Her walls went up because she could feel any hint of her chance at freedom disappearing with every day that passed.
I’d give her the night to lick her wounds.
After that she and I would need to have a very serious conversation about the state of our life together.
Twenty-Six
Calla
I tried not to feel Ryker’s eyes on me as I went through my yoga. If I could have done it anywhere besides the backyard, I would have. But as it stood, Axel was determined to have Ryker teach him how to throw a football properly to get that unattainable spin.
I’d tried, lord knows I’d tried over the last year. But I didn’t know the first thing about football, couldn’t tell you a single thing about it aside from the fact that football players wore tight pants and there was a quarterback.
Ryker knew how to throw it perfectly, just another check in the hero worship my son had going on. Even Ines enjoyed running after the ball when Ryker threw it as far as he could. The space behind the house was massive, with an enormous field cleared out where the sun shone down on it in the late afternoon.
I loved watching my baby girl giggle when Ryker picked her up and hefted her over his head like he might throw her to Axel, and I loved the broad smile that crossed my son’s face every time Ryker turned his attention to him.
He needed a father.
And no matter what I might think about Ryker for me personally, I couldn’t deny how incredible he was for the kids and with the kids. I’d always known being a mother meant making sacrifices, but could I sacrifice my life and my morals for them to have this with him?
For all the good he offered my children, could I condemn myself to a life of uncertainty with a man I knew was a killer in the trusted inner circle of Matteo Bellandi?
All I’d wanted for as long as I could remember was a family. A happy, whole family where the ghosts of our past didn’t haunt us. As much as Dad did his best and adored me, he still mourned my mother. I’d felt that loss through my life, the lack of a mother.
I didn’t want to do that to the kids, but I also wanted to have the white picket fence and an uncomplicated life. I had the distinct feeling any life I had with Ryker would never be easy.
I’d spend every day wondering if it would be the day he never came home.
I set my forearms on the mat I’d placed on the oddly flat space at the side of the field, as if Ryker had known it would be the perfect spot for me to do my yoga with just a hint of sun shining through the trees behind me. With a deep breath, I shifted my body up into a dolphin pose. When I sighed out, I kicked my legs up until the movement shifted me into an elbow stand. I held that, breathing through the feeling of Ryker’s eyes on me. Eventually, I bent my knees to drop into a half scorpion, loving the way the inversion of my body made all the blood rush to my head. Normally, I hated it. I’d never been a fan of the feeling of my head drowning and losing all cognitive thought to the overwhelming pressure, but there was something so magical about the loss of thought in that moment.
Ryker’s odd behavior didn’t dance at the forefront of my mind. I wasn’t blinded by his seemingly obsessive knowledge of us that I couldn’t explain, and I didn’t feel like I was losing my children to a man I didn’t know.
I was just free. Free from thought and jealousy and logic.
But it eventually became too much for me, and I had no choice but to bring my legs back together into my elbow stand and drop my legs back to dolphin pose. When I stood and stretched my arms to the sky, I became acutely aware of the sweat that dripped down my spine as my head cleared and reality returned. I felt too hot in the coming moment and eventually dropped my arms to my side with a last exhale. Turning to Ryker, I found he’d stopped throwing the ball to Axel, just holding it in one of his massive palms as he stared at me. Axel stared at him, a mixture of amusement and disgust on his face, but Ines just looked confused.
“James’s dad looked like that the one time he picked me up at the studio and Mommy was teaching a class,” Axel inserted, and Ryker’s attention finally shifted off of me to study him meaningfully.
“I’ll just bet he did,” Ryker grunted, finally tossing Axel the ball. “I think I’ll have a word with James’s father when he comes to pick you up.”
Axel blushed, seeming to finally realize that Ryker might not be a fan of other men looking at me. He was too young to understand the nuances of attraction, or what it meant for Ryker to be oddly possessive of me. His father had never cared.
But I got stuck on the part about James’s father picking Axel up, wracking my brain as I tried to think if I’d forgotten a birthday party. “Why is Mr. Weaver picking you up?” I asked Axel, crossing my arms over my chest. I was positive there was nothing I’d forgotten.
“James asked if I could sleepover tonight. Ryker said it was okay,” Axel said, and he eyed me as he realized that might not have been a good decision, but I knew from the expression on his little face that he hadn’t meant it to be hurtful. He’d asked one of the people he saw as his guardians, but it didn’t change the fact that it hurt.
“I see.” I nodded, turning a glare to Ryker. While my son might not have intended any harm, Ryker had to have known that it wouldn’t be acceptable to me. “Axel can you take your sister inside? I’m sure you need to pack for your sleepover,” I asked, and my sweet boy nodded and took his sister’s hand to guide her back toward the house.
Ryker and I both watched them go, waiting until they were safely through the pool room and through the door that went to the main house. I couldn't stand the thought of them alone, when they shouldn't have had to be alone ever.
But it was unavoidable with what needed to be said.
I wouldn't make Axel feel uncomfortable, not when I genuinely couldn't blame him for being confused in our current situation. Ryker acted like he was their father, and he needed to set the expectations of what they should seek from him. Permission to go do something fell with me as his mother, and it was Ryker's fault for confusing those lines and not correcting Axel in the first place. Then he hadn't even bothered to tell me he'd given my son permission to go to a friend's house.
"Calla," he said.
"Don't," I mumbled. "You crossed a line. You should have told Axel he needed to ask me about those things. It is not your place to tell him what he can and cannot do."
"He's my son," Ryker turned to stare down at me, crossing his arms over his chest like he was the wronged party and not certifiably insane.
"You haven't even known him for two weeks!" I said sharply, stepping into his space to return his glare. "You do not get to decide like this! He is not yours, and nothing you can say or do will change the fact that he already has a father." My voice trailed off as exhaustion filled me. I was so tired from fighting him all the time, from trying to make him see my perspective and the fact that he'd ripped me from the life I'd created and just expected me to cave to his ridiculous demands. "I'm trying. God, I am fucking trying to understand what the hell is so wrong with you that you think any of this is okay." I scrubbed a hand over my face, bending down to roll up my yoga mat. "I'm trying to make it work, since you didn't give me any choice. Do you think maybe, just maybe, you could stop for once and consider what this has been like for me? I am not asking a lot by expecting you to leave the decisions regarding my children to me, and if you can't see that, then you're even more of a dick than I thought you were."
I stormed toward the house, leaving Ryker staring after me. It should have felt like a victory, like I'd successfully won a battle.
Instead, it just felt like he was preparing to win the war.
✽✽✽
I fully expected to have to go through the motions with Mr. Chris Weaver. Pretending that the fact that my son was going off to a sleepover wasn't an enormous deal. He'd spent the night at James's a few times, but it was the distinctly noticeable presence of Dante sitting in his car out in the driveway that made it feel very different.
Our lives were fu
cked.
So fucked that my son couldn't even spend the night at his friend's house without personal security staking out the property and without my six-year-old having a direct line to him through his very own cell phone. "Maybe the boys should just spend the night here," I suggested when Chris Weaver looked at me in shock as Ryker explained the security protocols.
Dante wouldn't go into their home unless there were signs of trouble, but Axel was to answer his phone calls on the hour every hour and notify him when he went to sleep. "This feels like you don't trust me to look after the boys," Chris objected, crossing his arms over his chest. He didn't say the words to Ryker, seeming to either identify me as the weak link or maybe it was because we knew each other well enough because of the kids.
He'd been there for me, helped with the kids after Chad's death and given me a shoulder to cry on after I'd tucked them into bed when it felt safe to break down. I understood why it would feel like a betrayal of trust to insinuate he couldn't keep the kids safe.
"That's not what this is," I told him with a small smile. "Ryker works in security. He's paranoid, but his job also comes along with certain dangers. He isn't trying to keep Axel safe from you, but from other parties who might seek to harm him and see an opportunity where he's unprotected. It's just a formality."
He didn't look convinced, but he sighed. I knew he adored Axel, and who could blame him? My son was impeccably well behaved for his age, too serious if anything.
"Fine," he said, touching the top of his son's head. "Maybe the next sleepover can be here. Axel has told James all about his new room."
"That would be great," I grinned.
When Chris returned the smile warmly, Ryker grunted. He touched Axel's shoulder briefly. "Why don't you show James your room now? I'd like to have that word with Mr. Weaver." Axel swallowed, but he didn't argue. I didn't blame him, because the intensity in Ryker's face was compelling, and I was very grateful for the fact that Ines was happily playing with her toys in the living room and couldn't have cared less about the conversation that happened in the kitchen.
I had a feeling it wouldn’t be fun.
After Axel led James away, Ryker listened for the moment the baby gate at the top of the stairs swung closed before he spoke in a cool, quiet voice that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on its end.
"I'll lay it out for you very simply. Calla does not exist for you," he said.
"Ryker!" I whispered sharply, shoving at his shoulder. The ridiculous man just couldn't seem to help himself from behaving like an asshole.
"Excuse me?" Chris asked, furrowing his brow as he tried to make sense of Ryker's words.
“Ignore him,” I hissed, glaring at Ryker out of the corner of my eye. “He hulks out randomly and has no idea when to shut his damn mouth.”
Ryker didn’t seem to care that I’d spoken, or hear the warning in my voice for what it was. "You make it very obvious that you want more from her. Enough that even Axel has picked up on the way you stare at her." Ryker crossed his arms over his chest. "As you can see, she is very much spoken for. Since I doubt you'll be able to let go of that attraction so easily, you deal with me from now on. You need to talk about something regarding the boys or a play date? You call me. Axel will give you my number."
"You're forbidding me from talking to your girlfriend regarding her son?" Chris asked, and from the way Ryker's face hardened I knew it had been the wrong word to use. Though what he was supposed to refer to me as, I had no clue.
Did hostage equate to girlfriend? Wife?
Who the Hell knew with his meatball ass.
"My woman," Ryker growled. "I realize for a man like you the distinction may not be significant, but know that for me it is. I won’t have another man looking at my woman like she’s a piece of meat."
"It's ridiculous is what it is," Chris laughed. "You don't own her. She can speak to whoever she likes."
"You have about thirty seconds to realize that you are in over your head and shut the fuck up. No, I do not own Calla, but she is mine regardless. Now tell me you understand what I'm telling you or we're going to have a far more serious problem than working out security for Axel, and you may want to think about security for yourself."
"Stop it right now. This is ridiculous," I said, giving Ryker another little shove to get him to turn his attention to me. But he held his stare with Chris, and something the other man saw in his manic blue eyes convinced him it was most definitely smart for him to agree with what Ryker said. "Chris, I'm so sorry-"
"I understand," he said finally, ignoring me entirely. He called up the stairs for James, and a moment later the boys came barreling down the stairs like only adolescent boys could do.
"Bye, Mommy!" Axel said, squeezing my legs tightly as I leaned down to kiss the top of his head.
"I'll see you tomorrow. Be a good boy."
"Bye, Ryker!" Axel said, hugging him tightly until he bounded out the door after James and his father.
"Mommy!" Ines called from the living room, finally having had enough of being ignored.
I glared at Ryker briefly, twisting my face into a glare that I felt in my soul. "I cannot believe you. You do not fucking listen to a thing I say, do you?" I asked him, leaving to go play with my daughter.
Maybe I could convince her to make voodoo dolls with me.
Twenty-Seven
Ryker
With Ines tucked into bed and Calla having gone up to the master to take a bath with a book to read, I’d gone to the home gym to work off some energy. The thought of Calla covered in bubbles, her body slick and oiled from her bath, was enough to drive me mad.
Knowing that she hid from me because I’d sufficiently pissed her off didn’t quell my need for her. I shouldn’t expect anything less from her. I’d thrown her into an impossible situation without warning or regard for how she might feel about it, and I kept pushing. But it was unavoidable, given that the alternative would mean letting Calla come around to understand her place in my life slowly.
I’d rather overwhelm her and get it over with, and I’d have been lying if I said I didn’t like my Hellcat when she was angry. I preferred her smiling, but there was something sexy about her when she scrunched her little face up at me in pissed off fury.
So it was only when I’d pushed myself near the point of exhaustion that I made my way up the stairs to go to the main house. I never expected to find Calla sitting in my home office, staring down at the box of cameras Enzo had dropped off at the gate earlier in the day. His guys had finally finished uninstalling all the security equipment I’d put around her house.
I’d needed them gone before the new owner finally moved in. I didn’t expect her to come to the office that time of night, because my Sunshine still never sought me out. She preferred to hide in the bath or spend her time hovering over the kids rather than risk having to spend time with me.
It had never occurred to me to hide the cameras, because I’d never intended to keep my stalking a secret from Calla. But I might have held off on telling her for just a while longer.
I knew without looking what the note on the top of the box said.
I knew how incriminating it was.
“What house are these from?” Calla whispered, but from the way she refused to look at me as she clutched the tiny cameras in her hand and shuffled through the box filled with them, I knew she suspected.
“Yours,” I said. I wouldn’t lie to her, not ever. But the fact was that I also didn’t regret what I’d done. I’d always known the day would come when I told her the truth.
I just hadn’t thought it would be so soon.
I stalked toward her, fully conscious of the way sweat dripped down my chest and the fact that even in her disbelieving fury her eyes tracked the trail it left down to the waistband of my pants. Calla could never claim that the magnetic attraction between us was one-sided. I’d seen it the first time she met me, and if she hadn’t been married to a man who was very useful to Matteo, I’d have made her m
ine.
Married or not.
But I owed Matteo everything. His father had given me my revenge, after all.
“You-you filmed us in our home?” she asked, and her voice quivered with the realization that she hadn’t understood just how far my obsession went.
I nodded as I leaned over her in the chair. Her back straightened, leaning back as far as she could into the leather to avoid me as my hands grasped the arms and caged her in. “I watched you through those cameras,” I confirmed. “I watched you when I snuck into your bedroom every night. I did anything I could to be with you before we were together.”
Her eyes went wide only a moment before her hands went to my chest and shoved. “You’re insane,” she hissed.
“I’m fairly certain we’ve covered this, Tesoro. Who did you think it was that you felt watching you? A figment of your imagination?” I reached down to the top drawer of my desk, tugging out the massive, overflowing envelope. Opening the clasp, I let the pictures slide across the desk. Her eyes flew to them, and she reached out and grabbed one in each hand to study them.
The first photo was the one I’d taken while she slept the night before she officially became mine. The last one of her in her old home. The creeping of my ink on my wrist looked as brutal as I’d remembered next to her luminescent skin, and it felt like the perfect photo of how much she lit up my life.
The second photo was from years prior, when Chad had still been alive. Calla was still pregnant with Ines, holding her belly as she walked through the park with Axel clutching her hand. From the look of joy on her face, Ines had kicked. Calla loved being pregnant, loved feeling her children protected inside her. Like she carried the entire world within her.
I imagined it was similar to how I felt when she was in my arms.
“This was always going to end one way, Calla,” I whispered, tucking her hair behind her ear as she stared at the photos in horror. She’d get over it, understand that I’d only done what was necessary to protect her from the evil in our world—the very evil her husband had dragged her into the center of when he’d gone dirty.
Grieved Loss: A Dark Mafia Romance (Bellandi Crime Syndicate Book 3) Page 19