Chapter Ten
Eight hundred and one days without Amelia.
Eight hundred and one days of searching for her.
Nineteen thousand, two-hundred and twenty-four hours.
One million, one hundred fifty-three thousand, four hundred, and forty seconds.
Too long.
And every second more was almost unbearable.
“It’s her,” I said as I stared down at the photo on my phone screen. A contact in Outfit territory had found her.
Sasha, my driver for the day, nodded. “We’re almost there, boss. Soon you’ll have her back.”
Almost there. My heart clenched. Nothing could go wrong now. I peered out of the window at the small corner flower shop where Amelia worked. I couldn’t look inside from my vantage point, but the men I had hired had assured me she was in there. They had kept an eye on her since this morning.
“What are you going to do with her?” Sasha asked. My head whipped around, and I narrowed my eyes at him. Regret passed his face, and he ducked his head. “None of my business. I apologize.”
Niccolo had asked me the same question this morning when we’d found out our search was finally over. I hadn’t been able to give him an answer. Rage had blinded me, but now I felt a potent mix of anger and longing.
Amelia would return to the mansion with me. She would never get the chance to run. She would be mine forever.
My heart pounded in my chest when I left the car. Passersby stopped to gawk at me, then quickened their pace after a look into my eyes.
I smirked. Slowly, I approached the shop windows. I was almost scared.
What if the Amelia I saw today wasn’t the Amelia I remembered and desired?
The one who filled my dreams and nightmares?
What if she’d become unrecognizable? She had looked the same in the photo, only more grown up and even more beautiful, but what if her core had changed, the very thing that had made her her?
I peered through the shop window, and my breath stalled in my chest when I spotted her. She was dressed too casually, in jeans and a shirt, but it did nothing to reduce her beauty. Her hair was still the beautiful red I remembered, and her blue eyes made my heart clench. She smiled at the customer.
She was still my Amelia. My dove. The reason for every breath I took.
And she was mine.
18 years old
My smile felt stiff as I showed the woman the bouquet my boss had created, with the additional flowers she’d requested.
She was my last customer of the day. It was already ten minutes past six, and the store usually closed at six sharp, but she had come in a minute before closing time.
She had started browsing the array of flowers on display, picking several she wanted added to the original bouquet, which wasn’t easy since it had been intricately bound, and I usually only did smaller arrangements.
I was desperate to get home so I could relieve Flavia of watching Luciano.
She had the night shift in the bar she worked in, so I had watch duty.
We both worked long hours so we could afford the place we rented in Minneapolis.
We had been in town for eight months, the longest we had stayed anywhere in the past twenty-six months.
This place almost started to feel like a real home, as if we might be able to put down roots here.
Sometimes I worried we shouldn’t even think about making any place our longtime home, but both Flavia and I couldn’t move anymore.
We were exhausted from the constant running, plus it ate up too much of our hard-earned money.
We both hoped the Camorra couldn’t ever reach us here. That Nestore wouldn’t find me.
My heart clenched thinking about him like it did every time he crossed my mind, which happened daily, but I still knew it was the right decision. My panic attacks had stopped despite our life on the run.
I dreamed about him every night. Sometimes those dreams were visions of a happy future we would never get, and sometimes they were nightmares filled with Nestore’s rage and images from the past.
Sometimes I dreamed of finishing school, of opening my own floral store, of a bright future without fear of being caught.
On occasion, I had searched the net and the darknet for information about Nestore, hoping to find something that would give me hope.
But last time I had checked, six months ago, Nestore had fought in a cage in Las Vegas and brutally killed his opponent.
His eyes had been full of bloodlust, rage, and madness. He’d terrified me.
After that, I had stopped looking. Nestore wasn’t on a path into the light. He had gone further into the dark.
Because you left.
My belly turned with acute guilt, but I shoved it back. “Are you listening to a word I just said?” the woman seethed, eyes narrowed in reproach.
“I’m sorry. It’s been a long day,” I said with an apologetic smile.
She tossed her blond hair back. “That’s hardly my problem.”
The bell over the entrance rang as the door opened. I must have forgotten to turn the sign in the window that said we were closed. “I’m sorry—”
I felt the color drain from my face. My fingers went numb, and the bouquet fell to the floor, the binding bursting open and flowers spilling everywhere. Peruvian lilies, white hydrangea, red roses, and eucalyptus spread on the floor.
“What are you doing? You ruined my bouquet! I won’t pay you a cent. And believe me when I tell you I’m leaving a scathing review. Because of you, I won’t have a gift for my mother-in-law.”
I was barely listening. I had trouble breathing. Everything around me seemed to still as I watched a familiar, impossibly tall form fill the entranceway. Was this reality? Or a daydream?
Nestore Romano stood in the flower shop, flanked by two muscled men dressed in all black.
He was even more beautiful than I remembered.
I didn’t have a photo of him, but my memory hadn’t done him justice.
He was far more terrifying than I remembered, too.
He towered over the two men flanking his sides.
He wore a long-sleeved black linen shirt, black pants, and black combat boots.
His shoulders had broadened, and his muscles now defined his body.
His face had sharpened and lost any boyish trace even though he had gained weight and no longer looked emaciated.
He looked like a man who carried power, a man who wielded it without hesitation or mercy.
I swallowed thickly when his furious eyes met mine. Nestore had always gazed upon me with reverence and love. Now there was only triumph and fury. He had found me.
The woman followed my gaze, her brows furrowing. “It’s my turn.”
Nestore’s rageful gaze landed on her, and his lips curled with disdain. “Leave. Before I see if your blood is the same color as the roses on the floor.”
He stepped farther into the shop, opening up the doorway for her to leave.
The woman blinked, glanced at me, then she grabbed her purse from the counter and rushed outside, leaving me alone with Nestore. His men had stepped out and closed the door.
“Eight hundred and one days, Amelia,” he murmured in a voice that made the little hairs at the nape of my neck stand on edge. He took a couple of steps closer. I was frozen, barely able to breathe, overcome with fear. Nestore looked like a man out for revenge.
“Did you read my letter? I explained everything,” I whispered.
He bared his teeth. “I read it and tore it apart. You betrayed me.”
“I needed to leave. That house and your obsession with revenge were unbearable for me. I had constant panic attacks. The dark was swallowing me whole.”
His rage burned brighter. My words were making it worse, and I wasn’t sure what to say to make him understand. He bridged the distance between us, and the full force of his wrath washed over me in a wave of almost unbridled aggression. “Another Lamorgese who betrayed me.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t—” He took a step closer, and I backed away until my back hit the wall and Nestore towered over me like a wrathful Greek god.
“Don’t insult me by lying.”
I shivered. I wasn’t lying. I never meant to betray him.
I simply couldn’t watch what he had become.
It pained me to see him now when I remembered who he was.
He grabbed my chin between his forefinger and thumb, tilting it up so I was forced to meet his gaze.
My skin tingled from the contact, as if whatever bond we’d shared was awakened by the simple touch.
“Eight hundred and one days. Did you ever think of me?”
“Every day,” I rasped, tears springing into my eyes.
“Every day,” he echoed in a low, dark voice. His gaze traced my face, every line, as if he were trying to memorize it. “I didn’t have a single photo of you. The only thing left of you was my memories. You have become so much more beautiful than what I remember.”
“Did you think of me?” My voice shook with hope. What was I doing?
He grabbed my hands and pressed them against his temples, his gaze almost feverish with emotion. “Every fucking second of my existence. You are in here so deeply that even a drill couldn’t get you out. Fuck, I’ve thought about drilling a hole into my head just to bleed out my obsession with you!”
He touched my palms to his chest over his heart.
It pounded against my hand. “And you’re in there, and the only reason it’s still beating.
You are a part of me, and I’ve come to realize that cutting you out of me would mean cutting out my heart and brain.
You are and will always be my first thought in the morning and my last thought at night.
You are the reason for everything, and because you are like a part of myself, you are and will always be mine. ”
Words crowded my throat. I didn’t know what to say. He cradled my palms in his bigger hands and leaned down until we were at eye level, and the amber specks in his dark green irises became impossible to miss.
“Have you been with anyone else?”