Chapter 18 – Two Weeks Later
NICOLETTE
TWO WEEKS LATER
The motel has continued to be our home these past couple of weeks. It’s been quiet, and we’re both alive, so that’s something to be thankful for.
After he held me that very first night, I’ve been in his arms ever since, sleeping beside him, his powerful body making me feel safe. I’ve gotten so used to sleeping with him that I don’t know what I’ll do when we’re free of this place.
I keep wondering if we’ll be strangers again.
My heart tightens in my chest. The painful truth that he may not want me, even after everything we’ve shared, hurts me to my core. He hasn’t tried to kiss me or do anything, and I’ve been too afraid of rejection to make the first move.
Sitting on the couch, I wait for him to return. He’d left a little while ago to pick up a second car Michael has left him a few miles away. They thought it better to switch one more time just in case the other one Michael had sent as soon as we got to the motel had been spotted.
I love how close Raph is with his brothers. They’ve always been that way. I wish I’d had that. A sister I could rely on. But that was never us.
I still remember the day I caught Bianca and Giancarlo making out in his car, well after she was married to Raph.
We were all planning on having dinner at my sister’s, and Raph was to do the cooking. I had finished school early and decided to drop by in hopes of catching him alone and maybe offering my help. I thought maybe it’d be a way to get us to how we used to be.
But things didn’t go as planned. Instead of finding him there, I found something else entirely.
EIGHTEEN MONTHS AGO
ALMOST 20
I decided to take the train to Raph’s today, leaving my car at campus. I attend college not far from home, but dorming allowed me to have some peace away from seeing Raph and my sister together.
When I don’t see Raph’s SUV, I start for the back of the house to wait for him in the yard when suddenly a car comes rolling down their gated street.
As the black sedan gets closer, I peer around from the side of the back wall, wondering who it can be. But when the sedan stops, I find Giancarlo at the wheel, my sister beside him.
Okay, that’s weird. She’s supposed to be coming from work. Did he pick her up? I stand there, waiting for her to exit, but instead, she throws her arms around him and…
“Oh my God…” I whisper.
She’s kissing him. Not on the cheek, either. His hand finds the back of her head, and he pins her to the headrest and practically eats her alive.
This is disgusting. Nausea swirls in my gut. She can’t be doing this to Raph. Oh my God, poor Raph. What if he’s heading home right now and finds them? This will kill him. I knew she was a bitch, but to him? Why? Why would she do this?
I instantly hate her even more.
I never liked Giancarlo either. He’s one of those sleazy kinds of men and he treats Fernanda, Raph’s mom, like shit. Even with all my parents’ faults, Dad never treated Mom badly. Not in front of us, anyway. How could he do this to his own son?
Finally, she gets out, swiping her mouth with a grin. I shake my head with vitriol filling my chest.
She winks at him like she’s some schoolgirl with a crush.
You’re married, you bitch! To his son!
“I’ll see you in a bit, you sexy thing,” Giancarlo calls before he speeds back out.
And when she turns toward the house, she jumps back with a gasp.
With a hand on my hip, I glower at her. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”
She scoffs, heading for the door and taking out her keys. “What’s your problem?”
“Seriously? You want to pretend that I didn’t just see you tongue-fucking your father-in-law?”
She opens the door, heading inside, her heels clacking before she removes them and places them in the foyer closet.
I swear if I could get away with it, I’d take one of those thin heels of hers and stab her in the eye.
“Hello! I’m talking to you!” I follow her into the kitchen, not even taking off my shoes.
“Listen, child,” she snarls. “I’m a grown woman and what I do is not your business.” She takes a single step and glares. “Now shut up and pretend you didn’t see that. Got it?”
“I won’t do that.” I near her, only a few feet between us now. “I won’t lie to him. He deserves better than you. He always has. Now he’ll have a good reason to leave you.”
Her eyes grow wide, and for a split second, I think she’s actually afraid. But she lets out a laugh—a big, mocking laugh—and pretends she needs to catch her breath.
“That’s truly adorable.” Her brows pinch and her lips tighten as she pats my shoulder. “I almost feel bad for you, Nicky. Being obsessed with my husband so much that you’d be willing to ruin your own life by ruining mine.”
“Don’t call me Nicky. That’s not my name.”
She does that on purpose, knowing I hate it. No one calls me that. My God, how can we be related?
“I wouldn’t be ruining my life,” I tell her. “I’d let Raph see exactly who you are.”
She steps into my face, her expression icy, our bodies almost an inch away.
“Really? Is that what you think? Because if you tell him, he won’t believe you.
” A single cunning laugh rolls out of her.
“I’ll cry. Tell him you’re jealous. That you’re not over him and want to see our marriage fail.
I’ll tell him that you still wanting him is stressing me out and you are the cause of why we can’t seem to get pregnant.
I’ll tell him that you’re no longer welcome here in our home and that it’s time we cut ties with you for the sake of our marriage.
And Mom and Dad? They’ll be on board with it, because they never loved you. You know that, right?”
My chin trembles, tears filling the space behind my eyes. Those words may as well have been a knife to tear me apart. Because that’s what she just did.
And the sad truth is, she’s right about it all.
Raph would do anything she wanted, even cast me aside.
My parents would do everything to protect her.
They’d blame me. Hate me. Tell me how ridiculous I am for thinking she could do such a thing.
And Giancarlo, if he were to find out, would probably kill me. I can’t say a word.
The front door opens, the sound growing in the distance. Footfalls thud heavily.
“Hello? Bianca, you home?” Raph’s voice calls as he treads through the foyer, walking the distance toward us.
“Yes, baby!” she says. “Right here in the kitchen.”
Now I see him, both of us staring at one another. His jaw clenches, his gaze searing into mine.
My heart stills and my pulse pounds.
But then he quickly looks at her, clearing his throat.
“What’s going on here?” he questions. “You girls okay?”
He slips out of his dove-gray suit jacket, the white dress shirt beneath contouring to his biceps like a second skin.
“Oh, yeah, we’re fine.” She slides up against him, her manicured fingers trailing down his abs, and I’m filled with heated jealousy.
Watching the man you want with someone who should’ve never had him to begin with is agony.
She takes her time touching him, glaring at me as she does, a sinister grin on her face that he can’t see.
“Nicolette had something to share with us, isn’t that right?” She smiles politely, a coat of venom lining her sinister mouth.
My heart races and my head spins. My throat closes as he pins me with a concentrated gaze.
“What is it?” he asks, circling his arm around her, and it’s as though he’s yanked my heart out of my chest and stomped on it.
I can’t say it.
I shake my head. “Nothing. I…uh…I’ve gotta go.”
I practically run out of the kitchen and toward the door. I can hear her laughter, and the back of my eyes burn.
“Nicolette!” he yells out just as I rush onto the street, running for the gate, needing away from this place.
He runs after me.
“Wait, damn it.”
The emotion in his voice, the demand in it… It’s what causes me to stop. To turn. To look at him. And I instantly regret it because I can’t look at him without wanting to die.
His palm lands on my arm, as though a shackle meant to keep me in place. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going back to school.”
“Why?” His chest heaves.
“Because, Raph…just because.”
His breaths roll out of him like a quiet tide, drowning me in goodbye.
“I wish you wouldn’t go,” he says.
I wish I didn’t have to, either. But I can’t be here anymore.
I let out a heavy sigh. “Are you happy, Raph? Like truly happy?”
He pauses, his gaze narrowing, like he’s trying to figure out why I asked. Seconds drift by, and selfishly, I want him to say he isn’t. That she could never make him happy like I can.
But instead, he breaks my heart all over again.
“I am happy.”
I nod with sorrow filling the marrow of my bones.
“Good, then,” I say with a broken kind of smile, and it feels like every piece of me is dying. “Be happy.”
Even if it’s not with me.
I pivot and start for the road, the distance growing between us.
“Come back,” he calls with a tight rasp in his voice.
My heart…it swells with hope, with hate and love and all these emotions I can’t contain.
And right here on this street, I stop for the second time, like he holds the key to my every move, every breath, every molecule in my body.
It’s his. I’m barely able to hold back the tears as I face him once more.
“Stay.”
He treads a step closer, keeping his eyes on mine, and it’s almost too much to look at him. Too painful. I want to run away while running into his arms at the same time.
“Have dinner with us,” he goes on. “Your parents will be here soon.”
“I don’t belong here. Never did.”
His eyes grow sad, right along with mine.
“Bye, Raph,” I say this final time, meaning it.
As I rush out of there, I could swear I hear him whisper, “You belong with me.”
But when you’re in love with someone who’ll never love you back, you pretend to hear things they’ll never truly say.
That was the most Raph ever said to me since that moment I kissed him. I still don’t know if I really heard him say those words, and I never asked. Because in the end, it didn’t matter. He was hers. He was never mine.
But now I know the truth. He never loved her, and somehow that gives me comfort.
I wonder if he’d be mad at me if he were to find out I knew about the affair for all that time and didn’t tell him.
It’s my one regret. I let her scare me, but at the time, I was afraid of losing Raph for good.
Now, once he finds out I knew, I might lose him anyway.
RAPH
I shut the door of the black sedan Michael had left for me. Reaching for the glove compartment, I find two nine-mils and a bunch of bullets, along with a few more burner phones.
Before I can start the car, one of them rings, and I immediately know it’s him. Pressing a button, I answer it.
“Yeah?”
“Glad you got your gifts.” There’s amusement trickling in his tone. “There’s more in the trunk.”
“Oh, yeah?” I chuckle. “Must be my birthday.”
“Consider it an early gift.”
“Can’t wait to open it.”
I start the car and put him on speaker.
“I’ve got some news,” he says.
“What’s that?”
“I’ll be married in a few days.”
Well, can’t say I expected that so soon.
“Honestly didn’t think you’d go through with it.”
“Let’s just say she just landed at my feet and had no other choice in the matter.”
“Poor girl.”
He laughs. “She’s kinda growing on me.”
“By the sound of it, it seems it’s more than kinda. What is she like?”
“She’s good with Sophia. They get along.”
“How about you? Does she like you?”
“I’m growing on her too.” He chuckles. “Maybe.”
He sounds happy. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him sound that way.
“You deserve that,” I say.
“She’s not staying.” His voice hardens. “She agreed to a year in exchange for her freedom, and I will give her that.”
“Why not keep her?”
“Wouldn’t be right, even if she wanted to stay. You know the way our life is, it wouldn’t be safe.”
“I get it.”
It’s why I can’t keep Nicolette either. That and about a hundred other reasons.
“Also wanted to tell you, I’m talking to the Irish and I may have a plan soon.”
“Look, Michael…” I let out a heavy sigh. “I don’t want you putting yourself at risk for me. You have a daughter. I can answer for my own mistakes. This is on me.”
“No. This is on him. You did what you thought was right, but he put it in motion, and for that, he will answer.”
My pulse thrashes. “I want to see him suffer.”
“And he will.” He pauses. “Take care of yourself. I’ll be in touch.”
“Tell your fiancée I can’t wait to meet her.” I let out a small laugh.
“She thought you were dead.”
“Sometimes it feels that way.”
Except when I’m with her.