Chapter 6 Daniela
DANIELA
An hour later, Vinnie and I are back home. Robin ended up coming with us.
Raven stayed at the hospital with her mom.
I’m feeling like crap.
“You okay?” Robin asks, after I’ve said hi to Belinda and sent her back to Natalie for her lessons.
“It’s just a lot to deal with,” I say.
She raises an eyebrow. “So… You and Hawk…”
“What do you mean?”
“Come on, Dani. It’s written all over your face whenever his name comes up.”
I sigh. “You really are Raven’s twin. She said the same thing. Said she saw it in my eyes.”
“Yes, well, as much as Raven and I don’t have in common, we do seem to be on the same footing when it comes to our intuition.” She smirks. “So spill it.”
I bite my lip. “I’m not sure what there is to spill.”
She smiles. “Well, if you had to pick a Bellamy, Hawk’s one of the best we have to offer. He’s a good man. Probably the best man I know.”
My cheeks warm. “He is. I mean, I really don’t know him that well. I didn’t know he had a middle-child thing going. I was an only child myself.”
“I suppose birth order doesn’t really make a lot of difference.” She sniffs. “Maybe it’s just more Hawk’s and my personalities that were the issue.”
“I don’t really know much about his backstory.”
She shrugs. “It’s kind of the same as mine. Falcon was the oldest, the golden child. Everyone’s hero. Until he went to prison, I guess.”
I’m not sure what to say to that, so I simply offer a weak smile.
“Then Raven and I came next, twins, but I preferred to be outside with Falcon. So Raven quickly became Mom’s favorite. That is, until Eagle came along.”
“But Hawk came first.”
“He did. And he was different from Falcon. Still big and strong, and God, you’ve never seen a more beautiful child than Hawk was. With those blue eyes and all.”
“He is dreamy…”
Robin chuckles. “I’m glad you think so. But yeah.
Hawk was a little quieter. Always concerned with right and wrong.
For some reason he and Dad never clicked.
And he and Mom never really clicked either.
I never clicked with Mom either, but Dad and I were close.
Maybe because I was more interested in learning what he did on the ranch than what Mom did inside the house. ”
“I see.”
“Bottom line, if you can make Hawk happy,” she says to me, “then I’m all for it.”
I give her another weak smile as Vinnie appears in the family room.
“I thought you had a meeting,” Robin says.
“I did. For about five minutes. Turns out one of the key people was a no-show, so we rescheduled.”
“Sorry about that. I guess we all could have stayed at the hospital after all,” Robin says.
“Robin,” Vinnie says, “if you want to go ahead back, feel free to use one of our cars.”
“No, it’s okay. I’d like to stay here.” She flops onto a couch. “I need a little bit of a break.”
“Understandable.” Vinnie turns to me. “I don’t want to pry, but are you doing all right?”
I nod. “Yeah. I mean…”
“Please, don’t go into any detail,” he says. “I don’t need to hear that. But I just want you to know that Raven and I are in your corner.”
“And I am too.” Robin smiles.
I swallow. “Then I probably should tell you something.”
They both raise their eyebrows.
“And what’s that?” Vinnie asks.
“I’ve been getting… I guess there’s a reason I went home with Hawk last night.”
Vinnie raises an eyebrow. “Other than you wanting to?”
“I did want to,” I say. “Please believe me. He didn’t force anything on me.”
“My brother would never do that,” Robin says. “As I’ve told you, he’s always been concerned with what’s right and just.”
“Yeah,” I say. “But he’s been helping me with something else too. Something that’s been going on.”
“Daniela,” Vinnie says. “I promised you’d be safe here. What’s going on?”
Both Vinnie and Robin listen with wide eyes as I tell them about the first two cryptic messages—the threatening Valentine’s Day card and the box of poisoned chocolates—I received.
“Why didn’t you tell me about those?” Vinnie demands. “You know I have surveillance.”
“I didn’t want to worry you. You’re already doing so much for me, putting me through culinary school, getting me away from my father.” I swallow. “Having him…taken care of.”
Robin’s eyes go even wider. “Clearly there’s a lot I don’t know here.”
Vinnie sighs. “I’ll explain it all to you. Or Raven can. But first, Daniela, we need to figure out what to do about this.”
I gulp. “That’s not the worst of it. Yesterday, after you left the courthouse, someone came out and gave me a teddy bear. Said it was left for me.”
“What?” Vinnie says through gritted teeth.
“Yeah. It turned out there was a grenade in it.”
Vinnie threads his hand through his hair, his jaw rigid. “Oh my God. I heard about that. I was already on the road, and it came through the news. I figured you were gone. You said you were going to do some shopping in town.”
“That was a little white lie. I wanted to call Hawk. I wanted to be with him. To celebrate the end of our marriage. So we could…”
Vinnie doesn’t seem to care about the fact that Hawk and I made love. “Daniela. You should’ve called me. When you’re in trouble, you call me. Now what happened?”
“I’m fine, as you can see, and I had to stay for a while to look through all the personnel files of the people who work at the courthouse to see if I recognized the man who gave me the teddy bear. But I couldn’t. He wasn’t an employee. He was just disguised as one.”
“So someone knew you’d be there,” Vinnie says.
“Yeah.”
“I made the arrangements to have our divorce finalized with the judge in question,” Vinnie says. “It’s a judge who has worked with my family for years, who I trust—”
He stops midsentence.
“What? What is it?” Robin demands.
“A judge who worked with my grandfather.”
“So you think the judge…” Robin begins.
“Could be,” Vinnie says. “It wasn’t even on the docket. They squeezed me in. Kept it off record.”
“Well, someone knew,” Robin says.
I sit, listening, chills creeping over me. “I’m okay,” I say again, though my voice trembles a bit.
“This is not acceptable,” Vinnie says. “You could’ve been killed. I’ll fucking have that judge removed from the bench. That’s the least of what I’m going to do to him.”
“No, Vinnie, please,” I say. “That’s not the way to do things. That’s how your grandfather did things. How my father did things. Please don’t go off halfcocked.”
“He’s not going to get away with this. The valentine, the candy… Maybe we could say those were just silly pranks. But a fucking grenade?” He slams his hand down on the table. “No one fucks with my family, Daniela. You’re now my family, just as much as Raven is.”
“I agree,” Robin says. “If you make Hawk happy, then you’re my family as well. And I’ll tell you something else, too.”
“What’s that?” Vinnie asks.
“I’m a veterinarian.” She holds up a finger.
“I know that doesn’t seem like anything relevant to this conversation, but there have been times when I’ve had a sick animal and other vets haven’t been able to figure out what’s going on.
But I always can. Because I research, and I eliminate, and I use everything available to me.
And when I’ve eliminated every possibility—every single one—I’m left with something improbable that always turns out to be the right answer.
” She grins. “What I’ve learned from all of that is that every mystery can be solved.
And I promise you that I will help you figure this out. For you, Daniela. And for Hawk.”