His UnBearable Touch_Howls Romance

by Reina Torres

  The flush on his cheeks deepened. “I wouldn’t mind that at all. It might mean that I make a few more trips back to New York from Italy before the new year.”

  “You know you’re always welcome to stay with us.” That assurance was from Salvatore.

  Natale’s father promised to call the next morning and crossed to the private elevator waiting for him a few steps away.

  As the door slid closed, Salvatore wrapped his arms around his mate, pulling her closer to his warmth. “I’m glad he came to see you.”

  She sighed and snuggled closer. “He was spending more time in Italy once I was settled in and running Durante.”

  “And now that he has a new lady friend-”

  “Friend?” Salvatore’s laughter vibrated through both of them.

  “And with our baby on the way,” she smiled brighter as Salvatore smooth his large hand over her belly, “he’ll be here more often, because…”

  Salvatore felt her tense in his embrace. “Principessa?”

  Natale turned in his embrace. “The Singletons. Val said they were very upset by his visit. How angry they still were.”

  He nodded. They’d all heard the story.

  “Could you check something for me?”

  Salvatore pressed a kiss against her lips, growling at the way her breath hitched in her chest. “Anything.”

  “Check to see the last time they went to visit their son in Geneva.”

  “What are you thinking, my love?”

  “You said the parole board let him out early because he promised to move away and never see Allegra again.”

  “Mmmhmm.” He stroked her back with his hand. “That’s what they did and his parents bought him a home in Geneva.”

  Natale powered up her phone and pulled up the New York Times Society Pages and did a quick search for ‘Singleton’. The search offered up an astounding number of entries over the years. Handing her phone over to Salvatore she let him look. Nodding, he went into the Orsino Business Office, just inside the main door of the penthouse.

  Sliding into his desk chair, Salvatore woke the computer with a touch of the mouse and began his search into the bank records of the Singletons, looking specifically for their travel records. Tickets purchased. “You don’t think they might have turned their back on their son?”

  He caught the look in her eye.

  “You’re right. They were full of excuses for him.”

  “I don’t trust them to follow the ruling. People like the Singletons don’t see themselves like the rest of us.”

  Salvatore picked up the phone receiver and set it on speaker, touching speed dial three.

  The call picked up on the first ring. “Can I kill him now?”

  Natale’s indulgent sigh was the only thing that stopped Salvatore from snapping at his brother. “No.”

  “I’m bored,” the youngest Orsino was not used to waiting for things, “all he does is the same thing every day. Go to work and then market before he gets home. Then he makes dinner and watches movies on his computer and drink.” When he was done with his recitation he paused. “How is Allegra doing? Does she know I’m going to miss her concert?”

  Salvatore gave his mate a slow smile when she silently sighed at Uberto’s comment. “She knows.”

  “Can’t be helped, I guess. First things first. So, if I can’t kill him, what can I do?”

  Salvatore had a look in his eye that made Natale shiver down to her toes.

  “Can you get into his home when he’s not there?”

  There was an ominous moment of silence on the other end of the phone. “I’ll pretend you didn’t just insult my skills. Just tell me what you want.”

  “Fingerprints. I will send you the prints from the police file.”

  “No need,” Uberto’s voice sounded upbeat, excited, “I have the records on my phone. Why do you need the prints?”

  The front door of the penthouse opened up and Salvatore was already on his feet. “Get them and compare them to the prints in the file. Then call me.”

  “What? That’s all you’re going to-”

  Salvatore hung up and he moved toward the front door, taking Natale’s hand in his as they moved.

  In the kitchen, Valerio dropped his keys on the table and looked up at them. “I just need to get showered and changed. Then we can go to the theater.”

  He saw a look pass between the two.

  “Did something happen?”

  Salvatore managed a smile for his brother. “Not yet, but our brother is about to have a little bit of fun on company time.”

  Valerio tugged at his tie, a ghost of a smile returning to his lips. “Tell me.”

  Allegra let a bit of time go by before she turned back to her makeup table. “You were kind of hard on Zack.”

  “He’s annoying,” Linda huffed and walked over to the closet, sliding the hanger on the bar. “This is a really nice dress.”

  “Thank you. Natale was a huge help. It’s hard to find a dress that I feel comfortable in and can play in, without having to worry about flashing the first few rows while I’m getting ready to play.”

  “I guess you’d have to worry about something like that.” Linda’s tone was soft, almost sullen. “Oboe players, well, we don’t have to worry about that.”

  Allegra set down her compact and laughed. “Yeah, I guess that wouldn’t be a problem.” She picked up her blusher and opened up the cover. “And I guess you don’t get a lot of the same comments about playing position. When I was in high school, some guy that I liked told me he’d never be interested in a girl who played the cello.”

  “What?” Linda sounded genuinely surprised. “Did he say why?”

  Allegra sighed as she dusted on the blush high on her cheekbones. “He said all girls that played the cello were secretly lesbians. That we liked thick girls with hips between our legs.” Allegra laughed. “Little did he know.”

  “Yeah, um… that’s bordering on-”

  “TMI? Yeah, I guess. Sorry about that.” Setting the compact down she turned slightly on the seat. “You said you wanted girl talk. What’s up?”

  “Nothing, I mean… I had something to… so what are you going to do after this concert? I mean, you’ve been gone so long. You haven’t played in public in forever and now you’re just… What are your plans?”

  Allegra felt an odd twinge in her middle. “You know, I don’t know. For so many years I thought I’d never play again. So much of my process in learning music, well, anything really, it’s all visual.

  “But when I was upset or when I was lonely, which was a lot of the time,” she confided, “I’d hear the music in my head and my fingers were almost itching to play again, so I got a tutor to come in and we worked on getting my skills back.”

  Linda mumbled something, but Allegra couldn’t quite hear it.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing.” Linda sighed. “Nothing.”

  A chime sounded from Allegra’s phone.

  “Okay then,” Allegra turned back to the table, “then I really need to get my makeup done and get changed.”

  “Hey,” Linda moved closer and wrapped her hand around Allegra’s upper arm, “why don’t we go for a walk. You know, relax a little before the show.”

  Allegra got up so her arm wouldn’t be bent at a weird angle. “Hey, no. I have things to do before the concert and-”

  An alarm sounded and Allegra’s whole body tensed.

  “That’s the fire alarm.”

  “Let’s go.” Linda shifted her hold on Allegra’s arm. “I know a quick way to get out of here.”

  Allegra nodded and tried to pull away. “I need my phone.”

  “No, we’ll get out of here and you can use my phone, okay?”

  The alarm only seemed to get louder and the sound in Allegra’s ears echoed like the sounds of sirens.

  Sirens.

  Police sirens.

  Ambulance sirens.

  Her skin went cold, her mind went numb, an
d when Linda pulled her toward the door, Allegra stumbled after her.

  The phone rang as they were getting in the car. Salvatore put his phone on speaker. “What did you find out?”

  “You knew, didn’t you?”

  Valerio eyes were as black as night. “What?”

  Uberto barked back through the phone. “Lance isn’t Lance. The fingerprints don’t match. They-”

  Valerio nearly tore the door off of the car and pulled the driver out. “Get in!”

  Salvatore followed but Natale stayed behind with the driver.

  The car peeled out of the private garage and rocketed onto the street amidst honking horns and angry shouts.

  Valerio yanked his phone from his suitcoat pocket and tossed it to his brother. “Call the guards, tell them to get Allegra out of there.”

  Salvatore was already relaying the message.

  People rushed by, excited voices, and Allegra stayed on her feet with Linda tugging at her arm. They avoided the elevator, stumbling down a few flights of stairs with Allegra trying to catch her breath.

  “I need my phone, Linda.”

  “We’re almost there.”

  “I need my phone. I should call Valerio.”

  “You should concentrate on the stairs before you fall and hurt yourself.”

  Allegra wanted to say that her arm and her shoulder were already aching from the vice-like grip that Linda had on her. “Shouldn’t we be outside by now?”

  A rush of cool wind washed over her body, followed by the close smell of dank, stale air. Wrinkling her nose, Allegra turned away.

  “What is that smell?”

  “We’re leaving through a basement exit. Just keep walking.”

  They continued forward and Allegra turned a little and gripped Linda’s arm with her free hand. Fear dug her fingers in deep.

  “Ow! Stop it.”

  “I can’t,” Allegra gasped in a breath. “I can’t help it. I can barely breathe. I can’t-”

  “You really are a basket case, aren’t you?”

  A door ahead of them pushed open, creaking on rusted hinges and then a loud bang as if it slammed against a wall.

  “What’s that?” Allegra moved toward it, eager to get out of the belly of the building. “Is that the exit? Hello??”

  Linda let go of her arm and Allegra stubbed her toe on something, bumping one foot against the heel of the other, and stumbling she fell to the floor, one hand landing in a puddle.

  “Linda? Help me up, please?”

  “What for?”

  Footsteps approached from the open door.

  “Help, please?” She lifted a foot to set it down on the ground, but a sharp pain shot through her knee. “I just need to get outside.”

  “Outside?”

  The laughter didn’t need to echo off of the walls for Allegra to know she was in danger, the sound of his voice was enough to make her legs turn to jelly as her heart stopped beating.

  “You’re not going outside ever again.”

  “Lance?”

  “See? You remember me.”

  Allegra turned back. “Please, Linda. I don’t know why you brought me here-”

  “I brought you here because I’m tired of you and your circus taking the focus away from the music.”

  “Don’t forget how much money I offered you.” Lance’s tone was droll, but tight. He never liked to be in the wings.

  “Yeah,” Linda scoffed, “that’s right. It’s a ton of money, more than I’ll ever need even living in New York. So, where is it?”

  Something roared over Allegra’s head and she flinched.

  A moment later, something fell to the ground behind her.

  “You shot her?” Allegra felt anger boil up inside of her.

  He laughed in reply. “I hope you’ll understand that I just did that for us, baby. She doesn’t need the money, not anymore.”

  Silent tears fell onto her cheeks. “I’m not going anywhere with you. After all these years, just let me go.”

  Footsteps splashed through a puddle and came to stop at her side. Fingers dug in to her arm and she groaned as he lifted her up onto her feet. “The last thing I’m ever going to do is let you go.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The street out in front of the theater was choked with traffic. Cars and their angry drivers, mulling people, scared patrons and musicians struggled through the cars and other vehicles, trying to get as far from the building as possible.

  Valerio and Salvatore abandoned their car at the end of the block, and used their earpieces and lapel microphones to communicate with their men. The building, as far as they could determine, was completely evacuated, but there was no way to tell who had been inside at the time.

  “Who has Allegra?” Valerio asked the question out of desperation. If someone had her, they would have said so, but he still had to ask. “Well?”

  Jane, the pianist and Allegra’s friend flagged him down as he rushed toward the building. He vaulted over the hood of a cab to get to her side. “Where was she?”

  Jane swallowed, her hands pressed to her cheeks in a helpless gesture. “I left her in her dressing room.”

  Valerio started to move away toward the building.

  “Wait!” Jane called him back with the desperation in her tone. “When the alarm sounded I went back. She wasn’t there.”

  A quick look out of the side of his eye told him that Salvatore was speaking to several of the men.

  “Where would she have gone?”

  A young man was running in their direction, skidding to a stop beside Jane. “I’ve been looking through the crowd. Allegra’s not out.”

  Valerio wanted to shout at the boy, but he held his anger barely in check, especially because it was directed at himself. “Where could she have gone?”

  A queer look passed over the younger man’s face and then he rose up on the balls of his feet to look at the crowd as sirens blared through the air, cutting through the excited babbling of the onlookers. “She was with Linda. Or rather, Linda was in Allegra’s dressing room with her when I left.”

  Linda. The image from the artists file popped up in his head. Tilting his chin down, he spoke into the lapel microphone, and cut in on the other conversations. “Who has eyes on Linda Overmeyer?”

  One by one the men checked in, all of them had the same answer. Valerio felt his heart stop in his chest. His instinct was to rage and tear the building apart brick by brick, but that wasn’t going to help Allegra, not at that moment.

  “Hey, hey…” a man dressed all in black waded through the crowd that had only grown in the last few minutes, “you looking for the Rossetti woman?”

  Valerio heard the man and nodded. “Yes, what do you know?”

  “I passed them on the stairs.”

  “Them?” Apprehension crawled over his skin.

  “Yeah. She was walking with that cold bitch,” he turned to Zack, searching for a name. “You know…”

  “Linda.”

  “Yeah,” he snapped his fingers, “the oboe player. I asked them if they needed help. Linda told me where to step off but the other lady, she didn’t even seem like she heard me.” He frowned and his eyes narrowed as if he was searching for the right words. “Every time the alarm sounded, she seemed to tense up. Her shoulders…” he shook off the thought. “I didn’t want to argue. I just thought it was weird that they were headed down toward the sub-levels, but-”

  Valerio’s hand shot out and fisted in the man’s shirt, how do I get down there?”

  The stagehand turned to look over his shoulder as firefighters rushed in through the stage door.

  “There could be a fire-”

  “There is no fire.” Valerio felt the man tense as his tone sank in and the man paled, blood draining from his face. “Tell me.”

  A hand clapped down on his arm and Valerio turned to the younger man standing beside him.

  “I’ll take you.”

  Valerio’s eyes narrowed on his face. “How do y
ou know where it is?”

  “I spent summers with my grandfather in this neighborhood. He told me about the tunnels.”

  Tunnels. The word sank in and Valerio reached his hand up to his lapel spoke into the microphone to tell his brother what was going on as he gestured to the other man.

  Go.

  Away from the sirens, her mind began to clear and fresh fear set in.

  He wore the same cologne.

  The scent coated her tongue, rolled her stomach.

  His touch crawled along her skin.

  She was trying to keep up. Not because she wanted to go with him, but she didn’t want to fall either. The uneven ground beneath her feet was hard enough to contend with. And the farther they went, the air changed too.

  Changed from cold and stale, to rank.

  “Where… where are we going?”

  “You just leave it to me, Allegra. I’ve got everything under control.”

  Control. The word had a chilling effect on her. It said volumes.

  “Yes, I know, Lance.” Even saying his name hit her hard, made her ache. “I just… can’t we slow down?”

  “We’ll slow down when we get there.”

  “I don’t have my cane,” she told him, tugging on his arm. “I’m worried I’m going to fall.”

  He slowed suddenly, nearly stopped beside her and that sudden change made her trip, forced her against his body and she had to slam her lips closed to keep from retching all over him.

  “You were always clumsy.”

  Allegra was thankful that her mouth was closed. His cold words brought up so much anger that she thought she might burst. Unbidden, her thoughts turned to Valerio. Is that what it felt like to have his bear inside of him. Was the bear all the base emotion and his human side the reason? Or was there a mix of both?

  When Lance tugged her along, she went, trying to stall her steps, keep her thoughts on Valerio. He would come for her. He was likely already looking for her.

  He would come, she knew.

  She just had to wait and see what Lance had in mind.

  They moved through the structure quickly enough. Zack knew the building well and seemed to sense the question on the tip of Valerio’s tongue. “I get here early a lot. Don’t have much to do in my apartment except sit around while my roommate screams at soccer games on his TV. So, while I’m here, I look around.