Chapter Ten
Harper knew this was a setup from the start.
The moment Marcus Villa came to Enzo’s home, at just the right moment, when he’d left the house from a frantic call, she had known it wasn’t going to end well. This was Villa putting her in her place.
Her uniform was back in place, and she had no choice but to leave Enzo’s home to go with him. Fear raced down her spine, because she still hadn’t been able to find some way to confirm if she was pregnant or not.
She didn’t even know if Enzo was aware that she’d been taken by his boss. She was trying not to freak out.
Marcus Villa had brought her to another home, a mansion from the looks of it, where she’d been sent to get changed into a uniform. This one was black, with a frilly white apron, and a hat to adorn her head. She looked every part the maid she was paid to be. And no sign of Enzo.
Marcus hadn’t said many words to her. There was no way she would be able to leave. She didn’t know if this meant she was working for Marcus now, or if he’d taken her for a job. She was trying not to freak out.
None of the other staff members talked. They didn’t even look at each other.
She heard a lot of horror stories over the years about girls being taken and forced to serve in many different ways. Was this because of her father? Had her father made a deal with Marcus?
The chef pushed a platter into her hands, and she held it tightly, although she felt terrified.
She was in a line of multiple girls, all of them seeming to know what their jobs and their places were, and she felt so damn small.
Was this Marcus’s plan? To make her feel small and realize she was nothing more than a cleaner?
There was no time for tears or fear. She had to be prepared for whatever happened. She felt sick to her stomach.
She was pregnant with Enzo’s baby, and she didn’t even know if she was ever going to see him again. Her future was no longer certain, not that it ever really was. Her life was never certain. In that moment, she hated her father more than ever.
The doors to the main dining room were opened, and Harper knew she didn’t have a choice but to square her shoulders and be professional.
She’d never really been a serving girl. She had cleaned. That was easy, she saw mess and knew how to deal with it. Serving people was never part of her repertoire. She took a deep breath in and a long breath out. This was all she could do. Falling apart was not the answer.
She followed the path of the other women and lined up in the room, where she saw a dinner banquet. Several men were dressed in expensive-looking suits, and the women were in gowns. It looked stylish, classy, and Harper noticed Enzo right away, as well as the slender blonde woman right next to him.
Enzo hadn’t recognized her. She blended in with the staff.
The woman beside him let out a little giggle, and this made her feel even more sick.
This is what Marcus wanted to do. To remind her of exactly who she was.
The woman next to Enzo was a woman more fitting to his standards.
Not her, the daughter of a nobody. Enzo was the son of a Capo, a man people admired and looked to for leadership.
He shouldn’t be paired with someone like her.
Harper was about to avert her gaze, as she realized she was pregnant with nothing. No family. No hope. She was trapped. And she was in love.
Because even though this reality check had been like a slap to the face, it didn’t stop her from still loving him. She loved him, more than ever before.
Enzo chose that moment to look up, and the instant he did, she saw the shock in his eyes and the rage.
“Well, I think we’ve all proven here tonight, that this is going to be one fine match,” Marcus said.
She looked down at the floor. It would be so much easier to let the floor just open up and swallow her whole.
“Enzo, I think Bianca is an absolutely stunning woman, and she will make you an amazing wife,” Marcus said. “And Bianca, you deserve a man worthy—”
The pain kept slicing through her chest.
“What the fuck is the meaning of this?” Enzo asked.
Harper stayed perfectly still. That tone was deadly. She had never heard it herself, and it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She feared moving.
“It is time for you to move on. You need to have those heirs, and Bianca is a perfect candidate.”
“I suggest you speak carefully, Marcus,” Enzo said.
This made Harper look up. Both men were staring at each other, and the tension was that sharp, she didn’t even think a knife would be able to cut it. She gripped the tray in her hands, and she didn’t quite know what happened next but Enzo shoved out his chair.
Harper wasn’t sure if she was witnessing this quite yet, but he was suddenly in front of her, he grabbed the tray out of her hands and launched it across the room. The people at the table ducked, but Enzo didn’t seem to care.
Two men entered the room, both carrying guns, and Enzo was there, holding his out, and with two shots that were muffled the guards fell to the floor.
More cries and more screams, and Enzo cupped her face. “Go and wait in the car for me.” He pulled out his keys. “You know which one.”
Harper didn’t dare look anywhere else. This couldn’t be happening, yet she took the keys from his hand, but before she left, he tugged the hat she’d been forced to wear and tossed it to the floor.
“Go,” he said.
Harper was afraid, but she followed his command. He was the one in charge of her. He was the father of her child.
She ran from the room, and no one stopped her. She raced outside, and she didn’t even take a moment to enjoy the cold winter evening. All she wanted to do was get to freedom. She had no idea what was going to happen. The fear was real.
The moment she spotted Enzo’s car, she clicked the button and watched the lights flash, and she quickly climbed into the passenger side. Now, as she sat in the comfort of his car, that fear didn’t go away.
What was Enzo going to do? He’d just made a scene at Marcus Villa’s home.
She looked down at her hands in her lap.
And he’d done it all for her?
****
Enzo turned to look at Marcus. The gun was still in his hand.
There were ten people at the table, and Enzo knew not a single one of them were important. Perhaps Bianca, but even her parents were not here. These were all Marcus’s puppets, made to do his bidding. He was pretty sure a few of them were servants that Marcus owned.
Marcus sat back and clapped his hands. “Well, that was certainly a show of emotion.” He looked down toward the floor. “Get the fuck out of my sight.”
They were both grunting, but they were also on the floor, as he’d shot them both in the leg.
From the moment he walked into the party, he had known something was about to go down. He hadn’t expected to see Harper. Marcus had lured him out of his home, and that must have given him the chance to go in and get Harper, without him realizing.
“Get out,” Marcus said to the table, and everyone but Bianca left the room.
“Do you want to tell me what the fuck is going on?” Enzo asked.
Bianca sighed. “He is a little too bad-tempered for me.”
“You’re not going to be his wife,” Marcus said. “So, you’d ruin your reputation for a cleaner?”
Marcus got to his feet, and Enzo still held the gun within his grip.
“After what you did, and what I had to put up with, you owe me,” Enzo said, looking at Marcus.
“Bianca, leave,” Marcus said.
Bianca looked upset, but she didn’t put up a fight, and she sighed as she stepped out of the room.
Now it was just him and Marcus.
“So, you’re going to waste your chance on a cleaner?”
“What do you have against her?” Enzo asked.
“You’re a Capo, that is good blood.”
“Good blood. I took your sloppy seconds, and she killed my family and my kids,” Enzo said, speaking out for the first time.
Isabella hadn’t been a virgin, and that was because she’d been mistress to Marcus Villa. No one else knew. Marcus had come to him with a favor. That simple favor would cost him so much.
“I apologized.”
“And you owe me. You owe me for my parents, and for my kids, and for my reputation,” Enzo said.
Marcus was a good head of the mafia. Enzo didn’t want his job, and when the man wasn’t being an asshole, he was good at what he did.
“Once you take her, there is no going back,” Marcus said.
“She’s already pregnant with my kid,” Enzo said. He took a step closer to Marcus. “And I love her. She came to me a virgin, which is more than I could say about my first wife.”
“I had no idea what Isabella was capable of.”
“It was a cry for help,” Enzo said. “You keep taking these women from good families and using them. Selling them off to your Capos to make good wives, and you think they don’t fall for you.
You think they don’t want to finally be the one to have the fucking boss, the head of the Villa Mafia.
Isabella wanted that spot. She coveted it, and hated every single woman you ever showed an interest in.
Killing my family, taking my kids, was her way of wiping the slate clean for you. That is all she wanted.”
Marcus had gone pale.
“And to you, she’d been an easy woman to fuck,” Enzo said. “I kept your secret and it will go with me to my grave. No one else will ever know why Isabella did what she did, or that she even fucking did it. We covered our asses.”
“What about your cleaner?”
“Harper knows that Isabella killed my family and my kids, but she doesn’t know the reason, and she never will. She’s no longer just a cleaner. She is my fiancée. Harper will be mine, and I will marry her, and you will see her as such.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then I’m gone,” Enzo said. “Me and you, we’re through, and I will walk away, and if you try to hurt me, know that I will destroy you.”
“You’d threaten your boss?”
Enzo took a step closer to him. “You don’t scare me, Marcus. You and I both know why you’re still on top. You want to keep it that way, make sure I don’t want to take it from you.”
Marcus looked him in the eye, and then he nodded.
“Consider it done,” Marcus said. “However, to satisfy the rest of the Villa Mafia, you’re going to have to do something. You have a choice right now.”
“What is it?” he asked, staring at Marcus.
“You have to kill all the Taylors. Every single member of her family, and then you have to marry her.”
Enzo looked at Marcus, and he had a sneaking suspicion the man before him didn’t think he could do it.
“Consider it done,” he said with a smile on his lips, then he stepped out of the room.
Enzo left the house, and the guards stayed clear of him.
There was a hell of a lot the Villa Mafia didn’t know, but he did. One of those truths is the fact Marcus needed him a hell of a lot more than he needed Marcus. The Villa Mafia was feared based on Enzo’s actions. He kept the enemies at bay and made sure the Villa Mafia was secure.
Making his way out to his car, he climbed into the driver’s side and didn’t say a word. He turned over the ignition and pulled out of Marcus’s long driveway. Neither of them said a word to each other, and he kept driving.
All the time he was aware of Harper’s fear. He reached over and grabbed her hand, locking their fingers together as he drove back to his home.
Once inside, he turned to look at her. Staring into her brown eyes, he saw the fear.
“I’m in love with you,” he said. “I am going to marry you, and that baby you’re carrying that you’re afraid to tell me, or you’re not sure, I know about it. I love you, Harper, I love you more than anything else.”
“But I’m a cleaner.”
“You’re going to be my wife.”
He reached out and gripped the back of her neck, pulling her in close. “I love you.”
“Really?” Harper asked.
“Yes, I more than love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. You’re everything to me.” And then, he kissed her on the lips. “Right now, I’ve got to go and do something. I need to know if you love me?”
“I do, I really do.” She put a hand to her stomach. “I’m pregnant.”
“Yes. We’re going to have a baby.”
“How do you know?”
“Kent. I got him to take some blood, and he told me a few weeks ago.”
She let out a laugh. “Seriously?”
“Yes. You’re going to be my wife.”
“Marcus Villa won’t like it.”
“He will accept our marriage, but I have to do something first.”
“What?” Harper asked.
Enzo looked at her, and it was on the tip of his tongue to lie, but he knew she deserved to know the truth.
“Your family is the cost.”
“My family?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Harper looked at him, and seconds passed, and he saw the tears in her eyes. There was a battle going on between right and wrong.
“He doesn’t love you, Harper. He was more than happy to hurt you. He doesn’t deserve your pity.” He wiped away her tears. There was still a bruise on her face from her last fatherly visit.
Enzo knew he had to do this. It would appease the rest of the mafia. Her place in his life would always be questioned, but most would not even dare act on it.
Harper cupped his face and pressed her head against his forehead.
“I love you and I’ll see you when you get home.”
Enzo tilted her head back and kissed her on the lips.
“Don’t be wearing this when I get back.” He flicked the collar of her waitress uniform and then waited for her to climb out of the car.
Harper did so, slowly, tentatively, and she made her way to their front door, turned toward him, and held her hand up in a wave.
She even smiled at him, and Enzo waited for her to close the door, then pulled out of the driveway and went to complete the job he needed to do.
Harper was his, and there was no way he was ever going to let her go.
If all he needed to do was remove her family, that was the job he was willing to do.