Nailed Down: The Complete Series

by Bliss, Chelle

  “Because.” He stepped toward me, resting his hands at either side of my hips on the railing. “You love him, and I love you. Because I want to build a life with you, and he’s already in your life. We can’t have bad blood between our families. We have to forgive the past if we want a future together.”

  I felt sick. Something thick and weighted felt like it had taken root in my stomach and settled its claws deep inside me. Now was the time. There would be no better moment. I had to tell him. He had to know the truth.

  “Listen—”

  “Samantha, I’d do anything for you,” he said, interrupting me with his hand on my cheek and his forehead against mine. “I’d kill anyone trying to hurt you. I’d give up every penny I had just to see you smile and, yeah, I’d go crawling to your mean bastard of an uncle, begging his forgiveness for taking your innocence all those years ago. There isn’t much I wouldn’t do for you.”

  The phrase struck me as funny. “Isn’t much?” I asked, curious.

  “Well, I mean, I think I can handle anything but disloyalty. But I don’t worry about that with you, Sammy.” Johnny straightened, pulling me close. “You’d never hurt me, I know that.” I closed my eyes when he slid his fingers through my hair, shifting my bangs from my forehead and away from my lashes. “I want a life with you. Children…lots of children one day—not now, but one day.” That weighted root dug in further, wrapping around my heart and squeezing as Johnny continued. “Smoke, he can take over for me. We’ve discussed it before. I don’t want this life forever, and he doesn’t have any ties. When he does, me and you, Sammy, we could make this all…official. We could have everything we wanted. All the things we talked about having when we were kids.”

  I leaned against his chest, letting the fairy tale wrap around me, already sad because I knew how temporary it would be. “That was a long time ago. Those were big, big dreams, Johnny.”

  “They were still ours.”

  They were, but sometimes the dreams we have aren’t meant to come true. Sometimes, the dreams of the past are meant to show us the work that must be done in the future. And not everyone is up to the task.

  11

  Johnny

  Father Patrick Nicola used his office for intimidation. It was a mammoth, ornate space with gothic adornments anyone would expect a priest to surround himself with.

  But the old priest had gone a step further, some twenty years back, asking my father to acquire a perfect replica of Hunt’s The Light of the World, all dark reds and black, with the Christ from Revelation looking menacing and ominous, to hang above his desk. It was an imposing, morose piece, instantly filling whoever looked at it with a swell of guilt and shame that would likely have them itching for a confession.

  But I wasn’t easily bullied.

  No matter that I’d been in this office over a decade before as a punk kid, just discovered naked in Sammy’s bed, unable to look at the old priest for fear I’d be struck dead just by sheer force of his rage for not agreeing to marry her on the spot.

  Even back then, though the guilt had been palpable and had lingered ever since, I hadn’t allowed the man, or this place, to intimidate me.

  I wouldn’t today.

  “Father Nicola will be with you in just a moment,” Sister Dominque said, motioning me to the bench just outside the old man’s office. There was a transom above the huge mahogany door, and from the leaded glass, I could make out the gray-green night sky and gold halo of the painting. I heard the irritation in the priest’s tone as he yelled at whoever had the misfortune to call him just before he’d been notified that I sat out here waiting for him. Sister Dominque’s smile, which was ever-present, faltered only slightly when she heard Nicola’s curse after she announced me, but then she shrugged, shot me a wink, and went back to her filing as though the old man’s anger wasn’t her fault.

  And it wasn’t. It was mine.

  The door flew open just after the sound of a phone receiver rattling against its base reached me, the old priest’s face, drawn and wrinkled, hardening as he held open the door and glared down at me. His eyes were sharp and blue, but edged with red, as though he hadn’t gotten much sleep as of late. There were bags under his eyes, more than I remembered seeing at my father’s funeral a few weeks back.

  He didn’t acknowledge me, other than to jerk his head back toward his office, stepping out of the way before he cleared his throat, addressing Sister Dominque. “No calls, please.”

  “Yes, Father.” I heard as I walked inside.

  I had sense enough to wait for an invitation to sit, which came in the form of a hurried, “Sit,” before he moved to his leather chair behind the massive wooden desk.

  There were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves surrounding the room and a large fireplace encased in marble and yet another huge religious painting I didn’t pay enough attention to identify. Then Sammy’s uncle cleared his throat again, bringing my attention back to his desk and the disappointed look on his weathered face.

  “Samantha warned me you might be foolish enough to ask to speak with me.”

  I nodded, weighing my answer and the old man’s mood before I spoke. “She advised me not to bother.”

  “You should listen to my niece. She is remarkably intelligent.”

  “I know this, Father.”

  Nicola cringed, but he recovered the expression by opening his bottom desk drawer and pulling out a nearly empty bottle of whiskey, which he didn’t offer to share. “She’s much more intelligent than you.”

  “Again,” I said, giving him another nod, “this isn’t news to me.”

  “And yet you don’t heed her warning and take it upon yourself to darken my door when you know you’re not welcome. Why is that, Mr. Carelli?”

  I sat forward, pressing my lips together as I watched him pour two fingers of whiskey into a tumbler. “Because there is bad blood between us that I want to resolve.”

  The priest nearly choked on his drink as he sipped, seeming genuinely amused by my admission. “There is no resolving our bad blood. The wounds run too deep.”

  “They are old wounds, Father.”

  “Not to me,” he said, humor gone now, pointing at me with his tumbler, one skinny index finger extended. “You were a vile, opportunistic punk who took advantage of my innocent niece, and when I discovered what you’d done, what you destroyed, you shamed her further by refusing to marry her.”

  “Father…”

  “I am not your father, Carelli, or your priest.”

  We stared at each other for more than a minute. The room crackled with tension, and I fought the impulse to knock the tumbler out of his hand and grab the bottle from his desk. I needed a drink and fought the nagging urge to clock the old asshole for dredging up the past, something I’d never be able to change. Something I’d never be able to forgive myself for, no matter what I did.

  “What would you have me do?” I asked him, knowing the answer before he spoke it.

  “Let her be.” He sat back, abandoning his glass for the bottle. “If you really love her, then walk away and let her find someone who will be good for her. Someone who will care for her.” He pushed the bottle at me, looking half drunk, half enraged.

  “No one can do those things for her like me.” I meant it.

  One glance my way from him and I understood that the old man knew I was serious. The glare on his face gave him away. He leaned back, one arm flung over his armrest, the other scrubbing over his mouth before he finished the whiskey in one long pull from the bottle.

  “Samantha will never marry you without my blessing. And, Carelli, I will never consent to blessing any union between you and my niece.” He threw the empty bottle into the trash and leaned back in his chair. “Not ever.”

  I stood, knowing a losing battle when I was in the thick of one, intent on walking away without a backward glance, until the old man called my name, and my curiosity and some still-flickering hope inside my head had me turning to face him.

  “Understand me
plainly. If you don’t leave Samantha alone, I will make certain there is someone else occupying her time. And make no mistake, she will listen if I suggest they are a better match for her.” The priest left his desk, stepping up to me, like he didn’t care that I could knock him out with one punch to the jaw. But I was no animal. No matter what he said to me, that he was trying to keep Sammy from me, Nicola was still a priest, and on my worst days, I was still my mother’s son and a Catholic. I stuffed my hands into my pockets and repressed the urge to knock the smirk off his face. “Sammy is stubborn, but you know if she is anything at all, it’s a loyal, dutiful niece. She will listen to me.”

  I turned, leaving the old man’s office while I still held on to my control, trying to remind myself, given the choice, Sammy’s loyalty would be with the man she swore she’d always loved. Problem was, I wasn’t sure if that was me or her uncle.

  12

  Sammy

  Some of the renovations had been completed by the time Johnny and I returned from the Hamptons. Indra spent most of the next weekend filling me in on what of the bottom floor was left to complete.

  “It all looks so different,” I told her, excited to see several of the older students volunteering to help Indra and the staff to organize the classrooms and ready the music room for the upcoming sessions. The ceiling had been fixed and a new air conditioning and vent system installed, and paint and new flooring were over halfway finished on the entire first floor. Blues and greens adorned every wall, and pops of white and black frames accented the surfaces, giving the place a modern vibe that brought a new energy to the whole space. Rico had worked magic, and I was officially under his spell.

  There would be an end-of-summer concert next month, and the students were eager to try out the new facilities and, as it turned out, the new equipment and instruments Johnny had purchased as a reopening gift to the center.

  “That’s because it is different.” Indra motioned to the few stragglers. They were all older kids excited about their last concert with the group, watching us as they left the hallway and focused instead on our conversation and not the boxes still left to unpack in the classrooms. “What are you doing?” she asked them, grinning when two of the girls shrugged. One of the older girls, Camille, looked at her companions then smiled, seeming not to care what anyone thought.

  She was taller, all knees and elbows, and messy, Indra had always called her, but goodhearted. A mama hen, always taking care of the other kids. But Camille was nosy and she didn’t have a filter, something that was apparent as she stepped away from the classroom and rested her hand on her hip, giving me a look that was half tease, half serious inquiry.

  “We were just wondering where Miss S’s man got off to. He was cute.”

  “That’s enough,” Indra told Camille, shooing away the girl and her friends, though she couldn’t quite hide her smile. When the girls disappeared into the classroom, Indra turned, arms crossed as she faced me. “That’s actually a good question.”

  “Which is none of your business,” I told her, waving her off when she pouted. “Don’t make that face. You’ll get wrinkles.”

  “That’s not gonna happen.” She smoothed a hand over her cheeks. “Too much melanin in this epidermis, my friend.”

  Ignoring the eye roll I gave her, Indra tried again to dig into my personal business, but she was thwarted when the front doorbell rang. I checked the monitor in the reception area, instantly irritated as I caught sight of my uncle and a man I didn’t know waiting outside to be buzzed in.

  “Best behavior,” I told Indra. My friend frowned, looking toward the entrance as I hit the buzzer, and her frown shifted, morphing into a forced smile that made her look like the Cheshire cat.

  “Father Nicola,” she said, extending a hand to my uncle.

  He took it, accepting the hug she gave him with an awkward pat on her back before he looked over her shoulder, his features relaxing when he spotted me. “Ah, Samantha. Come, please.”

  The man next to my uncle seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place him. He was young, maybe just a few years older than Johnny, with blue eyes and sandy brown hair. He had a dimple in one cheek and wore a tailored blue suit that made his bright eyes shine.

  “This is my niece, Samantha Nicola. Sammy, this is Liam Shane.” My uncle turned, pushing me toward this Shane fellow with his hand at the center of my back. “Mr. Shane is interested in your charity, love, and wanted to see the facility.”

  “Your uncle tells me the Carelli family are donors?” Liam asked, a small twitch pulsing over his bottom lip.

  “Well, they have participated,” Uncle Pat added, dismissing Johnny’s involvement in my charity.

  “Would you like to see the facility?” I asked Liam. I felt awkward and on edge that his first question had been about Johnny’s family. He nodded once, and Indra greeted him, bringing him into one of the classrooms.

  “You should be in there with him, not your friend,” Uncle Pat said, leaning close to me as though he didn’t want anyone to make out what he said.

  “Why? It’s not like…” I turned, only just noticing his smile. My stomach fell, and I took a step back, head shaking. “What are you doing? My Lord, you know this isn’t going to work.”

  “You deserve someone respectable, and this Shane fellow is an attorney from a good family. His father owns several trucking companies, and he has his own money as well. You could do worse, and he’s better than…”

  “Than what, Uncle Pat?” I stepped closer, pulling him away from the hallway and the classrooms. “Better than the father of my child? Where is this even coming from? Johnny told me last night that he went to your office and you both agreed…”

  “We agreed? What did that boy say we agreed to?” His voice was loud now, indignant, and he didn’t lower it when I tried to quiet him. “Tell me.”

  “Johnny said you agreed to disagree about us being together but that you would…stay…out of it.” Saying it aloud made it sound idiotic. My uncle couldn’t stay out of my life any more than I’d ever be able to keep from advising Betta on anything, regardless of how old she got.

  Once you’re a parent, you’re a parent for life.

  I dropped my shoulders as the swell of anger and disappointment bubbled in my gut. Johnny had lied to me. It might have been in an effort to give me at least a little peace, but it was still a lie no matter the intention.

  My uncle’s unamused laugh felt like a slap across the face, all bitter and irritating, and I stepped back, waiting for him to deliver the final insult. “Agreed to disagree. That stupid boy wanted my blessing.”

  “And you said?”

  “The truth.” He frowned, acting disappointed, as though I should have guessed his response. “I will never give my blessing for you to be with Johnny Carelli. You have always known this. Now, he does too.”

  Behind us, Indra’s voice carried as she led Liam back toward the lobby.

  “He has money and wants to donate,” my uncle whispered, holding my arm as he turned me to face Liam. “If he invites you to dinner, accept. There’s no harm in keeping a man like that company after he’s donated handsomely to your charity.”

  “No, I suppose there isn’t,” I said, wanting to be anywhere other than in this building, facing this man. He was handsome enough, but he wasn’t Johnny. No one ever would be, no matter who my uncle decided I needed to be spending time with.

  “Ms. Nicola, the facility is excellent. Tell me, how big is your staff?” Liam asked, nodding as he looked around the room.

  “Ah…we host a staff of fifteen volunteers,” Indra offered for me when I didn’t answer the man quickly enough.

  “Yes,” I finally said, still in a bit of a daze from the information my uncle gave me. I didn’t like how Liam seemed to calculate square footage or how closely he watched our teachers and students breaking down tables and chairs and reconfiguring their placement in the rooms.

  “Well, I’d love to discuss a donation and the possibil
ity of a fund raiser I have in mind over dinner. Say, tonight at eight?” Over Liam’s shoulder, my uncle nodded, throwing me an insistent, encouraging nod of approval.

  “Eight tonight?”

  “Yes,” Liam said, stepping closer to take my hand. He held it to his mouth, kissing my knuckles longer than I thought was necessary or comfortable. “Eight tonight. Just you and me, Ms. Nicola.”

  “Like hell,” Johnny said, stepping through the front entrance doors as they closed behind two exiting volunteers. His face was contorted in twisted anger. He bypassed my uncle, who tried and failed to stop Johnny from approaching me, and went straight for Liam, standing in front of me as he tore the man’s hand from my fingers. “You’re gonna want to back the fuck up, Shane.”

  “Carelli,” Liam said, laughing as though Johnny weren’t glaring at him like he was ready to do him serious damage. “I’m sorry, did I step on your toes by coming here?”

  “You know where you are, and you know why the fuck you shouldn’t be.”

  “Do I now?” Liam stopped smiling and dropped his hand, slipping it into his pocket as he stared up at Johnny. “I got no reason to cause beef with you.”

  “No? But you got pissed that Cara’s husband put you out on your ass the other night, and I hear you’ve been asking around about them. When that got you nowhere, you started asking about me and mine. You being here—” he nodded, motioning toward me “—makes me think you’re itching for a scrap, when you know damn good and well you don’t want that shit.”

  “Johnny, please stop…” I said, but he held up his hand, silencing me without even a backward glance.

  “I think,” Liam started, not backing down or cowering away from Johnny as he kept his stance wide and intimidating. “You got territorial issues where they don’t belong. According to Father Nicola, you have no business here. I do.” Liam bit his bottom lip, tilting his head toward me, nodding twice. “I’ll admit, maybe I’ve got words for your cousins about things I’m owed.” He slipped his gaze to me, looking me over like I was naked and he liked what he saw. “But this? Bonus. And I plan to make that shit my personal business.”