Chapter 4 #2
“Not for a while. But it’s good to be back.” I peer at him from beneath my lashes. Does this mean that he’ll take me back to Stowe?
“I’ll take you,” he begins, and my heart feels like it’s soaring, “on one condition. You don’t try to be a hero.”
“I won’t.” That’s an easy one to agree to. I’ve never felt less like a hero in my life.
But he isn’t finished. “I won’t let you go anywhere alone, Meggie. If you try sneaking out in the dead of night, I’ll be there watching you.”
Enzo chuckles behind his coffee.
“If you’re thinking of causing a distraction so that he hears about it, then think again. If you so much as sneeze, I’m going to be waiting with a fucking tissue, do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.” I chew my bottom lip. He might think that he’s being the tough guy putting his foot down, but I know he’s only doing this to protect me, and my chest swells with love for him. “Are we done now?”
“We’re done.”
My stomach rumbles, and I stuff half a slice of toast into my mouth. “I could eat an entire loaf.”
An hour later, we’re on our way back to Gio’s mountain cabin.
I doze on the back seat of the car with my feet on Gio’s lap.
Contrary to what he thinks, I realize my limitations.
My foot was throbbing after walking from the woodland lodge to the car, but the pain meds make me drowsy, and I’ve already made up my mind to ditch them when we get to the cabin.
I know I need to heal, but there will be plenty of time for that once we’ve found Amber.
What I’m not prepared for is the triggered fear and panic when Gio helps me out of the car outside the cabin. I can’t move. The last time I was here, Nikki’s body was lying on the grass right there, and Amber was screaming, “Auntie Nikki!”
It’s hard to swallow. Has anyone told her parents what happened?
Where is her body? I can’t bear to think of her on a cold mortuary slab; she was always so full of life, the last person dancing at a party, and the first one to suggest an adventure.
I need to ask Gio about her, but I can’t cope with the answers I might get. Not yet.
“Meggie?”
Gio places his arm around my shoulder and grips my hand tightly, allowing me to cross the threshold on my own two feet even if he is there to support me. He knows how badly I need to do this. I need to find Amber and fulfill my promise to my mom.
Inside the cabin looks as if a herd of wild animals managed to get in, turn it upside down in the hunt for food, and leave again.
“Wh-what happened?”
I lean against the breakfast counter while Gio straightens the couches in the living room.
My eyes fill with tears when I spot the blankets in a heap in the middle of the room.
The den. Amber was sleeping in the makeshift den that Nikki and I threw together while Nikki talked about her toxic relationship with the abusive actor.
“Yeah, I might’ve had something to do with this.” Enzo surveys the mess as Demi joins him. “I was looking for you, Meggie. But I was too late.”
It occurs to me then that there’s still so much I don’t know about what happened that day. I had no idea that Enzo was here. I still don’t where the security team were while Nikki was getting killed, or why Ric was the only person who helped us. But the questions are overwhelming.
Gio stops what he’s doing, comes over, and guides me towards the nearest couch. “Feet up.” He looms over me like an unrelenting warden and waits for me to prop my foot up on a cushion. “You’re going to stay there, and you’re not going to move.”
I can’t help smiling as I watch the three of them fixing up the room. I must doze at some point, because the next thing I know, the lights are on inside the cabin, the living room is immaculate, and the aroma of tomatoes and spices is wafting my way from the kitchen.
Using the back of the couch, I drag myself into a sitting position. Gio has his back to me, stirring pasta sauce in a pan on the stove, his body swaying in time to the low music drifting from the sound system.
I don’t know how long I sit there watching him.
Even doing something as simple and banal as making pasta, he is still the sexiest man on earth, and my pussy instinctively clenches.
Will he always have this effect on me? What would I do if this animal attraction ever faded?
Would I miss it, or would it organically morph into something even more mind-blowingly sexy?
“You’re awake.” Gio dries his hands on a dish towel, walks around the breakfast bar, and perches on the arm of the sofa. “Better?”
He undresses me with his eyes, and I feel heat rushing into my cheeks.
“A little. Still ravenous.” For him as well as food.
“Dinner won’t be long. I would offer you a glass of wine, but not with all the medication you’ve been taking, so water will have to do.”
“I didn’t know you could cook.” I feel strangely shy, as if I’m meeting him for the first time and starting over.
“I’m Sicilian. Cooking is in our blood.”
He goes to the kitchen and returns holding a glass of iced water with a slice of lemon on the rim. Our fingers brush when he hands it over, and a shiver of excitement shoots down my spine.
I sip the water, condensation dripping down the outside of the glass. “Do I get special treatment because of my foot?”
“No, fiore, you get special treatment because you are you.”
He kisses the top of my head and goes back to preparing the meal, turning the volume up on the sound system now that I’m awake. A Bon Jovi song is playing, ‘In These Arms Tonight’, and Gio sings along.
The man can cook and sing.
I allow myself to relax a little and, just for a moment, I forget about the men out there scouring Vermont for a glimpse of Amber’s father and tell myself that she’s nearby. It’s only a matter of time before we find her, and when we do, I’m never letting her go again.
As if by magic, when Gio is plating up our pasta, Enzo and Demi arrive. Demi sniffs the air, and says, “Something smells good.” She turns to Enzo. “You didn’t tell me your brother could cook.”
He shrugs and strolls through to the kitchen where he dips his finger in the sauce and licks it. “You never asked. Besides, I’m the better cook out of the two of us.”
“Remains to be seen.” Demi comes into the living room and crouches beside the sofa. “You look a little more alive than you did this morning.”
I’ll take it as a compliment. I hardly know Demi, but from what little time I’ve spent in her company, I’ve learned that she says what she thinks.
No filter. And I wonder if she has always been this way or if something happened as she grew up that made her not give a shit about what anyone else thinks of her.
It must be quite liberating not to stew over the things society expects you to do or say and just get on with it.
“Do you need a hand?” She watches me with her hands on her hips as I lower my foot over the side of the sofa.
“I’ve got it.”
It hurts like fucking crazy, but I want to show Gio that I don’t need him nursing me. I don’t have a plan, but I do know that I won’t be able to help find Amber with him glued to my side. He won’t like it, but I think, when this is all over, he’ll understand that I did what I had to do.
We sit around the table and eat in comfortable silence despite the Steve Barone shaped elephant in the room.
I wish Amber was here. Each time her smiling face pops into my head, I’m floored by the guilt that I’m sitting here eating great pasta while she might be starving somewhere, cold, frightened, unable to sleep in case he comes back and hurts her.
“Hey.” Gio’s hand slides across the table and squeezes mine. “You must eat, Meggie. You want to be strong enough to find her, don’t you?”
He’s right. I fork cheesy, tomatoey pasta into my mouth and force myself to chew, only it doesn’t taste the same now.
“What’s the plan for tomorrow?” Demi asks.
Enzo tears off a hunk of crusty garlic bread and dips it into his sauce. “Hook a fish, find our girl, and get the hell out of this place, I reckon.”
A warning glance passes between him and Gio, and Demi keeps her eyes fixed on her plate.
“Hook a fish?” I sip my water and track the cold liquid as it goes down.
“It’s nothing.” Enzo shakes his head. “An old Sicilian saying.”
But his eyes are telling me otherwise.
“Gio?”
He sets his fork down and dabs his mouth with a napkin. “Amber’s father is sometimes known as The Fish.” He leaves it there.
He doesn’t need to explain; my brain is already imagining how and why he earned the nickname, and the pasta is sitting in my gut like a bowling ball.
“The shark connotations.” I release a long-drawn-out sigh.
“I didn’t want to tell you, Meggie. You were frightened enough.”
I blink back tears. “Does he drown his victims? Is that what he did to my mom?”
Gio is off his seat and kneeling in front of me in an instant.
“No, that’s not it at all. I don’t want you to think that’s what he’ll do to Amber.
” He studies my face, smoothing stray curls behind my ears.
“I know it’s hard, Meggie, but think back to when he was with your mom.
How was he with you? How did you feel in his company? ”
I shiver involuntarily. “I hated it when he was there,” I say in a small voice. “I stayed out of the house as much as I could.”
He nods. “That’s how he earned the pseudonym. Because there’s nothing in here.” He takes my hand and places it over his heart. I can feel his heartbeat beneath my palm, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, and the fluttering of my own heart in response.
“Right.” Demi pushes her seat away from the table and stands up, glancing at Enzo. “I think that’s our cue to leave.” Her plate is empty, smear-free, as if she licked it clean when I was looking the other way.
“Where are you going?” I ask. Gio is still holding my hand over his heart.
“We’re staying in the next cabin.” She flashes her eyes at Enzo when he tears off another hunk of garlic bread. “We’ve got you covered, Meggie. There are men in all the cabins, so try to get some rest.”
I hear the front door close behind them as they leave.
There were men in all the cabins before, and he still shot my best friend.
The Fish.
What the actual fuck!
But why am I even surprised?
His smile was fake. Everything about the way he love-bombed my mom when they first met was one gigantic red flag. Only a man with a lump of granite where his heart should be could kill the mother of his child and abduct his own daughter five years later.
“I’m sorry, Gio, but I can’t eat now.”
“Hey, you don’t need to apologize for anything.”
He helps me hobble over to the sofa, tucks a blanket around my legs, and finds a book for me to read while he clears up the kitchen.
I open the book to the first page, but I can’t even see the words.
Another day has passed by, and we’re no closer to finding Amber. I understand why Gio didn’t tell me because now that I’m aware of the nickname, it’s hard to think of him without imagining his jaws open wide, and multiple rows of sharp teeth sinking into Amber’s soft flesh.
When Gio has finished in the kitchen, he joins me in the living room. Kneeling by the couch, he kisses me on the lips, and my entire body pulses with desire for him.
“When this is all over, fiore…” His breath mingles with mine.
“When this is all over?”
“I’m going to fuck you until you beg me to stop.”
Before I can tell him that I’ll never beg him to stop, a radio crackles from somewhere in the kitchen.
A cloud seems to pass over his head, his eyes darkening, as he goes to retrieve it.
I can hear Demi’s voice from the couch.
“The Fish has been spotted.”