Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
OLIVIA
A nother night at the club led to another morning that started late, groggy, and alone.
I didn’t know how Gabriel did it, keeping us out late with a mix of work and partying that I hadn’t been capable of even back in college.
And even when he brought me back home, he still wasn’t done. We’d made love until the early hours of the morning, and afterward, I collapsed into sleep.
And just like last time, he was already showered, dressed, and halfway out the door by the time I woke up.
“Slow down,” I teased when I caught up to him, finishing his cappuccino in the kitchen. “I’m starting to think you’re getting up so early because you can’t wait to get away from me.”
“Never,” he said with a half smile. “I’ll be back to pick you up at eight again for dinner.”
“Okay.” I nodded as he stood up. “I’ll make sure I’m done working on your brother’s books before then.”
“Oh, that reminds me,” he said, popping the last bite of his breakfast pastry in his mouth. Letizia had made fruit-filled bomboloni this time. “You don’t have to work in the bedroom if you don’t want to. The desk in my office might be more comfortable.”
“You have an office?” For some reason, he was the last person I could imagine trapped behind a desk, pushing papers around.
“On the second floor,” he said. “Letizia can show you where it is.”
“Thank you,” I said as he opened the back door and headed out.
“Well, you two appear to be getting along well,” Letizia said, turning around from her usual post by the stove. She took the kettle off the burner and poured the steaming hot water into a white porcelain mug that she’d hung a tea bag in earlier.
“I guess so.” I thanked her with a nod when she slid the cup in front of me. I didn’t know what else to say.
During the day, our relationship as captive and captor was more polite and respectful than I had any right to imagine it would be. Then, at night, it changed into something as spicy as sin.
But even in the moments when I was so overwhelmed by pleasure that I couldn’t speak, the threat that Gabriel presented to me and my family never really went away. It was always hanging over my head.
For every story of saving a little kid or paying a young man’s way through college, there was another intimidating comment telling me to pray I never found out about the true power of his wrath.
But given the way Letizia was smiling at me now, I had a feeling she didn’t know the true nature of our relationship.
“Mr. Gabriel doesn’t allow just anyone into his office, you know,” she said. “It must mean he trusts you.”
Okay…now I was certain she didn’t know.
“I don’t know about that,” I said. “I think he just knows I won’t do anything stupid.”
Letizia’s eyes narrowed as she shot me a questioning look. “I’m pretty sure that’s the definition of trust.”
Maybe it was.
After I finished my tea and apricot-filled bun, I followed her up the stairs to Gabriel’s office. It was a small room, decorated in the same dark wood and masculine tones as just about every other room in the house. The walls were covered with built-in bookcases—all of them full—and the desk was massive, taking up most of the floor space.
Still, for something that was clearly the center of attention, it didn’t look like it had recently gotten a lot of use. It wasn’t that the place looked abandoned. Letizia was far too proud of a housekeeper to ever allow a layer of dust to settle on shelves or cobwebs to accumulate in corners.
On the contrary, everything was too neat and tidy. There were no pads of paper out. No empty coffee cups or piles of pencil shavings. No fresh scratches on the desktop.
The picture it painted made perfect sense to me.
This was the desk of a man who did his work out in the real world. Who talked to people face to face instead of on the phone. Who sat down across from them instead of writing them an email.
When I sat down in the high-backed chair and arranged my work for the day, I was reasonably certain that this wasn’t really Gabriel’s desk. It was his father’s. And probably his grandfather’s before that.
I didn’t know how far back the history of D’Angelos in New York went or if they had always been mafia men. I was sure if I asked Gabriel tonight at dinner, he’d tell me all about it.
Strange that just a couple days into captivity, I was already comfortable enough to sit around brainstorming dinner conversation ideas instead of possible escape plans.
I even found my mind drifting as I began to wrangle the nightclub numbers, floating away on daydreams and memories of last night’s pleasures. So much so that only fifteen minutes in, I pressed down too hard on my pencil and broke the tip.
“Shit,” I muttered to myself, looking over the vast desktop for a sharpener. I didn’t see one, so I started opening drawers.
I was almost disappointed to find Gabriel wasn’t hiding anything scandalous inside. I didn’t find any weapons or a stockpile of drugs, just paper and pens…and one very familiar-looking cell phone.
My cell phone.
My breath hitched in my throat, even though the sight of it shouldn’t have come as a surprise.
Gabriel had told me he had it, after all. He’d used it to call my family.
Not that they ever called him back.
At least, Gabriel said they never did. But there was only one way to know for sure.
Shooting a glance at the closed door, I quickly picked it up and pressed the power button. My muscles were tense, ready to toss the thing back in the drawer if I heard so much as a floorboard squeak outside.
That wasn’t likely to happen, though, I reminded myself. Both Gabriel and Matteo were out of the house, and even if Letizia did come in, I doubted she’d think there was anything strange about finding me with a phone.
She did think I was a guest, after all.
After a few excruciatingly long seconds, the phone screen lit up.
There were no missed call notifications.
I checked the call log just to be sure.
Nothing.
Just a long list of ongoing calls. Some of them I remembered making the day of that terrible meeting with Gabriel, and some after he’d taken my phone.
So he was telling the truth.
He had called my family. And if that was true, then there was no reason to believe he hadn’t told them the truth. Gabriel wasn’t one to hold back on details, and I was sure he’d explained every last element of the deal we’d made.
My freedom for a temporary reprieve of Theo’s life.
And they still didn’t call back.
I shouldn’t have been surprised, but their abandonment stung more than I thought possible. I didn’t want to believe it. There had to be another reason they hadn’t returned either of our calls.
Maybe they were afraid.
It would make sense. My family might be assholes, but they weren’t criminals. Receiving threatening voicemails from a notorious mob boss was probably more than they could take.
Checking the door one more time, I decided to risk calling them myself.
This time, I didn’t start with Theo. I didn’t have time to risk leaving messages with a coward who was too chicken to check them.
Instead, I dialed my mom…and was shocked when three rings in, she picked up.
“Liv?” Her voice was tight and hesitant, almost as if her finger was already hovering over the End button in case the person who spoke wasn’t actually me.
“Mom.”
The word rushed out of me, along with a massive sigh of relief. I’d never been so happy to talk to her in my life.
“Liv, darling. Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m fine, Mom,” I assured her. “I’m not hurt, but I am in a bad situation. We all are.”
“I know, honey,” she said. “Your brother played us the message that horrible man left.”
Well, at least Theo wasn’t doing his usual trick of completely burying his head in the sand. That was a good sign.
“So then you know that the family has ninety days to come up with a few million dollars.”
For a long moment, nothing but silence came from the other end of the line. My heart sank.
“Mom,” I prompted her after another few seconds had passed. “You did know that, right?”
“Theo…Theo told us the man wanted money, but he didn’t say how much,” she said.
Of course, he didn’t.
“Well, it’s a lot,” I repeated, trying to get her back on track. I didn’t know how much time I had before Matteo came home or Letizia came up from the kitchen. “Which means you’re going to need to sell something—the house or maybe even the company.”
My mother gasped. “We can’t do that. It’s just not possible.”
“You have to,” I said as plainly as possible. “If you don’t, then the mob is going to kill Theo.”
Another gasp. “Don’t say that, Liv.”
“I have to, Mom. It’s the truth.”
“Well…well… can’t you do something?”
I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt and blame her critical tone on shock and not her usual general disappointment in me.
“I am doing something,” I told her. “The only reason Theo is still breathing right now is because I struck a deal with Gabriel D’Angelo to be held as collateral through the summer.”
“Well, then strike another deal,” she said, as if negotiating with a mob boss were the easiest thing in the world.
“I’ve already tried that,” I told her. “He wasn’t interested.”
“Then try harder,” she huffed. “Do whatever you have to do in order to buy us more time.”
Whatever I had to do ? Did she even know what she was saying? For my own sanity, I had to believe she didn’t.
“It won’t work,” I told her. “This is Gabriel D’Angelo, Mom. He doesn’t make exceptions. I’ve been with him for a couple days now, and I can promise you he’s tough as nails.”
“So, you’re not even willing to try, is that it?”
I wanted to scream in frustration. Her daughter was being held hostage by the country’s most dangerous criminal, and that was her primary concern? My hand gripped the phone so tight that I feared there would be finger marks along the side when I slid it back into the drawer.
“Listen to me, Mom,” I said as slowly and calmly as I could. “I will do everything I can on this side to calm things down, but that doesn’t change the fact that Theo owes the mob millions of dollars, and if he doesn’t pay it back, they are going to kill him.”
I could hear the soles of my mother’s sneakers smacking against the tile on her kitchen floor as she paced back and forth. Even a thousand miles away, I could sense she was trying to find a way out of this mess—a way that didn’t end with her sacrificing anything .
“What if we went to the police?” she tried.
“Oh God, no!” Even I knew that was the worst idea possible. “If you involve the authorities, Theo’s already as good as dead. Besides, don’t forget that the only reason we’re in this mess is because Theo committed fraud. Bring in the police, and they’ll arrest him.”
“Oh, I guess that’s true,” she admitted, sounding more disappointed than anything else.
“There’s only one thing to do, Mom,” I said again. “Sell something—either the house or the company. There’s no other way.”
“Easy for you to say,” she sniped.
Easy ?
What part of this did she think was easy?
I was about to snap and ask her just that when I heard the sound of a stair squeaking through the closed door.
“Shit. I gotta go,” I said in a rushed whisper.
My mother’s muffled complaints were still pouring out of the earpiece when I hit the power button and threw the phone back where I’d found it. I’d just finished sliding the drawer closed when the door opened, and Letizia came in with a fresh mug of tea.
“I thought you might like another,” she said, placing it in front of me. Despite my attempt to smile at the gesture, my exasperation must have shown through on my face because her brows pulled together. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes. Of course,” I said a little too quickly. “It’s just these numbers. They’re frustrating.”
Even though I was generally a terrible liar, she must have bought the excuse because the creases along her forehead eased away.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” she said. “I’m sure with a little work, everything will end up just fine in the end.”
“I certainly hope so,” I said with a sigh.
“Oh, I know so,” she said with such a knowing smile that I began to rethink just how ignorant of the truth the housekeeper really was. “I’ve never been wrong about this kind of thing before.”