To say this entire morning had become a shitshow was putting it mildly. It wasn’t what I was picturing at all. First in my study, it was Elias who was avoiding his mother. Fine. I could deal with that. But I’d been looking forward to us finally sitting down and having breakfast as a family.
I was sitting at the head of the table. Natalya was on my left with the doctor beside her. On my right, Martha was feeding Elias.
This time, it was Natalya who was the one unreceptive with our son. I wondered if Elias’s rejection earlier in the study was having a delayed reaction.
My boy had been trying to get her attention, and all she did was brush him off.
“Natya…wafs,” my son asked his mother. Elias rarely offered his food to anyone, including me.
“I’m good,” she said with a smile I had hoped to never see again. It was the smile she gave me the day I took her home after giving birth to Elias. A smile that was resigned and one that was frozen in place when I wished she would get angry at me instead.
The flesh of my fingers dug into the stem of the fork. I leaned into her. “What’s wrong with your food?”
“It’s fine.” She wouldn’t look at me. It wasn’t fine. I glanced at the doctor. He was giving Natalya a speculative gaze too.
“Good. Fine,” I said. “Are you sure?”
She didn’t answer.
I sliced the waffle with more vigor than was necessary and popped a piece into my mouth. While I chewed, my gaze wandered around the table, falling upon Elias first. He was bubbly when we came in. He usually was when food was within reach, but now my son had turned sullen.
The day was going downhill fast.
I chewed the waffle with precision, swallowed it, and put another bite in my mouth. My jaw started to hurt with the chewing, but it also could be from the tension that had fallen over the room.
So much so that I got irritated when Natalya picked up a piece of bacon and took a minuscule bite. The only ones at the table who were truly eating were the doctor and me.
Natalya, realizing what she had done, pasted a smile on her face so wide I’d be surprised if she didn’t pull a cheek muscle. “Are you full, Elias?”
He nodded.
“Then can I have your waffle?”
He nodded again.
Natalya pushed her plate across the table and my son picked up the piece with his hand and transferred it to her plate.
“Thank you.”
“Yo welcome.”
“Papà…canna go?” Insecurity filled the expression on my son’s face. He wasn’t comfortable at the table and wanted to play with his trucks.
Fuck. I was raging inside, but my rage was directed at myself. In my eagerness to get my family back, I might have caused more problems.
“Go ahead, sport, but no running.” I tipped my chin to Martha, who looked concerned.
When they left, I put down my fork and knife and steepled my fingers. “Do you want something else to eat?”
Natalya’s head was bowed in defeat, and a jolt of fear pushed out my anger. Static raised the hair on the back of my neck.
When her gaze lifted to mine, my lungs expanded with that fear.
“I can’t do this.” The chair scraped back. She stood and ran out of the dining room.
“What the fuck?” I surged out of my own and went after her.
I spotted her retreating figure running into the gardens.
I lengthened my strides and followed her. I found her at the edge of the patio, bent over and sobbing.
I touched her shoulder. She spun around and batted my hand away.
The poison-soaked glare she shot my way had me flinching.
Her cheeks were wet with tears. “You don’t love me!”
I never told her. Telling her now would sound lame. “Natalya, I—”
She stabbed her finger in the direction of the mansion, her eyes accusatory. “Don’t. It was in that room where you told me of your expectations. You said…I will never love you.”
I stilled. “Your memory is back?”
“No!” She was still yelling, stepping left, stepping right, swaying as if she would fall, but I was afraid to touch her again. “I wasn’t sure if it was a fake memory. Since I met you, I had this voice in my head—your voice telling me this.”
“I’ve changed,” I said.
“Do you love me now?”
“Of course!”
“I don’t believe you.” Fury mixed with her tears. “It doesn’t feel true!” She pounded a fist on her chest. “In here. I feel it’s a lie.”
I pinched my temples between an index finger and thumb before gesturing toward her. “I’ve never told you—”
“See!”
“When you disappeared, I realized what a stubborn fool I’d been.” I took a wary step toward her. It was then I caught sight of Doc Gleason in the background. “I missed you. I missed you because I loved you.”
She looked up at the sky, still continuing to cry. “The thought that I would leave you is now making sense. Did you set those expectations when I was pregnant? It felt like I was pregnant, but that would mean you’ve been cruel to me for months and I just took it.”
“I was never cruel.”
“Telling me you’ll never love me isn’t cruel?”
“Love is not a requirement in an arranged marriage!” I said. “You were young, Natalya. You had romantic notions that I was your hero. You had delusions of making me one.” Fuck, I was gaslighting her. I made her fall in love with me. “I admit.” I exhaled heavily. “During our honeymoon, I manipulated you into falling in love with me.”
“Arranged marriage?” she asked. “I…I’m someone?”
This was getting complicated. I shot the doctor an I’m-fucking-this-up-so-badly look.
She stopped crying, but her gaze was shooting in all directions. I couldn’t tell if she was in full-blown panic or a mental spiral of information overload. And she was continuing to sway.
Fuck it.
I reached for her. And was relieved when she didn’t fight me when I made her sit on the stone benches that circled the patio.
I crouched in front of her. “You’re the daughter of one of the most powerful men in Italy.” Or used to be. The Galluzo was in a debatable position with Carmine at the helm. Despite his year of learning the ropes from my half brother and me, I doubted he was fit to lead for long. He just wasn’t forceful enough and the clans would eat him alive.
She looked at Doc Gleason. “You knew this?”
“I googled it on the plane while you slept.”
Her attention returned to me. “What else? What is this manipulation?”
“Natalya…”
“I don’t trust you right now. And if you don’t tell me the truth, if my memories come back and I find out you lied to me, I’ll find a way to leave again.”
“You’ll leave Elias?”
“No. I’m taking my son with me.”
I stood, fighting the sneer that threatened to form on my face, reminding me that the mental state of Natalya was more important than my ego. “Right now, Elias isn’t comfortable around you.”
“I’m going to work on that.” Tears brimmed her eyes again, but instead of despair, determination glinted behind those tears. “Because that boy inside needs to know that I would have never left him.”
“You didn’t. You wouldn’t.”
“What happened that night?” she asked.
“Good question.” I went down on my haunches again. “I don’t know for sure. You and Elias were kidnapped by Russian thugs, but Orlov—he’s the head of the Russian mafia in Chicago—swore he had nothing to do with it.”
“How did you get Elias back? And why wasn’t I with him? I wouldn’t have abandoned him.”
Fringes of hysteria crept into her tone. I got up from my crouch and sat beside her, enclosed her with my arms, and rested her head on my chest. She was too overwhelmed to resist, but she needed to hear this.
“You didn’t. They took you and Nessa…she’s the nanny. You left your locket with them.” I cleared my throat. “There was a tracker on it. You didn’t know that.”
She had stopped crying, and after a long indrawn breath, she pushed away and stared up at me. “Is Nessa still here?”
“Yes.”
“Was I close to her?”
Her eyes searched mine. I caught my bottom lip with my teeth and contemplated what to say.
“Why can’t you answer me?”
“She’s not my biggest fan.”
The doc choked on a laugh.
“What did you do to her?” Her tone was accusatory and all the angst of those days came crashing back.
I let go of her and sprang to my feet. “She wasn’t you!” I jutted my arm in her direction and repeated. “She wasn’t you. I traced the tracker and when she came out from the forest line, I resented her for not being you! I hated her that day.”
“That’s not fair,” she whispered. Eyes wide in a way that was wonder.
I faced her squarely. Every vein in my body popped with anger and fury at this whole damned situation. “You think I didn’t know that? I do.”
“Is that why she’s no longer Elias’s nanny?”
My shoulders slumped and the way the rage leaked out of me to be replaced by despair had enough force to make me take a step back as I said in a choked whisper, “Our son called her Mamma.”
Natalya’s mouth twitched in despair. Twisting one direction, flattening, twisting again, and turning down while tears continued to roll down her cheeks. Finally, on a ragged sob, she only said one word, “Luca…”
Rayne
“Luca…”
For the first time since I met him, the anguish he experienced with my disappearance sunk into my lungs and pulled the world from under me. The enormity of the emotion I was feeling for him was more than the sympathy I would have had for a stranger in the same situation. Because if I wasn’t sitting down, I would have fallen to my knees.
In front of me was the broken man he was trying to hide from his family and our son. In front of me was the husband who had lost his wife and had to live with the not knowing whether she was alive or dead.
Whether she left him on purpose or his enemies took her.
For me, not knowing who I was had its challenges, but I built a life and moved on.
I was seeing a man who never moved on.
Was it because he missed me and loved me? Or was it because of the guilt that he didn’t show me that love before it was too late?
Rising unsteadily, I went to him.
I reached out, but he recoiled.
“Don’t give me your pity,” he said roughly. “I deserve your scorn.”
I believed him. I crossed my arms and glanced at Doc Gleason.
“If it wasn’t too early, I’d say we all need a drink,” he said. “And to think we’re still missing all the pieces.”
“I want to talk to Nessa,” I told Luca.
His mouth compressed into a thin line, and a muscle pulsed at his jaw. He slipped out his phone and texted someone. “She works in the kitchen. Is she ready for this?” His question was directed at Doc Gleason.
“If she was the last person who saw me before I disappeared, don’t you think it’s important that I talk to her?”
“She’s right. Information could be lost in translation,” the doc said.
“You’ve eaten very little,” Luca said. Either he was really concerned for my health or he was trying to stall my meeting with Nessa. I hated that I didn’t completely trust him, but as the blanks were starting to fit into my memory, my reactions to him were making more sense. He might have regretted how he treated me during our marriage, but I was a different person now. I could feel it deep in the core of me.
“We can talk in the dining room.”
On our way there, we met several people in the big foyer. I recognized Tony. Beside him was a dark-haired woman with bangs and straight, short hair in a staff uniform. I hadn’t seen Tony since Brad…Oh my God. Brad.
I turned to Doc. “Have you spoken to Brad?”
“No.” He looked at Luca.
Luca was glaring at both of us. “No.”
“What do you mean, no?” I flared. “We need to check on him. You body-slammed him on the coffee table.”
His mouth twisted in a sneer. “He deserved it.”
“You even pointed a gun—”
A series of images flowed in a reel through my mind.
Luca with a gun pointed at someone. But it wasn’t Brad.
My gaze swung toward Tony.
It was Tony, but he was beaten up and bloody and on his knees. We were surrounded by mafia soldiers. In this very hall.
“Natalya?” Luca’s voice came to me from far away.
My lungs couldn’t keep up with my heartbeat, or was it the other way around?
The room spun.
“You’re under a strange assumption that I’m giving you a choice.”
Two of his soldiers hauled a bloody Tony to the center of the foyer. They shoved him to a kneeling position.
“Tony…” My voice cracked, then I turned pleading eyes to my husband. “I’ll do anything.”
He drew out his gun and pointed it at Tony.
“No!”
“No!” I screamed.
Fingers gripped my shoulders, and Luca’s wild eyes searched mine.
I shoved at him and backed away. “You’re a monster.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Here in this very foyer.” I pointed at Tony. “You were going to execute him.”
Luca’s face contorted in what could only be frustration. He scrubbed his face with his hand and twisted away from me.
“Fuck!” His roar bounced around the grand foyer. Then he spun back on me. “Is this a fucking joke?”
My chin tilted up, fury lighting me up from the inside. “Are you denying it happened?”
“I’m not!” he snarled, reminding me of a frothing, rabid dog. “But why the fucking fuck do you remember only the bad parts of our marriage?”
“Maybe because there weren’t enough of the good!” I yelled back. I retreated to the woman beside Tony. She was in my flashes, too. “Are you Nessa?”
She nodded.
“She doesn’t speak.” Tony kept his eyes trained on Luca whose daggered looks in our direction only fueled my need to pump the girl for more information.
Nessa grinned and brought out her notepad while casting a defiant look at her boss. If Luca was a cartoon character, I imagined he would have smoke coming out of his ears and breathing fire like a dragon.
As if sensing the tense situation, Doc moved in front of Luca while Tony also used his body to shield us against the man who looked ready for a second explosion.
“Can we talk somewhere?” I asked Nessa.
“The dining room,” Luca gritted. “You’ve barely eaten.”
Nessa scribbled on her notepad. “Attic.”
“She wants us to talk in the attic,” I informed everyone.
Luca’s mouth tightened, and his nostrils flared. He sidestepped Doc, who gripped his arm, but he shook it off. “I’m fine.”
He walked toward us. “You’re going to keep my wife away from me, Tony?”
“That depends, boss,” he said in an uncannily calm tone given Luca’s threatening approach. “You assigned me as her bodyguard before. I’d like to be assigned to her again.”
The men locked eyes for a while. Finally, Luca said, “Your niece is a pain in the ass.”
“But she’s loyal, more to Natalya than to you,” Tony said. “You’re fair. I think you would want someone on Natalya’s side.”
This was interesting information. I wondered if that was why Luca didn’t want me talking to her.
Luca cocked his chin to the side, muttering about people not knowing where their loyalties should be. He squared against us again and pointed a finger at Nessa. “The truth. You and I don’t see eye to eye, but Natalya needs the truth.” Then he told Tony, “Since you’re eager to be her bodyguard, why don’t you bring up the food?”
My husband seemed to have a preoccupation with my diet.
“What do you want to eat, tesoro?” He seemed to have recovered from his outburst. “I can have Martha make you something.”
“I thought she was taking care of Elias.”
“I’m capable of watching over our boy.”
“Something easy. I’m not picky.”
“Have Martha make a quiche,” he said to no one in particular.
“I said something easy,” I retorted.
“Well, I don’t feel like making it easy for anyone today,” Luca said, striding away from us. “Come on, Doc, we can have that drink in my study.”
If Tony hadn’t said that Nessa was more loyal to me than Luca, I probably would have reservations following her to the attic. An attic to me was musty and old and where people hid their secrets and, in Luca’s case, maybe the literal skeletons of a dead body or two.
I was following Nessa past the kitchen when a loud screech gave me goose bumps. I spun around, thinking I was under attack. A gray cat was running full tilt toward me, her pitiful meows, loud and heart-rending, reminded me of a mother cat looking for her kittens.
It stopped two feet from where I stood and made what could only be described as a loud, scolding meowing sound.
“Uh…” I glanced at Nessa. She had a hand over her mouth like she was trying not to cry. Martha joined us and shook her head, her face equally devastated and bittersweet. “She remembers you,” she choked.
I knelt in front of the cat and put the back of my hand against her nose so she could sniff me, the action so familiar.
“Her name is Mrs. B,” Martha said. “I forgot about her. She missed you. For days after you disappeared, she haunted the halls with her cries, looking for you.”
“I can tell.” Any doubt that I had about being collectively lied to dissipated. I always trusted an animal’s instinct. Mrs. B sniffed me a bit more. I wasn’t ready to pick her up, and the cat was hesitant as well. She was standoffish. It was as though I needed to grovel at her paws before she allowed me the honor of carrying her. Mrs. B did, however, rub her face against my leg.
I stood and made an elaborate gesture for Nessa to proceed. Mrs. B trotted behind us, then ran crisscross in front of me. I had to watch where I stepped before I tripped all over her.
When we arrived in the attic, contrary to my earlier reservations, what greeted me was a space filled with morning light, a widescreen TV that made me giddy, and rows of books I couldn’t help running my fingers through. Romance books, some with broken spines, a couple of special editions, and more than a few belonging to the same series with how their spines beautifully aligned. As I picked one out, I weighed its heft in my hand, but my eyes became critical toward the bookshelf. An instinct that I’d seen this one before.
“There’s something behind this.” I turned around to face Nessa. “This space is mine.”
She signed Yes, and I understood it.
ASL worked in my brain. New skill unlocked. “I know how to sign.”
Nessa replied. You learned it to communicate with me.
I laughed. “No wonder your loyalty is to me.”
I took down a few more books. “There’s equipment behind this.” I glanced over my shoulder. Nessa was sitting on the couch and she signed. Yes. Boss found it.
“He didn’t know?”
She shook her head. He was in Chicago most of the time.
I abandoned the books and sat beside her. My gaze noted the shelf above the TV. A row of photographs were arranged there. A close up of me as a blonde, and one where I was holding a baby Elias, but my mind rejected the idea to approach and inspect those frames. There was fear. There were too many questions, and I wasn’t sure what to ask her first. “He left me here often?”
She nodded.
“What did I do? Am I a hacker?” I wondered if that was why I was tempted by the Dark Web. Oh my God, then that was what he meant by a second life.
No one is sure. She grabbed her notepad. No one knew you were that good with computers. She underlined that.
I laughed. “For almost a year?”
She nodded vigorously and grinned like a proud mother.
“Did you suspect?” I asked.
She averted her gaze.
“Did you?”
Maybe a little, she signed. The memory you remembered? You were the reason Zio Tony was beaten up. You left Tralestelle without telling anyone. No one knew you had a backpack except me, and I saw the computer inside.
“You didn’t tell anyone?”
She shook her head.
“Why?”
Not sure. I felt sorry for the way the boss was treating you. And then she suddenly signed. Erase. Erase.
My mouth pulled into a smile. “He told you not to lie, remember?”
He confuses me. I think he reacts more than acts when it comes to you.
“I know it’s subjective, but do you think he loved me?”
Nessa gave me a long look before she expunged a big exhale while surging to her feet. She walked to the window.
“Nessa? I can take it. It’s okay if he didn’t love me. He said as much.”
She bent over and clutched her stomach and started shaking. I thought she was having a seizure.
Worried, I rushed to her side. “Are you all right?”
Boss, she started signing, while still keeled over in what appeared to be laughter. Is the king of denial.
Hope rose in my heart. It would be easier to contemplate learning about my relationship with Luca if I wasn’t a pathetic doormat.
She pointed below us. I came closer to the window to see where she was pointing at. Luca was in the garden following a toddling Elias. Doc Gleason was trailing behind them on a phone. A phone! I sure as hell hoped he was talking to Brad.
My gaze returned to father and son and a tenderness for them expanded in my heart of whatever they both went through, especially Luca. Elias had been an infant, but surely he felt something viscerally wrong when he stopped hearing my voice, the rocking of my arms, and the smell of my skin. Tears formed at the corners of my eyes. My heart was opening up to the idea of Elias being my son.
Nessa tugged my arm. I’m still not sure what he feels for you. He’s a very contradictory man.
Amusement tinged my voice. “I’m getting that.”
A knock sounded on the door and Martha peeked through. “How are you two up here?”
“Nessa is filling me in on my contradictory husband.”
The older woman came in carrying a tray. Nessa walked over to help her.
“I’m sorry Luca made you do this. I would have been happy with a peanut butter sandwich.”
Martha clucked. “That wouldn’t do. The boss is adamant about not taking the abundance of food for granted.”
“Where do you want this?” Tony came into view, holding a carafe of coffee.
“Are we having a breakfast brunch up here?”
Tony chuckled and put the coffee and the mugs on the coffee table as Martha instructed. “I would love to, but I’m on a thin line with the boss. I’m gonna head back downstairs.”
Tony retreated from the attic.
I was starving. I sliced a piece of quiche, transferred it to a plate, and took a bite.
“What have you told Natalya about that night?” Martha asked.
“Nothing yet,” I answered around a mouthful of quiche. “I was impressed with the space up here and had to explore.”
“You loved it up here.”
“I can see why.”
“You fooled every one of us thinking you were reading your romance books and watching romance movies.”
“Wow,” I said. “You all must think I’m such a lady of leisure.”
Martha gave a light laugh. “Not at all. Everyone was happy you updated the appliances in the mansion and you were a genius, keeping the household budget straight.”
“Seems I had a boring existence.”
Nessa was shaking with laughter again and decided to join me for breakfast.
After the first few bites and sips of coffee, I came back to the purpose of holing up here. “So what happened that night I was abducted?”
Fifteen minutes later, I was processing.
