“I don’t appreciate being let into the house like I’m your mistress.”
I looked up from the pool table at Rachel. She walked into the mansion’s game room with an amused look on her face. I returned my attention to the game, sank my shot, and circled the table, chalking my cue stick.
“Damn, that didn’t distract you one bit?” Dario grumbled. My consigliere arrived an hour ago. It had gotten too hot in the garden and I brought my boy back inside. He was sleeping on the couch beside Gleason.
“Not when I need this distraction. Hi, Rachel. Corner pocket.” I positioned to sink the eight ball and finished the game.
Doc, who was nodding off, startled awake. He got up and met Rachel. “We talked on the phone.”
The two doctors exchanged handshakes.
“Glad to meet you,” Rachel said. “But I actually have to see Natalya to believe she’s back.”
“Not right now,” I countered.
“Why not now? When we talked earlier, you were excited.” Rachel grabbed a cue stick from the wall.
“Another game?” Dario asked.
“Unless you’re going to use your stick on Luca’s head,” Rachel said. Her eyes fell on my son, then on Gleason. “Did he make you a babysitter? Where’s Martha?”
“I’m babysitting,” I corrected. “My wife commandeered my staff.” She, Nessa, and Martha had been in the attic for the past two hours. I threw an irritated glance at Dario. “What are you waiting for? Rack ’em.”
“The game isn’t improving your mood,” he observed.
What I really wanted was a cigarette, but I wasn’t smoking while my son was in the room. I’d become more of a social smoker now, and I didn’t want the sudden appearance of my wife to drive me into the habit again. “You’re pissing me off right now and making my mood worse.”
Dario didn’t seem perturbed with my short temper. The bastard’s twitchy mouth spoke volumes of his amusement.
“What’s up with him?” Rachel asked. “And why did you have Rocco sneak me in? Is she vulnerable right now? She met Elias, right?”
“Him is pissed.” I kept my focus on the green woven fabric. Green was calming, right? “Rocco snuck you in because I didn’t want Natalya to see you. I changed my mind. Vulnerable? That’s debatable. She’s met Elias. They’re still making up their minds about each other. She seems to be doing just fine and is currently in the attic with Martha and Nessa.”
“Nessa? Oh dear.” Rachel snorted a brief laugh.
My friend was aware Nessa didn’t particularly like me, and I honestly wasn’t sure why I didn’t get rid of her. She was a superb cook. She didn’t even talk back, but her condemning gaze irritated the fuck out of me.
I made a break of the balls Dario just set but failed to sink any or rail the required number, ending on a foul.
“Cazzo!” I growled.
“Ooh, I think I might have upset your balance.” Rachel moved around the table and took aim at a ball. “I’ll take solid.”
“Guess I’m sidelined.” Dario took his seat beside Gleason.
“Is someone going to explain why Luca is in a bad mood when he was fine this morning?” Rachel asked.
“Stop talking about me like I’m not here.” My eyes focused on the balls she seemed to be sinking with no issue. Rachel was a pool shark. I should have known better than to let her push Dario out of the game. I preferred playing against Dario. He was less likely to psychoanalyze me while we played, which was usually how Rachel gave me therapy because I couldn’t sit still on a couch.
“Well?” She continued potting her balls. Those might as well be mine.
Still staring at the rolling spheres, I said, “She only remembers the bad shit that happened between us so far.”
“And so far, it’s the really bad shit,” Dario chortled.
“Like what?”
“The time I told her I will never love her.”
Rachel had already heard my confession about that and had called me a moron. Not very psychologically worded, and I wondered if the Morettis wasted money sending her to psych school.
“What else?” she clipped.
“The time I pulled the gun on Tony.”
“Typical. You never told me if you were really going to shoot Tony.”
“I was pissed, but I’d probably shoot him where it hurt, but not kill him, and no, I don’t want to discuss the time I chopped off his finger.”
“You were only seventeen.”
“He deserved it, according to Emilio.”
“Should I be in this room to hear this?” Gleason spoke up and the doctor’s eyes darted between us.
“Are you asking if I’m thinking of shooting you, too?” I asked mildly.
“Shame on you, Luca, trying to frighten an old man.” Rachel missed her shot.
“I don’t think he’s frightened,” I remarked sardonically. Rounding the table to sink my balls, I knocked my first one into the corner pocket and called another. “I’ve had zero body count since he made my acquaintance.”
“Luca has this weird sense of justice,” Rachel told Gleason. “But it’s a very thin line.”
“Just don’t try to kill me or hurt my family.” I winked at the doctor, who’d turned a tad pale. “And if your heart is as criminally black as mine, all bets are off.”
“Understood.” The word was strangled.
Dario laughed and squeezed the doc’s shoulder. “You’re a friend of the family.”
“I see.”
“We’ll make it worth your while.” Gleason was smart. He knew he’d seen too much. There was only one way to keep him quiet, and that was to bring him in. I needed him here in the mansion until Natalya regained her memory and be on call when there were setbacks. Having a neuro on payroll would ensure the care my wife needed.
“I guess I don’t have a choice,” Gleason said. “It would have been nice to have one.”
I sunk three more balls but missed the fifth one. I leaned against the wall to let Rachel have her turn.
I balanced the cue stick on my shoulders and twisted from side to side. I missed my workout this morning and had been stiff as hell. “You’ll have a comfortable retirement.”
My eyes met Dario’s across the pool table. My adviser had done a deep dive into the doc’s background. He was selling his practice anyway, and from his reaction when he found out I was the Chicago mob boss, I didn’t think he would balk too much.
Rachel missed the eight ball. I had two more to sink.
I chalked my cue stick and prepared to take my shot.
“You don’t want Natalya to see me because she’ll remember you missed Elias’s birth.”
Something snapped inside me. I flung the stick on the table. “Bitch.”
Rachel merely raised a brow. “That’s what you’re afraid she’ll remember.”
“Wow,” Gleason said.
“I don’t need input from you, old man.”
Gleason did a zipper gesture against his mouth. Dario was biting his fist, probably trying to avoid making commentary.
I hated people right now.
“Ziarach!”
Shit. Elias was awake. He rolled off the couch and toddled toward Rachel. Elias combined “Zia” and “Rachel.” It was cute. But what was not so cute was the way they all seemed to be ganging up against me.
Elias always looked for me first when he woke up.
“Hi, little man.” My friend lowered the stick and scooped up my son, who erupted in toddler chatter that made little sense.
I was unreasonably agitated, but for this part, I didn’t need an audience who wasn’t in my inner circle.
I opened the door. “Rocco!”
My soldier came forward. “Escort Doctor Gleason to his room.”
“Oh, shouldn’t I be hearing this too?”
“You’ve heard enough.”
I nudged the old man out of the game room and into Rocco’s care and slammed the door before facing the two people who knew me the most.
Two people who appeared to be finding amusement in my predicament.
My eyes were looking elsewhere when I gritted, “Both of you should be on my side.”
Rachel was rocking Elias. “I’m on the winning side. It looks like Natalya is finally winning.”
“Damn, where’s that scotch?” Dario added. “We need to toast to it.”
“This is ridiculous. I wasn’t such a terrible husband.” That sounded lame to my ears.
At this, Rachel’s eyes softened. “You’re a good father, but a terrible husband.”
“I am not a nine-to-five husband. The Chicago family is like a corporation and I’m its CEO. Why couldn’t she be happy with everything I could give her? This house. The money. I wasn’t a bad husband. When she was pregnant, I went to most of her appointments. I ran her baths, massaged her feet. Made sure she had the best nutrition.”
“Except you told her you’ll never love her.” Rachel lowered my boy, who seemed to have had enough of grown-ups and went to the corner of the room where he played with his trucks. He had them in almost every room in the house. “You’re able to do those things because you never made yourself vulnerable to her. Granted, the night of Elias’s birth, you had an excuse.”
When I stayed silent, she pressed. “How badly do you want your wife back? That’s the hard question you should ask yourself. Not for Elias, but for your marriage. Because from what I’ve witnessed of your marriage, you and your wife have different expectations of love.”
“Did you know?” I gritted. “There was this man who is in love with my wife and was willing to die for her?”
“Whoa.” Rachel reared back and sat beside Dario. “Were you there?”
“I was,” he said. “I thought Luca was going to shoot the man right there except Natalya went in front of the gun.”
I needed a drink. I went behind the bar of the game room and grabbed a beer. “You guys want one?”
“He’s in avoidance,” Rachel said.
I took out three beers and went to them. “I’m not avoiding. I need alcohol for this conversation and so do both of you.”
“I haven’t had lunch yet,” Rachel said. “What’s on the menu?”
I exhaled a sigh. “My cook is with Natalya. We’re going to starve or order pizza. Can we talk about my issue?”
“I came here for Natalya, but it seems you’re the one who needs therapy.”
I leaned against the pool table in front of them and guzzled down a beer. “You should be happy. Luca Moretti is finally ready to listen.”
Rachel laughed and leaned against the armrest of the couch in a move to get comfortable. “All right. I’m not a neurologist, but I don’t think Gleason can give you a definitive answer either. But before anything else, I find it interesting she remembers her hacker personality. Though most of it is semantic memory, I think that’s part of her personality that she was the most comfortable with and where she feels she has power in her life. From what you told me, her parents suppressed her intelligence because they feared she’d get exploited. That’s really hard on someone with a high IQ. So she created this double life.”
They should be shot. “I don’t know how parents wouldn’t be proud of a child genius.”
“I bet Elena has something to do with it,” Dario said. “In her eyes, that’s not a marketable aspect. I mean, you married her and stashed her in this mansion.” His chest started shaking with amusement. “Not knowing she installed a ghost bridge in your house.”
“Shut up,” I growled, but my mouth twitched. My wife was brilliant. “I would have been thrilled with her. She might overhaul our gaming websites.”
Dario snapped his finger. “Right?”
“So you’re not intimidated at all by her IQ and her computer abilities?”
“If I had known this, I would have been prepared for it…” I paused. “Once I’ve gained her loyalty, of course. I assumed I was getting a wife who would run my household and give me heirs.”
“That right there.” Rachel pointed her bottle at me. “Lose that assumption.”
“I already did. I wish Natalya had been honest with me. I was honest with her.”
“About said expectations?”
I scowled at her. “Can we move past that? I was wrong, all right? To set expectations and crush my wife’s—ah fuck.” Crush Natalya’s heart and spirit. I couldn’t say the words aloud, but they wrapped my chest in a vise of shame and guilt. I needed to fix this. All this time I was seeing her as a weakness, but she wasn’t. She made me want things. I wanted to build a future with her.
Another thought occurred to me.
“But it’s not a split personality, right? This Rayne person never existed?”
“Doc Gleason doesn’t think so. It’s simply amnesia. Natalya and Rayne are the same person. Do they feel different?”
“Other than she hates me right now? I don’t think so.”
“She appears more confident,” Dario said. “And there’s that slight change in her speech pattern.”
“That could be from building a life for herself and adapting. Her IQ doesn’t disappear simply because she has amnesia. The skill to shape an identity and what it needs to survive is still there.” Rachel pointed out. “She was twenty-two when she married you, twenty-three when she became a mother. She spent two years alone and built self-reliance. You’re just dealing with a more mature version of your wife, independent from the influence of the mafia and its constraints.”
I didn’t like the sound of Natalya building a life for herself away from me. “Have I…” I blew out a breath. “Gleason said she’s remembering the bad stuff because that might be related to how her amnesia formed.”
“He did mention dissociation might have something to do with it. Psychology is not an exact science and the way the brain handles memory isn’t either. But remember, when Natalya went missing, she was on the brink or was already in postpartum depression.”
“Perfect storm,” Dario said.
“Exactly,” Rachel said.
“I want to fix this,” I said in a resolute voice, because I couldn’t imagine being without her again. I had so many regrets after she disappeared. I played many scenarios where I treated her with the love she deserved. This was our second chance. “Whatever it takes. I don’t want to wait until she recovers her memory to prove how much…”
My breath hitched, and the two stared at me.
“How much she means to me.” I wasn’t going to declare the words for the first time to them. But Rachel and Dario must have seen something on my face because I saw approval on theirs, even relief, especially on my consigliere’s face.
“Are you going to confess that you manipulated her?” Rachel asked.
I spread my hands helplessly. “I don’t know how. I tried to earlier, but I got sidetracked.” The more I thought about how I fucked up, the more I realized the mountain I had to climb to win my wife back—with or without the amnesia.
“Are you ready to declare her alive to the family and associates?” Dario asked.
“Not yet. I need to figure out how to woo back my wife first.”
And this time without the intent of manipulation, but with the intent of showing her that I was in love with her. That she was a priority, and yes, my love for her was my weakness, but it was also an emotion that was giving me strength. And with clarity that I hadn’t seen in my thirty-seven years, love was something worth dying for.
Take that, Brad Bailey.
