Page 1 of Twisted Obsession

Prologue

Giovanna

Present Day

Itried to relax into the noises and smells I’d grown up with, and let their calming presence wash over me. I wasn’t sure why I’d felt so relaxed a second before, but was now consciously trying to slow my breathing and heartrate down. On my next inhale, I held my breath and counted to five, before letting it blow slowly through the small fissure my lips had created.

Letting my body sag slightly and concentrating within myself, I understood that the well-rehearsed measures I used to curb the panic attacks I’d spent most of my adolescence enduring, were beginning to show a result.

Again, I took in a deep lungful of air. Although the breath felt calming, I couldn’t find the aroma of sea kale, nor the strong salty taste I was searching for. But the wind was strong, I could hear the commotion it was making as it haphazardly flung itself around the sheltered area, so it had more than likely carried the recognisable aromas away.

Bovalino beach had become a firm favourite of mine nearly ten years before. When, as a child of eleven, I’d first crossedover the rocky ground of the cliffs that surrounded it and placed my white, T-bar sandals onto the soft, almost white sand. With my brothers flanking me, the baby of the family, we’d been introduced to the children of the Giordano family. There had been five of them altogether, but just the three of us in attendance and instinctively I’d felt Romeo and Gabriel bristle.

It hadn’t been an entirely blissful first meeting, unlike, I assumed, children from normal families would find an arranged playdate. Although I hadn’t really understood the dynamics of our families back then, I more than understood them now. Our two families, the De Lucas and the Giordanos, were steeped in tradition, religion, obedience and rules, and normal was probably the one thing we could never be accused of.

What I had found on that day, though, was an instant bond with the two girls in the Giordano family. Without speaking a word to each other, as we stood listening to our testosterone-filled brothers and I’d cast my eyes over their beautiful white dresses and sandals matching my own, I knew that I’d found comrades. Then, as their ribbons blew about wildly on the salty breeze and the action caused errant hairs to fall from their place, ruining their Sunday best, I realised they might even be much needed allies. How right I’d been. The three of us had become firm friends over the years as we approached womanhood and had begun to take our discerned places in amongst the male dominated world we’d been born into.

What I didn’t understand, when a fight had broken out between my brother Romeo and Alessio Giordano on that sunny afternoon away from our parents’ eyes, was the strange connection I’d felt to Dante Giordano, the youngest son, as his hand slipped into mine and his little sister Mia’s, to lead us away to safety.

Subsequently, as he’d turned to meet my questioning stare and his unusual aqua coloured eyes had found mine, it hadstarted the preoccupation I knew I would always have toward the boy and the man he’d turned into.

It was as that memory garnered momentum in my mind, that I felt my heartrate accelerate once again. I exhaled faster than I would have liked had I been in control of myself, as I attempted to extinguish the recollection, and like I had over the past few years, push all thoughts of him away.

I took a moment to focus and appreciate the stormy skies I could sense I was captured in. The strength of the wind had very obviously increased. The force of its potency was sounding out louder in my ears and I relished the thought of having the beach to myself once the storm blew through. Knowing that, as we were in September, it would be short lived. The birds above me would be flying on the wind, catching the updrafts, and wheeling ever higher before plummeting as they played together. Inside my mind, I also felt like I was soaring with them. I wanted to turn around in a circle, with my arms outstretched as I absorbed the nature around me, but confusingly, I slowly became aware that I couldn’t.

Surprisingly, knowing the beach was private to the two of our families, I heard people speak to one side of me, and moved my head in the direction of the two voices.

‘…London.’ I knew the male voice I was straining to hear had said more, but all I caught was the one word.

What?I struggled with my confusion.

‘Time to make that call.’ A different male voice found my ears.

I turned my head sharply and after feeling a dull repetitive thud behind my eyes, I winced. Suddenly, I felt some of my long hair fall over my face and instinctively reached to move it, only to find that both of my arms were restricted. Concentrating hard, it was then that I understood they were captured by somesort of binding around my wrists and the pressure of seat arms underneath them.

Where am I?

Why am I sitting?

My eyes won’t open.

The beach I had conjured up in my mind dispersed and then vanished when I heard the voice again.

Trying as hard as I could, I still couldn’t keep up with the conversation I could now hear. But fear travelled through me when one sentence was spoken, and I understood it word for word.

‘I’ll keep Giovanna, until I’m satisfied my family is out of harm’s way.’

The conversation carried on for a while, then stopped abruptly, but in my head all I could make sense of was those few words.

I’d been taken. Was I the De Luca prize my brother had recently warned me about becoming?

Nausea and fear took hold of me.

‘What’s…’ The one word came out incoherently and I stopped trying to speak again instantly, when my tongue couldn’t formulate what I was trying to ask. Saliva embarrassingly dribbled from the corner of my mouth, and I flinched when someone else’s fingertip gently ran up my face, from my chin to the corner of my mouth, wiping it away.

‘Good… she’ll be awake by then.’ A strong, heavily accented, and masculine voice replied to some information imparted to him. When his intonation encapsulated me, and hints of sandalwood and fresh mint flooded my nostrils, I used any available senses to hone in on discovering what was happening to me, as I intuitively recognised whose company I was in.

Dante. I was mistaken. I’m with Dante.

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