Chapter 27
Dante
Nico’s name flashes across my phone screen as I finished prepping the dinner Lucia half prepared. I slice with aggression, hopeful the danger it mimics might explain why Lucia looked at me today like I’d dragged her heart across broken glass.
I’m already drowning in questions I can’t answer, so I consider letting Nico’s call ring out, but my thumb swipes across the screen before I can weigh up the pros and cons.
“Lucia just deposited money into Edoardo’s account,” he says, not bothering to issue a greeting.
The vegetables I’m cutting blur into a smear of gray as my knuckles whiten around the knife. “She what?”
I thought she’d gone for a walk to cool her head. That once she had calmed down, she’d return to eat dinner with us as she has the previous week.
This is far from the agenda I set when I heard her leave her apartment shortly after entering it.
“All of it,” Nico says. “Thirty thousand. Gone. To Edoardo fucking Cordoza.”
My chest caves in under a pressure that makes it impossible to think straight. Lucia was quiet tonight, but not in a way that suggested she’d do this. She bought groceries, for fuck’s sake. Before I tried to coach her into helping me clear the fog in my head, she was making a three-course meal.
That isn’t something a person does when severing ties.
That’s the action of someone who has already decided to leave.
“What the hell did I do last night?” I whisper, more to myself than to Nico. “Did I say something? Hurt her feelings?” I swallow hard, my next thought almost laughable. “Did I reject her?”
The idea is absurd. There’s no fucking way I rejected her. I fight myself every time she walks into the room, and don’t get me started on how hard it is to hold back when she looks at me with those eyes that assure coronary failure will be marked on my death certificate.
Even earlier, when she glared at me like she wanted to skate her knife across my jugular, all I could think about was kissing the anger off her mouth until she melted into me.
I would have if I hadn’t spent the last week gathering evidence to prove we have a strict employee–employer relationship. If Lucia’s arrangement with Edoardo blows up in my family’s face, I’ll need more than my word to stop a mafia war.
“I don’t know,” Nico says, pulling my focus back to him. “But she looked pissed.”
My phone dings, so I pull it away from my ear, activate the speaker function, then bring up the image he forwarded me.
Pissed doesn’t even begin to cover it. Lucia seems wounded. Betrayed. Her expression harnesses the scars of unforgivable mistreatment.
If I did something unforgivable, I have no fucking clue what it is.
I’m still trying to piece everything together when Nico clears his throat.
It’s never a good sign when a Caruso clears their throat.
“Also…”—I’m ready to murder him for the delay—“I changed the results of your drug test.”
My heart stops beating as my eyes dart to Camille’s bedroom door. I couldn’t explain Lucia storming out in a way Camille would understand, so I said she was getting ready for dinner. I joked that only slobs eat steak and seafood in their everyday clothes.
She went to put on a pretty dress ten minutes ago, and I’ve been praying like fuck for some sunshine to break through the clouds ever since.
“What?”
“You failed,” Nico says bluntly. “So did Anna. I know that doesn’t make it any better, but at least you both look like shit parents.”
A dangerous growl rumbles low in my chest. “Nico—”
“I’m sorry,” he blurts out. “I just don’t know what the fuck is going on. You’ve been clean for years. Ever since—”
“The night I met a woman who made me toss it all away,” I finish, the words bitter and heavy.
One night with Anna made me want to be a better person, but one day made me doubt my lucidity the night Camille was conceived.
Nico snorts. “Which is shocking considering she had enough shit in her system for the both of you.”
My jaw clenches. “Anna is using again?”
“From what the test says, it’s a regular occurrence.”
As I stare at a framed photo of Camille smiling on a far wall, a cold dread burrows in my chest. Anna knows the rules. She knows she won’t get near Camille unless she’s clean. I made that clear throughout our multiple custody mediations this week. That term is non-negotiable.
“You didn’t change her results, did you?” My voice is as low as my trust. I don’t use drugs, haven’t in years, but now the lost memories and missing days make sense. The Carusos distribute the best of the best. I know how potent our supplies are.
Now I need to find out who also knows that.
“No chance.” Nico scoffs, wordlessly announcing he wouldn’t piss on Anna if she were on fire. “You said you wanted to do this the right way. To show Camille money can’t overrule morals.”
“That’s right.”
“Then trust me. I didn’t touch her results.”
I briefly close my eyes and suck in a sharp breath. I hate burdening my brothers. I prefer to be the shoulder they lean on when they need advice, but I’m swimming in waters out of my depth.
“Can I ask a favor?” Nico murmurs in agreement without thought.
“Can you backtrack my movements over the past forty-eight hours?” Before he can ask questions, I add, “Don’t bother going through the footage from inside my building.
” I trust Lucia wholly and without constraint, so I don’t want her every move scrutinized when she’s done nothing wrong.
“Anything outside here is up for grabs. I need to know anywhere I visited, even if it was only for a second, the prior two days.”
Again, he coughs to clear his throat. “I’ll get straight on it.”
Before he can hang up, I call his name.
“Yeah?”
“Keep this between us. Giovanni has enough shit on his plate. I am hesitant to add more until I know what’s causing the stink.”
The woosh of a head nod sounds down the line. “I understand.”
“Thanks.”
I hang up, and then the universe toys with me with a quick knock at the door. I hope it’s Lucia and that she’s ready to talk, but my intuition warns me that isn’t the case.
That would be too easy.
I’ll fix my mistakes. I’ll even grovel if that’s the only way I can guarantee she’ll look at me how she did only last week. It will just have to occur in Lucia’s studio apartment since it’s the only floor space in this building not under surveillance.
When I open the door, it isn’t Lucia on the other side.
It’s Anna.
What the fuck?
She’s wearing a tight dress and too much perfume. Her hair is curled, and her lipstick is bright enough to stain anything it touches.
My jaw twitches when I take in her glassy eyes and forced smile. This is the epitome of the Anna I faced when I decided no number of Band-Aids could fix an irreparable crack. She’s pleasant until she decides she no longer needs to be.
“What are you doing here?” I step into the alcove, pushing her further into the hallway. “How did you get this address?”
I swear I’ve said those words before. Déjà vu hits me hard and fast, but before I can dwell on the thought, Camille rushes out of her bedroom, her steps as lively as the lace hem on her new dress.
When she sees Anna, her eyes bulge and her mouth falls open. A broad grin transforms her face as she rushes across the shiny floorboards. She jumps into Anna’s embrace as she does mine most nights and wraps her arms around her neck.
Guilt smacks into me as brutally as the force of Camille’s leap, which almost topples Anna over.
If Anna was the one hurting Camille, shouldn’t she be scared? Shouldn’t she hesitate? If I’m the safe, protective parent, shouldn’t she be clinging to me instead of her mother?
Camille buries her face in Anna’s shoulder. Her small hands grip the fabric of her dress as her body trembles with unspoken emotion. She remains silent. She always does. But the way she melts into Anna’s embrace exposes everything I’ve tried hard to ignore.
Anna didn’t hurt Camille. Someone else did.
“Dante,” Anna says softly, stroking Camille’s hair, “can I stay with her for an hour? Please. I’ll leave as soon as dinner is ready.” She lowers her eyes to Camille. “I’ve missed her so much. I’m not ready to let go yet.”
I want to say no. I should say no. But when Camille peers at me with pleading eyes and a lowered lip, I cave like a coward.
“Fine,” I mutter. “But only until dinner is ready. I have… plans.”
Anna only hears what she wants to hear.
She’s always been that way.
While beaming like the winner of a popularity contest, she heads to the coloring station at our dining table—which is never without supplies—and settles in for the long haul like she belongs here.
I’ve not yet reached the same conclusion.
Anna might not have hurt Camille, but as her mother, she should have done everything in her power to stop her from being hurt.
Four years of injuries prove, without doubt, she didn’t do that.
The reminder is enough to move forward with my plan for sole custody.
When Anna tiptoes out of Camille’s room, she smiles as she always does when she gets her way.
“Thank you for letting me stay for dinner and tuck her in. It was exactly what the doctor ordered.” Her teeth rake over her lower lip, highlighting the fresh batch of lipstick she applied while helping Camille brush her teeth.
“And thank you for not backtracking on your agreement to give me a second chance.”
The dinner I barely consumed scorches my throat’s lining. “What?”
“We talked about it last night, remember?” She tilts her head and attempts a cutesy expression. “Over drinks. It was like we were back at the club, canoodling how we did the night we met.”
I stare at her, lost.
I don’t remember that. Also, I don’t care how many drinks I had—I would never agree to give her a second chance.
Even with Matteo blowing up my phone every five minutes during his late-night walk with Lucia, I haven’t stopped watching Lucia’s apartment all night, waiting for her to walk through the door.
I’m obsessed with Lucia, utterly and wholly snowed under, so there’s no way I would suggest we try whatever we had again.
It was barely a thing to begin with. Yes, it captivated me for almost five years and made me celibate for just as long, but even prolonged abstinence didn’t have me falling into bed with Anna in the weeks following her arrival at my door.
It took an hour to realize the magic was left in the storage room where we’d conceived Camille. There wasn’t a single spark to trigger a twitch from my cock. It was as flaccid back then as it is now.
Anna blamed my lack of interest in sex for our downfall. Since it was the easiest way to explain how things went so wrong, I let her.
Oblivious to the disgust on my face, Anna leans in to kiss my cheek, leaving a streak of red lipstick behind. She giggles while rubbing at the chunk coating my cheek.
“We’re off to a great start.” She cradles my cheek with her lipstick-stained hand, and her expression makes me wonder if she’s overloading on fiber to stay thin. “I’ll see you soon.”
She rushes down the hallway, her head bowed and her red-bottomed shoes tapping the linoleum with an irritating click, clack, click.
She moves so fast that she bumps into someone coming from the opposite direction, further supporting my theory that she isn’t stable enough to take care of our child when she doesn’t stop to check if the person she knocked over is okay.
My already blistering anger doubles when I lock eyes with the person she mowed down. Lucia is at the end of the long hallway. Her suspicious gaze bounces between Anna’s rapidly retreating figure and me.
Guilt haunts me when her eyes narrow to the exact spot Anna kissed, and then it overcomes me when I raise my hand to check if the smear is gone.
Anna didn’t wipe away the lipstick mark from my cheek.
She lowered it to my mouth.
Like all men when they’re too enamored to think straight, I issue the shittiest excuse in the book. “It isn’t what it looks like.”
Lucia scoffs before she stabs her key into her apartment door and cranks the lock. Partway in, she halts before her head pops back out. “You paid for a month, so I’ll be here until the end of next week. You’ll need to find someone else to take care of Camille after that.”
My back molars smash together as fear engulfs me.
“Lucia—”
Ignoring me, she walks through the threshold of her apartment, her steps decisive, like she’s afraid if she slows down, she’ll break her cover of not needing anyone or anything.
I race for the sheet between our apartments, ready to fall to my knees and grovel, but a small, strangled whimper from Camille’s room stops me.
She only ever makes that noise when she’s scared or in pain.
I freeze, torn between two starkly different obligations. The urge to chase Lucia burns through my veins, but Camille’s well-being is solely on my shoulders.
I can’t let her down.
My daughter needs me, and I pledged to always put her first, but every step I take toward her room replicates a bullet searing through my chest.
The hits keep coming when I clear Camille’s door. Her body is twisted up in the blankets, her cheeks are red, and her lips tremble with a pain she can’t voice.
I hated having to choose, but I made the right decision to put Camille first. She’s terrified and peering at me like I am her only savior.
I am. I’m just praying like fuck I don’t lose Lucia in the process.