Chapter 36
36
MICHAEL
“I don’t think she did it, Michael,” Lorenzo says, voice dripping with disapproval. But he doesn’t know a damn thing.
“Shut up,” I growl as my fingers fly over my keyboard, working furiously to unscramble the security feeds that got messed with this afternoon. I need to find out what the hell went wrong.
“She couldn't have dismantled the cameras that cleanly,” Lorenzo presses. “And I doubt you ever told her the password to your laptop, so how could she have accessed it and stolen that information? Something else is at play here.”
“I said, shut the fuck up!” I explode to my feet, sweeping everything off my desk in a burst of white-hot rage. My computer, hard drives, stacks of files—all of it crash to the floor in a cacophony of destruction that does nothing to quiet the storm inside me. “Get out of here, Lorenzo.”
He doesn’t flinch. Just levels me with that infuriatingly calm look. “You need to pull yourself together.” Judgment laces every word as he turns and walks out, leaving me standing in the wreckage of my temper.
Once the door clicks shut behind him, I sink back into my chair, pressing my palms hard against my skull as if I could physically extract the chaos of my thoughts. The pressure builds behind my eyes, threatening to split my head in two.
What the fuck am I supposed to believe?
I know what the facts are. I know what my gut is screaming at me. And I know what the evidence that fucking snake Aldo presented during the commissione’s meeting tonight suggests.
The problem: All three things fucking contradict each other, tearing me apart from the inside out.
Deep down, I know she could never cheat on me. But a tiny voice in my head whispers— how sure can you be? What loyalty does she owe you, after all? No matter how I feel, ours is just a marriage of convenience. Hell, I lied to her that she was in danger to get her to marry me.
There’s absolutely no guarantee she’s grown to develop feelings for me the way I?—
I cut that thought off, slamming my fist onto my desk. It doesn’t fucking matter.
What does matter is the truth. Nothing but the raw, unadulterated truth.
I don’t trust Aldo one bit, but the fact that he tossed those photos in front of the commissione and waved a flash drive with sensitive mafia business that only my brothers and I should know—all while laying the blame at my wife’s beautiful feet—means I can’t just sit back and do nothing.
Because of the security breach, my men are swarming the premises, and they’ll know if Gianna gets punished or not. If I leave her comfortably in her room while I try to find out the truth, word will spread that I’m weak for her. And that won’t do at all. I worked too goddamn hard building my reputation to let it all crumble over this.
With a heavy sigh, I take out my phone and swipe through the camera feed to the room where she’s being held. She’s pacing mindlessly, her legs jittering with nervous energy. I zoom in on the feed, my eyes narrowing at the little bruise forming at the corner of her mouth. I was so out of it earlier, I didn’t even notice it.
Where the fuck did she get that?
A feeling of foreboding settles at the base of my spine, but I try to shake it off as I take out the spare laptop in my desk drawer and turn it on. Since all my devices are synced, it’s easy to pick up where I left off on my destroyed computer.
Time blurs as I work, the lines of code swimming before my eyes. After what feels like hours, I finally locate the beginning of the scrambled thread. Just as I start deciphering the code to unravel this mess, a sharp knock interrupts my concentration.
“Fuck off, Lorenzo.”
But the door creaks open anyway, and he pokes his head in. “Someone is here to see you.”
I glare, about to rip into him, when he steps aside—revealing a dirtied, disheveled, and shivering Gracie.
I’m on my feet before I fully register it, already moving towards the old housekeeper who’s been with me since I was a teenager. “Gracie, where the hell have you been?”
When I couldn’t find her earlier, I told myself I didn’t care. That I had bigger things to worry about. But as I take in her appearance, I finally admit to myself what I’ve been too stubborn to acknowledge—I was worried sick about her disappearance.
“You have to find Gianna,” she says urgently, her weathered hands gripping mine with surprising strength. “I think she’s in grave danger.”
My frown deepens at her incoherent rumble, but there’s no denying the raw fear blazing in her eyes. “What are you talking about? Gianna is fine,” I say gently, but she shakes her head so hysterically I worry she might hurt herself.
“No, she’s not! A woman came in here this afternoon to see her, and I left them alone to talk. Next thing I know, she’s in my kitchen thrusting a needle in my neck, and I’m waking up in the middle of nowhere as the sun was setting. It took me hours to get back here. We need to look for Gianna!” She ends in a desperate wail, tears streaming down her wrinkled face.
My lips part as the wheels turn rapidly in my mind. What woman? No. No, that doesn’t make sense. “Gianna is here, Gracie,” I say slowly, I found her fast asleep on her bed when I got home.” From the meeting that went so horribly wrong.
“That’s impossible,” Gracie insists. “I was taken out of the house—she must have been too. How is she here? Can I speak to her? Please? Maybe we can make sense of all this together.” Gracie rubs her palm over her temple tiredly.
I glance at Lorenzo, who’s still hovering by the door, and give him a subtle nod. He walks in swiftly and gently takes her by the shoulders. “Alright, Gracie. Let’s get you to your room. You need to get some rest; Michael will figure everything out.” His reassurances fade as the office door closes behind them.
Christ. What the fuck is going on?
I grab my phone and open the tracking app—something I should have fucking done the moment I got home. I go to the little picture of Gianna and tap on it. When I fixed the clasp of her necklace, I added a little extra treat for myself: a tracker. And thankfully, she hasn’t taken the damn thing off since.
I check her current location—in my house, exactly where she should be. I scroll up to the history, going as far as this morning when I left for work. She stayed in her bedroom for hours. Then, around mid-afternoon, she went outside the house, then to the living room for only a few short minutes before leaving the house again—leaving the compound entirely.
My jaw clenches as I follow the tracker’s path straight to Aldo’s place, where she spent three damn hours before returning home—at almost the same time Aldo showed up at the commissione meeting with this ‘evidence’.
Something doesn’t fucking add up.
I’m being set up. This is all Aldo’s twisted plan. Gianna’s desperate words come back to haunt me, and I fist my hands. I’m being framed. I’m innocent.
Lead fills my stomach as I storm out of my office, taking the stairs two at a time towards the back where I’ve imprisoned my own wife. My wife, who was telling the truth all along.
I slap my palm against the security panel impatiently and rush through the door the instant it slides open, down the hallway to the last room, where I find her curled up into herself on the thin mattress, shivering violently.
My heart lurches painfully as I yank the door open, cursing as a gust of freezing air hits me. What the fuck? “Why is it so cold in here? Didn’t Lorenzo turn on the heater?”
Gianna looks up at me wordlessly, her face pale as death, teeth chattering audibly. Fuck. I shrug out of my jacket and drape it over her trembling shoulders. Then I wrap my arms around her and scoop her up, carrying her out of the freezing hellhole.
Lorenzo’s fucking dead as soon as I see him.
“Wh–what’s going on?” Gianna asks, her voice small and uncertain as I carry her out of the hallway and towards the stairs.
I don’t say anything—I can’t push the words past the thick lump in my throat and the agonizing ache in my chest, and she doesn’t ask me again. I take her to the bedroom—not her room, but ours —where I gently place her on the bed and cocoon her in thick blankets. Then I watch her intently, waiting for her shivering to subside.
Finally, she meets my gaze, those golden eyes still holding that heartbreaking confusion. “What is it, Michael?”
How could I have punished her for something I knew deep within me she didn’t do? Just for the sake of my reputation? Fuck that.
I run an agitated hand through my hair and, instead of answering her question, I counter with my own. “Who’s the man in that picture with you? Where do you know him from? When did you meet him?”
She sighs, her gaze dropping from mine, and I hate losing that connection with her more than I’ve hated anything. “I already told you—I don’t know him. But you’re not going to believe me, are you?” Her voice is hollow, resigned.
I silently will her to look back up at me, and only when she does do I say, “Try me.”
“Well, Michael, I’ve never seen that man before. I have never and would never cheat on you. I don’t even remember being on that bed at all—much less naked,” she says emphatically, but then her eyes go distant, unfocused, and whatever memory surfaces makes her whole body shudder. She goes even paler, her eyes haunted by ghosts I can’t see.
What happened this afternoon? What did that bastard Aldo do to her?
“What is it?” I demand, even though I have no right to. “Tell me everything.” I need to understand how it all went so catastrophically wrong.
“Aunt Marie came here today. I was stupid enough to let her in. Thought I was being the better person—showing her kindness she never once showed me.” Her mouth twists in self-loathing. “Well, turns out she didn’t need it. She drugged me, stuck a needle in my neck. Next thing I knew, I woke up at Uncle Aldo’s place somehow. I suspect she had help.”
My heart shrivels as she speaks, while simultaneously, a deadly rage builds inside me. The fucking audacity of that family—after everything they’ve done to plot against us, they still dare to pull this shit?
As she finishes her story, her lips tremble and hot tears spill down her ashen cheeks. The sight of those tears—tears I caused—breaks something fundamental inside me.
I go down on my knees in front of her and reach beneath the blankets to find her hands, clutching them tightly in mine. “I’m sorry.”
Gianna stares at me, lips parting in surprise, so I force myself to repeat the words. “I’m sorry.” I bow my head and press my face against our joint hands over the blanket. This is only the second time in my life I’ve apologized to anyone, and the first time was to her as well. She’s the only one I’ll ever go on my knees for, the only one I’ll ever humble myself to apologize to.
And while I know it’s not nearly enough, I’ll apologize a thousand times and spend the rest of my life making it up to her.
“I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions,” I continue, my voice rough with guilt. “When I saw that picture… I just—my mind snapped back to the past. I saw nothing but red. Stopped thinking logically. Even though I knew deep down you couldn’t have done what you were being accused of.”
She hesitates before asking gently, “What happened in the past?”
I stiffen, the old hurt clawing its way up my throat. I’ve never talked about this to another living soul, and I expect it to be excruciating to articulate these memories. But to my surprise, the words flow easily. I shouldn’t be surprised, really. It’s always been easy to talk to her. She makes it easy just by being herself.
So I tell her about Senator Bradley Hart—a serial cheater—and how his wife coped by wearing sexy clothes while cleaning the entirety of the old mausoleum we lived in, practically inviting the lascivious gazes of her husband's security guards.
I tell her about going to my mother’s room one evening and finding her fucking one of the guards. About running into my father and, in my horror and confusion, spilling it all to him. About him dismissively saying it didn’t matter since he cheated too—but I could still overhear their argument later that night.
And the following morning, my mother and her bodyguard were just… gone. Father said they’d run away to be together, and I acted out for weeks, consumed by guilt, convinced it was all my fault. But the year my father died, I found out the truth—he actually had my mother and her lover killed, disposed of like garbage.
I tell her how it all messed me up mentally. And how when I saw those pictures of her with another man, it made me sick to even think about. When I finally calmed down enough to think rationally, of course, I realized it couldn’t be real. But that one moment of gut-deep fear made me react like a damn idiot. Made me choose my reputation over her and imprison her in that cell, just in case it turned out to be true.
I’m not telling her this just to get her sympathy—but I get it anyway. And I find I don’t hate it. A small smile tugs at my lips when she wraps her arms around my neck and draws me into her embrace, my face pressed against the soft warmth of her chest. “You were just a child,” she murmurs. “That must have been horrific for you.”
I sink into her and allow her to comfort me, surrendering completely to the only person who’s ever made me feel safe enough to be vulnerable.