“I never thought that you actually killed my father. I was trying to prove that you didn’t.”
I had to tell her the truth. But I didn't know how I would do it.
“Let's go to the kitchen.” I grabbed my knife off the floor and I held it against his throat. “And if you so much as breathe the wrong way, I will come back in here and slice you open. Do I make myself clear?”
He moaned in response.
I walked out of the bedroom and began pacing back and forth in the kitchen. Vienna followed me, looking completely distraught. How was I supposed to tell her this? When she turned on her own family in order to protect me?
“You need to sit down.”
She got up onto one of the barstools and put her face in her hands.
“Your dad and your mom split up when you were just a baby. He was a drunken bastard that used to beat her and you on a regular basis. He was wasted all the fucking time.”
I shook my head, remembering him so clearly. “Maria had somehow escaped with you before things got worse than they were. She came to my father looking for work and protection. She knew that one day, he would come looking for her. An entire decade passed, and he never did. Then suddenly, one day, he showed up at the club, asking about you and her. I was there. I saw the whole thing. He was a mess. He took a swig out of a flask just to stand up and stop his body from shaking. He couldn't be trusted. My father turned him away. But he kept coming back. Your mom came to my father and asked him for help. She wanted round-the-clock surveillance, even on you at school. It was too much.” I paused taking a breath. Her eyes were growing wider with every admission. “I was seventeen. Almost a man. My initiation was supposed to be the following year, but when your mother was so afraid and I thought that he was going to hurt you, I took matters into my own hands. I went to my father and told him that I was going to kill your dad.” She lifted her head and her mouth dropped open a little, but I pressed on. “He approved, said it made me a good man. So I did it. I went to the motel that he was staying at and I put a bullet in his head. He didn't even try to fight me. He knew it was coming, and I think he wanted it to happen. Just be put out of his misery.”
I walked over to her, but she pulled away, looking afraid. I had just solidified everything in her mind that told her that I was dangerous. I was the monster who had killed her father. The person that tore her family apart.
“You know he had a friend. He was crazier than your dad was. He came into that office with a gun and killed three people, including your mother. He was taking revenge out on us. Vienna, we would've done anything to keep you safe after that night. And I'm still trying to make up for it. But this? Lying to me? It doesn’t make me feel like I made the right choice.” I couldn’t believe our relationship had been built on this lie. On both of our deceits.
I was going to get hell for saying that, but I probably deserved it.
“You didn't make the right choice? You killed my father! You couldn't have helped him? Got him into rehab? Maybe he could have changed! Didn't you and your family ever think of that? Did you even give him a chance? And everything that happened here? I thought Roberto would kill me if I didn’t do it. He’s told me for years how bad you are, and how he needed to prove it to me. Whenever I said no, he’d hit me. He’d torment me! I had to do this. I just had to!”
Now the tears were really flowing. I wrapped my arms around her and she was sobbing into my chest, pounding her little fists on me. I knew she was hurting, and I knew that it was my fault. But in the end, I did it to protect her. And since she allowed me to keep my arms around her, I knew that deep down, she knew that. She knew that it was what was right.
“I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I took your father away from you. But I just didn't want you to get hurt! I never want to see you hurt. It kills me that I caused you this pain.”
She pulled back and wiped her face, her skin red and blotchy from her tears. It looked like her face had been stained with her sadness.
“I understand why you did what you did. But I just can't forgive you yet.”
“Then I will do everything to make sure that you do. Starting with your uncle. What do you want me to do with him?” I knew what I wanted to do to him, send him to an early grave for putting her up to this. For hitting her. But it was her choice. I needed to respect that.
She sighed heavily. “Send him home. Back to Jersey. Make sure I don't ever have to see him again.”
I nodded. “I'll make a call. What else can I do?”
She shook her head. “I just need some time alone. I'm going for a walk, and when I get back, he needs to be gone.”
I nodded. “Done. But I need something too. I have to know what of this is actually real?”
She sighed. “Everything.” She rubbed her belly for a moment. “Roberto sent me here for information, but even that first night, I realized I never wanted to find anything. I had fallen for you the moment I got into your car. That night, the one night we spent at the club when our parents were out of town, I almost kissed you that night. I wanted to so badly. Roberto turned my anger over my mother’s death against you, and I thought that hatred he developed in me could erase all those feelings I had for you. But it couldn’t, it never did. I tried to end it, you can even ask him. I was so afraid he would kill me.”
She was a rat, but her heart was in the right place. And it was clear she was terrified of Roberto. I had to forgive her. She was weak with years of anger and sadness. And those were caused by me. As angry as I was at her in that moment for deceiving me, I knew the anger wouldn’t last long. She would find her way underneath my skin again, in some ways she already had.
She started to move away from me, but I caught her by the hand. “I want to keep you,” I said to her as honestly as possible. It hurt too much to watch her walk away from me.
“I know.” She pulled her hand out of mine and walked toward the bedroom door. I prayed that it wouldn’t be the last time that I ever saw her.
24
Vienna
Luka removed Roberto from the bedroom and I got out as quickly as possible.
I needed an escape.
I watched them in the living room as I exited the apartment in silence. Roberto was just sitting tied to the chair, Luka standing over him, a knife to his throat.
“Aren’t you going to say goodbye?”
I shot Roberto a look over my shoulder. “No.”
I slammed the door behind me. I ran down the stairs and onto the street, feeling the sun on my skin. I just needed to get away. I walked the streets, feeling free, but in other ways, I knew I was still trapped.
How had Roberto gotten in? I thought that Luka could keep me safe. He promised me he always would, but what if he couldn't? What if he couldn’t keep our baby safe either? What a disturbing thought that was. Suddenly the sun didn't feel as warm on my skin, and a chill ran through my body. I needed to find someplace safe where I could sit for a while. I needed time to think. I walked a few more blocks, looking for a restaurant or a café I could dive into. Finally I came upon a dive bar which looked dark and was covered with graffiti. It was the perfect place where I could hide in a corner and no one would notice my tears.
I pushed open the heavy door, and when I entered the dark bar, the smell of beer overwhelmed me. There was a long wooden bar on the side wall, and there were several small tables and booths. The walls were a dark wood color and the floor was made of stone. The place was practically empty, which didn’t surprise me, since it was a Sunday afternoon. There weren't any TVs hanging over the bar, just more bottles. Obviously this wasn't a place for the sports crowd.
I walked up to the bar and signaled the bartender to come my way. I sat down at one of the stools at the end. Hopefully no one would sit down next to me. I could drown my sadness in a pint alone.
“What can I get for you?” an older gentleman asked me.
“Anything.” But then I thought about it further and touched my stomach. “Actually a soda.”
He gave me the once over. “A soda, huh? Are you here to celebrate something? Or to chase the demons away?”
Demons. More demons than I would actually like to admit. “The latter, but… I can’t drink if you get what I mean.”
He simply nodded and wandered off. Within a couple minutes, he was back with a short glass of cola and a large square ice cube.
“Good luck honey.”
I lifted the glass to my lips and took a small sip, letting the liquid flow through my body. The bartender gave me a small smile and walked away from me as I looked around the place. There were maybe only five people in the bar with me. A group of men were sitting at a table in the back, talking amongst themselves, and there was a lonely couple at the bar with me. This was the perfect place to hide.
I took another sip of what I assumed was some off brand bar cola and tried to move my thoughts past Roberto, wrapping my head around what Luka had done.
He killed my father.
He was the one that began a chain of events that took my family away from me, and I knew that deep down, I truly hated him for that.
As much hatred as I had for his actions, a small part of me always wanted him to be the Luka I fell for when I was a teenager. I never wanted to really admit that he was a monster that destroyed my family. Ever since I'd made the decision to stay, I buried those feelings of hatred so deep that I didn't think anything could bring them back up. But here I was, waves of sadness rushing over my body. At this moment, I never wanted to see him again. But on the other hand, I was still his. It was maddening.
There was absolutely no denying the fact that I had completely fallen in love with him. I lusted after every touch of his strong hands, and I waited for him to call just to hear his strong, seductive voice. He completely owned me. Every moment not spent with him seem wasted.
I held the necklace that I had taken from my mother between my fingers, rubbing the silver back and forth. For the first time since she died, I felt truly alive again. He had given me a gift. He had given me my life back. And we were building a new life together, the two of us and our unborn child.
Before Luka came back into my life, all I had was anger and resentment toward him, brought on by Roberto’s tirades. But now, hearing Luka’s admission, I started to understand his reasons, and I knew he was telling me the truth. My father had been a complete drunk. Luka had said that he'd even beat my mother. She had gone to the Giotis for help. But in the end, they couldn't keep her safe.
So how could Luka ever keep me safe? And what about keeping me safe from himself?
I hardly noticed as the group in the back of the bar broke away from their table and stood around the bar. Whatever business they had been discussing clearly was over. I watched as a few of them exited the bar. I recognized the way they were walking. It was like they had an extra ten pounds of weight on them, but none of them looked overweight. They were packing. I looked around me again, almost as if I had finally started to notice my surroundings. Where was I? I tried to think of what street I had walked down, where I had turned. I wasn't sure anymore. Did I walk into another mob family’s territory?
Shit.
“Enjoying that drink, doll?”
An older Italian man sat down next to me. I watched as two men flanked him. They tried to seem nonchalant, and if I hadn't been observant, I wouldn’t have noticed their protective stances around him. I'd seen men do that before.
Too many times.
“It's all right.”
I shoved the rest of the cola down, trying to appear more interested in my drink than I was. I had to get out of here. It wasn’t safe, I could tell.
“I have to get going. My boyfriend is waiting for me.”
The man grabbed my wrist. “Sit. Have another drink. It's on the house.”
He signaled the bartender and the old man filled up my glass. I saw him quickly make eye contact with the man sitting next to me. Clearly, the bartender wasn't the one in charge here.
“No really, I have to get going.”
“I insist.” He held up his stein and I lifted my glass slowly. They clinked together in an awkward way. He took a swig from his beer but I didn't drink anymore out of my glass. I no longer trusted that what was in my glass was only cola.
“Haven't seen you in here before. You don’t come in here often, do you?”
I shook my head. “No. I just took a wrong turn.”
“I'm lucky you did. That's an interesting necklace.”
“My necklace? Oh. It was a gift.” Suddenly, my lies were back running through my veins. He didn’t need to know about my mother. He was already fishing for information in an uncomfortable way.
“From who?”
“Boyfriend. He just gave it to me.” More lies. I prayed that he bought it.
“Boyfriend?” I noticed the two security guards get closer to him. I'd made the wrong choice of words.
“Yeah.” I had to convince them now. Hopefully, they wouldn’t mess with me if I was the girlfriend of a mob son. Or maybe that was the wrong move to make. I wasn’t sure. But right now, I had to hold on to the fact that I was in love with Luka. It no longer mattered what he had done to my family. I was his. I only hoped now that it didn't end my life.
“I know that’s a lie. I also know that necklace was your mother’s. Why are you here? Where’s Roberto?”
Shit.
“Roberto?”
“Yes your uncle. I know he’s in town. Not our arrangement, he was expected to stay in Jersey and I was supposed to keep an eye on things here. I don’t need him nosing around in my business.”
“Wait, what? You’re an Agnelli?”
The men around us laughed. “A friend. Tell me what’s going on.”
“Nothing, I haven’t seen him. I just had a fight with my boyfriend and I came for a drink. This is a coincidence, I promise.”
“Ah yes, Luka.” He smiled at me crookedly. “Well, isn’t that advantageous? I’m meeting with his family tomorrow night. Perhaps you should stay with us until then.”
I put my hands up. “I don't want any trouble. If you have a message, I can make sure that it is delivered to them. But I’m not involved in his business. I don't know anything.”
“See, the last time that he sent us a message, he shot one of my security, and he carved up one of my best sellers. So if I send you back with a message, I don’t want to hurt you. That pretty little face of yours looks good the way it is.”
I felt sick to my stomach. What would he do to me? What had I gotten myself into?
“Now, I think I'll just keep you. I like leverage at these meetings. Maybe we can even get Roberto there and solve all of our problems. Get rid of the Gioti’s for good.”
I tried not to panic.
“You,” he said, pointing to one of his guards. “Call Roberto and tell him we have his niece. I want him at this meeting for back up. And you,” he said, turning toward me. “You stay here until we get further instructions. This just made the meet with your boyfriend a lot more interesting.”
I reached for my cell phone, but he snatched it out of my back pocket. “Do you have anything else on you? A weapon, maybe?”
I shook my head. “No. Just my phone.”
He smiled at me again, and this time, it almost seemed genuine. “Wonderful. Drink! It is going to be a long night ahead of us.”
I tried to inspect the drink before I threw it down the hatch, but I hardly had a chance. He was watching me too closely.
I had ended things with Luka on such an uncertain level. What if he didn't come for me? What if this meet went bad? What if this had been for nothing?
25
Luka
I made a call to make sure Roberto was taken care of.
“She said that she never wants to see him again. Make sure of it.”
Marco nodded at me before shoving Roberto in the back seat of his car.
“She also made me promise not to kill him. See that that doesn't happen.”
�
��Got it. So where is she?”
I shook my head. “I don't know.”
“I can't believe you found Vienna. After all this time.” He looked at my closely. I could tell he was annoyed I had lied to him.
“Marco you know I never stopped caring about her. I had to make her mine.” But now as quickly as I had found her, I had lost her. And that was on me and my secrets.
“What about her father? I can’t imagine she feels too great about all that.”
“She doesn't. It's why she's not here right now. Why I’m praying that she comes back. I won’t force her to make a decision. It's all up to her now. As much as I want to, I can't force her into this. But there’s something else man.”
“What?”
“She’s having my baby.”
“Uh dude. You sure know how to pick ‘em. Congrats though.”
“Thanks. Women, man, they’re tough.”
Marco nodded. “That is the purpose of having women in your life, man, to make things difficult.”
“I know.” I stifled a chuckle.
I watched as he drove away, Roberto in the back seat practically slumped over. I hoped that I would never see that asshole again. It took everything I had to not kill him. I told Vienna I wouldn’t, though, so I didn't. I may have landed a couple more sucker punches to his stomach while I waited for Marco to pick him up, but I kept my knife away from his flesh. And that took some serious restraint.
I waited for her to come home that night. But she never showed. I called her cell phone again and again, trying to explain to her my side of the story. About how I had to keep her safe, and doing what I did was the only way to make sure of it. After trying to reach her for several hours, her phone started to go directly to voicemail. Everything had fallen apart.
I'd always been a broken man; it was just the life that I had. Vienna made me feel whole. And without her, darkness clouded every inch of my life. The next morning, I looked in the closet, touching the clothes that she had worn only a couple days ago. I wondered if she would come back for them. If she would ever come back at all.
Beauty and the Billionaire Boss: A Bad Boy Romance Page 20