Nailed Down: The Complete Series

by Bliss, Chelle

  “You want to help me?” Her voice came out higher, and Sammy stifled the sob that got stuck in her throat.

  “I’d do anything for you. You know that.”

  It was a long two seconds while she watched me, her expression blank, her eyes widening as though she debated something she would keep to herself. Finally, the green of her eyes darkened, and Sammy shook her head, tightening her mouth until it resembled a hard line.

  “Then take off your clothes and get on your back.”

  Sammy had never made any demands of me. She took my body when she wanted it, but never first, never without me encouraging her. And it had always come from somewhere warm. There was nothing like that in her expression. She was still angry. Still hurt and scared. But if she needed this from me, it was what she’d get.

  The only consent I gave her was the slow nod of my head before I stepped away, already untucking my shirt to unbutton it as she leaned on my desk. Sammy’s expression stayed neutral, didn’t change at all until I slipped out of my shoes and loosened my belt, unbuckling and lowering the zipper on my pants. Then, her gaze was on me, and her attention was enough to turn me on.

  She took two steps, her gaze roaming over my chest, not touching me as I stood there, watching her untie the straps of her sundress and slide the light fabric off her body.

  “Lie down,” she said, her voice low, hungry. She nodded to the floor, and I obeyed, loving how she owned me, wanting her to touch me, wanting her mouth on me.

  Sammy slipped out of her sandals and pulled down her thong, crawling on top of me. Her mouth glided up my thigh, licking and teasing, cupping me, tasting just the tip of me until I was wet enough, ready enough, and she put my cock inside her, guiding me with her strong, sure fingers.

  “Bella…oh Christ…”

  That earned me a glare as she tortured me, but I didn’t care. She felt too good all over me, tightening, clamping down on me… It was all I could do to just hang on, let her use me, abuse me, however she wanted.

  “Anything…anything…I…want…” she said. Her movements were sloppy, disjointed, the harder she rode me.

  I arched up, steadying her, and the light coming from the desk lamp hit her face. I stopped moving altogether, seeing the heavy tears and the anguish twisting her features. “Sammy…” I said, holding her as she fell against my chest. “Amore mia …please…”

  “It’s all a lie…”

  “I’m not lying,” I told her, lifting her head to look in her eyes. “I’d never lie to you.”

  She closed her eyes, mumbling something I couldn’t hear under her breath. I wanted to understand, wanted her to tell me what she needed from me, but her cell rang. Sammy moved, sliding off me to grab her phone.

  I sat there, wondering how much more of a mess we could make of our lives when I heard her answer the call.

  “Yes, this is she. Okay…is he speaking?” She exhaled.

  I watched her in the reflection in the window, spotting the relief I knew she’d never let me see if she knew I was looking.

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  She hung up, hurrying around my office to dress, and I followed her lead. I pulled on my shorts and pants, not bothering with my shirt. I knew her well enough to know she wouldn’t want a chaperone to confront her uncle. “I’m glad he’s okay.”

  She nodded, not looking at me.

  I knew none of the problems we’d had before she walked into this office had been settled.

  “Sammy…”

  “You did lie,” she said, cutting me off as she pulled back her hair and twisted it into a messy knot. “You lied then. You lied about what my uncle said to you in his office.” She turned, finally facing me. “Men lie. I get that now. Even very good men.” I stepped toward her, meaning to stop her when she started for the door. “Don’t worry about it, Johnny. I can handle things myself.”

  Sammy left before I could catch her. I swore I heard her mumble something that made no sense to me then. Something that would haunt me until I was hunting her down, desperate to find out what had happened to her.

  It came out as an afterthought, a throwaway statement she likely didn’t think I heard; something that stung more than anything she’d ever said to me before.

  “We don’t need you.”

  17

  Sammy

  Patrick’s breaths were even, and the monitor next to his bed marked a lowering temperature and blood pressure level.

  He was cooling, his skin no longer blazing-hot.

  He was calm now, healing.

  I wasn’t faring as well.

  “He’s in and out,” the nurse said, getting a nod from me.

  I kept my attention on the man in the bed. The woman fiddled with the machine, checking tubes and medicine, while I could only watch and wait.

  I’d taken my time getting back to the hospital. I wasn’t eager to face him or confront all the lies he’d constructed for the past thirty years. There were so many questions. So many things that made no sense to me. So many facts hidden behind cover-ups and half-truths. My apartment was closer to the hospital than the rectory, but after I’d stopped home for a change of clothes, I’d gone by my uncle’s place to grab evidence. He’d wake up and I’d say my piece. After that, I had no idea what would happen.

  The picture in my hand seemed like such a monumental thing, volatile like a grenade with the pin already pulled. It rested on my lap, my parents’ smiling faces staring back at me—one dead now, one likely dying on the bed in front of me.

  “Samantha?” he said, his voice weak and breathy. I didn’t take his hand when he reached for me, and he noticed, leaning in my direction, a frown already forming on his face. “What is it, sweetheart?”

  He followed me with his gaze as I moved from my chair to his side next to the bed, silent, my expression neutral. There was nothing I could say that would make a bigger impact than the picture in my hand, so I handed it over, placing it on his chest, my attention never leaving his face as he picked it up.

  The confusion that made him look so much older when he woke shifted instantly as his gaze lowered and he moved his eyes down to the photo, looking at the image of a thirty-years-younger version of himself and the woman he claimed to love holding their baby.

  I wondered how long he considered lying. I wondered if he had a blanket explanation cued up should anyone, especially me, ever come across this picture and connect the dots like I had. But as he went on looking at that picture, as the years seemed to flit through his mind the longer he stared at my mother’s beautiful face, clarity and surrender seemed to crash together, and Patrick—my uncle? my father?—decided not to bother with a lie.

  “Does anyone else know?” he asked, wincing when I laughed. “I don’t mean to sound indelicate, but there is a protocol. It’s the only reason I ask.”

  “There’s a protocol?”

  He stared into the hallway, looking very old and very tired as two nurses passed by. Patrick leaned back, moving the picture to the tray at his side. “Bishop Williamson stipulated that you were to be cared for when he placed me here. We weren’t to be transferred for any reason. It was unspoken. He prepared the necessary paperwork, had you and Ava made legal, but officially, he knew nothing. He was a good man and understood…how mistakes can be made.” He closed his eyes, hands rubbing into his lids before he looked at me again. “He let me go on telling the story of her being rejected by her husband. He believed I would be a good priest. And when she died…” He crossed himself, suddenly overcome with emotion, tears dotting his lashes. “This isn’t Ireland, mind. The Church here hasn’t begun to acknowledge children fathered by priests, and we knew that. You were allowed to live at the school as a ward because you were my family.

  “But if anyone ever discovered the truth, the Bishop made me promise I would leave the Church and absolve him of any knowledge.” Patrick rubbed his face, letting his head fall back against his pillow.

  “Bishop Williamson died fifteen years a
go,” I said, not understanding why he was so upset.

  “It would tarnish his memory and his reputation if anyone knew what he permitted.” He lifted his head to look again at the picture but didn’t touch it. The old priest glanced at me, looking like he wanted to say something, but instead, kept silent. “Did you tell anyone?”

  I said nothing, but I watched him, letting him guess.

  He knew me well enough to know whom I’d run to and why I’d done it. Patrick let his head fall back against the pillow, and he looked up at the ceiling, eyes wide. “That boy…”

  “Is no different from you.”

  He jerked his gaze to me, face pinking. “I am nothing like…”

  “Johnny fell in love with a girl who was off-limits…like you.” Patrick looked away from me, staring again at the ceiling. “He got that girl pregnant but couldn’t marry her…like you.” I stood, leaning against the cabinet behind me, watching the man I’d known as my uncle shake his head and mutter under his breath, small prayers I doubted anyone would answer. “And like you, a stubborn old priest kept Johnny swimming in shame and resentment until it nearly undid him.”

  “I have paid my penance for my sin…”

  “That’s what I am to you?” I asked him, not surprised when he refused to look at me. “I read your letters. A long time ago, you claimed to love her.”

  “I do love her.” For the first time, he showed real emotion. His voice cracked, and there was a shake in his hand when he reached for me.

  But I didn’t touch him. I couldn’t. “But you can’t see how Johnny loves me, or why I’d want Betta to know her father? When you spent my entire life keeping me from the truth? You want me to keep my daughter from the truth too?”

  “Don’t you see? The mistakes we made… I broke my vow, and it cost me…her. God took her from me because I disobeyed Him.” He sat up, tears on his face now. “And you made the same mistake. The very same. I could not let you die too, not you or that beautiful baby…”

  “But you wanted me to marry him!”

  “That was a mistake,” he said, closing his eyes. “It was rash, and I thank God above the boy refused. God knows what would have happened to you and the baby if you’d married that boy or what He would have done in punishment for your sin! Just like my beloved Ava.”

  “God didn’t kill my mother,” I told him. “He doesn’t kill innocent people.”

  “Samantha…” he tried, leaning against the railing on the bed when I grabbed my bag and made for the door. “Please, child. I have made mistakes, but that boy…”

  “That boy is none of your business anymore,” I told him, turning back to take my mother’s picture off the tray. “None of us are.”

  18

  Johnny

  There had been only one message. An image. That beautiful face—the high cheekbones, the pouting, arched mouth. The stuff of every fantasy I’d had since I was eighteen.

  Streaks of black down her cheeks.

  Smudged makeup.

  Green, green eyes clouded with fear, soaking in tears.

  Three words and my life changed forever.

  Come find us.

  That motherfucker had no idea what he asked for.

  19

  Johnny

  The hospital staff knew me. Dr. Matthews had been Chief of Staff when my father got his diagnosis, and we’d paid a lot of money to make sure that stayed out of the papers. This would too. Angelo sent Sal, his nephew, to make that assurance.

  “Tell your men, no one goes in or out.”

  “And if the old man gives us grief?” This kid, Matteo, I think his name was, was new, another one of Angelo’s men brought in from Newark.

  “He won’t,” I told him, staring at the door that led to Father Patrick’s room, “I’m about to handle that.”

  Angelo stepped up to me, leaning down to catch my ear before I opened the door. “Should we be bothering with this old asshole? He hates you, man, and Smoke and Dario have already left…”

  “If anything happens to him, no matter how pissed off she is, Sammy will never recover. If I have the chance to keep him safe, I’ll do it.” Angelo nodded, grabbing the door for me so I could walk inside.

  The priest lay sleeping, his head moving restlessly on the pillow as the night nurse I hired two hours ago watched his vitals. She had dark skin and black eyes, was curvy but cut and wore black scrubs, her hair pulled back. She was more polished and professional than the hospital staff, for good reason. Private care nurses like her came with stealthier training and protection you couldn’t learn in nursing school. It was the reason there was a nine strapped to her ankle and two blades concealed at her waist.

  “We good?” I asked her, watching the old man mutter under his breath.

  “He’s got a fever, and it’s spiking. It’s not surprising, given his age and the stress he’s under. The doctor will be back after his shift, but for now, I’m monitoring him.”

  “Unless he codes…”

  “I understand, Mr. Carelli. No one in or out.” She adjusted his IV once more, flicking the drip before she nodded to me. “I’ll give you a moment.”

  When the nurse left the room, I stood there watching the old man, wondering if he could hear me. But I instantly corrected myself. If Patrick Nicola had any idea I stood this close to him, he’d be using the last stores of his health to curse my immortal soul just for daring to breathe the same air as him.

  “You are a piece of work, you know that, old man?” I told him, wondering if he’d ever understand how much Sammy had cried for him or how much she’d suffered because men like us couldn’t stop lying to her.

  I turned, readying to get out of this place and find Liam, to get Sammy away from him, when Patrick made a sound, the low moan of a delirious man, crying out from pain or sickness. “Not…yours…” he said, his voice clearing as I faced him. He kept his eyes closed, but he’d tightened his fingers around the railing. “You can’t have them…my girls…”

  “I only want Sammy,” I told him, head shaking with pity at how out of his head the priest had become.

  “She doesn’t want you,” he wheezed. Those blue eyes were hazy, moving around the room as though he couldn’t find a single thing to focus on. “Samantha… she wants…her…just Betta…”

  “She’ll have better…”

  “Idiot boy…” he said, swiping at the air like I was a bug he couldn’t kill. “Her child… Betta…” Patrick inhaled, the explanation coming out in a rushing breath that had me staggering back, falling against the wall. “Sammy’s child, Elizabetta. She…only wants to keep her from you.”

  “That’s not…”

  That name… Sammy knew what it meant. Why it was important.

  The room seemed to pulse and bend around me. My head swam, and I couldn’t decide if the old man was delirious and fabricating impossible scenarios, or if the person I loved most in the world had lied to me.

  The rush of possibility was too much.

  He couldn’t be serious.

  He was high, not thinking clearly.

  Sammy never had…

  But I wouldn’t know, would I?

  I left her.

  I broke her heart and didn’t see her for a year.

  Then I broke her heart again and didn’t see her for nine more years after that.

  A sick, bitter taste filled my mouth, and I thought I might vomit.

  Patrick fell back against the pillow, finally passing out, his grip on the railing loosening just as the private nurse entered the room. “Mr. Carelli?”

  I lifted my hand, quieting her, unable to speak at all. I kept that hand raised until I moved out of the room and found Angelo, calling him over, still so rattled by the possibility of that delusional man’s words that I had to lean against the wall to steady myself.

  But there were too many eyes on me. Too much attention on everything I did. This wasn’t the time or place to lose it. There was a plan in play, and I had to execute it.

  Sammy n
eeded me.

  “I got a job only you can do,” I told Angelo, pressing one hand on the wall as I looked down at the floor, watching my feet as I spoke. The sick feeling wouldn’t leave me. Angelo was at my side, nodding, and I caught his profile in the corner of my eye as he scanned the hallway, gaze focused on the guards around us. “Get to Sammy’s building. Night guard likes the ponies. Tell him about the race next weekend and that jockey with the smack problem. It’s an easy win if he bets against him. And slip him two large to get into her apartment.” Angelo glanced at me, a question in that expression he needed answered. “I want to know who else lives there. I need pictures of the second bedroom and anything that might clue you in to who that person is.” Angelo gave me another nod, starting to walk down the hall, but he stopped when I tugged him back by the collar.

  “If this person is who the old man says they are, then we got someone else to protect, and I’m gonna need all the information on them.” I touched his chest, driving home my point. “No one is more important to me now, you feel me?”

  “I feel you, boss,” Angelo said, his face serious. He gave me a tap on the shoulder, and then he was gone.

  “Sal,” I called, wiping my mouth, and the boy was at my side before Angelo had made it down the hallway. “Get the car.” I pulled out my cell and texted my cousin as the kid jogged next to me toward the stairs. “We got somewhere to be.”

  20

  Johnny

  The Suburban was parked two blocks from the warehouse, four car lengths behind a busted yellow bus that had seen better days. Much like the Suburban. Had to hand it to my cousins; they had paid attention when I’d schooled them on going incognito. They had it down to an art form.

  Two knocks on the window and the locks disengaged. I slipped inside alone, nodding to Dario and Smoke, my eyebrows shooting up when I spotted the youngest of my uncle Sonny’s sons, Dante, in the middle of the middle row.