Chapter 9 Alessa
Alessa
Idon’t know what possessed me to ask Holden to go with me today, but it just felt right after what Gage said to me. I need something to break him out of his shell and make him more comfortable around me. Not the guy who is currently as close to the passenger side door of my BMW as he can get.
I’m taking him to one of my favorite places with a motive.
Pulling out of the garage, I take the back exit from the estate we use so paparazzi don’t spot us. Micah talked my dad into installing it when people started noticing us and would sit at the end of the driveway waiting for us to leave.
It’s about a forty-five-minute drive to where we’re going and on a rural road on the outskirts of Abbs Valley, where we live, so it gives me time to think. Holden doesn’t require constant conversation; he doesn’t require any at all. He is content to stare out the window.
My conversation with Gage is a constant buzz in my head.
He made me admit what I wanted, even if it was just to myself.
Now that Ryder and I have swerved past the line of friendship, he acts differently.
Jealous. I feel like our friendship is crumbling at its very foundation.
I knew he had girls throughout his life, and he knew I had guys, but he never acted jealous of them until Leo.
Leo is a different problem within itself.
I still haven’t worked up the nerve to talk to him, just a few words in passing.
I know I need to clear the air, at least for my own sake, but I’ve never been in this situation before.
I sleep with guys. I don’t date them. Now I have Leo, Ryder, and Gage vying for my attention, although Gage is the easiest of the three.
It was easy as breathing when he kissed me in my office.
I didn’t feel like we were risking our friendship as I did with Ryder.
Not because I’m not as close to Gage but because Gage is easier to read than Ryder.
Ryder hides his emotions the same way I do, with a carefully placed mask.
I’m finding it harder and harder to hide mine. I feel like I’m losing control.
Growing up with Ryder, he was everything to me, and I was everything to him.
He was my protector, my date for dances, my shoulder to cry on, my video game buddy, and the one who used to scare the guys away in school.
I was his cheerleader at football games, his voice of reason, the one who didn’t take his shit, and the one girls were intimidated by because of my relationship with him.
Now I feel like we are losing everything we built.
People end up dating their best friends all the time.
Could Ryder and I pull that off? I don’t think we can when I’m still entertaining the idea of dating the other guys.
Am I thinking about dating them? At this point, I have no fucking idea.
I take a right off the main road onto a long dirt road, and Holden finally looks up, staring out of the windshield.
We travel the two miles before the wrought-iron gate finally comes into view, with my name hanging from the top.
I enter the code, and the gate swings open, allowing us to enter.
No sooner than I pull up in front of the cute ranch house, the woman who runs the ranch walks out, a huge smile on her weathered face.
“Alessa!” she crows as I step out of the car in her thick Italian accent, clasping my cheeks in her hands and kissing both sides.
“Hey, Marcella,” I greet with a smile. It’s been too long since I came out here.
Dad bought this farm from Marcella when her husband died, and she was about to lose it. Then he told her she could stay there and run it. When he died, I never changed much; this one was one of them.
“It’s been too long,” she chastises and then casts a glance at Holden, standing beside the car. “Who is this lovely young man?”
“Marcella, this is Holden.” She raises an eyebrow as if asking if he is my boyfriend, and I shake my head.
“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” Holden mumbles with a polite nod.
She prances over to him. “None of this ma’am nonsense. Call me Marcella.” She kisses him the same way she kissed me. He returns the gesture with a shy smile, making my heart melt.
“I’ll get Vincenzo to take you up,” she offers, referring to my secret place.
“That’s fine. We can walk it.”
“It is such a lovely day. Come in when you get back. I made cupcakes.” She spins on her heel, her loose colorful skirt swishing behind her, and heads back into the house.
Marcella is sixty years old and still looks like she’s in her forties.
The only things that give her away are the laugh lines that line her eyes and around her mouth, and her long black hair is streaked in grey.
She lives here with her two sons, Vincenzo and Giovanni, with other ranch hands milling around.
Marcella knows who we are but treats us like long-lost family.
“Come on,” I beckon Holden with a smile and head to the back of the house.
We head through the back gate and down the little trail leading to where I want to go. We are silent on the walk, with it only being about a two-mile hike, and it still takes my breath away when we finally break through the trees.
It’s a meadow that overlooks the field below, where you can watch the horses, goats, and cows graze. The bench my dad had built still stands in the little gazebo. The meadow is in full bloom with flowers I can’t name, some wild, some Marcella planted and tended to.
“This reminds me of home,” Holden says with wonder.
I lead him over to the bench, both of us breathing in the fresh air. “Texas?” I ask.
I know some of Holden’s history, but a lot of it is still a mystery. He doesn’t talk about his past.
“Yeah,” his smile is sad, “before things went bad.” He lapses into silence, and I know I need to tell him my story, hoping it might prompt him to talk to me.
I pull my feet onto the bench, hugging my knees to my chest. “I want to tell you my story.” He whips his head towards me.
“I know you’ve heard bits and pieces, but I want you to have a better understanding of me.
I need you to know I understand what you’re going through.
” I turn to face him. “I need you to know I would never hurt you like they did.”
“I know,” he says softly.
I look back at the field, trying to figure out where to start.
This isn’t easy for me to talk about, but I feel like Holden deserves to know.
“As you know, I was born into the Poletti life. Generations after generations have run Abbs Valley and Los Angeles’s underbelly, among other places.
My mom and dad were good people, as good as you can be in the Mafia.
” I smile at that. No matter how good we are, we’re still criminals.
“My mom died in a car accident when I was young. I was old enough to remember her but still too young to have gotten a good life with her. She was beautiful. Long blond hair, tall, the prettiest green eyes, and one of the gentlest souls, and my dad was madly in love with her.”
I still remember the stolen kisses and the dances around the house when they thought I wasn’t watching.
I knew if Mom could have had more kids, there would have been a horde of us.
But complications from her pregnancy with me took that away from them.
They loved me just as fiercely as they did each other, and I missed that so damn much.
That was the type of love I had always dreamed of for myself.
But I feel like that was robbed from me.
Frankie took more than just my innocence that night.
“It broke him when she died, but he still did his best to raise me and run an empire. When I was old enough, he trained me in combat, knives, guns, anything so I could protect myself, along with Micah. With our age difference, he always felt more like a brother than an uncle.”
I take a deep breath. This is where the story turned ugly.
I don’t want to gloss over it, but I also can’t drag the story out.
“When I was thirteen, I was out with my guards to meet Ryder and Gage, and someone ran a red light, smashing into the side of our SUV. That someone worked for Frankie Perez.”
Holden’s whole body is turned towards me, taking in every word. “They killed both guards and took me. I was locked up in a smelly old house for days where his men would rape, sodomize, and torture me for hours. All at the order of Frankie because my dad outbid him at a casino he wanted.”
My voice cracks on the last word, and I can feel tears leaking down my cheeks without any recollection of when I started to cry.
Holden places his hand on my knee without a word.
It’s the first time he’s ever initiated contact.
I lay my cheek on his hand, staring into his soulful brown eyes, seeing the pain on the surface.
Pain for me and pain for whatever he went through.
“When my dad found me, I was covered in blood and completely shut down. I ran into a place in my mind and hid, trying to block out what was happening. It took a while for me to return from that place, and my mind wasn’t right when I did.
No matter how much therapy he put me through, it didn’t help.
I felt every man was looking at me like those men did.
I jumped at every sound. I cried over everything.
I didn’t trust anyone.” I look back at the field, watching a colt run around his mom.