I sensed Luciano’s eyes on me, but I worked hard to ignore him. Even when he wasn’t looking at us, I knew he kept watch. He said he needed something from me. I wondered what it was. One thing I knew for sure. I was sick and tired of being a pawn in everyone’s struggle for power. By pulling Ella, Matteo, and I back into his world, he put our lives in danger. It made me hate him even more.
“Do you think it was my email with a photo that gave us away?” Ella murmured under her breath.
I wondered how he found us too. We were so careful. Just a few days ago, I thought about him and here he was. Maybe it was my warning, and I ignored it. Didn’t I feel like someone was watching me the other day at the market? Now I knew for sure someone did. I should have packed us up and made us move that day. Instead, I ignored my instinct.
God, I hope we get out of this alive.
Finally, I shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t want Ella beating herself up about this.
“I don’t think so. It doesn’t really matter,” we both spoke in whispers. “We’ll just keep out of his way. He said he needed something from me, and in order to get an annulment, I had to be in the States.”
Emma’s mouth just about dropped. “He’ll give it to you?”
“I guess he wants it too. I don’t really care, as long as I get it.”
“What do you think he wants?”
I wished I knew. Not knowing made me anxious and blind. I couldn’t afford to be blind when it came to Luciano nor anyone else.
“What about your family?”
That was my biggest fear. Yes, I feared Luciano, but I feared my family more. “I need a plan to get us out of Luciano’s clutches and to keep Matteo off my family’s radar.”
“How?”
I brushed my fingers across his forehead, moving the little strands of hair out of his face.
“I don’t know.”
“Should we tell him?”
I knew what she was asking. If I told Luciano that Matteo was his, he’d protect him. But I was scared of losing my son. I couldn’t lose him. He was my everything. I wished I knew what the right thing to do was. I wanted to keep my son protected and with me at all costs. Did that make me selfish?
Maybe. But I needed my son; he was my reason for fighting to survive. Besides, Luciano hated the Romano blood so much, I kept telling myself not to entrust my son to him.
“Not yet,” I murmured. “I just need a plan.”
By dragging us back to the States, Luciano was putting us all right back in the middle of the war between his family and mine. I refused to allow my son and my best friend to be pawns. Nobody would use us ever again. As far as I was concerned, they could all kill each other. I couldn’t care less. Well, except his dad.
Although his father hated my family too. But he never transferred that hate to me. If anything, he was extra nice. I never understood why Luciano hated my family so much. I gathered they did something to him, but I could never get an answer. I figured it must be about money. That was all that mattered to my grandmother and my uncle. And God knew, Luciano did some horrible shit for money. I saw it firsthand. Drug trafficking and money laundering. Why did he need it when he was rich as fuck? Between him and Cassio King, they owned most of the real estate in New York. Luciano owned casinos in New Jersey and Connecticut too. Wasn’t that enough?
I raised my eyes, risking a glance at my husband. Our gazes met and shudders ran through my body.
It’s just disgust, I lied to myself.
God, I hated him. I hated everything about him.
We landed at JFK International, and I debated if somehow, I could alert security or the border patrol to help us and get us out of my husband’s clutches. We exited the plane and Luciano already had extra men waiting for us, along with his armored vehicles.
If he wouldn’t work with criminals, he wouldn’t need this shit.
But I kept those thoughts to myself. I glanced around, hoping someone would come and take our passports. Ella’s, Matteo’s, and my traveling documents were falsified. We left the country with fake documentation too, but we discarded them the first chance we had in Europe. Our first purchase in Europe was new identities. When I gave birth to Matteo in Northern Italy on the military base, I used my real name, so I could ensure there was a record of my son. But I already had a new identity established for him too so when Ella snuck me out of the hospital two hours after giving birth, we were on our way to Portugal. We stuck to EU countries, to ensure we moved under the radar.
Crossing borders was always my biggest fear. Yes, we invested a lot of money into our new identification, but neither Ella nor I were experts. I couldn’t tell the difference between a good fake travel document and a bad one.
But I should have known that Luciano would bribe whoever so we’d never have to go through any security or border patrol.
“Oh, wife, you look so disappointed,” he taunted me as we all crammed into a large vehicle, his guards packing two vehicles in front of us and behind us. He probably knew exactly what I hoped for. “There will be nobody to check your travel documents. Don’t worry, I wouldn’t let my wife get put in federal prison for traveling on falsified documentation.”
“Ex-wife,” I barely choked out.
“Not yet.” His cold gaze was on me, chilling me to the bone. And the smile on those sinful lips was cruel. Still that sweet spot between my thighs throbbed. I tried to justify to myself it was deprivation. My body would react like this to any man. The last time I had sex was with him, the day he pressed his gun onto my temple. It was only natural that my body finally wanted a release. Though I suspected I was lying to myself.
Maybe I am just plain stupid. Only a stupid woman would feel any fucking tingling on her pussy at seeing a man that played Russian Roulette with a gun against her skull.
There was nothing natural about this. My body should be repulsed by him. He put a fucking gun to my forehead and would have killed me. He pulled the trigger, and the only reason I lived was because of some sheer, dumb luck.
I fucking hated him. My husband, my uncle, and my grandmother were all competing for the first spot on my hate list. I should kill all three of them. At least, I was smart enough to learn some defense skills over the last few years. And I learned how to use a gun.
Maybe it will come in handy, I thought to myself. And I could rid this world of three parasites. But even as I thought that, I knew having Luciano’s blood on my hands would shatter me. I could never look my son in the eyes, if I murdered his father. Regardless if he deserved it or not.
I hate his guts.
“Mamma, ho fame.” Matteo’s voice pulled me from my hate tantrum. I blinked my eyes, looking at my son.
“What?”
“Ho fame,” he whined. I glanced at Ella in exasperation, but I knew she didn’t understand him either. I had to learn Italian. What kind of mother doesn’t understand her son?
“Matteo, in English please.”
I felt like shit asking him to say it in English. I should know my son.
“He’s hungry.” Luciano chimed in, and the fact he could understand my son and I couldn’t, made me hate him more.
I dug through my bag but before I could pull out a snack for him, Luciano handed Matteo a Kinder Bueno. My son’s eyes got big, and before I could even open my mouth to reprimand Luciano for giving a kid chocolate to sate his hunger, Matteo was tearing into it, struggling to open it. His eyes met mine, begging me to open it.
I took it with a sigh and opened it for him.
“Just one bar,” I told him. “We’ll have lunch or dinner once we get to our pris-” I cut my word off. I almost said to our prison but that would be cruel. I didn’t want to put Matteo in the middle of my disagreements with Luciano. “To our destination,” I murmured.
I refused to say home. That was not our home.
“Grazie,” Matteo told Luciano and pride swelled inside me. My son will grow up to be a good man. We’d start with his manners and end with his compassion.
“Prego,” Luciano answered him. I pulled my phone out and instantly downloaded Rosetta Stone. There was no chance in hell I would ever not understand what my son was saying.
“Get me one too,” Ella muttered under her breath, her eyes on my phone. I nodded, and once I purchased for both of us, I started the download process. I would learn perfect Italian, if it was the last thing that I did.
