Chapter 20
DOVE
“You have to tell me everything now.” Alex sits at the kitchen counter a couple of hours later with a half-eaten pizza slice in front of him.
“Everything?” I glance up from my own slice. “About what?”
“About you. About Felix.”
Felix glances up from his own plate with the most adorable shocked look on his face. “Me?”
“Mhm.” Alex points between the two of us. “You’re both Mafia. I want to know everything.”
“Maybe when you’re older,” I reply, picking up my slice.
“No. You can’t say that. Not after everything. My whole life is over. Mike is dead. Mary is dead. We can’t go home. I’ve seen dead bodies and I still see them every time I close my eyes. There’s no way you can’t tell me everything now.”
My heart clenches as if caught in a fist and every word from Alex tightens the grip.
He’s right.
Deep down, I know he’s right but the thought of spilling all the secrets to my son when he’s still got so much of his youth to cling to just feels wrong.
Then again, maybe it’s my own wishful thinking.
His youth likely vanished the moment he saw Mary die.
“What do you want to know?” Felix asks, then he glances at me as if asking permission.
I nod after a few long seconds.
As his mother, my version of things likely won’t be what he wants to hear, and Felix can give him the impartial truth that will either satisfy him or scare him away from any further questions.
Alex’s eyes glint and around a mouthful of pizza, he asks his first question. “Have you ever killed someone?”
“Yes,” Felix replies.
“Have you?” Alex locks eyes with me.
“I have, yes.”
“Do you only kill bad people?”
“Depends on your definition of bad,” Felix says. “To many, we are the bad guys. Bad guys to us are worse guys to someone else. It’s all perspective, but in my opinion, everyone I’ve killed deserved it.”
“Even those people who… who killed Mary?”
“Yes.”
“And Mike?”
“Absolutely,” I reply immediately. “They deserved it.”
“Who killed them?” Alex glances between us and once again, Felix comes to my rescue.
“I did. It was a separate issue that I was involved with. I didn’t know anything about your Mom or the car.”
Alex nods and returns to his pizza, seemingly deep in thought. The freedom to ask any question he wants appears to overwhelm him with choice. “Felix, how do you make money?”
Felix picks up his glass of soda and smirks. “Drugs.”
“That’s it?”
“Is that not cool enough?”
“No it’s just… you hear about drugs all the time on the news. It’s almost boring.”
Felix nearly chokes on his drink. “Boring? Ouch. True, it’s on the news a lot.
We supply a lot of medicinal and recreational drugs to multiple markets.
Clubs, parties, rich bastards looking to get high.
The drugs on the street are different. We supply a select few who then feed it all out to the public. ”
“And the medical?” Alex holds his cast arm aloft. “Did I get your drugs when I was in hospital?”
“Maybe,” Felix chuckles. “We tend to supply things cheaper than big pharma but not necessarily through hospitals. Those who come to us with medical needs have less to pay.”
“You make it sound like charity,” Alex replies.
“There’s a balance,” I say after finishing my slice. “Always a balance. You have to know your market and you also have to make sure there’s enough public loyalty that you won’t be betrayed.”
“Wow.” Alex straightens up and sighs. “Sounds complicated.”
“It can be,” Felix replies. “But it’s just another business at the end of the day.
Don’t be mistaken though, it’s very dangerous.
People kill for money, for power or just because they want to expand and have a bad day.
Like your Mom said, it’s about balance. Be scary enough that people don’t challenge you, while being kind enough that the public values you. ”
Alex toys with some loose thread at the end of his cast and fixes me with a look. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Have you been doing crime all these years?”
I can’t hold in my laughter at how he says it. “Doing crime? No, honey. I haven’t been doing crime. I haven’t done crime since I left.”
“Because my grandparents died?”
Such a simple sentence sends my heart up into my throat and I nod slowly. “Yeah.”
“How did that happen?”
I have no words. The death of my family is hardly something to get into with Felix right there. It risks unraveling the one truth I’ve managed to keep hidden all these years but the deeper someone looks, the bigger the risk it’ll all end.
“We don’t know,” comes Felix’s surprising response. “The slaughter of the Healy clan is one truth that evades a lot of people.”
I gape at him. Does he really not know Caterina was behind the whole thing? That she hunted me and my family down like dogs? How has she managed to hide that from him all these years?
“No one?” Alex glances between me and Felix continues.
“Several families over the years have tried to take credit for it, and Caterina Salamone was there to pick up the pieces after she sent people to help, but every claim I looked into was false. No one knows.” Felix turns his gaze to me and sympathy floods his eyes.
“And I wasn’t there,” I lie weakly. “But after it happened, I ran.”
Is that how she spun it? Caterina the snake, pretending she sent people to aid us when she sent those same people to kill us. All these years, I thought Felix was part of the attack and when I learned at dinner that he wasn’t even there, it made no sense how he was still in the dark.
Now it does.
Caterina has her claws deep in Felix and he doesn’t even see it.
“That’s so sad,” Alex murmurs. “I’m sorry Mom.”
His words snap me out of my thoughts and I smile. “It’s okay. It was a long time ago.”
The meal eventually comes to an end and Alex retreats to bed after thanking Felix a final time for taking him to the funeral. Felix clears away the plates and pours us both a glass of wine when we retire into the lounge.
“Don’t know if I should drink this,” I murmur softly. “After last time.”
“If you feel the urge to drain the bottle, just let me know,” Felix replies.
I stand near the window, gazing out over the glittering city.
New York has always felt like my home, like part of my soul was created here, but now that I’m looking at it after everything that’s happened, I can’t bear to be here.
“I was serious, y’know,” I murmur, tracking Felix’s movements behind me with my mind’s eye. “Alex and I have to leave.”
“I know.”
“We can’t stay here.” Especially if Caterina really does control Felix. I can’t fight that battle for him, not at the risk of him finding out the truth about Nico.
“I know,” Felix repeats. He melts out of the darkness behind me and joins me at the window. “I told you I’ll help you.”
“You don’t understand.” I set my glass down on the table near the window and turn to face him. “We have to leave. Alone.”
Felix glances at me. “You don’t mean me, do you?”
As much as it pains me, I shake my head.
“You have a life here, Felix. Power and responsibility. You will be looked for no matter where you go and then Alex and I will never be free. If you really care about me as much as you claim to…” My heart drops to my gut and I bite back the bubble of emotion rising in my throat. “You have to let me go.”
“I can’t,” Felix replies softly. He turns to face me. “You’re asking me to do something impossible.”
“You have to.”
“I’d give up all of this in a second if that’s what it takes.”
“No, Felix. You don’t understand.” I take his glass from him and set it aside, then clasp his hands between both of mine. “This world, this life? It won’t let you go.”
“I’ll make it.”
“Caterina won’t let you go. And that’s fine because this is your life. You have far too much to give up for me. So you have to understand that if we’re to part on good terms, you have to let me go. You have to.”
“You’re talking like that’s the only option.” Felix twists his hand in mind until his palm rests against one of mine, then he threads our fingers together and pulls me close. “I can protect you, Dove.”
“You can’t,” I whisper. “Not like this.”
“I can. Don’t you remember all the promises we made to one another? That I would get enough money and power to save you from whoever your father married you off to, and then I would be there and protect you.”
“Felix, you don’t understand—.”
“No, Dove.” Felix cuts in and there’s such pain in his voice that my heart somersaults.
“You don’t understand. You’ve been alone for so long that you’ve forgotten what it’s like to lean on someone, to get help and be with someone but I’m here, okay?
I’ve loved you all these years. I never stopped because losing you almost killed me and I’ve been drifting through this life in a bubble just waiting for the end.
But you came back. All this time, you were still alive and now I’m here.
I have the money and the power. I can keep you safe.
I can protect you. Why won’t you let me? ”
The truth bubbles on the tip of my tongue. With three words, I could end this and dissolve our relationship into one last fight that would leave Felix dead on the floor.
But I can’t say it.
Because I love him too.
It swells inside me like air, increasing pressure in my chest until I’m forced to gasp and Felix lifts a hand to cup the side of my neck.
His thumb runs along the length of my jaw and he gazes deep into my eyes.
I’m rooted to the spot, unable to look away or even think beyond how beautiful his eyes are.
“I’m here for you now, Dove. You and me. Just like it was supposed to be. You don’t have to run. You don’t have to be scared. I’m protecting you now.”
His deep voice and the power in his words make me weak.
Every promise entices that old, scared part of me that ached to sink into the arms of the man I loved and let him take care of me.
Fifteen years of living on a knife’s edge and now Felix is offering me softness and safety.
“Please, Dove,” Felix whispers, and he leans down until our lips are a hairsbreadth apart. “Stay with me this time. Stay with me.”
I cave.
Cupping his face with both my hands, I guide him in and claim his lips with a soft, sweet kiss that ignites an immense heat, sending my heart racing and a rush of heat spiralling south.
In an instant, the kiss turns desperate.
“Okay,” I whisper. “I’ll stay.”
“Stay with me,” Felix repeats against my lips. “Just stay.”
The kiss grows heated, no longer a soft press with tender love behind it.
His desperation morphs it into something much more urgent and I’m right there with him.
Our lips press together, weaving a pattern back and forth with only small gaps for a snatch of air.
His hand slides up until his fingers rest just underneath my ear and he winds his other arm around my waist, pulling me snug against his body.
“Stay,” he gasps when we break apart longer than a millisecond. “Stay.”
“I’m here,” I gasp, sliding one hand into his hair and caressing through the strands. “I’m right here.”
His hand slides deeper into my hair just as the nape of my neck, then he grabs a fistful and pulls my head all the way back.
Felix’s lips land on my exposed throat and he kisses a path all the way down to the hollow of my neck, where his teeth graze my collarbone and send a shock of heat down through my body.
Then we spin and he shoves me against the table, sending the undrunk glasses of red wine crashing to the floor.
Cold wine splashes my ankle, but neither of us spare it another thought as I hit the wall and he crowds me against it, kissing me like my life depends on it.
Nothing else matters.
Only this moment.
Only us.
“Stay,” Felix whimpers against my lips, then he uses the grip on my hair to pull me with him away from the wall, around, and back against his desk.
The lamp and boxes shudder from the impact, pens collapse out of their containers and scatter across the desk, stacks of paper flurry into the air when he sweeps one arm to clear it, and then he’s placing me down on the desk as if I belong there.
Part of me does. I belong here with him and I never want to leave.
That part of me is stronger today.
Felix’s teeth sink into my lower lip at the same time as he rips my blouse open and paws at my breasts like an animal.
I wrap my legs around his waist and draw him in, where the ridge of his cock through his slacks bumps against my core.
“Clothes off,” I demand breathlessly. “Now!”