Chapter 21
Luke
“C an we track the car ?” I asked Sean.
It sounded like Jimmy was getting up in his room, but I couldn’t focus on that. Keeping my voice low so it wouldn’t carry to Marlo upstairs, I paced and spoke with Sean. In this huge foyer, with the domed glass ceiling overheard, I felt like I was a feral, rabid animal pushed to his limits, trapped in a cage.
The longer Emma went missing, the harder it was to breathe. I’d already lost her once. Her father had her kidnapped. But this time, I didn’t know if she was taken or if she’d just...left.
“We can, but—”
He didn’t finish as she came inside the front door. A couple of guards assisted her at the entrance. No, not her. They helped her bring my mother in.
“Mom?” My eyes bugged out, but I didn’t care about the details. I couldn’t. Seeing Emma alive and well made my heart sing. Relief swept through me, almost dizzying me with the force of it. My mom was all right too, not looking any worse for the wear but alarmed.
“Emma.” I ran up to her, catching her close. She didn’t look harmed. If any, a little pale, but intact and not wounded.
That was until she turned to look at Sean. Red marks lined her neck. I furrowed my brow, studying her. “Are you hurt?”
The tendons in her neck flexed as she forced a swallow. Then she shook her head. “I’ll be okay.”
“Lucas,” Mom said, staggering toward the nearest chair with the help of a guard. “What on earth is going on?”
Emma cleared her throat. “I was promised to marry Antonio Marchese before I met Luke and fell in love with him. Then we found out he’s Marlo’s son. And now...” She lifted her hand in a vague gesture. “Now this is our life.”
I held Emma’s hand, feeling the ring on her finger and knowing what it symbolized. Her love for me. My love for her. And the fact that I would get to the bottom of why she was acting so distant.
“Wait. Where did—” I shook my head, lost. “I left with Jimmy to find her. We were stopped on the way by Giordino guards who challenged me. I came home to find you missing and now—” I volleyed my stare from her to my mom.
“Antonio found Krista. He had her beat and used her phone to contact me with a message. I was supposed to go to him and leave you to save her. I went, planning to get her out.”
I gripped my hair with my free hand, furious that she’d risk her life like that.
She pointed at me, warning me not to lash out about that very point. “No. You’re not the only one who can care about your loved ones. You ran out to get Nina back. That was a trap. A bait to pull you out of hiding. Same for her. You can’t be mad at me for going to help her when you did the same thing for your mom.”
I hung my head and shook her. Dammit. I couldn’t argue her logic when she worded it like that. “But I had backup. I took Jimmy with me.”
“And I found backup there. The Marchese guard, Justin, saved her and took off to hide. When I was there, though, I found her”—she pointed at my mom—“and we got away.”
“Just like that?” I snapped my fingers. “You managed to slip past all of the Marchese forces without notice while helping a slower woman along?” I didn’t word it nastily to show my disbelief, but it did seem like a stretch.
“Not...just like that.” Emma lowered her gaze and furrowed her brow, worrying me more.
“She was a brave woman, risking herself to get me free,” my mom said. She seemed to breathe easier, sitting down, but as soon as Jimmy came out of the room, she perked up. “Jim.”
“Nina?” Jimmy walked closer, still sore from being hurt, but steadfast to reach her. On the way toward her, he glanced up in the direction of the stairs that led to Marlo’s wing. “What on earth— How did you get here?”
As Emma repeated what she said, I watched her closely, concerned about why she was acting so different. Something had to have happened to make her close off like this, talking monotone and not clearly with that intelligence she never tried to hide or squash.
“Let me get you settled. We’ll find you a room, Nina.” Again Jimmy glanced up in the direction of his brother’s wing upstairs.
I dragged my hand over my face. “For fuck’s sake, Jimmy. Marlo is two inches from death. You can’t seriously think he can hear us down here, through a closed door, do you?”
Jimmy glared at me. “You don’t understand.”
“No. I fucking don’t. So fill me in. Why are you so worried about her being near Marlo?”
Nina patted Jimmy’s hand. He’d sat down next to her after dragging a chair closer to hers. “Haven’t you explained anything?”
“No,” I said, answering for him. “He hasn’t.” I crossed my arms, showing that I wouldn’t budge until I had answers.
“Before you were born, I was dating Jim.” She nodded at him. “We’d only just started seeing him when I came here.” She sighed, seeming to struggle with the admission as she scanned the large entrance that led to the double staircases. “Looked a lot different then,” she mused dryly.
“We’d just started dating, and I had her over for a party. Marlo saw her and raped her.” Jimmy supplied those details in a blunt, cold tone, like he hated to say it at all.
“Needless to say...” My mom gestured at me.
Jimmy scowled. “He told me to make sure she got rid of the baby. He wanted her to abort, but I couldn’t force her to do that. It was her choice, not his, so I lied and told him that I’d seen it taken care of. We didn’t continue to date, but we were still friends. I stayed nearby to help her as much as I could through the pregnancy and then when you were born.”
“He really did stay to help,” Sean said. “Since you were born, all through your trainings. Knowing who you really were, we had to make sure you stayed well.”
“And hidden,” my mom added.
I exhaled the breath I’d been holding in, not breathing fully as I waited for them to explain more. It didn’t sting. It didn’t hurt knowing that Marlo never wanted me. It did answer the question about if he’d known about me, and it seemed he did and didn’t. He knew that my mom was pregnant, but he’d been told that I was aborted.
“Why?” I shrugged, still feeling like I was missing something. “Why did he want you to abort?” I asked my mom, but then looked at Jimmy. It seemed my mom never knew Marlo. He’d taken advantage of her in the cruelest way possible. My hatred for him grew.
I wasn’t wallowing in a woe-is-me shame. I didn’t care that I was a product of rape. I knew who I was. I was confident in what kind of a man I was. But I despised that anyone had ever hurt my mother.
“He didn’t want a bastard child to have his power,” Jimmy replied. “He has never wanted me to have power after him.”
Emma scoffed. “What, he wants the Rossini reign to end with him?”
Jimmy nodded. “He has never liked the idea of passing on ‘his’ wealth to anyone in the family. By never remarrying after he had his first wife killed, by insisting that he have his bastard child aborted, he wanted to be a family of one.”
I arched a brow at him. “Except you?”
He shook his head.
Sean cleared his throat and spoke up. “Marlo arranged for orders of a hit on Jimmy. To be carried out after his death. So the power wouldn’t fall to his only brother.”
Jimmy snorted a dark laugh. “He never wanted to kill me sooner. I was too valuable, practically running the empire for him. But he would be damned if someone else got the position of being the boss after him.”
“This is...” I huffed. “This is some fucked up shit.”
“Can you blame me for wanting to hide it all along?” my mom asked, quietly and almost nervously.
“No.” I looked off to the side, unsure how to unpack all the reactions that came with this news. Pivoting, I saw Emma frowning and staring at the floor.
She had already been acting distant since her return, and I wanted to know why. I wanted to give her my attention, all of it. I didn’t want to focus on myself and if the finer details of my past could change me now.
“I’m going to...” I shrugged. “I need a moment.” I said it to the rest of them as an excuse to slip away. Tugging Emma’s hand so she’d come with me, I set out to distract myself with her.
What we were just told wasn’t rosy, good news. Yet, I knew that something else was up with Emma, and I was determined to figure out what it was. My past couldn’t be changed. What was done, was done. Moving forward, though, I had all the time and ability in the world to make sure my fiancée was handling this all the best that she could.