She continues with a sigh. “But fortunately for me, I wasn’t around him much. My biggest jobs were to look pretty and… keep my legs closed.” She can’t hide the note of bitterness in her tone or the way her voice wobbles. She knows as a woman of the mob, her parents likely only valued her virginity with an eye toward potential marriage to someone of high rank above literally anything else she could offer them.
I nod my head. “I understand. And your mother?”
She shrugs. “Still alive, as you probably know. She’s a good enough mother, I suppose, but cowered under my father and made the rest of us toe the line. She sent me to boarding school when I was little, and I never fully got over that rejection.”
I listen to everything that she says, but I try to read between the lines. Her home was nearly loveless, the only affection she likely ever received was when she did something her parents approved of. Knowing what few expectations they had for her, I would venture to guess that wasn't very often. I can use this to my advantage. I'll have to.
While brute force is only one way that I could interrogate her, I could use the carrot instead of the stick as well. Personally, I prefer using both methods, but we’ll get there.
While I listen to her answers, I gently slide my hand to the small of her back. It's a gentle, possessive move that should reassure her, and while she's talking, she might not even be aware that I'm doing it, except for realizing that it's comfortable for her.
"Tell me about your brothers."
She bristles. I watch as an unreadable expression spreads into a thin-lipped smile. There's a touch of sadness there. "I got along with my brothers when we were younger. We were on the same side, really. But once my dad was gone, and Sergio took the lead, he was almost as bad as my father."
I don't know much about Sergio, but I'm not surprised. He takes his job very seriously.
“Do you trust them?"
She looks away and doesn't answer at first. Finally, she shrugs. "Trust them to save me if I were in danger? Yes. Trust them to take care of me if I needed something like a roof over my head or money in the bank? Yes, of course. That's part of their job. Trust them to know who I am and to take care of my best interests?” She shakes her head with a laugh. "Not on your life. "
I catalog all this information in my mind. I'll process through it later and compare what she tells me to what I find out from Gloria and Mario.
I have a few more questions to soften her up, to get her used to talking to me. If I can ask her about her past and get her to open up to me about it, I'll go in for the more important questions and likely get better answers.
“How old were you when you went to boarding school?"
"Six."
Six. So young. Barely first grade. I remember how at that age the whole world started when I woke up and ended when I went to sleep. There was no past, no future. Everything in the six-year-old mind seems to be focused on the present. What they're going to eat for breakfast, how they're going to entertain themselves for the day. How to stay out of trouble, how to make friends, how to do well in school. Does a stray puppy on the street have a home, and how high can they swing without falling off and breaking a leg? How much does it hurt to break a leg anyway?
She has an odd expression on her face, her eyes level under drawn brows, her lips set in a frown. She doesn't like talking about her family or her past.
Time to make this a little more heated. Press a little further, even.
"Tell me, Vivia. Were you a good girl?"
Her brittle smile falters a little bit. "According to whom? The pastor at the local church? My mother? Or you?"
I don’t hesitate.
“Me.”
She doesn't answer this question at first but takes a deep breath and gives me an almost demure smile. "Up until recently, I was a good girl by everyone's standards.”
I can't deny the fact that I want to protect this woman. It’s a flaw I need to be aware of, one I can’t ignore. An instinct I’ll have to stifle and choke. Even as I tell myself that I have a job to do, even as I tell myself that it is crucial I find out information that could lead us to the threat against my family, I see a wounded person. I see someone in such desperate need of approval it's choking her. I see someone who knows there's no turning back from what she's done, and anything she's ever known is gone to her.
Vivia knows that her family won't take her back. She doesn't quite know the extent of the damage that’s happened yet, but Sergio says she's dead to them, a punishment worse than death for a woman like her.
She doesn't know that the Montavia family will no longer see her as one of theirs. She doesn't know that the protection, and every provision that was hers, is gone now. All she has is me, and this one last chance to save her life.
* * *