Chapter 5
NICOLETTE
“Where am I?” Panic grips me as I groan, causing my body to jolt.
I fight to get away, but I can’t seem to move. My head pounds at the back, my arm throbbing as someone sits beside me. Through the slits of my eyes, I can make out a man, maybe my father’s age, hair gray at the sides, brown at the top.
“I’m a doctor. You’re safe.” His voice is kind. Soft.
I relax into…a sofa? Yes, definitely appears to be one.
“Where am I?” I question once more, the distress evident in my own words.
“You’re in a safe location, Nicolette,” another man replies.
I instantly gasp.
Oh my God. No… He found me.
A rush of breaths pounds through my rib cage, my lungs heaving, and when I try to push myself off the couch, a heavy hand drives me back down.
“P-p-please don’t kill me…” I beg, looking up at him.
Michael.
Inexplicable dread rushes over my arms, cold as the darkest storm. He’s terrifying. That scar on his right cheek, those hard features…
I gulp as he assesses me.
If his father wants me dead, surely Michael does too.
Maybe they’re working together. But Raph wouldn’t allow my sister to die.
Maybe Michael is covering up for his father.
It wouldn’t be so far-fetched. Isn’t that what Mafia people do for each other?
Hide each other’s skeletons in their own closets?
“Why would I kill you?” He narrows a curious stare, a gun sitting in his waistband.
And even through the fog, all I can do is stare at it, wondering if he’s going to pull it out and shoot me. Better yet, maybe Giancarlo will jump out and finish the job himself.
“Because of…” My upper arm burns with brutalizing pain while the doctor wraps it.
Oh, fuck. I got shot, didn’t I? Great. I bet I’ll get a lovely scar to look back on.
Michael cants his head to the side while glaring at the doctor, who immediately jumps to his feet.
“She should recover just fine,” he explains in a hurry. “The bump to her head will go down, and her feet, by some miracle, only have some superficial cuts. Just keep an eye on her, and if there are any signs of a concussion like we discussed, you’ll have to take her to the hospital.”
“And the bullet wound?”
“It’s only a graze. It’ll heal. She’s lucky it didn’t hit an artery.”
Lucky. Ha. He has no idea how unlucky I am.
Why did my sister have me come over that day? She didn’t even tell me what she wanted, because a few minutes later, Giancarlo showed up. I wonder if she knew he was coming and wanted me to hide there on purpose. We all knew how dangerous he was. Maybe she was using me as a witness.
A chill runs down my nape. I was so stupid thinking she called me because she wanted to improve our relationship by spending some time together. I’m na?ve sometimes. But I still carried that tiny hope. Hope that I finally mattered. That she loved me.
“Thanks, Doc.” Michael walks him to the door and shuts it behind him. Once it is, he marches toward me and gives me a hard-edged look. “Now, you’re going to tell me exactly what’s going on, Nicolette, and who you’ve been running from.”
When my lips start to move, fear ebbing and flowing through my veins, he casually takes out his gun and keeps it at his side.
I shiver.
“And don’t you dare lie to me, because I will get it out of you.”
Tears ache in my eyes. “Just please promise me you won’t kill me. I—I won’t say a word.”
“Whether you die depends on you. What did you do? And to whom?”
“Me?” I groan as I scoot back against the pillows at my back. “I didn’t do anything. It’s what I saw. Do you not…”
When confusion lines his brows, I realize that it’s possible for Michael to be in the dark about his father. That would make sense. He hasn’t killed me. Yet.
“Do I not what? Speak.” Seething madness settles behind his eyes.
“Um…my bag. Where’s my bag?” I dart a stare around the room, not seeing the small duffle I had with me.
He struts over to the corner of the room, kneeling down, and when he rights himself, I see it.
He gently places it next to me, and I rummage inside, looking for my phone.
I managed to steal a charger from one of the guests at the motel I worked for.
Not my proudest moment, but I needed my phone and I couldn’t waste money on a charger.
I had to save every penny I could for food and toiletries.
The money I was making at those places was shit.
When I finally find the cell under some clothes, I remove it and turn it back on.
“If you were running from someone bad enough to want you dead, it was foolish to have your phone with you,” he says. “That’s how they must’ve tracked you.”
“I was careful. I only turned it on for emergencies.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He clenches his jaw. “What do you have to show me?”
Quickly, I open my gallery and find the video.
“I thought you knew,” I tell him as I outstretch my hand and give him the phone. “I thought you were here to kill me like he wants to.”
“Who?” His brows furrow just as he presses play.
When the voices of Bianca and his father come through, talking about sleeping together and then about her being pregnant, he curses roughly over and over. His free hand balls tightly as he watches them.
“How long have you known?” he asks, pausing it.
“For a few months before she died. I caught her coming out of his car one night while he kissed her. Like, full-on make-out kind of kiss.”
“I get the visual.”
Revolted, he shakes his head, watching the video, and my stomach bottoms out when I hear the gunshot.
“Fucking bastard.” He scrubs his face with a palm as he paces, the phone no longer playing the recording. “Okay, listen.” He finally stops and stares at me with concentration. “Raph is on his way, and—”
“What?” I gasp, almost falling off the sofa with how hard I shudder. “Why? I…I can’t see him.”
I gape down at my appearance, knowing I look like I’ve just been dug out of dirt. I can’t see him after all this time looking like this. Nor do I actually want to see him after the kiss.
That kiss, though. The mere thought of his lips on mine sends a shiver coasting down my body. He kept them there for long, breathtaking seconds before he pulled away. It was as though he was kissing me back without actually doing it.
I’ve measured every man that came into my life against Raph.
He was perfection, and no one came close.
It’s why my relationships only lasted a couple of months.
My heart wasn’t over him. It never would be.
I loved him in silence then, and I continue to love him in silence now.
Love doesn’t simply cease to exist just because we want it to.
“Like I said…” he stresses. “He’s on his way, and we’re going to tell him what’s been going on. But…”
He presses his fingers into his temple and closes his eyes for a moment before staring back.
“You can’t tell him about this recording or the baby. It will kill him to know that not only did our father fuck his wife but got her pregnant too.”
“I—I agree. I won’t tell him. I promise,” I hurriedly say. “I wouldn’t want to hurt him either.”
My vision clouds at the thought of hurting him in any way. He didn’t deserve what my sister did. She was a bitch, through and through.
“Good.” He pushes some buttons on my cell, then stuffs it into his pocket.
“Hey! I need that.” I attempt to get to my feet, but instantly succumb to a dizzy spell. With my eyes forced shut, I breathe in and out.
“You won’t need your phone anymore,” Michael counters. “Not unless you plan to die.”
I straighten myself and shoot him an irritable look as he goes on.
“I’ll be destroying your phone, along with your copy of that video. But a copy will remain with me.”
From the look on his face, I can tell there’s no use in fighting him. Maybe it’s better this way. Who do I have to call other than Brenda?
Suddenly feeling chilly, I retrieve a beige cardigan sweater from my bag and slip into it. My shoulder aches as I do, but other than the bullet wound, I feel mostly okay. I’ve always had a pretty high tolerance for pain, and I can definitely use that right now.
Exhaustion settles behind my eyes, and I kinda want to sleep, but before I can think better of it, the door flings open.
I’m suddenly spinning, round and round like a merry-go-round. My mind, my heart…right down to my soul. I prickle everywhere when a pair of deep, dark eyes finds mine and holds me still in a waking dream.
He’s here. Actually here. In this room.
And I only see him. Everything else simply vanishes. We’re both frozen in time, staring at one another—or more like into each other. My heart lurches, as though wanting to run into his arms and stay there for the rest of my days.
His mouth parts and his brows bow with intense unspoken emotion, and I start to wonder if he feels what I feel in this very moment. The gnawing in his gut. The crescendo of his heartbeats.
He can’t peel his eyes off me, while my heart flutters and soars and dances to a song only he knows the lyrics to.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
I ache to confess it out loud. To show him. To make him feel it the way I do. Loving him in silence should be easy by now, but seeing him again after so long, I realize it’ll never be easy. This is the most painful thing I’ve ever felt.
“Michael?” He finally snaps his eyes away, his voice harsh, like he doesn’t want to see me at all.
And I’m suddenly ice cold, my entire body drowning and suffocating and dying under the waves of my tumultuous emotions.
“What is she doing here?”
She…
He says the word as though it’s a disease he wishes to eradicate from his body. Yank it clean off until it withers away and dies.
Even after all these years, even being twenty-one now, I know he still wouldn’t want me. I may no longer be the girl who kissed him at seventeen, but he still doesn’t see me, does he? He never will. I never stood a chance with him.
My nose burns. It hurts. It fucking hurts.
His rejection hurt then, but somehow it hurts more now.
“She’s here because she has info, and you’re going to need to sit down for it.”
His chest expands as he hardens a stare my way. “What could she possibly have to tell us?”
“Go ahead,” Michael urges with a quick glance. “Tell him.”
But I can’t seem to speak, my lower lip quivering from my broken heart. The tears pool in my eyes as I gaze at him, wishing for the man who was once gentle and caring. Not this hardened version of him.
It’s like he hates me. What did I do except love him? Fine, I kissed him. And maybe I shouldn’t have. But I was young.
No, you know what? I don’t regret it. Fuck him. He wants to be this way. Two can play that game.
I blink away the tears and flip on my mask. I’m good at that. I had a lot of practice living with my family.
“Hello to you too, Raphael.” I call him by his full name, one I have never used with him.
Everyone close to him calls him Raph. But we’re not close. Not anymore.
“Pleasure to see you after so long.” I rake him with a scoff. “Nice beard. Do you own a razor these days?”
Fine, he doesn’t exactly look like a sasquatch or anything. The beard is a little longer than I remember, and it’s quite sexy. But I refuse to make myself seem like I’m attracted to it or anything having to do with him.
Michael fights a smile, and it looks odd on a man who barely ever does.
“Why are you here, Nicolette?” Raph’s bulky bicep ripples beneath his navy-blue long-sleeved t-shirt.
My core instantly pulsates, and I fight to extinguish the maddening way my body still won’t give him up.
“I suggest you speak now and save the jokes for someone else.”
“Wow, was that supposed to be an insult?” I release a barely there laugh. “Consider me wounded. Ow…fuck,” I mutter, gently rubbing my injured shoulder and peering down at the spot on instinct.
In lightning speed, he’s right in front of me, looming over me, making me forget the pain once again and remember the passion dripping through every vein in my body. My pulse thumps in my ears as I nervously look up at him.
His brows tug, concern etched in the darkened pools of his gaze. “Are you alright?”
He reaches a hand for me, and more than anything I want him to touch me, to feel his hands against my skin. But he stills and clenches a fist.
“Are you hurt?” He sucks in an inhale like the idea pains him.
“I’m fine.” I glance down to my lap for a moment. “Even a bullet couldn’t stop me.”
“You were shot?” His eyes grow.
Worry traps his features, and my pulse batters in my throat.
He cares?
“Who shot you? Give me a name, Nicolette,” he breathes in a frightening way, and a cold trail rushes down my spine.
I hold his eyes to mine.
“Your father’s man did,” I whisper.
All the color drains from his face, and he snaps his attention to Michael. “Where the fuck is he? Tell me right now.”
His body shudders. It’s like every inch of him will snap at any moment.
“Raph. Sit. There’s more,” Michael says solemnly. “A lot more. And I need your weapons before we tell you.”
From Raph’s intense stare at his brother, I can tell he wants to refuse. He wants a fight. But Michael shoots him a look just as dark and depraved.
“Fuck,” he grits, removing the gun from his waistband and another around his ankle, then walks over to the round wooden table, dropping both against it with a clank.
He flashes a wrathful gaze at Michael. “One of you better start talking before I find him and kill him for this.”
At that last word, he pitches me a tender look that has my heart hammering. It unearths all the feelings I’ve tried so hard to bury. How does he manage to uncover it all with just a gaze?
“Why do you care what happens to me?” My mouth moves before I can make it stop. “You’ve spent years pretending I didn’t exist, and now suddenly you’re my hero?”
Pain pounds in my chest and the back of my nose burns, but I fight the emotions with a tight smile.
His gaze is unrelenting, and suddenly he’s in front of me again, his palm clasping the side of my throat, his thumb stroking my jaw in the gentlest way. Goose bumps spread across every inch of my skin, and my body awakens with a relenting need.
“Because I won’t let anyone hurt you,” he stresses. “Ever.”
I suck in a breath. For a moment, he sounded like the old Raph. The one who’d protect me. I’d do anything to have him back again.
But when he drops his hand away, I’m cold and alone.
Reminded once again that he’ll never truly want me.