Chapter 50 – Amanda #2
“Yes, fine. Thank you!” I gave the woman a weak wave and bolted.
“Amanda, you look funny,” Bill quipped, waving the stump of beef at me. “You okay?”
“Where’s Vincenzo?” I croaked. We needed to talk about this.
I didn’t come from oil money; I wasn’t a celebrity.
I had enough funds for a nice life, thanks to him tucking them away, but this?
This place? A standing appointment? Vincenzo couldn’t afford that—on second thought, he lived in prime real estate, keeping it empty and not turning it into rentals.
But! Was he planning to be married to me in two years?
We hadn’t even talked about our circumstances in the light of the doom my father clouded the horizon with.
And yet Vincenzo made the appointments.
How he managed that was another question.
“V’s at Mama Ana’s. Some big meeting.” Bill opened the car door. “You sure you’re okay? You look like you’re going to be sick.”
I felt like it. “He said someone else was picking me up,” I frowned, pausing before getting in the car. “Was there a change of plans?”
“Who?” Bill frowned right back at me.
“Um, G something.” I pulled out my phone. There were no new text messages. “Guglielmo?”
“DON’T use that name,” Bill barked.
I flinched. Had I said it wrong? My Italian was decent, but words like that didn’t come easy to a non-native speaker.
“Vincenzo does,” I faltered.
“What V does, he’s earned.” The henchman pointed a finger at me. “To you, it’s Bill, ‘hey you,’ or I’ll even answer to fuck-face. Not the other name.”
“You’re Gugli—”
“Not to you!”
I yelped, diving into the car.
Bill glowered at me and slammed the door.
But by the time he walked around, sat in the driver’s seat, and started the engine, the foul mood had vanished. Almost instantaneously.
“Had a nice massage?” He wagged his eyebrows. “Happy ending included?”
“Gross.” I went to buckle my belt but stopped.
A woman was walking down the street, carrying a shopping bag—and a puffball.
Bill saw her a moment later. “Merda!”
“I have to talk to her,” I breathed, shooting out of the car as the henchman shouted at me. Vibrant Italian curses cut the air like the crack of a whip.
But I was already in her path, intercepting my stepmother. “Carole! Hi, how are you?”
“I’ll call you back, Jessica.” One long, acrylic nail tapped on the phone screen. She pulled the Bluetooth from her ear as her eyes went wide. “Where HAVE you been?”
I shrugged. “Where I said I’d be. Why?”
“Why?” Carole’s perfectly manicured brows tried to shoot upward, but her forehead wouldn’t allow it. “WHY?”
Chandler sneezed.
The image of my cats hunting him like lions with a hyena distracted me for a moment. They would shred him to pieces, smiling while doing it.
“What’s happened?” I said innocently. Come on, let’s see what you know.
“You ungrateful child,” she sniffed. “When Archy told me that he had two little girls, I didn’t let it stop us from dating. I tried to be a good mother to you, I did! And this, this is how you treat me?”
I let her vent. If she was here, there was a possibility Dad was in town.
I wanted to glean anything useful to tell Vincenzo.
We needed to anticipate my father’s next moves.
He was the constant antagonist in our story.
While Steven and the warlord Varga were evil, they were only in our lives because Dad invited them.
“What did I do this time?” I demanded.
“You ruined everything,” she wailed. “Archy is considering bankruptcy, because you couldn’t just marry the yummy British boy.”
Bankruptcy was actually a solid plan to regroup after financial disaster. Not that Carole understood how businessmen used it as a loophole. No, to her brain, it was probably the type of bankruptcy that destroyed middle-income families.
“His businesses are that bad?” I felt…nothing.
No, that wasn’t right. There was a kernel of glee threatening to pop inside me at the thought of my father struggling.
How the tables had turned. This news would have had me working without sleep to help him save face and his investments.
Now, I was going to step back and watch him fall.
“Well, if you’d pick up the phone, you would know,” Carole huffed. “We’ve been calling and calling and calling.”
“No one’s called me,” I countered hotly, done with her accusations.
My stepmother gave me an ugly look. It started at my head and scanned down to my shoes. “Clearly, you’ve been too busy buying pretty clothes to answer. Did your other outfits get a little tight?”
The muscles of my tummy tightened. “No,” I snapped. “And the staff inside Cielo said I had one of the trimmest bodies they’d seen. Couldn’t believe it was natural.”
There. That was a snub to her constant need for a surgeon’s blade.
Carole’s eyes flashed wide. “Cielo?”
She looked at me, looked at the spa beside us, and then back.
“I have a standing appointment.” I couldn’t help the triumphant barb.
Carole leaned over, looking behind me. “Oh, the wedding planner. I see where you’re getting that kind of money.”
Frowning, I shot a look to Bill, who leaned against his car. Wedding planning was a lucrative business, but if she thought it was a large enough price tag to have me accepted into one of the most exclusive spas, she was dumber than she looked.
“Wait until your father hears about this,” she sniffed.
“You’re one to talk.” I jerked my chin at the shopping bag. “How are you affording Dior when Dad’s going bankrupt?”
Carole clutched the shopping bag possessively to her chest. “Mind your business, Amanda.”
“Fine, stay out of mine.” I was about to turn on my heel, but I had one more question. “Where is Dad?”
“Tokyo. Salvaging the family fortune.” She twisted her mouth in a pout.
But it was the twitch in the corner of her right eye, the one that no cosmetic filler could silence, that I caught.
“I hope he cuts you off because you chose him—” she pointed at Bill, who waved back with a toothy grin “—over our family.”
Carole was lying about Dad’s whereabouts. Lying and insulting me. I didn’t dignify her with a response. I left her fuming on the sidewalk, Chandler snuffling in her arm.
“Did she recognize me without the mustache?” Bill chortled as I slid past the door he held open for me.
“Really? That’s what you’re wondering?” I sniped.
Bill shrugged and closed the door. I had half a mind to call him by his Italian name or maybe try the English equivalent William.
Instead, I asked, “She said she’s been calling?”
Bill looked at his phone, shook his head, and took the car out of park. “Nope. Even though she all but humped me like a dog in heat, she hasn’t called me once.”
“Gross.” I winced. “No, not you, idiota, me.”
“Oh, that,” Bill chuckled. “Yeah, her, the secretary, your dad. V’s guys have blocked the calls.”
That explained it. The days and days of radio silence.
I should be furious. I really should have been. But Vincenzo messing with my phone made it so I had time to see things clearly. To breathe. To heal. If I’d been contacted by the vestiges of my parasitic old life, I would never have had the courage to claim a new one.
The drive was pleasant. Bill hummed along to songs, when he wasn’t gabbing about something.
I reverted to my relaxed state, pushing the complex thoughts to the back of my mind. Normally, I would have dwelled on the situation. But the strain was wiped away, and I didn’t feel stressed. It was a first in a long time. I planned to enjoy it for as long as I could.
Mama Ana’s was busy with a dinner crowd.
Bill teased the hostess before going to a table of men eating at a large round table.
Since he didn’t invite me to follow, and we’d been told Vincenzo was in the private room, still in a lunch meeting, I shifted, looking over the place.
I didn’t want to take up a four top for just me.
I wondered if the cook would shoo me out if I waited back there.
The manager emerged before I could decide if I should go into the kitchen or not. We locked eyes across the restaurant. Her face transformed from anxious into a scowl. Maybe it was the new, rejuvenated me, but I set my shoulders and marched over.
With a sigh I could feel, Gabriella broke away. “Hi, Amanda, how’s it going?”
I lifted my shoulder. “Can’t complain.”
The woman’s nose wrinkled as if she smelt dead fish. “Can I help you, Signora Messina?”
I pursed my lips. I’d had enough lady drama to last a lifetime.
Carole was someone I might not ever have to see again, and Gabriella was a mafia princess.
Which meant she was my family. We needed to put this behind us.
“Look, when I said I wanted a change to start over, I was serious. I’m not your enemy. Don’t treat me like one.”
Her mouth fell open.
“Hi, Gabriella Deluca. I’m Amanda. Nice to meet you.
” I took the opportunity to reach for her palm, shook it, then dropped my own to my side.
“There, we’ve met. Now would you kindly stop gaping at me and tell me how I can help out around here?
It’s really busy, and you look like you could use an extra pair of hands. ”
“You’d…help?” she croaked.
I shrugged. “What else am I going to do? Make your staff wait on me?”
“Well, yeah?” Those warm brown eyes blinked rapidly. “It’s a restaurant.”
I waved my hand. “I already had mixed greens and other small bites at the—” I almost said spa, but that wasn’t going to help my image. “I’m good. Put me to work or tell me where I can wait for Vincenzo. Either way, don’t let me stand here.”
A glint sparked in her eyes. “You can bus dishes.”
“Done.” I turned on my heel.
She didn’t think I would—or probably could—do it. What she was too young to know was that when I would leave the preppy school, sneaking over to the wrong side of town, I spent many afternoons here helping Vincenzo. After which, there would be a little studying and far too much kissing.
Those were the days….
As I worked to clear tables, regretting my choice of footwear, I let the past wash over me.
Long ago, my dad worked for the head of the criminal organization.
He parted amicably with Don Morelli and turned legit, right around the time my parents got divorced.
When my dad started making ungodly gobs of money, my sister and I started high school at a fancy school.
Imagine my surprise when Vincenzo, the boy I grew up playing with, landed a football scholarship to the same place.
Dad wanted us to be seen, to rise to the upper echelons of society.
I wanted to marry Vincenzo Messina.
Funny how everything turned out.
By the time the rush slowed, Gabriella came up to me with two glasses of crimson wine. “I guess I was wrong about you.”
I toasted her and took a long sip. “I’m not your enemy.”
She snorted. “We’ll see about that.”
Before I could come up with a smart, sassy response, the door to the private dining area slid open.
Liam emerged, the half mask covering his face.
He cast a sharp look around the restaurant.
A dangerous energy crackled through the space, and I wasn’t the only soul who paused in the devil’s presence. His gaze landed on me.
I gave him a nod, which made the muscle under his good eye twitch. But then, his gaze slid to the side.
Beside me, Gabriella was stiff. Her strong, no nonsense energy was extinguished. I heard the gasp catch in her throat.
“It’s true,” she whispered when Liam finally turned to leave.
I’d sent him an update about the meeting with the judge, which my phone showed he’d read, but he hadn’t bothered responding to it. I would have gone to talk to him, but he seemed extra ornery. Whatever business had him cloistered away with my husband and the other Morelli Men had him agitated.
“What’s true?” I asked, turning slightly to look at the young manager.
Gabriella shook her head. “None of your business.”
I snorted. “Okay, then.”
She sighed and threw back the rest of her wine. “You don’t have to stay and help close.”
I was just about to say I would, to prove to her that I could, when the air shifted again.
Another presence invaded the bustling restaurant. This one brought warmth, and my blood responded with a quick jump. I knew before I looked who it was. My soul felt him across the distance.
“Gabby, Signor Morelli and your father want to speak to you,” Vincenzo said. The hard clip of his voice gave nothing away.
“Of course,” she murmured.
Setting her glass of wine down, Gabriella slipped away, leaving me to face the monster.
Mine. Per sempre.
Vincenzo stopped a few feet in front of me, his presence demanding my attention.
“Hi,” I beamed. “Boy, do I have a lot to talk to you about.”
Vincenzo’s smile reached his eyes. “Can’t wait, fiore.”
“Let’s start with the fact that my stepmom is in town, and she lied about my dad being in Tokyo.” I planted my hand on my hip and brought my wine slowly to my lips, staring at him as I drank slowly.
His gaze dropped. First to my lips. Then to my throat as I swallowed. Those dark eyes heated.
“Two things I already knew,” he countered. “What’s there to discuss?”
“A lot.” I tipped the wine glass at him. “And we’re going to talk. Not argue, not fight. Talk.”
“I’d like that.” Vincenzo took a step closer, trapping me next to the wall. “But if you’re upset about anything we talk about, I’m going to start by telling you that I’m not sorry—for any of it.”
I leaned against the wall for support, tipping my head far back to look up into his eyes. There was a whole sea of people around us, but standing with him, it all faded away.
“You’re not?” I challenged.
Vincenzo shook his head. “For you, I would do the unthinkable. No one is powerful enough to stop me. I’m driven by the sheer force of will. There is no job I will hesitate to do if it serves you.”
My insides burned with life. I melted into the wall—fucking melted—at his declaration. “I—”
I stopped myself.
Stopped myself before I blurted out something that used to come so naturally to my lips.
But he knew. This person, my person, he always knew. “Ti amo, fiore, per sempre.”
Someday, hopefully soon, once I had a little more time to heal, to come back from the ashes, I would be brave enough to say it back. For now, I simply nodded and whispered, “Per sempre.”