Chapter 52 Vittoria
VITTORIA
Things have been … different all week. Usually, Ignazio is around, but lately, he’s been out most of the day, not coming home until after I’ve already gone to sleep.
It’s not something that would usually bother me, but after meeting with Liana at the spa, my thoughts and emotions have been all over the place.
I still haven’t reached out to her. There have been multiple times where I start typing out a message to her, but each time, I end up deleting it, unsure how to continue this relationship.
As naive as some would believe me to be, I do think she is my daughter, but I can’t understand why Ignazio would do all of this.
For the several years we’ve been together, he’s been nothing but kind, loving, and gentle with me. I even developed a close relationship with his daughter who lost her mother at a young age. We’re a family. Why would he take me away from mine?
There’s more to this story I’m not understanding, and I’ve been hoping this past week it would begin coming back to me, but it hasn’t. I’ve had a constant migraine, but there’s still a wall up, keeping me from gaining access to everything I should know.
I just need more answers.
“I don’t care what the hell needs to be done.
It’s been a whole fucking week. You need to find them,” my husband snarls as he walks by the library where I’ve been sitting for the past hour to wind down before going to bed.
The door is cracked, so his voice was mumbled, but I heard him loud and clear.
Could he be talking about Liana?
I rush over to the door and open it slowly, peeking my head out into the hallway, and watch as Ignazio disappears into his office with Andreas.
This is completely unlike me, but I follow this instinct deep in my gut that’s telling me to find out what he’s talking about.
The door is cracked, so I stand right outside and listen in.
“I don’t know what those damn kids are planning, but they know Vittoria is alive, which means I need them fucking found.”
“I’ve tried calling Massimo, but he won’t answer my calls,” Andreas says.
“You don’t have a fucking tracker on your kid?” Ignazio snaps.
“I had one on his phone, but he disengaged it.”
“What fucking use are you, Andreas? You’re the reason I’ve been put in this situation, so you better figure out a way to get me out of it.
I’ve made fucking sure Vittoria is with a guard everywhere she goes outside of this house.
If that daughter of hers finds her again and tells her everything, there’s a fucking probable chance her memories will start coming back, and I can’t have that happen. ”
My heart sinks, and I choke back the sob wanting to escape my lips.
Ignazio just confirmed Liana is my daughter. He just confirmed he’s been keeping an entire part of my life away from me. The lies. The manipulation. Who is my husband?
“I understand, Ignazio, but Massimo is smart. He will do the right thing, get his wife under control, and they will go back to New York if they haven’t already.”
“Well, then maybe you should contact one of your men in New York and see if they’re back home,” he snaps.
There’s so much anger in his tone. I’ve never heard this man speak the way he’s speaking to Andreas now. It’s … scary.
A sharp pain radiates through my skull, nearly pushing me to the floor. My vision gets blurry, and nausea seeps through my body.
I need to get out of there.
Grabbing onto the walls to hold myself up, I stumble my way back to the library, praying Ignazio and Andreas don’t walk out of the room and find out I was eavesdropping.
I let out a sigh of relief when I push the door open, and barely make it to the couch without collapsing. Lying down, I close my eyes and place my hand on my forehead, trying to stop the splitting headache that’s pressing against my skull.
When I open my eyes, the dizziness gets worse, and I’m thankful I’m already lying down, because one moment I’m in the library trying to manage the extreme migraine that’s set in, and the next, I’m falling into a dark part of my brain.
A cold, sterile feeling takes over my body.
Beeping sounds in the background.
“She survived, but there’s no telling what the extent of the damages are until she wakes up,” a man says.
“Extent of the damages?” another man says.
“She was in a plane crash, Mr. Faraci. The chances of her experiencing some type of brain trauma are extremely high.”
“Brain trauma … What exactly do you mean by that, Doc?”
“I won’t know until she wakes up, but there is a high chance there could be some memory loss, disorientation, things of that nature.”
There’s a pause, then Mr. Faraci says, “Memory loss? Is that something that would be permanent?”
“Not necessarily, but again, I won’t know much until she wakes up.”
“I see … Well, I plan on staying with her until she does wake up,” he says.
“Since you know her, it might help if you speak to her. She might recognize your voice, and it’ll help her wake.”
“Got it, Doc.”
“I’ll leave you two, but let me know if you have any other questions.”
Footsteps make their way farther away from me until the click of a door latching echoes through the room.
“New plan,” Mr. Faraci says.
“Yes, sir?”
There’s another person.
“I need you to get with our guy and have a new identity made for Bianca.”
Who’s Bianca?
“Sir?”
“I want it prepared just in case what the doc said is true.”
“In case she has memory loss?”
He’s talking about me?
“Yes. I want everything set in place for when she wakes up, that way there aren’t any fucking questions as to who she is and where she came from.”
“Questions, sir?”
He sounds just as confused as I am.
“Yes,” he snaps. “I want an entire new identity made for her so I can finally make her mine the way she was always intended to be instead of that fucking loser husband of hers that’s now dead.”
I gasp and shoot up to a sitting position. The pain in my head intensifies, and I cry out.
The lights turn on, which has me cowering from the brightness.
“Too bright,” I say, then they’re lowered to a dim a moment later, and I realize I’m no longer in the library, but instead in my bed.
“Tesoro mio, are you okay?”
Ignazio’s arms find their way around my shoulders, but I wince. My entire body is telling me to run from him.
“What is going on, Vittoria?” His voice is stern this time, and I have to guess it’s because of my reaction to him. He’s going to become suspicious if I don’t do something quick.
I fight through the pain and drop my hands into my lap. Glancing over at Ignazio, I force a small smile on my face. “It’s nothing. I was just having a nightmare, and when I woke up, I was extremely disorientated. The last thing I remember was falling asleep in the library.”
Ignazio extends his hand out to me again, placing it on my shoulder. It takes everything in me not to pull away from him.
“I carried you in here when I found you asleep on the couch. What was your nightmare about?”
I tense, knowing I need to think of something quickly or he’ll catch onto my lie.
“Oh, I don’t remember much. I just remember you and I were on a boat and you went overboard. It was nighttime, and the last thing I remember is screaming for you.”
I swallow down the lie, looking over at Ignazio. He’s staring at me intently, as if to read through me, but when he doesn’t say anything, I take a deep breath.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you,” I say.
“You never have to apologize for something like that, tesoro mio. Let’s talk more about this nightmare you had.”
“Oh, no. No, no, no. We should both get back to sleep.”
Without thinking about it, I roll over and turn my back on Ignazio, cradling my head in my hands. I close my eyes and silently pray he doesn’t think twice about this, but after that dream—memory—I had, I can’t bring myself to fake that with him.
None of this makes sense, but I know that was another memory coming through, I just can’t figure out why I didn’t remember that from when I was in the hospital.
I have more questions now than I ever had before, but what I do know is that my entire life with Ignazio Faraci has been fabricated by his own doing, and he’s a dangerous man who I need to get away from.