Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
E ight Months Later
Gaetano
“I don’t know, Gaetano. Which one do you think I should get her?” Bobby looks between the boxes with confusion.
“Depends. Would Santa think she’s a good girl?” Bobby doesn’t talk about his daughter much.
Mylena was adopted. He and his wife never could have one of their own. I’m aware her biological mother was the daughter of their neighbor who was too young to keep her. When she was still a young kid, Bobby mentioned her from time to time. But once she hit her teenage years, there were times I forgot he had a kid. His wife he bitches about constantly, he can’t stand her.
He chuckles. “My Mylena is a good girl, only a few points from valedictorian. It’s just that Delores is always bitching about me spoiling her. But she deserves it. I hate she’s so far away…then again with her mother—I’m not surprised. I’m grateful she’s coming home for Christmas.”
I shake my head, “In that case, she deserves the one-carat in each ear in the princess cut. It’s timeless, and the diamonds are clear as water.”
Nodding. “Yeah, I’ll take those. Thanks for hooking me up.”
“No problem?—”
His phone rings. He checks the display and answers. “Bianca, hey, sweetie.”
A flood of garbled speech comes out too fast and not loud enough for me to catch everything. My whole body stiffens as my mind races, wondering if she’s all right.
“It’s okay, take a deep breath. I can come to get you. No problem at all. Are you safe right now?” It’s a little slower but no clearer than it was a minute ago. “All right. I’m on my way.” He ends the call, and the minute he does, he yawns.
“Why don’t you let me go get her, and you go home to bed? You’re not going to be any good to her falling asleep. You were up at what? Six in the morning today to get Sandro to the airport so he could fly out to deal with the shelter in LA.”
His sigh is heavy. “My alarm went off at five. I thought he was going to come back tonight, so I didn’t dare head home to relax. I don’t know. She doesn’t like you much.”
I laugh. “Only because I don’t indulge her the way you and Sandro do. And she met me once. Besides, you and I both know I’m going to be the one who ends up killing whoever made her cry. If Sandro knows we let it go until he got back into town, he’ll never forgive either one of us.”
My smile was already fake—something to prevent him from seeing how badly I needed to be the one to go to her. It disappears as I read his hesitation. “You are not dropping whatever happened to her.”
He shrugs. “She’s begging me to. It’s a stupid girl thing?—”
“Give me the address and go home. Don’t make me tell Sandro.”
A hand goes over his face. “Yeah, okay.” He’s clicking through his phone. “She gave me her location a long time ago so I wouldn’t have to go into her tracking information. Damn, she’s on the other side of town.”
I nod as I check the text he sent me. He’s not exaggerating. She’s on the other side of the city. It will take me almost an hour to get to her—if I go the speed limit.
Two minutes after I close my front door behind him, I’m in my car. While my garage door opens, I take the time to turn off the app for the tracker on her vehicle so it won’t alert if her SUV is nearby. I remove the app for the cameras, again. I’ll download it again the way I keep doing—unable to go more than a few weeks without watching her.
In the half hour it takes to get to her, half a dozen scenarios are running through my head. What the hell was bad enough that she called Bobby for help when she had several credit cards and her debit card?
The closer I get to the address, I see it’s a twenty-four-hour pharmacy. The parking lot is basically empty of cars. There are two men drinking from a bottle at the edge of the lot. When they see me get out of the car, they decide to leave. Smart.
Inside, I find Bianca’s beautiful face is still swollen from crying, and her eyes are red-rimmed. The cashier is an older woman, patting her shoulder consolingly. She’s in a thin black lacy dress with her tits up and spilling out of the top of it. I want to tear out the eyes of everyone who has seen her in it—man or woman.
Even though I’ve been watching her almost daily over the last eight months, seeing her only a feet away from me, I’m discovering changes in her I hadn’t noticed. The way she’s holding herself is different than the last time I saw her. Her shoulders are back, and her head is up.
Bianca sees me and sighs. Fresh tears appear, and she shakes her head.
“Is this the fucker?” The cashier asks her, giving me the stink-eye.
“No, he’s my ride.” She’s moving toward me with apprehension and what might be relief. Suddenly, she stops. Now she’s wary.
It’s a mistake. The last thing I should be doing is touching her, only I can’t stop myself. It doesn’t matter that I can see for myself that she’s all right. I need to touch her—to feel her soft skin beneath my fingertips. I catch her chin and bring her face up to mine. There are bruises along one shoulder and arm, rage fires through me that anyone dared to touch, to mark her skin.
Her gasp at my touch turns my whole body hard. I’m grateful for the curious eyes of the cashier keeping me from screwing up even more.
Taking a step back, I hand her my keys. “Go get in my car.”
She hesitates, not taking my keys. “Why?”
Swallowing my anger isn’t easy. “Go get in my car. Now.”
Nodding, she takes my keys. She’s smarter than I am and careful not to touch me.
Once she’s outside, I nod at the cashier. “She’s not going to be honest with me. Can you tell me what she told you?”
Her eyes run over me distrustfully.
I take out my money clip, peel off two hundred-dollar bills, and offer them to her.
She frowns at me.
Interesting. “She won’t tell me in order to protect the fucker who hurt her. You think they deserve to be protected?”
Taking the money, she shakes her head. “She went out with a friend from school. The girl set her up—if you ask me. They leave the club and call the girl’s brother to pick them up since they both were drinking. She never explained how they ended up at his place instead of him taking them back to their dorm. Alls I know is she said, the brother tries to get into bed with your girl at his place. When she told him no, he threw her out of his apartment. She’s begging for her purse, and neither of them will give it to her. Doesn’t even have her keys. He tried to take her phone out of her hand. But Bianca bit him.”
“I take it the apartment is around here?”
She nods, pointing towards the large apartment complex I can see across the busy street.
“You got an address by any chance?”
“Not an address. She said it was a big, white, jacked-up truck, and the apartment was on the ground floor with the truck headlights visible from inside the apartment. Apparently, he went outside when they first got there and sat in the truck for a while.”
“Thanks.”
In my car, Bianca has the heat on. It’s two weeks out from Christmas in Vegas. While it might be warmer than most places during the day, the desert at night can be freezing. I keep my eyes off her. There’s enough light coming into the car, and she would see far more than I want her to.
“You want to tell me what happened?” I keep my voice low and even.
“Only if you don’t tell Sandro.” Her voice wobbles.
I shake my head. “Princess, you are many things. But worth dying over, isn’t one of them.” I lie. Death would be the easiest way out of the hell I’ve been in since I laid eyes on her. “If Sandro finds out I hid this from him, he’ll spray my guts over the desert.”
Rubbing her hands over her eyes. “It’s not a big deal. Please drop it.”
“Where’s your purse?”
The tears start all over again. “Gaetano…”
I sigh to cover the way my whole body turns to stone at hearing her say my name. That isn’t how I want her to say it—I want it low and filled with need, not fear and tears.
“All right. We forget your purse. You want to go back to the hotel or dorm?” I let the silence fill the air between us. “That’s right. You can’t go to either place because you don’t have the keys to get in. And when Sandro asks you what happened, what are you going to tell him?”
She’s shaking her head.
“So that means you’re coming home with me. And we’ll just wait until Sandro comes home tomorrow from handling the shelter for Luca. He can take you to go get your purse and keys. Because it sure as hell isn’t going to be Bobby who handles this. It’s me now or Sandro tomorrow. What’s it going to be?”
Sniffling, she nods. “Now, and you. Please don’t do anything crazy.”
“Why don’t you tell me what happened, and I’ll decide if I’m going to do anything crazy or not.” I invite.
Exactly as I knew she would, she lies—downplaying it as a misunderstanding. I find the white truck and the apartment easily. It’s Friday night in Vegas, so even though it’s almost one in the morning, there are still lights on in several apartments. Not good. Depending on the people in the complex to not be nosy isn’t a great part of any plan.
“What’s her name? And his?”
“Destiny and Gary.” Her hand goes down to the door handles.
I shake my head. “No, you’re staying in here. Don’t get out of the car.”
Sighing, she sits back.
There’s an apartment directly across from this one, two more down the breezeway, and four more on the second floor. One good thing I’m seeing is a lack of those damn cameras everyone has. Along with no cameras in the parking lot is a good thing—for me.
I pound on the door, covering the peephole. “Open up, Gary.”
“Who the fuck are you?” Is yelled through the door.
“Karma, Gary. Open the fucking door. Or I open it myself. Don’t piss me off more than you already have.”
“Go away! I’m calling the cops.”
I laugh. No way is this piece of shit calling the cops. “Call them, Gary.”
He wasn’t expecting that.
Fuck this. I send a kick into a few inches to the side of the doorknob. The door swings open and hits the wall behind it. He’s a roid rage asshole with more muscles than brain cells. Pussy that he is, he holds his sister in front of him. She’s a bleach blonde with fake tits, and she’s screaming at him.
I have three inches on his ass, and I’m hoping he’ll square up. He sees it and doesn’t dare. Since I’m not a woman, he knows he can’t win.
“Where’s Bianca’s purse?”
He pushes her toward me. “Give it to him.”
She goes running and swipes it off the floor, where she’s upended everything, and shoves it all back inside.
“Her cards and wallet,” I demand.
The wallet and cards are on the coffee table. She grabs them, and I stuff them in the purse.
Because I need to, I send my foot into his stomach the same way I sent it into this door. He goes flying, and it’s enough—for now.
I’m glad to find Bianca hasn’t moved an inch. In my car, I set her purse in her lap.
“Thank you.”
“Do you want to go to the hotel or to your dorm?”
“Dorm, please.”
“Log in to your bank and shut down your card.”
She nods and does it. “So you’re going to tell Sandro on me?”
“You know Sandro wants you to meet someone?—”
“Yes, yes, like I haven’t heard it a thousand times already.”
“To that end, he’s attempted to give you the space to find someone. If he knew what happened tonight, he’d lock your ass up in the hotel or ship you off to an all-women college. It won’t give him what he wants, and you need in the end. If you move back into the hotel with him, I won’t tell him.”
“You’re going to kill them, aren’t you?” The words are quiet.
“They are going to get what’s coming to them.”
Her sigh fills my car as we pull up outside her dorm. “Fine. I’ll tell Sandro I don’t like dorm life after all.”
“Good.”
She opens her door, “Gaetano?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
She’s out of the car.
I watch until she’s inside.
Now it’s time to make the brother and sister feel the pain they deserve.
Bianca
I would rather cut my tongue out than admit I was happy to see Gaetano instead of Bobby. All I wanted to do the second I saw him was throw myself at him so he could hold me the way I longed for so badly. The only thing that kept me from doing it was the anger vibrating through him. Gaetano angry is freaking scary. Not even Sandro scares me as much as Gaetano does.
The thing was, I considered calling Gaetano. I’ve thought of calling him every single night for the last eight months. When I imagined seeing Gaetano again, I hoped I would be cool and could pretend I didn’t still dream of him.
I didn’t want Gaetano thinking I only called him to fix things when I was dumb and screwed up. Especially when I knew his way of fixing this would lead to Destiny and Gary ending up dead.
I’m grateful he isn’t going to tell Sandro. But I hate that it means moving back into the hotel to do it… Who am I kidding? I fucking hate the dorm. As badly as I tried to fit in, I don’t. Everyone seems so young and immature.
The only thing I’m not sure about is what Sandro will say. Will he think I gave up too easily? Will he resent me wanting to move back in? Will I have to tell him what happened to get him to agree?
What the hell happened tonight? I’ve been turning it over in my head ever since Gary threw me out of his apartment, with Destiny laughing at me. That’s something I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive. Destiny laughed at me as her brother yelled at me and pushed me around his apartment after trying to sexually fucking harass me. We’ve known each other since we met in our English class at the start of the semester. She was funny, and I thought we were going to be best friends or something—until tonight.
Destiny has been after me to go out with her for weeks. She wanted to go out to the hotel the Outfit owned on the strip. How she knew it was Outfit-owned, I have no idea. She thought it would be cool to meet a made man and hook up. For Destiny, it was all about the hook-up. She had men on a list she was after, a professor, a football player, a basketball player, and someone in the mafia—marking them off a list like she was going shopping.
Collapsing onto my bed, I sigh to see my roommate still isn’t here even though it’s almost two in the morning. God, this night feels like it’s gone on forever.
Blinking back tears, I bury my face in my pillow. This whole college thing sucks. I hate it. I didn’t think it would be this hard to make friends, to feel normal.
I need to get up and get out of these clothes and take my makeup off… Slowly, I slip into sleep, dreaming of Gaetano and wishing he were here now.