Chapter 7 #2
“He’s had the same number since we were children. He made sure Dante and I both memorised it in case we ever needed to call him. I’ve never forgotten it.” Or forgotten how Dante’s father had been more of a father to him than Niccolo’s had ever been.
Although it had never been spoken of, Niccolo had been aware from a young age that the Coscarellis suspected what went on behind the closed doors of the Martinelli estate.
Poor in money but rich in love, his best friend’s parents had gone out of their way to treat him like a second son.
If he’d been marrying Georgia instead of Siena, the Coscarellis would have taken his parents’ place at the wedding.
His own parents had only been invited to the wedding because it was the whole point of the wedding: Lorenzo tying his family to a duke’s family.
“They why don’t you use the house phone to call him?” Georgia suggested, her eyes now dancing with excitement.
“What house phone?”
“The one in the hallway next to the downstairs bathroom…” Her brief burst of excitement dimmed a little. “Unless it’s just an ornament and not a real phone. It looks like an antique.”
He was already on his feet. “There’s only one way to find out.”
Georgia perched herself on a leather armchair and crossed her fingers, arms and legs that this would work.
Just the act of doing something to get them out of this mess gave hope, and she needed hope.
The moment Niccolo said Lorenzo had died in the church, she’d known what the implications were. The danger she was in had magnified by a million. The Espositos knew she was pregnant with Niccolo’s child. The odds of them letting her live had gone from evens to a million to one.
Until that point, she’d assumed herself to be an unwitting pawn in a game between Lorenzo and Niccolo, targeted by the former to flush out the latter. It hadn’t been personal. Now, all bets were off, and the danger to them both was very real.
But hope was powerful, and Niccolo’s confidence and assuredness over the plan he’d yet to share with her was feeding her hope. For all that, the relief that flooded her when Niccolo began talking on the antique phone was so strong that for a long moment she couldn’t even breathe.
The call ended quickly.
“He’s going to get Dante to call me back,” Niccolo said.
She had a sudden ominous thought. “The Espositos won’t be tracking Dante’s phone too, will they?”
“It’s possible, so his father’s going to get him to call me from one of the castle’s landlines. They can’t have touched those.”
“Can you ask him if Callie’s okay, please?
” It still didn’t feel real that her sister, a woman who couldn’t bear to be touched by men, had fallen in love, and with, of all people, the man who’d held her captive in his castle for almost a week to stop her putting into motion everything that was happening now.
“If she’s still with him, she’ll be safe,” he assured her. “Dante’s castle is a fortress. No one can enter the grounds uninvited.”
“I’m thinking more about her emotional state. If she knows what’s happening with you and me, she’ll be going out of her mind with worry.”
The house phone rang, making them both jump.
Niccolo answered it immediately. “Dante?”
And that was the only word Georgia recognised. For the next few minutes came a conversation in rapid Italian she could only hear one side of. Judging from Niccolo’s loosening body language, she didn’t need to be able to understand it.
“He’s willing to help us?” she asked when the call ended.
“Yes.”
She inhaled slowly, letting another wave of relief flood through her system. “And my sister?”
“Out of her mind with worry but safe and well.” His brow furrowed in disbelief. “I think you might be right that they have got together. His voice sounded weird when I asked about her. He sounded… possessive.”
“That’s good to know.” She hated to think of her sister in any kind of distress.
Hated even more that if she’d been honest with Callie about the Espositos when she’d caught her about to fly off to Naples, her sister wouldn’t be thousands of miles away.
“If anything happens to me, she’ll need someone to love her because you can bet your life our parents won’t step up to the mark. ”
He was on his knees in front of her before she could blink, his hands on her shoulders, his dark stare penetrating her intently. “Nothing is going to happen to you, carina. Nothing.”
She palmed his cheek. “I love your certainty. Now tell me what the plan is so I can have certainty too.”
“You won’t like it,” he warned.
“If the endgame is that we all live, then I’ll love it.”
And so he told her.
Night had fallen. Thick clouds were hiding any sign of the moon. Outside, everything was black; the perfect cloak for dogs on the prowl to hide in.
“You’re jumpy,” Niccolo observed when Georgia peered out of the French doors in the living room that had earlier looked over a vast garden encircled by thick, high trees. Now she was looking out over a black nothingness.
“I don’t know if it’s better to see or not to see,” she said, hugging her arms.
He stepped behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. “They won’t have found us yet.”
She wished she had the same confidence. “How can you know?”
“Benjamin wasn’t on the wedding guest list,” he reminded her. “We can assume their dogs are in the UK looking for us, but I spent four years studying here. This was my home, and I have many friends here who were on the guest list. They will be targeted first.”
“Will those friends be safe?”
“Yes. They will be observed and then once it’s established they’re not hiding us, the dogs will move on to their next target.”
“But how can you be so sure?”
“Because I know how the Espositos work. They’re methodical in their single-mindedness.
Also, you have to remember that they’ve learned the art of discretion – it’s how they became legitimate.
Everyone knows it’s all smoke and mirrors, but it suits big business and the government to believe in their legitimacy.
If they start a blood bath in England against a series of people all connected to me, the authorities will not be able to turn a blind eye.
No, the Espositos will keep their dogs on a tight leash until they are certain their targets – us – have been found. ”
She shivered.
He rested his chin on the top of her head. “We will be gone before that happens.”
She leaned back into him and closed her eyes.
Niccolo had gone through the plan with her.
The wheels were already in motion to get them out of England.
She wished they could leave right now, but it was impossible.
Niccolo wasn’t prepared to leave anything to chance, including the endgame.
Two nights would be spent in this house in the middle of nowhere, and then all their ducks would be in a row and they could put the plan into action.
Until then, they would stay exactly where they were, and Georgia would spend what were potentially her last hours on earth frightened of shadows.
In many ways, she’d spent her life frightened of shadows, she thought with a flash of insight that made her blink widely.
Not in a literal sense, but in the sense of always hiding behind Callie and following her lead, content to take whatever path her sister chose.
Even the path of Georgia’s career had come about because Callie had suggested – rightly – that it would suit her artistic side.
She’d followed the same pattern in her relationship with Niccolo.
Everything had been dominated and led by him, not because he was selfish – he wasn’t in the slightest – but because she’d let him.
Being with him had been such a rush that she’d been happy to do whatever he wanted, even walking out of a life-drawing class minutes after arriving because he’d called and said his meeting had finished earlier than expected and that he would be at her apartment, as he always called it, within the hour.
She could have told him she was busy and that she’d see him when her class was finished, but she didn’t.
The thought hadn’t occurred to her. She’d packed her art equipment away, apologised to her tutor and the other students, and hurried home to wait for him.
The two most significant relationships in her life, and she’d been the sheep…
Because, she now realised, her successful, professional parents, the ones who should have been the two most significant people in her life, had treated her with indifference.
Georgia and Callie hadn’t been created through passion or love or a deep-rooted need to procreate, but because their parents had reached the pinnacles of their respective careers by both being made consultants, and so deemed it time to tick off the next box in the checklist of their lives, the one marked ‘children’.
Already in their forties, they’d gone through numerous debilitating rounds of IVF before Georgia and Callie’s embryos had taken, but there had been no effort to actually parent, not when paid help would do it for them.
Growing up, it had felt like only Callie could truly see her, right until the day a gorgeous Italian had taken her hand in his and locked his dark chocolate eyes onto hers.
Something in Niccolo’s touch and stare had instinctively made her feel safe, enough so that the subtle barrier she was barely conscious of raising around people to keep them at a friendly arm’s length didn’t have the chance to form.
However badly their relationship had ended and for all the pain of its aftermath, it had been passionate and beautiful. The best months of her life.
Screw being frightened, she suddenly thought with a shot of defiance.
She was done with being frightened. Done with hiding behind others.
Done with being a sheep. Done with letting her life be influenced and dominated by other people’s choices.
She’d already proved she was stronger, physically and mentally, than she’d ever dreamed she could be.
If these were to be her last few days on this earth…
With a burst of impetus, Georgia stepped out of Niccolo’s hold and drew the French door’s heavy curtains with a decisive yank before spinning around to face him. “Let’s close all the curtains and blinds in the house and tune the outside world out of our minds, and go to bed.”
Eyes glittering, he arched an eyebrow.
She closed the gap between them and rested her hands on his broad, naked shoulders.
Rising onto her toes, she gazed deep into his eyes.
“I don’t want to spend the next two nights worrying about all the ways the plan can fail, Nic.
I want to spend it living.” She craned her face closer, eyes fluttering shut as she breathed him in and brushed her mouth to his for a featherlight kiss, and whispered, “I want to live it with you.”