacht three months ago. They never found so much as a bone, and she's calling a dead man!"
The bald capo next to him slapped his thigh, laughing.
"An orphan married off in somebody else's place, and she really thinks she's a Sicilian princess? Dreaming in broad daylight!"
"Boss, I think the fever's cooked her brain. Better pour in more ice water to wake her up!"
Carlo took off his cashmere overcoat and draped it over Bev's shoulders.
He carried his champagne to the glass and tapped the outside of the tank with a finger that wore a gold ring.
"Is it cool enough for you now, my dear?"
"Last night a hundred and twenty degrees in the card room was too hot for you. How about ice water just above freezing? Enough to cool you off?"
I looked down at the thermometer on the inside wall of the tank.
The red line sat at thirty-four degrees, two above freezing.
The bone-chilling water had already risen past my calves.
I was burning with a hundred-and-four fever. My overheated blood met the freezing water, and every vessel in my body throbbed with pain.
My legs turned purple from the cold, and the muscles twitched uncontrollably.
I stumbled to the glass and pounded on the thick wall with both hands.
"Carlo! Let me out!"
"Last night the card room was a hundred and twenty degrees and I had a fever of a hundred and four. If I hadn't opened a window I would have collapsed from heatstroke right there!"
"What's wrong with opening a window to save myself? What gives you the right to do this to me?"
Carlo swirled his champagne and splashed it against the glass.
"Save yourself? Your life is a life, and Bev's isn't?"
"She has a phobia of drafts. She was out in cold wind for forty-two minutes, and the private hospital had to defibrillate her three times to bring her back!"
"You don't have one ounce of compassion. Putting you in the tank to clear your head, isn't that fair?"
Every ragged breath dragged at my chest, and a tearing pain spread through my lungs.
I couldn't hold myself up. I clutched my chest and slid down to my knees in the freezing water.
The bitter cold soaked straight through my skirt.
I looked up at Carlo through the glass, my nails digging into the seam of the tank.
"Carlo, I still have shrapnel in my lung from the bullets I took for you three years ago..."
"The doctor said I must never get chilled. Please, for the three bullets I took for you, let me out. I can't breathe..."
Carlo's fingers tightened on his glass.
He stared at my purple lips and took half a step forward.
Bev, beside him, suddenly pulled the cashmere coat off her shoulders and dropped it on the floor.
She pressed both hands to her chest, gasping for breath, tears rolling down her cheeks.
"Boss, please, let her out!"
"I'm worthless. A girl like me who clawed her way up from the bottom, even if I died of a draft in some hospital, nobody would care!"
"I shouldn't have gotten sick. I shouldn't have caused trouble for a lady like her. Just let me die!"
I pushed myself up against the glass and pointed at Bev, shouting.
"She's lying! Last night when I left the card room, I saw her with my own eyes, out on the terrace in the sea wind, flirting with some man on the phone!"
"She doesn't have any phobia. She never even set foot in a hospital!"
Carlo kicked over the champagne tower beside him.
Dozens of crystal glasses smashed on the marble floor.