Chapter 14
14
Valentine
“ S he doesn’t look too pissed.” Dante turns, not hiding his surprise.
But barely a second later, the bedroom door slams so hard, it nearly rattles the Banksy clean off the wall.
“I take that back.” He laughs before his mood slips. “Did you get what Vitale said?”
Pulling out my phone and opening the app, I download the audio file from the hospital. The small audio device is hidden in the dress Matteo chose for her to wear, right between my wife’s lush tits. I’m not sure I’ve ever been jealous of an inanimate object before today.
By the time we’re sitting around the island, the file is ready to listen to. We skip over Vitale whining about our lack of respect, and his usual rhetoric of making it so our pack is excluded from the race of being named his successor, until we come to the part where he ordered us out.
The recording picks up the moment her breathing hitches louder, but it also doesn’t miss the way she purposely controls herself. I could spend a lot of time listening to her breathing. Equally satisfying is the sound of Vitale struggling to pretend he’s not dying. His emphysema is music to my ears.
“ So, you are a woman who opens her legs for powerful men, in hopes of becoming something of value to them, when all you are is another cunt to fuck.”
Matteo drops the crystal tumbler, the glass shattering over the marble, but it’s essentially forgotten when we all lean in closer to hear her response. The chair she was sitting on scrapes, then she takes a small inhale. I blaze with pride that she didn’t break down immediately. My grandfather might literally be on his last legs, but he is still an unpredictable narcissist with a propensity for violence and intimidation.
Light footsteps are next. She put her back to him. The most disrespectful thing you can do in our world.
Vitale barks, “ My grandson won’t be able to protect you forever .”
She doesn’t whine, even though he would have been trying to shove his dominance down her throat. Instead, by the sound of the recording, she doesn’t even bother turning to look at him when she replies. “ Your three grandsons have already told me they kill to protect. ”
The way she emphasizes grandsons has me nearly pumping my fucking fist.
“Fuck me. We are never letting her go now,” I whisper, grabbing the bottle of Scotch and filling my glass while taking the recording back to listen to her threatening the old prick again.
We’re so caught up replaying the audio, we all miss her returning. She does it just as impressively as the way she handled Vitale, the click of the safety switch the only noise before Dante’s head gets pushed forward.
“Look at you, baby girl,” he says slowly, rising off the chair but not yet turning around, “finding guns. You know the rule of pointing a gun at a person, right?”
“The one where you don’t point a gun at someone if you’re not prepared to use it? Or always check there’s enough ammo before you flick off the safety?”
Dante turns to face her. We all do, and I start having as much trouble breathing as Vitale has breathing. Not only did she find a weapon, but she also found a tactical vest and a pair of Dante’s old training pants. Of course, she also somehow knows how to wear the vest; she’s laced it tight, her tits nearly spilling out of the top of it.
“Vixen,” I tease.
Beside me, Dante is getting ready to pounce. I can feel his muscles bunching as if they were my own. It’s the twin thing we share.
“Pass me your phone,” she says, cutting us both off. Her voice doesn’t shake, but she’s got that soft demand in it I knew she would have. And I have my hand out, passing my phone to her, before she even finishes. Funnily enough, Matteo has his hand out, offering his too.
“What are you doing?” Dante asks as she calls a number.
Our wife is brave. She stands with her chin high, her backbone straight. I seriously can’t help the way my eyes keep gravitating to her cleavage. She’s a nymph walking amongst us.
Taking a couple of steps away, keeping herself in the best position to maintain the upper hand, she answers by lifting one of her eyebrows.
“Sit. Hands on the island.”
Matteo and Dante drop like school kids trying to impress the hot substitute teacher. Dante must be struggling not to reach over and show her how quickly he can disarm her, but he sits still.
“Jana, sorry I missed calling earlier. It’s been such a busy day, full of surprises.” She glares at the three of us as she speaks. The woman who has been housing and employing our wife talks rapid-fire back, her worry and concern obvious. “No. Not yet. I promise, if I need you, I will call.”
A smile breaks over her face before she swallows it. Not a happy smile, more one of relief.
“Call me on this number anytime. Yes, I’m sure. Okay, I need to go, but I will call you back tomorrow.”
Without waiting for a response from Jana, she hangs up and slides my phone into the waistband of her pants. Or maybe it’s her undies. Either way, for the second time today, I’m struck by a wave of jealousy for an inanimate object so visceral, I start growling like a wolf.
“You can’t be serious,” she snaps so suddenly, the growling part of me stops and nearly starts panting.
Then she does what none of us expect. Faster than we can blink, her fingers move deftly and well-practiced to engage the safety before she swings those hips of hers as she hustles, pushing Dante’s gun across the island toward him .
Dante’s head swings from her to the gun, back to her again, before he tips his head. “You didn’t just want to ask for a phone?”
“As if you would have given it to me.” She rolls her eyes at him before she does what she did to Vitale and puts her back to the three of us. Not walking out of the room, instead opening cabinets and looking for something.
“What are you doing?” I growl impatiently.
“Dying of starvation,” she answers without turning around.
Matteo hops off his seat to help, but she freezes him with a single look. “Come on, please. Let me help.”
“You’re kidding, right? You are literally the last person in this room I will be asking for help from.”
“Burn, bro.” Dante chuckles before she pins him with one of those looks. And while it’s my brother’s turn to burn, my cock stirs.
She goes back to ignoring us and opening and closing cabinets until my patience snaps.
“Sit,” I bark out like a demand, my hand pointing, making my request impossible to ignore or misinterpret.
She fights through my compulsion and avoids looking directly at either of us. “I think I’ll stand.”
Dante chuckles. “It was not a request.”
The Alpha bark from my brother isn’t a real surprise. I knew he’d pull it the moment she walked in armed and dangerous—not with a weapon, but with what she’s wearing. But Dante should have waited, because even before he finishes speaking, her peachy ass is up on that stool, a look of fake innocence on her face.
Neither of them says a word, just watching each other. Her stunning caramel-colored eyes hold some pretty stunning fury, while my brother’s eyes are full of challenge and a growing energy, fueled by his desire.
Matteo breaks first out of all of us. “You’re a ghost.”
Layne doesn’t refute the fact or argue about us digging into her past or who she is.
“Nothing to say?”
“It didn’t seem like a question,” she answers curtly, curling her feet under her butt. On purpose. Layne is working hard to maintain an air of nonchalance, and it’s an act, but fuck me, it’s a turn-on too. My neck is getting sore at the ping-ponging as I keep jumping from my brother to her as every emotion dances over her face. “Plus, we were supposed to be talking about the sudden and irrational leap from fake fiancée to wife.”
“Who are you?” my twin pushes, although the words contain way too much innuendo for something that needs a lot more solemnity.
“Did you miss the memo, Dante?” She takes a measured inhale, an eerie calm settling over her. “I’m Layne Miller, the person who agreed to be your fake fiancée because I went to the aid of a man who tricked me into believing he needed help. Then, because of my”—she takes a moment to tip her head to the side, tapping her finger on her chin before she uses her long fingers to overemphasize the next word she speaks—“‘humanity,’ I got dragged into things that really don’t have anything to do with me essentially being abducted by a piece-of-shit Beta and twin Alpha assholes who were pretending to be nice. For nearly the whole damn week. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Matteo looks devastated. Poor bastard.
She sits back, resting her hands on the island, before popping up like she’s forgotten something. “Oh, wait, then, because facing your delightful grandfather by myself wasn’t enough, I just found out that I am now Mrs. Fuck You De Luca. All because I helped some dipshit Beta. Does that answer your question?”
“Why is it that Layne Miller didn’t exist months ago?” I interrupt, pulling her attention off my brother, or he’s likely to leap over the kitchen island and kiss the flurry of words right out of her mouth.
She is well-deserving of her anger; we have completely blindsided her. But if she calms down for a fraction of a second, I will explain.
“Annul our sham marriage, give me my belongings, and you will never see Layne Miller again. Problem solved,” she suggests, smiling sweetly. Saccharinely so. And my cock stiffens at her sass, to the point of hurting.
“Layne, you know I can’t do that. Not now.” I try to placate her, and she nearly kills me with the chaos and fear in her eyes. It takes everything in me not to bark at her to listen, so I can agree that we caused this, when all she did was help Matteo.
“Right, because let me guess—you don’t believe in divorce, either?” She laughs and it is on the manic side.
Her eyes flare, her scent stinking of helplessness, when none of us answer, in effect answering her question. Her voice is tiny when she speaks. “Why?”
“Because pretending we were engaged was never going to be enough.”
She closes her eyes as the weight of my words sink in.
“We did this for you too.”
Layne scoffs, her eyes still not coming back to us as she looks off into the distance.
“Who are you, Layne?”
“Some things, Dante, should stay unanswered. Surely you understand that philosophy better than the average Joe Blow on the street.” She climbs off the high stool, then picks her underwear out of her ass as she walks straight past me and back to the kitchen.
This time, when she opens the fridge door, she nearly rips it off its hinges, making all the bottles crash together in the door. Rising onto her tiptoes, she pulls a plate of leftovers out, swinging to look at me. “Does this have seafood products in it?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?” she triple-checks, her eyes narrowing at me.
“Yes. We know you have an allergy. Why would we feed you something that could potentially harm you?”
She hums back, pretending she’s not about to murder my brother and rip Matteo’s limbs off his body. “Get this—it seems I have a slight problem trusting you three for some reason. It might have happened somewhere between this morning's fairy tale and this afternoon’s blindside, but either way, I ran out of time to stop off and get another EpiPen.”
Matteo sinks farther into his chair, while Dante looks at her with unadulterated lust. Her attitude is such a turn-on for him. She goes back to watching the food heat in the microwave, and Matteo swipes his phone off the counter, probably making a bulk order of EpiPens. Hopefully more tactical vests too.
My need for answers makes me impatient. “What do you think Vitale would do if he discovered we married a woman with no past to speak of? Actually, I’m not going to waste time waiting to hear what you come up with. He’d put you front and center in a room with all his guards and tell them to get the answers he wants. It would be horrific.”
“Wow, really?” she patronizes.
Dante cracks, “Us asking questions is infinitely better.”
“You need therapy.”
“Don’t tell me what I need.” I snap.
She looks at me, so fucking innocently. “Okay.”
My brother clicks his fingers to get her focus again. “I want to know what you are taking the tablets for.”
I pull a “what the fuck” face at Dante, because what he said was stupid. We all know why she’s taking them; she’s an un-bonded Omega on the run.
“Because I can. And that’s one day off our tally, since I answered a question. Add in the days you disappeared when I first arrived, and we’re at fifty-five days now from our original agreement of sixty days for us to fake pack. Make sure you keep count, so we don’t argue later about how many days I have remaining to be your unlawfully kept wife. Ah, let’s just cut to the chase and call it what it is—your prisoner.” Without turning around from the microwave, she keeps talking. “I need to eat. This bullshit you’ve dragged me into needs my full mental capacity. Your lack of foresight is going to get me killed.”
She balances her plate of food in one hand before going back to the fridge and grabbing a soda. And then she struts out of the kitchen, leaving the fridge door wide open.