There was nothing I wouldn't do to claim her.
"He's ready. Not looking forward to it, but he's ready." Matteo grimaced with his words. Don had been hesitant when I first involved him in my plans, not enjoying the prospect of deceiving a grieving widow in the slightest. Personally, I thought he was more likely terrified of what would happen when Calla realized she'd been lied to and tricked into letting her stalker support her and her kids financially.
I couldn't blame him there.
"Good," I grunted. "Are we done gossiping? Can we move on to the corpse?" I asked.
Simon chuckled at me, stepping away from the chair to lean against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. "He ain't no corpse."
"He will be soon enough," I answered, stepping over to my table of tools and picking out my favorite knife.
Matteo's levity faded to the ruthless mask he wore to rule the city, but he stayed back. Always letting me take over, because, unlike the others, I enjoyed this part.
I enjoyed every scream, and every time they begged me for mercy. Enjoyed every pulse of blood as it left their bodies.
“Where is Murphy planning to base his operation?” Matteo asked, and the silence of his answer sealed his fate.
I enjoyed every second of his torture.
Six
Calla
I carried Ines as we walked along the path in the cemetery. It had been months since we visited, months since Axel asked to talk to his Dad.
I thought about it too often, about the fact that our lives were moving on. Our time of grieving had come to an inevitable close, even though I wasn't ready. I knew I had to be. The kids deserved better than for me to cling to the memory of what we'd once had.
Of what we would never have again.
But I wanted it back. I wanted to feel what it meant to have someone sleep next to me and wake up next to me. I just couldn't ever risk losing it again.
Axel's hand was tight in mine, clutching with more strength than I'd have thought possible coming from his little hand. Even though it had been months, he remembered the walk as much as I did. There'd been weeks when we'd come every day. Weeks when we'd braved the cooling early winter air to sit on the grass for hours until our noses were red and runny.
But something about the one-year mark felt significant. Like it foretold a shift.
Like we finally had to move on fully.
The thought of leaving Chad behind made me hurt all over, and from the ashen look on Axel's face, I imagined the feeling was mutual. Ines clung to me. Even she was silent where she would have normally babbled happily. When we turned onto the grass, Axel pushed his shoulders back, releasing my hand suddenly. I tried not to wince from the loss.
He wanted to be a big boy when he talked to his father, and I had to respect that.
Even if it killed me.
Because he was my baby, and he always would be.
My heart thumped in my chest when Chad's tombstone came into view. Even though it was simple, there was no mistaking it. Not with the way the stones that surrounded it had aged. His family: his mother, his father, and his brother, had all died in a car accident before we met, leaving Chad alone. My kids were the only Latours left.
I touched the stone as we came up to it, setting Ines down. She curled her legs up underneath her, placing the flowers she'd brought on the grass gently. Axel sat in front of the stone in silence, staring at the words intently.
Father.
Husband.
Officer.
Chad’s life reduced down to three words and a few scrapbooks worth of pictures.
I stood there, letting Axel have his silent conversation with his father. When he turned his blue eyes up to me finally, they seemed far too old in his little boy face. "Can I talk to him alone for a minute?" he asked.
"Sure," I said, though the request shocked me. Another moment where he wanted to show how grown-up he was, and it filled me with dread. I still remembered when he’d been a newborn who demanded to be held all the time. I still remembered when he was a teething toddler and punching handsome strangers in the park. For him, it was a lifetime ago. For me, it felt like yesterday.
I tightened my fingers around the stone, pausing. While I had every intention of giving my son the time he needed, a part of me knew I wouldn’t be visiting the cemetery soon.
It was well and truly goodbye in a way that I hadn’t yet let myself feel.
With a sniffle, I grabbed Ines’s hand, leading her back to the path where I could keep Axel in my sight but give him the privacy he needed. I watched his lips move for a moment before I stopped watching and turned my attention down to my baby girl. "How does ice cream sound?" I asked her, tucking her platinum hair behind her ear.
"Yum!" she said with a grin.
"I think so too. I'm going to get spinach ice cream," I teased her, tapping her nose and getting a giggle.
"Eww. Cookie!"
"Spinach cookie ice cream?" I asked her with a smile.
"Nooo. Mommy silly," she laughed, hugging my leg tight.
"Okay, okay. Cookie dough it is," I murmured, bending down and tapping my cheek with my finger. "But I think you have to pay the ice cream toll first."
She smiled, pressing a sloppy kiss to my cheek.
As she went back to frolicking on the surrounding path, something drew my eyes to the familiar area in the distance, the place where my mother’s grave sat. My father still visited regularly, so I knew if I wandered over I would find it maintained. Whenever we visited Chad, I couldn’t bring myself to wander over.
I’d never known her, given that she’d died in childbirth, but I felt the echoes of her life through every second of mine. It was there in the way my father loved her fiercely after nearly three decades without her. It was there in the gentle smile I saw in her photos.
It was there in her absence, painted on my soul as I’d grown up without a mother to talk to me about all the things a girl needed a mother for.
Just like a boy needed a father.
"You okay?" I asked, turning to Axel when he walked up next to us. His shoulders were back, his face less pale.
Whatever he'd said to his father, he felt better for having done it.
"Yeah, Mommy. I'm good." I hugged him to my side, sniffling in his hair once before I forced it down.
"Let's go get that ice cream then," I whispered, standing up and holding out a hand for Axel to take. As my eyes settled on the area behind him, a shadow moved through the trees at the edge of the cemetery grounds. There one minute and gone the next. I smiled, thinking of the shadow who’d saved me.
Shadows couldn’t exist without light.
We were slower to walk the route back to the car with Ines walking along beside us with her little legs. Where Axel was tall like his father, she'd gotten my petite build, so it felt like it took us hours to make the trip.
It didn't matter though, because with my kids on either side of me, I held my entire world in my hands.
I could survive anything if it meant giving them the best life possible.
Even being alone.
✽✽✽
I set my book down with a glance at the clock hanging on the wall. It was late enough that there was little to no choice. Turning the light off as I stood, I made my way to the stairs with nothing but the light from the streetlamps streaming in the windows. My fingers trailed over Chad’s favored recliner as I passed, a gentle reminder that nobody had touched it in a year. Nobody dared to sit in the supple leather, although it was easily the most comfortable spot in the cozy living room. Nobody wanted to displace him from our lives.
But as I peeked inside each of the kids’ bedrooms, stalling however I could, the thought sounded ridiculous even in the privacy of my mind.
Chad was dead.
He’d been dead, and nothing would ever change that. Still, I couldn’t erase the memory of him falling asleep in the chair with Axel in his arms when he’d been a baby. I couldn’t erase the vision of him perching
on the edge every morning as he pulled on his black boots.
Nobody would ever sit in that chair again, and I couldn’t live in a mausoleum. I’d have my dad help me put it on the curb over the weekend.
As I made my way into our bedroom, I stared at the massive king bed. Releasing a sigh with a sad smile, I made my way over to it. It was too big to be empty. Too big for just me.
Climbing on top of the covers on my side of the bed, I tried to will away the tension in my body. There was nothing I wanted more than to relax and just fade to sleep, but even lonely widows had needs.
Needs that went unmet with two children to think of and not wanting a relationship.
I stared at the ceiling for a moment, wishing the need away. Reading romance novels never helped my situation, but for a few moments of my day, it was nice to get lost in a world where things like true love existed.
It was nice to read about happily ever afters for couples who deserved them, for women who could let themselves be vulnerable enough to love. To read about men who would do anything for their women.
With a glance at the closed door, I let my fingers touch the tops of my thighs. They were too soft, too delicate as they slid my nightgown up to my hips. I didn’t look down as I slid my hand inside my underwear, clenching my eyes tight to dispel the reality that it was my fingers that touched me. My own fingers that slid through the wetness that lingered despite my crushing loneliness. Two fingers at my clit, circling gently as my eyes clenched tighter. Shadows permeated the haze of my vision, feeling like they never left. Like my shadows were everywhere, lurking just beyond view.
My back arched as the heat of pleasure consumed me, as the building orgasm rose to my well-practiced and efficient movements.
But even with the way I knew my body so well, there was only one thing that could ever send me tumbling over the edge of oblivion. The guilt I felt with the vision never lessened, not even with all the time that had passed.
Vivid blue eyes shone through the haze of darkness inside my head, drawing a gasp from me as my back arched further and my fingers slowed to coax the last tingles of my release from my body before guilt overwhelmed me.
Vaulting myself off the bed, I made for the bathroom with guilt pulsing through my body.
It wasn’t my husband’s memory that got me off. Not ever.
But a shadowed stranger with blue eyes that I had no business thinking about.
The shower called to me, to the dirty feeling that crawled along my skin.
Just like always.
Seven
Ryker
I shoved open the door of the beat-up car I used whenever I needed to go beneath the radar.
My Maserati would have stuck out like a sore thumb on Calla's residential street all night. As I made my way across the road, sticking to the shadows, the hair on my head clung to my skin and tickled my neck. Still damp from my shower after I'd washed the stench of the warehouse off my skin, it was too thick to dry quickly.
I hadn't wanted to waste any more time. The only thing that had prolonged me getting to Calla's was my desire to double check that everything was ready for her and the kids' arrival the next day. I’d checked every last touch, watching Calla on the video feed on my phone.
Touching herself.
It wasn’t often my Sunshine took matters into her own hands so literally, and I both cursed and thanked the panties blocking my view as she writhed on her bed. It should have been my hands sliding her nightgown up her thighs and my fingers stroking her pussy.
There should have been nothing but me dancing in her head as she came. It always made me wonder what it was she thought of, but I’d never ask.
If it wasn’t me, it would mean I needed to kill someone.
The bedrooms were set, the furniture of the main space rearranged to accommodate the play area the guys would set up for the kids when I took Calla to go collect them after I explained her new reality.
Nobody saw me, despite my size, as I maneuvered through the streets like the creep I was. The house was dark, as I'd known it would be. I'd watched, waited, until the moment Calla's eyes closed, and she was lost to the land of dreams.
My Sunshine was a deep sleeper, never even sensing me when I crept into her room almost nightly.
When I made it to the front door, my key to her house was already in hand. Turning the lock, I pushed the door open and slipped inside. The motion of closing the door perfectly quietly was all too easy and familiar as I toed off my boots and clicked the lock back into place.
Navigating the stairs, I stealthily avoided the spots that squeaked, skipping the worst step altogether. I'd been doing it since the first night Calla slept alone there after Chad's death. The first night she'd finally gone back into the bedroom she'd shared with her husband when he lived.
Weeks had passed where she’d slept on the couch, as if she couldn't face the empty bed and her loneliness.
She couldn’t know she wasn’t alone. I was there, watching her every move. Supporting her through the transition as she came to terms with the shift in her life.
I spared a glance into each of the kids' rooms, smiling as I saw them sleeping contentedly. Even knowing what a hard day it must have been for Axel, I also knew he'd handled it well. He'd said goodbye to his father, had asked him to send someone to take care of his mother and sister.
His wish would come true the next day, though Chad probably rolled in his grave knowing that his wife was mine now.
The door to Calla's room stood wide open, the way she always left it in case either of the kids needed her in the night. It made it risky: me being in her room with her, given that Ines could easily have a nightmare and seek her mother at any moment.
It had happened twice. The first time I'd convinced the half-asleep girl she was dreaming and tucked her back into bed. The second, I hid on the floor next to Calla's bed, waiting for the two of them to resettle and fall back asleep before I snuck back out.
But nothing could keep me away.
And that night, as I sat on Calla's bed next to her and reached a hand out to hover over her sweet face pinched in frustration in her sleep, I knew it would be the last time I did this. The last time I watched her sleep and couldn't hold her. The last time I had to sneak into her bedroom.
I would never take having her in my arms for granted.
Wanting to remember the moment, I pulled my silenced phone from my pocket and took a picture of my hand against the side of her face as I tucked her hair back behind her ear. The scent of her lavender shampoo filled the air with the movement, instantly calming the raging urge to claim that roared in my veins. She tilted her head, pressing into my touch more even in her sleep like she knew it was me and emitted a happy little sigh.
The next day, Calla would be mine.
Our story would finally begin.
Eight
Calla
The next morning felt so much lighter. Axel's mood had visibly improved the moment he finished talking to his father. By the time we made it to the ice cream parlor, he'd been smiling with Ines and doing all the goofy tricks he knew to make her squeal with laughter.
That was my boy.
I felt particularly relaxed after my yoga classes of the morning, ready to grab my baby girl from my dad and go home and bake some cookies with her to surprise Axel.
I got hung up at the studio when my Aunt Sigrid called, but I didn't mind spending extra time in the back room. It was just as relaxing as ever, with the scent of sandalwood permeating the air that day. If I hadn’t wanted children with every gear in my body, I’d have wanted a home that smelled like the essential oils of the yoga studio. Something minimalist, with only the furniture necessary to live in and nothing extra. "I'm glad to hear that he could turn the day around. I worried about you three all day," she said with a somber note to her voice. She'd never been fond of Chad, always said there was just something off about him and avoided him when spending time with the kids and I, but that didn't mean that she coul
dn't sympathize with the loss we felt when he died.
"It was okay, in the end. It kind of felt like it was exactly what we needed. That one last day to grieve before we really start moving forward. We've just been getting by, but they deserve better," I sighed. "I just don't know how to do better for them."
"You're doing great, sweetheart. You're the best mom I know, but Axel is coming to that age where he will need a male influence in his life. Have you considered getting back out there? Dating a bit and testing the waters?" I sipped my water to stall before I swallowed and answered, even if I knew it wasn't the response she wanted.
"He has a male influence. He has Dad."
"And your father is an amazing grandfather, Calla. But the three of you need someone in that house to be there all the time. They need a father figure, and I know it hurts you to hear that. They can't have their dad, but you could meet someone amazing and give them a great step-father. You just need to open yourself up to that first."
I sighed, glancing at the door and deciding it was time to go get my girl. I was so not ready for this conversation, even if I had been considering the necessity of it myself. "I'm not ready to date. Maybe I'll get there eventually, but for now I just want to focus on us." I grabbed my purse off the table as I stood, cutting off her protests when I continued, "I've got to go. I'm late to pick up Ines, but I'll call you in a couple days. Okay?"
"Yeah, sweetheart," she sighed, her disappointment and pity clear in every syllable of the words. "I'll talk to you soon."
"Love you," I said as I hung up the phone and shoved the phone into my purse.
Stepping out the front door, I turned my back to the street as I dug my keys out of my purse and shoved it into the deadbolt to lock the front door. I’d only barely pulled the key free when a voice made me jump so high, I thought I might hit the overhang. "Mrs. Latour?" a male voice said, and I spun to stare up at the man I recognized all too well for only having met him once.
Grieved Loss: A Dark Mafia Romance (Bellandi Crime Syndicate Book 3) Page 4