churchill downs

The heels were still by the front door, abandoned as she’d padded in, curling her toes into the runner in the hallway like it would get rid of the cramps from wearing them in court this morning. Her suit jacket, shed next in that route through to the kitchen and the bottle of wine that was supposed to have been waiting until she’d fought rush hour traffic back to town from Charlottesville. At three in the afternoon it had been less of a fight, more of a straight speed through, but it didn’t mean she’d blown away the tension from her shoulders. That was the wine came in.

Glass number one drunk as she had paced the living room on the phone to her office. A continuance hadn’t been on the cards, in fact she’d been trying for the sort of trial that snuffed out the media gossip over the girl’s disappearance and suspected murder, but when your suspect had ‘slipped out’ of the cell he was awaiting trial in, there wasn’t much room to argue. Giorgia’s free hand had tangled in her hair on and off, unsnapping the buttons of her blouse at the throat as the heat had risen up. Her first meeting with the man had run that shiver through the pit of her stomach, rising the hair on the back of her neck. The smile he’d offered her had been patently human, but the mental image was there of extra teeth, eyes that could almost hypnotise. A predator of some sort and now he was running free.

Charlottesville’s chief of police had offered protection – politely declined of course with a flash of her own teeth, the breezy confidence of a woman who knew that she would not end up prey. Still, she had checked the back of her car before she’d gotten in, had watched the rear view on the way back. It hadn’t been Josh Tolliver she’d been looking for once she’d rumbled over the Wickery Bridge though.

A glance at the window now, then back to the pan where the oxtail was finishing browning. Giorgia had found herself leaving it unlocked every night since the first. Waiting. Hoping. Not willing to risk some fool on patrol seeing that reed thin figure climbing the fire escape, shooting before they engaged what little brains it took to make it through the academy. She was not losing him when they had only just found one another here. No cops, no Buckley brother, not even her own family would tear them apart again. This time she would fight in the way she’d not been able to then. Teeth and claws and fury raking at any that tried, even if it could cut her own heart as deep.

Double the usual proportions searing on the bottom of the pan, the golden crust on the meat building before Giorgia started to scoop it out. The click of the knife through the celery, onion, carrots and pancetta, the grind of its wide blade over the garlic cloves – just 2? Bah, 6, ground fine instead of sliced, all the better to melt in – meditative enough that most of her temper had boiled away. The officers who’d let Tolliver slip out were still getting a week unpaid suspension and she would be watching them, any sign that Tolliver’s money had lined their pockets to let it happen and hot coals would seem mild to drag them through face first. Giorgia stirred the nuggets of pancetta through the residue of flour and the oxtail at the bottom of the pan, those flakes of pure flavour sucking in the fat that the meat released. She would pack most of this up, leaving it in the fridge, a small sign of care if he stopped by tonight.

Giorgia’s lips curled at the thought, her smile pressed to the curve of the wine glass as she sipped at it – still enough left in the bottle for deglazing the bottom of the pan. Or braining Tolliver as he forced his way into her apartment.

She took two steps back, her fingers curled around the neck of the bottle. The blade would’ve been better, her aim probably good enough to have him down on the doormat before the first call even went out to the police. Teeth gritted, Giorgia almost relished the idea – even if it meant Leila’s family wouldn’t get the news of where their daughter had likely ended up – but the quick bite of the thought released the moment her sister’s voice sliced through the apartment, straight into her chest. Green eyes cut to the knife, not Roxxi, no matter how much she might’ve deserved it. ”What I did?” Giorgia snarled back. She started towards the kitchen door, the bottle still gripped, oh Roxxi would heal if she swung it at her. Nothing bothered her for long, except for the King Cockroach himself. ”You kick my door down, you come for me, and I’m the problem? Hai finalmente perso la testa ed è finita?.” Of course this would be about them, the people her sister had replaced her own family with. The snake and his poor little brother.

The bottle rose as she stepped into the hallway and stopped. It almost dropped to the ground, fingers going numb with the memory of how that electricity had snapped through her chest at the ball, leaving every muscle trembling until he’d soothed them. ”You’re still going to blame me for trying to protect you all? Oh, it’s a crime, isn’t it, il mio povero piccolo bambino.” But the hitch in her sister’s voice had hit Giorgia in the chest where those lightning bolts wouldn’t get a chance to.

Heartbreak, a mirror of her own right there on those twisting features. Giorgia lifted her chin, trying not to fall for it all. She was a devil to her sister, sitting at the right hand of Lucifer himself. Dark brows rose, a bitter laugh ready to follow them, but the emotion that drove whatever had twisted itself inside of her sister while she was gone leapt to the ceiling, shattering the ceiling light. Cursing, Giorgia threw her arm up – she hadn’t been scared of that electric rush of Nemo’s power, but he loved her, she knew that anything her sister had felt for her except hatred had been boiled out long before. ”You can’t smell it anymore? You can’t see the truth in me? Cieco a tutto tranne che a lui. Ti ha detto di farlo? Per liberarti di tua sorella perché non è altro che malvagia. Guarda, ascolta... guarda tu stesso!” Temper snapped in Giorgia’s voice, trembled in the hand she held out to her sister as though she were warding her off.

Giorgia’s head tilted, her lips going bloodless as she pressed them together. Would she have to drive the blade into Emiliano’s chest herself to have Roxana believing that she hated him as much as she did. ”I’ve done nothing,” she hissed. ”Get out, tell him I’m going nowhere. This is my town as much as yours, or theirs now.” Oh, but she would run in a heartbeat, if he would let the two of them go. No more retribution, just some place together where the scars that run deeper than that still beautiful face could heal.

Tagged: ROXANNE BRASCHI * Word Count: 1219
Translation: You've finally lost your mind and it's over him?/My poor little baby/Blind to everything except him. Did he tell you to do this? To rid yourself of your sister because she's nothing, but evil. Look, listen ... see for yourself!

Roxxi had thrown plenty of punches before the electricity had crackled through her at the ball, but even when they had been little girls fighting over a doll or the behaviour of a man who didn’t even deserve their hatred, it had verbal. In the years she’d hidden away here Roxxi had grown far more used to turning her training on her own flesh and blood. Ready to sting, to crack, to break. If she had been human her sister’s punch might’ve shattered that arch of bone, left her looking like the abused women who’d come through the DA’s office time and time again. They had been beaten by the men – and women, the world wasn’t so black and white anymore – they had loved. He couldn’t do it to her though, had turned all that anger on anything but her, Roxxi though, oh, she had no regrets.

Panting out a breath, running her tongue inside her cheek to taste the brief flash of her own blood before the skin that had broken open on her teeth healed again. Heat filled Giorgia’s eyes, but unlike her sister, she didn’t let it spill out, not here, not when she might not stop. One of them had restraint at least. Dio! The two of them stood there in that narrow slot of the hallway, the light, the world exploding around them as Roxxi’s upset exploded outwards. Oh, she would pay for that – not that she had taken a penny from Nemo for the damage he had caused to her apartment. Roxxi was different though, she would take every piece of flesh that her sister carved from her back in another way.

Now Roxxi was turning mute, her questions ignored, because why bother listening when you could form opinions – ones so twisted they could never come close to being right – without using your ears. The silence should’ve been warning enough. In those first breathless seconds, with the glass still tinkling around them – to play minefield to her bare feet again – Roxxi rushed at her. As children they had been trained for this, taught how to protect themselves, but never seriously against one another. Pushed back, despite her swinging the bottle – poorly, it clattered away, thudding on the floorboards (unfortunately not crushing her sister’s toes as it went) and rolling. ”You just don’t want to hear it,” Giorgia gasped. It was cowardly, but she tipped her head back, trying to escape the crackle of energy. ”I didn’t!” she hollered in her sister’s face. ”You should have listened.” But Roxxi wouldn’t do that, would she.

Searching her sister’s face, those lines of pain and sorrow now hidden beneath something far more twisted, Giorgia tried to find some sign of what she was supposed to do, but if it was there, it was lost in whatever Roxxi believed. Digging down into the part of her that still raged at all that had been torn from her, Giorgia pressed forward into her sister’s hold, teeth bared. ”And there’s never any room for anybody else in your world. You shut us out, you ran to him the minute he was here because your own sisters make you feel sick. It’s pathetic, and he’ll realise that soon enough without my help.” Oh, she could’ve gone straight to Chase when she’d worked out just who Roxxi had wrapped herself around. A few light questions thrown at him the same way she’d thrown them at his brother and she’d have realised just how little he knew and she could’ve changed that. She’d known though, how it felt to have what you loved torn away and despite her threats and warnings, she had never wanted Roxxi to feel the way she had.

The laugh cracked out. Giorgia tried to shove at her sister as the tears started – not the crocodile sort Matilde or one of the others would have sobbed out – fingers digging into her sister’s arm to try and release the pressure over her chest. ”Because I didn’t tear his throat out when I had the chance?” she asked, her own throat burning. What had Emiliano done to poor, naïve little Chase? What had torn Roxxi up so badly she finally let that porcupine like suit of armour fall away?

Video?

Confusion filled Giorgia’s face. What was she talking about? A video, her job, that fool, her life? The laughter tailed off as she gritted her teeth. She didn’t bother sprouting her claws before she dug her nails into Roxxi’s arm. ”You’re crazy. Why would I care about some video of you? If I wanted to destroy everything I would go straight to him. I would tell that truth you think I’m incapable of.” With her grip, she shook her sister, her lips pursing as she ground leverage to push Roxxi back, her brows furrowing. ”What video are you talking about? Something with him? You were foolish enough to make something he could see?” Dio. A video of her sister and Chase Buckley would be the red flag that would send Emiliano rushing here. No time for Nemo to supposedly do what was necessary to crush the Buckley brothers finally. Her heart raced in her chest, her breath coming short as she stared at her sister with tears filling her eyes. They’d only had a few weeks together again, a fairy tale cut short again. Giorgia shook her head, cursing under her breath. Not enough, it would never be enough.

Tagged: ROXANNE BRASCHI * Word Count: 908

Giorgia’s feet scrabbled at the floor, the hand she closed around Roxxi’s wrist doing nothing to stop her sister from dragging her around like some little rag doll. Her nails were manicured, almost a requirement of the job when every time imperfection in your appearance could count against you in the old boy’s club of the courts, the pale tops of them digging into Roxxi’s skin like she could tear away that shield of indignation Roxxi had been clinging to since she was too small to really understand anything. ”Because we wouldn’t scream about what we couldn’t change like you did?” she asked, snorting bitterly. ”Did you even care about what you left behind, or what they put him through? Do you even know?” Or had Chase Buckley become her white knight – clad in a cheap suit, carrying that shiny brass badge like some sort of proof that he was one of the good guys.

She’d seen the reports, had heard from their own people that Mikey hadn’t been the only Buckley who’d gone to the bodega that night. Chase had been lucky that Emiliano hadn’t tried to make an example out of both of them. You couldn’t turn a cop to your side if he didn’t have the chance to become one in the first place. Chase had turned his life around from that screwed up point, started to climb towards sainthood and Emiliano had puffed up at the idea that he could turn that saint. He’d failed and it had probably made life a thousand times harder for Mikey. Even that hadn’t left him caving though and Roxxi would see some nobility in that instead of stupidity.

How much bigger a target was on Chase’s back now? Expanded by Nemo’s certainty that it had been the detective who had carved those scars deep into his face, destroying what had been beautiful, leaving a shattered man behind. She’d tried to help him rearrange the shattered memories of what had happened, but she’d seen those scars twist the moment she tried to suggest that perhaps he was wrong. While Roxxi clung onto Chase here Nemo wouldn’t leave, he wouldn’t stop trying to find some sort of payback.

And neither would Roxxi. Emiliano might not have been the one to kill their father, but she was quick to blame him, and the rest of them for everything else.

The tears were not what she had expected from Roxxi – she had always been hard faced in her accusations, a marble statue you couldn’t soften or change the mind of. It threw her, Giorgia’s temper softened as her grip did. She had nothing this time, but someone had to her sister, clawing away at the only part of Roxxi that was still soft. Already she was folding in around herself, sobs shaking her.

Giorgia wanted to gloat about her sister’s own crimes, but despite how Roxxi saw her, she couldn’t stomach to do it when Roxxi was sobbing like she once had. Then her sister had held her, making it clear who the monster was, letting her see that maybe there would be a time when the hero finally took the monster down. Only nobody had. ”And you didn’t think this man might’ve done it? Così pronto a condannare eppure sei uno sciocco per un paio di palle.” Hypocrite. Roxxi didn’t have to make the accusation, Giorgia already felt the rubber band snap of her own words in the pit of her stomach. She hadn’t seen how Emiliano had twisted Patrick into his web. She’d been blind right up until she’d pushed open the bedroom door and had felt her heart shredded again.

Making a sound low in her throat, Giorgia bared her teeth. Roxxi might’ve wanted her to turn around and walk straight back out of town but her sister was lucky she was here. ”The district attorney might have something to say about that. They claw at you, I claw at them.” No matter how strongly Roxxi hated her now, blood was blood and once upon a time her sister would’ve done anything to protect her. ”Surely he would’ve had better ways to do that. Did you do this to him first?” Giorgia brushed her tussled hair back from her face as she looked around at an apartment damaged again by the temper of someone she loved wrongly accusing her of something. ”If he had the video, if he was the one Emiliano talked into this … he would be our place to start.” The man who would regret ever allowing one of the rat’s claws to pierce his ego. Hissing out a breath, cursing under it, Giorgia moved back towards the kitchen. She snatched a towel from its hook under the lip of the counter and held it out to her sister, something to wipe away the tears at least when she wasn’t yet ready to risk being clawed like she’d reached out to a spitting cat.

Tagged: ROXANNE BRASCHI * Word Count: 828
Translation: So quick to condemn and yet you're a fool for a pair of balls