Bloody Heart: A Second Chance Mafia Romance (Brutal Birthright Book 4)

“Simone, put that right hand on your hip. A little lower. Yes, that’s perfect. Ivory, tilt your chin up just a touch . . . that’s it, perfect. Somebody move that fan—I want the skirt blowing the other way. No, the other other way! Good. Now tilt that reflector . . .”

The camera clicks again and again. With each click, I shift my position slightly. First looking directly at the lens, then down at the ground, then over my right shoulder. Then I shift my weight to my opposite hip, then I lean back against Ivory, then I rest my arm on her shoulder.

I move through positions automatically, without even thinking. I always keep my face to the light, and I remember to hold my jacket open like Hugo wanted.

We’re shooting a campaign for Prada. It’s my third this year. They always pair me with Ivory, because we make such a nice contrast to each other—her so fair, and me so dark. Hugo sings that old “Ebony and Ivory” song at us when he’s in a silly mood.

He’s not silly today. We’re shooting at the sand dunes in Algodones, and it’s been a bit of a disaster from the start. First it was windy. The sand was blowing in our eyes and teeth and fucking with Ivory’s hair. Her hair is fine as candy floss and white as a cloud.

Ivory’s not just blonde—she’s albino. Her skin is pure milk, and her eyes are violet-colored, more red than blue in the right light. Of course, that means she has to be slathered in sunscreen to shoot outdoors like this, and the direct sunlight is murder on her eyes. When we did the first set of outfits with the retro, oversized Duple sunglasses, she was just fine. But now that she’s changed into a long, flowing maxi dress and no shades, her eyes are tearing up and she can’t stop blinking. It doesn’t help that Hugo has that damn reflector pointed right at her face.

Worst of all was the giraffe. Hugo had the bright idea that we should shoot with actual animals—first an ostrich, then a Masai giraffe on loan from the zoo. The handler came along to make sure he behaved. But the giraffe wasn’t liking Hugo’s shouting one bit, or the flashes from the lightboxes. He ended up galloping off, one massive hoof the size of a dinner plate barely missing Ivory’s face. After that she didn’t want to stand anywhere near the animals. It took over an hour for the handler to get the giraffe back, chasing after him in our dune buggy.

Anyway, we’re behind schedule now. Hugo has decided we better get through a couple of outfits with just Ivory and me and the sand dunes before we run out of light.

“Lift that handbag up, Simone,” Hugo says. “No, not that high—this isn’t The Price is Right. Do it casual. Natural.”

There’s nothing natural about contorting myself into the perfect position to showcase both the jacket and the bag just the way Hugo wants, but I don’t even bother to roll my eyes at him. I’d like to wrap this up as well.

“Alright,” Hugo says, once he’s got a couple hundred images of this set. “Who’s gonna hold my snake?”

“I really hope that’s not a euphemism,” Ivory says, wrinkling her nose.

“Ha ha, very funny.” Hugo sniffs. He’s short and lean, with a salt-and-pepper goatee, a long nose, and a penchant for baseball caps. Ivory says it’s because he’s balding and doesn’t want anyone to know.

He opens up a large chest with suspicious-looking air holes in the side.

“I mean an actual snake. A Burmese python, to be exact. Why don’t you drape him round your neck, Ivory—he’s an albino, too. You two should get along perfectly.”

“Fucking hell no,” Ivory says, taking a step backward. It’s difficult to tell, but I think she went about three shades paler at the sight of Hugo lifting the massive snake out of the crate.

The thing must be twelve feet long. It looks heavy from the way Hugo is struggling to heft it out.

“Let me help,” the handler says, grabbing the lower half of the snake. The handler still looks sweaty and dirty from his romp across the sand to recover the giraffe.

The snake flops around at first, then perks up once it realizes it’s out in the open air.

It’s quite lovely—cream colored with yellow patches. It reminds me a little bit of buttered popcorn. Its skin looks smooth and dry.

“I’ll do it,” I say.

“Alright, switch to the white prairie skirt,” Hugo says. He’s not talking to me—he’s instructing Danielle, the wardrobe specialist. She runs to get the skirt in question, and a different pair of sandals. She helps me strip off my current outfit so I can change. I do it right out in the open, stripping down to a nude-colored thong. Nobody pays any attention to my nakedness. Nudity is as common as vape pens and Instagram posts in the modeling world.

“Which top?” Danielle asks.

“None,” Hugo says. “You don’t care, do you Simone?”

I shake my head. I don’t give a damn about going topless.

Hugo drapes the snake around my shoulders. It really is heavy—over a hundred pounds, I’d guess. The handler helps support the tail while I get into position between two sand dunes.

The snake’s tail hangs down over my bare breast. Its body runs across my shoulders, then down my left arm. He’s wrapped himself around my forearm, his head resting on my open palm. I cover my other breast with my free hand.

“Oh that’s perfect,” Hugo says. “Okay, stand straight on like that . . . alright, now turn a little to your left and look over your shoulder at me. Yeah. Extend that arm and see if the snake will look right at you . . .”

Modeling can be very peaceful. You become almost a human statue, poseable and moveable, but not feeling much. You know you’re making something beautiful. It’s always fun to see the images later, after cropping and editing. You get to see what you were that day—a goddess. An angel. A diva. A party girl. A CEO. An explorer . . .

But the real reason I started modeling was for money. After my blow-up with my parents, I realized how much they owned me. Without money, you have no independence. So I took the first job I could find that would give me that freedom.

I started with runway work in Paris. I was just one of the hundreds of models flown in for Fashion Week. I strutted up and down like a walking coat-hanger for hours at a time, cycling through dozens of outfits. Then I started booking commercial work, too. Just small campaigns for shampoo and nylon brands at first, getting paid a couple hundred dollars a pop.

A year later I got my first big job—the cover of Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Edition. Technically I wasn’t wearing a swimsuit at all—just a lot of strategically-placed body paint, in the shape of a cheetah-print bikini. After that they started calling me The Body.

I suppose I have Henry to thank for that nickname. My figure never quite went back to the way it was after he was born. I got slim again, but my breasts and hips were fuller than before. And that coincided with the end of an era in modeling. Heroin chic was out, the J.Lo butt came in. Everybody wanted curves, curves, curves. And that was me—I was part of the new wave of sexy supermodels. Kate Upton, Charlotte McKinney, Chrissy Teigan, Emily Ratajkowski, and Simone Solomon . . . plus a Kardashian or two.

Everybody wanted that exotic, ethnically-ambiguous look, and that “real woman” hourglass figure. I don’t know how “real” any of us were, but the money we made was solid enough.

The work flowed in fast. More jobs than I could handle. I flew to every corner of the globe.

It helped keep me busy and keep my mind off how fucking miserable I was.

I tried not to think about Dante—how I’d left, and how I’d lied to him. Lied by omission. The biggest fucking omission there is.

But I didn’t forget about my son.

Between each job, I flew back to London to see him. I let Serwa raise Henry—but he was still mine, in my heart. I held him, I played with him, I fed him. And my heart bled all over again every time I handed him back to my sister.

Serwa loved him, too—I could see that. She centered her world around him. Quit her job at Barclays, spent all day long taking him to the park, the river, the Eye.

My parents were funding it. They were fine paying for her to raise the baby, but not me.

I was bitter. So fucking bitter.

I saved every penny I made from modeling. I planned to take Henry back, when I had enough.

But Serwa was so attached to him, too.

And she was sick. After a year or two of recovery, she started to get weaker again. I thought if I took my son away from her, it would kill her.

So we shared him. She took care of him while I was working, and he was mine when I came home. He called us both Mama when he started to speak.

It wasn’t a terrible system. In fact, it worked surprisingly well. I missed them both so badly when I was gone. But modeling years are short—it’s an industry of youth. I had to work while I could. And I saved, saved, saved the money.

Serwa and I were closer than ever. I didn’t speak to my parents at all. I cut them off when they took my baby away without even asking. I told Serwa to make sure they never visited when I was home. She was careful to keep that promise—to keep them separate from me.

I did let them visit Henry when I wasn’t home. He had so little family, I didn’t want to deny him his grandparents. When I’d come home, he’d tell me all about how Grandma taught him to make crepes, and Grandpa gave him a Rubik’s cube.

My parents tried to make amends many times. I wouldn’t answer their calls or their letters.

Until Serwa died. She passed away three years ago. She was only thirty-four.

We were all there at the hospital together. It was the first time I’d seen my parents in years. My mother looked older. My father looked almost exactly the same—just a few threads of silver in his close-cropped hair.

I looked at them both, and I felt this hatred well up inside of me. I was so, so angry at them. The anger hadn’t faded at all. If anything, it was stronger. I saw them standing there with my son between them, and I wanted to tear Henry away from them, like they tried to tear him away from me, and never let them see him again.

But I swallowed it down, because we were there for Serwa, not for me. We sat and talked with her, and told her everything was going to be alright, she was going to recover again, like she always had before. She was on a short-list for a lung transplant. We thought that would fix everything.

Instead, she died that night.

When the doctor told us, my father broke down in tears. I’d never seen him cry before, never in my life. He grabbed me and pulled me into his arms and sobbed, “Simone, forgive me. You’re all we have left.”

I felt so alone without Serwa. I wanted my mother and father back just as badly as they wanted me. I hugged Tata, and my mother hugged us both, and we all cried together.

I don’t know if I forgave them, though. I never answered about that.

And even now, three years later, I’m not sure if I have.

We see each other often. From the outside, we look like the same close-knit family we used to be—minus Serwa, and with the addition of Henry.

But of course, what you see from the outside never tells the story of a family. It’s a ripe, red apple. When you cut it open, there could be anything inside. Crisp, healthy flesh . . . or rot and worms.

Henry lives with me now, full-time. I can afford a nanny/tutor for him. Her name is Carly. The three of us travel all over the world together.

The gossip rags wrote that I’d adopted my nephew. I didn’t correct them. I don’t talk about my son publicly, not ever. I don’t allow photos of him. It was my choice to plaster my face on billboards and magazines. I keep him hidden as best I can, so he can choose for himself someday if he wants a public life or a private one.

Also, I’m afraid . . .

Afraid of what might happen if Dante ever saw a picture of Henry.

Because when I search Henry’s face, I see my features . . . but I also see Dante.

I stole his son from him.

My worst fear is that he might someday steal him back.

The shoot is over. Hugo has carefully laid the snake back down in its nest inside the trunk. Ivory is shaking her head at me.

“Don’t hug me after you touched that thing,” she says.

I grin at her. “But you look so cute in that sweater. So snuggly and cuddleable . . .”

“Don’t even think about it!”

“Will you at least share a car back to the city with me?”

“Yes,” she says loftily. “That would be acceptable.”

Ivory and I have been friends for four years now. It’s hard to stay close to anybody in the modeling world—we all travel around so much. But you do tend to work with the same people over time, as certain photographers or casting agents recommend you for jobs.

I’m probably the only person who knows that Ivory’s real name is Jennifer Parker, and she didn’t grow up in France, like she likes to tell people. Actually, she’s Canadian—from a little town in Quebec called Mille-Isles.

Ivory says she has to craft a mystique around herself. “Nobody ever would have given a fig about Marilyn Monroe if she kept calling herself Norma-Jean.”

I understand secrets.

I understand that the truth can be so painful, that it’s much easier to live a make-believe life, where any questions that people ask you can’t hurt you at all, because they’re all just part of the narrative. It’s so easy to talk about yourself when nothing you say is real.

That’s how I do interviews.

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Red.”

“What’s your favorite food?”

“Pasta.”

“Who would you most like to eat lunch with?”

“Chris Evans, of course.”

It’s all just nonsense. The interviewers don’t care what I say. Neither do the people who read glossy magazines. Simone the Supermodel is just a character. She’s “The Body.” Nobody cares if I have a brain.

Ivory and I share a cab back to the city center. She drops me off at the Ritz-Carlton.

I take the elevator straight up to my room. As soon as he hears my key in the lock, Henry comes over to the door. He tries to scare me, but it doesn’t work because I was already looking for him as soon as I opened the door.

“Hey, you,” I say, wrapping my arms around him and pulling him against my chest.

Henry is so damn tall. He’s only nine years old, and he’s already up to my shoulder. I have to buy him clothes for sizes twelve to fourteen, and even then, the waist is baggy while the pants are barely long enough.

“I took pictures with a snake today. Do you want to see?” I show him the snaps I took on my phone.

“It’s a Burmese python!” he says. “ ‘D’you know they can grow up to twenty feet?”

“Luckily, this guy wasn’t that big.”

“They’ve got two lungs. Most snakes only have one.”

Henry loves to read. He remembers everything he reads and everything he watches on TV. I’ve had to cut down his YouTube time, because he was following his curiosity down all sorts of rabbit holes—some that I wouldn’t want him learning about even five or six years from now.

He’s got long arms and legs now, and his face is leaning out. It’s hard to see the chubby little boy he used to be. Some things are the same, though—he’s still a gentle giant, helpful, kind, and careful of others’ feelings.

“What should we do tonight?” I ask him.

“I dunno.”

“Did you finish all your schoolwork?”

“Yeah.”

“Let me see it.”

He takes me over to the little hotel desk where he’s got his papers and textbooks all spread out. He shows me the chapters he was reading with his tutor.

Sometimes when I know we’ll be in the same place for a while, I enroll Henry in one of the international schools, just so he can experience classrooms and friends in a somewhat normal manner. He seems to like it when he’s there. But he seems to like anyplace we go. He’s so easy-going, that I can never be sure if he’s genuinely happy, or if this is all he knows.

I have a lot of money saved now. Enough that I could stop working, or slow down. We could live almost anywhere.

The question is, where?

I’ve been to every city in the world, it feels like. But none of them are home.

Most recently, my parents were living in DC. After Serwa died, my father launched himself into humanitarian work. He’s brokering some big international anti-trafficking coalition. In fact, he’s doing a cross-country media blitz right now.

Well, speak of the devil.

My phone buzzes with my father’s number.

“Hold on,” I say to Henry.

I answer the call.

“Simone,” my father says, his deep, smooth voice cutting through the airwaves between us, as if he’s right in the room with me. “How was your shoot today?”

“Good. I think they got everything they wanted, so that was probably the last day.”

“Excellent. And what do you have booked next?”

“Well . . .” my stomach gives a little squirm. Even after all this time. “I’m actually supposed to do a shoot for Balenciaga next week.”

“In Chicago?”

I pause. “Yes.”

“That’s what your assistant said. I’m glad to hear it—because your mother and I will be there at the same time.”

“Oh, great,” I say weakly.

I was already dreading going back to Chicago. I haven’t been there in almost a decade. The idea of meeting up with my parents there . . . it doesn’t exactly thrill me. Too many old memories dredged up.

“I’m holding a rally,” Tata says. “In support of the Freedom Foundation. The Mayor of Chicago will be speaking, as well as one of the city aldermen. I’d like you to be there.”

I fidget in place, shifting from foot to foot. “I don’t know, Tata . . . I’m not very political . . .”

“It’s a good cause, little one. You could lend your support to something meaningful . . .”

There’s that note of disapproval again. He doesn’t think my career is meaningful. I’m one of the top paid models in the world, and he still sees this as a frivolous hobby.

“Just sit on the podium with me. You don’t have to speak. You can do that, can’t you?” my father says in his most reasonable tone. It’s framed as a request, but I know he expects me to say yes. I bristle against that pressure. I’ve been on my own for a long time now. I don’t actually have to do what he says.

But, at the same time, my parents are all I have now that Serwa is gone. Other than Henry, of course. I don’t want to tear down the truce between us. Not over something as petty as this.

Chicago is a big city. I can go there without running into Dante.

“Alright, Tata,” I hear myself say. “I’ll go to your rally.”

After I hang up, I pull out my phone and find the picture of Dante I’ve saved all these years. I try not to look at it, because he looks so fierce and angry. Like he’s staring into my soul, and he doesn’t like what he sees.

I’m addicted. Sometimes I resist for months. But I always come back to it again. I’ve never had the strength to delete it.

I look at his black eyes. That ferocious jaw. The firm lines of his mouth.

The ache I feel is as strong as ever.

I shut off my phone and shove it away from me.