Cardinal House (The Blackwell Brothers Book 4)

30. Wolf

Luna stares at the fountain for the entirety of the story that Vito tells. I already know it. Vito told me, repeatedly, this same story at least a hundred times over the last few days. We’ve discussed his employee and come to a mutually agreed upon end for him, after I’d told hima brief version of the story that Luna told me when she started to remember.

I don’t take my eyes off of her as Vito talks and she stares out at the gardens. I know even before she asks that she wants to go out there. For the air. To breathe. So I’m not surprised when she requests just that.

Luna slips past Vito without really looking at him, and he watches after her as she passes the fountain she’s been staring at for the last hour, before bringing his eyes back to me.

The sun is going down. The sky a deep pink, wisps of fluffy peach-orange clouds drifting over the tops of the trees. Luna follows down a winding path into the nearest copse of trees and then sits. I can see the top of her head, the large white bow secured at the crown of her skull.

“I’m going to marry that girl, Vito,” I voice before turning back to face him.

He doesn’t react outwardly, but the subtle tensing of his fingertips over his thigh is telling. He wants to be the one in control here, to be swooping in and saving her, keeping her, making up for all the years they’ve been apart. I understand it. I would be the same. But that’s not how this is going to go.

“You are?” He lifts a single brow slowly, his bight eyes on mine in challenge, and I could smirk, I could say something cocky, annoyingly knowing.

But that’s not, at all, what that statement is about.

“Yes, I am.”

His eyes tighten just slightly, his brow dropping back into an arch over his eye, and then he sniffs, cocking his head to one side, before reaching forward for an empty glass on the table.

“I won’t pretend I don’t want her moving back in here with me, with la famiglia, but I have-”

A large bang sounds overhead, cutting him off, his bright eyes instantly flicking to the ceiling with a small twist to his mouth. Slowly, his chin lowers in time with his gaze, and he’s levelling a look on me that speaks of darkness and sin.

“-Something I’m dealing with right now,” he finishes. Smirking slightly as he says it, the space above us falls silent after several thuds and thumps. “And it is not… ideal for her to stay here at the moment.”

“Luna will stay where Luna wants to stay,” I tell him, levelling him with a look as my eyes flick back to her.

The top of her head still in the same place, the tail of her white bow flicking like an irritated cat’s tail in the wind.

“She’s spent her life being controlled, not being allowed to go outside in the sun. The last thing she needs is to be cooped up in here like a princess in a locked tower. We’ve got a good life at Cardinal House, and you’re welcome to visit any time, but I have no intention of uprooting her, unless that’s what she wants.”

I stare him down, meaning every word, but I know, without having to ask her, that she won’t want to be away from me. We’ve fallen into routine over the last few weeks.

She brought me back to life.

I love her.

And she loves me.

And no one has ever loved me as wholly as she does.

‘What are the words you say to someone that you want to be buried with, same coffin, same headstone, same consecrated earth?’

“I want to visit,” he tells me, lifting a foot to cross his legs, resting an ankle across his opposite knee, resting the empty tumbler he took from the table against his thigh. “I want to attend the wedding.”

“Of course,” I nod, as though she’s already said yes, like I’ve already asked. “Unless she doesn’t want that,” I cock my head slightly, watching as his fingers tighten once more, creasing the fabric of his slacks as he does. “She does whatever she wants, she gets whatever makes her happy,” I tell him blankly.

He purses his lips instead of scowling like I’m sure he wants to, but then he nods, “Good.”

Vito stares at me, and there are so many things that either one of us, both of us, could say.

Instead, Vito lifts his chin, glances over my shoulder, and then pushes to his feet. Moving to a wet bar in the far corner, he ducks down behind it, and then pops up, crystal decanter in hand. Amber nectar flows into the glass he offers me as he sits back down, and I take it with eager fingers, not needing encouragement.

“I’ve always liked you, Wolf,” Vito tells me, flicking his tongue over his lower lip as he brings his glass back down to rest on his thigh. “I respect your family, the work you do. I enjoy discrete.”

“Well, we’re nothing if not discrete,” I say with a flick of my brow, swirling the whiskey around in my glass, and biting down on my smirk as I think about the decapitated body left in the shrubbery outside of Nolan Beaumont’s mansion.

“Yes, so if anything should befall my niece…” he leaves the statement hanging for a moment. “Well, you already know, I know how to aim.”

It pounds, my heart, as a smile curls my mouth, showing all of my teeth. One predator staring down another. There’s a moment where we hold each other’s gaze, and I want to tear his throat out for even daring to insinuate that I would ever do anything to hurt my Luna. But, equally, this really just means that Luna has an extra layer of protection now. The entire muscle of the Italian mob. Niece to the Don.

But then her mother had all of that and still ended up dead in a river. Her daughter stolen, and somehow winding up living with a paedophile rapist for over twenty years.

“I don’t think this should be something advertised,” I say next. “In order to keep her safe, from your enemies, she needs to remain unknown. Just mine. A Blackwell.”

He doesn’t like it, the way a green vein protrudes in his temple, pounding as rapidly as his pulse, it’s obvious that he didn’t expect me to say that. That perhaps he hadn’t even thought of it, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.

I won’t ever let her be put in danger again.

“Fine,” he eventually grinds out, “but I want her to meet my brothers, her other uncles when they come over from Sicily.”

“If that’s what she wants,” I agree, and he hates it, but he doesn’t argue.

Both of us reach forward across the low table, nodding in agreement as we clink our glasses together and take a sip. The alcohol burns on the way down, but we’re both smiling when I shake my head with a gruff laugh.

“We’ve had many drinks in the past, Wolf, but I never thought we’d be having a discussion quite like this one.” Vito sighs, blinking down at his hand cupped over his glass, “I could think of worse for my niece.”

I think of the early days at Cardinal House. The nightmares, the screams, the bed wetting. She never once hid herself from me, she never cowered away. I was her comfort, even when she couldn’t remember me, didn’t know me, a stranger who closed her in a coffin, she felt safe.

With me.

My eyes come up then, to where she went to sit outside, the sun almost set now. I’m climbing to my feet, my glass thudding down on the table as I round the sofa Vito sits on.

The cool wind whips at my skin and my feet are pounding over the stone pathway as I follow it past where she was when I last looked.

“Luna!” I bellow, real, true panic in my voice. I hear it in myself, as my heart pounds and my lungs squeeze, fear. “Luna!” The trees are dense, the path ending as it reaches the thick woods, shadows dancing, foliage ruffling. “LUNA!”

It’s useless, the shouting, she wouldn’t venture far, she wouldn’t go anywhere without me, not on her own. Not like-

She’s been so quiet since the night of the engagement dinner. After she fell, bumped her head, came to with the frightening realisation that she was remembering things. I should have seen it. The plotting. The carefully curated questions about my plans, what I was going to do to her abuser.

I spin on my heel, smacking straight into Vito at my back. His eyes wide with panic, “What is it, where is she?” he rushes out, scanning the dark trees surrounding us.

And I don’t know what to say, how to tell him that she’s willingly gone back to the place of her terror, so instead, I just tell him what we need, “Get a car.”