It was late in the afternoon, and Natalya hadn’t emerged from the attic. Gleason had been up to see her. Rachel was itching to meet her but agreed that it was best if we didn’t overwhelm her.
Everyone in my household seemed to be working against me, though, even Martha. My housekeeper had looked in on me and Elias, but mostly I’d been taking care of my son all day. Not that I minded. My amnesiac wife seemed to hold everyone’s interest. I wondered if it was because they couldn’t wait for her to remember everything including my being a shitty husband.
I was alone with my boy. He wanted to see the ducks in the pond. The pond was at the end of the gardens where we had quite a menagerie. Our ducks and cats seemed to get along. Elias giggled when one of the cats—I was thinking one of Mrs. B’s kittens—walked alongside a Muscovy duck. Mrs. B was nowhere around. I got a text from Martha that she and my wife had a grand reunion. I guessed her favorite person was back.
I had a bag of corn and oats with me and let Elias scatter them on the ground. I sat back and watched my son giggle and chatter in happiness while the ducks surrounded him. I had an incessant need for my boy to connect to what was good and innocent before the life that awaited him tested his humanity. Though Emilio didn’t force the mafia life on his children, the ones who followed his footsteps won his approval and support, while those who didn’t became outcasts.
“Papà…duck.” Elias ran toward me, eyes shining with glee. I stared into his innocence and prayed for it to last longer. Men grew up fast in the family. It was necessary for survival, and I couldn’t see a way out of it. I would love my son no matter what path he chose because I didn’t want him to live with regrets. I just had to look at what happened to my brothers from Emilio’s first wife.
Junior was stressed before he was ready and ended up dead.
Ange went to jail, and unlike me, money couldn’t buy his freedom and he spent ten years incarcerated. As the underworld underwent a shift, the one to lead the family had to be strategic.
No one questioned Emilio when he named me his successor. No one questioned it to his face, but it didn’t mean there weren’t grumblings. That I didn’t have enough street cred. It was mostly the old-school mobsters who couldn’t get behind that the money wasn’t on the streets unless your business was drugs. Everything was online and international and in real-estate construction.
After Elias had fallen asleep on my lap, I carried him back to the house. It was five p.m. There was finally activity in the kitchen. Nessa was chopping vegetables and had two stock pots simmering. The flour was out and chicken pieces were in restaurant-sized plastic containers.
The pizza boxes from lunch were stacked on the dining table.
I shifted my son to one arm and flipped one of them open to grab a slice.
Nessa glanced up, narrowed her eyes, and jerked her head at the pots. She was telling me it was almost dinner and to stop snacking.
“What? I’m hungry,” I said. “And by the looks of it, it’ll be an hour or two anyway.”
She pursed her lips and went back to chopping. I had my ways of annoying her too. She knew I didn’t like snacking before dinner, but today was a special case.
I glanced at the chalkboard beside the stovetop. Chicken and dumplings.
“That’s the first thing you cooked for Natalya when she arrived.”
She glanced up again and grinned.
“Did she remember anything else?”
She shook her head.
“Oh, you’re back.” Martha walked into the kitchen and saw me with Elias.
“Where’s my wife?”
“She’s in the attic.”
“Still?” She better not use it to hide again or I’d wreck that damned place.
“It’s familiar to her, and she likes it up there. She did come down to look for Elias.”
I glanced at my son drooling on my shoulder. “There won’t be much interaction. And he might end up cranky if we force him awake.”
“She doesn’t have to interact with him,” Martha said softly. “Why don’t you go up there and spend time with her. It’s a beautiful time of the day up there.”
She didn’t have to tell me twice. With Elias in my arms, I walked past Rocco who was on a bench at the bottom of the steps. He was talking to another soldier.
“Where’s Tony?”
“He’s with the doctor in the living room. Making sure he won’t snoop.”
Good idea. I took the steps to the attic, two at a time. I rapped lightly.
At Natalya’s answer to come in, I opened the door and couldn’t say that I wasn’t surprised that my wife had removed the paneling from the back of the bookcases. She stacked her books on a separate shelf. She was sitting on the couch in front of the entertainment center.
“You’re not surprised to see me?” I asked.
“I’m surprised you hadn’t come up sooner,” she said. A warm look came over her face when her eyes fell on Elias. “Martha said he would be pooped when it’s you taking care of him.”
“He can be a handful.”
“She also said you never wanted to hire a nanny under the age of forty.”
Fifty if truth be told.
She averted her eyes. “Is that because you don’t want Elias to call anyone Mamma?”
“It doesn’t sound right when it’s not you.” I took another step into the room, but I didn’t want to discuss my craziness, so I tipped my chin toward the network of computers.
“My network engineers redid your configuration.” That was all Natalya needed to know at the moment. I wasn’t stupid. I had a genius hacker in my house who could wreak havoc on our online business and I wasn’t about to tell her I had servers in the basement. I walked to the crib by the window and lowered my sleeping son into it.
She must have sensed the lack of information. “Can I have a laptop? I promise not to hack you. I’m only half-kidding.” She winked. “Nessa told me you came up here often with Elias.” A smile touched the corners of her mouth as she flung a look at the picture frames on the shelves. “This is almost like a—”
“A shrine?” The corners of my mouth hitched up. I walked to her side and sat beside her. “That’s what Dario calls it. He must have heard it from Tony or Martha.”
“Yes.” Then the gaze she cast me was full of questioning wonder that pierced my chest with something uncomfortable. I wasn’t used to explaining the crazy things I did when Natalya disappeared. “Nessa told me you wrecked the TV and other furniture that used to be here. Why rebuild it if you hated that I used this place to get away and hide things from you?”
I focused my gaze on the dotted lights of the router. I deserved to be laid open like this, right? It was a struggle to find the right answer. How could I find the words to explain what I did when I couldn’t explain it to myself? Wait. I could. But that would expose my fear, my weakness.
“Do you really wanna know?” I still wasn’t looking at her.
“Yes.”
“Would it change how you look at me?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking. I turned to her and could have kicked myself when the wonder faded into sadness in her eyes.
Be vulnerable, asshole.
“I wouldn’t know, Luca,” she said in a flat voice.
“I’m sorry.” I raked my teeth over my bottom lip before I let out a big exhale and this time embarrassment with myself made me look elsewhere because I couldn’t bear it if I saw pity. “I can’t explain it other than I missed you with an ache that I couldn’t get out of my chest, and it eased a little when I was up here with Elias.” Raggedness serrated my next breath. “Because somehow…I felt that you were out there, alive, and even if you were far away, Elias and I…I felt closer to you when I was up here.”
A suppressed sob came from her, and my eyes snapped to hers.
They were filled with tears, and her mouth compressed until a choked cry burst from her lips. “That’s the most heartfelt thing you’ve said to me.”
“Natalya.” My voice was full of leashed longing. “I must kiss you, tesoro.”
She gave a brief nod.
I scooted closer, and I thought I would grab her face and plunder her mouth, but instead, my own touched hers tentatively and another fractured sob rose in her throat. I gently kissed her, and I tasted her tears and doubts and fears, or maybe they were my own. Our tongues mingled in slow exploration, and I schooled my own urges, the urge to take control and dominate. An alarm in my head told me this Natalya wasn’t the girl who had fallen in love with me in Paris. I wasn’t even sure if I destroyed her love before she disappeared.
I sensed a new beginning and hope.
But hope deflated when she gave a pained noise at the back of her throat and pulled away.
“It hurts,” she whispered, and I believed her. For I saw the anguish in her eyes and I wanted to roar.
I did this to her.
Rayne
“It hurts, Luca, and I don’t know why.”
He reluctantly let me go. It also hurt to look at him because I saw his torment, and I was sure he was taking all the blame. I hated this amnesia. It made me sorry for the Natalya I couldn’t remember. And therein lay the problem.
“Don’t you regret this.”
I gave a brief scornful laugh. “The kiss? We probably shouldn’t have.”
“Why? We both felt the pull. Don’t deny it.”
“I’m one confused woman and mixing in this pull, as you call it, only makes things murkier.”
“It could make you remember faster.”
“What is from my past and what is from the now?”
“You can’t separate them.”
“I don’t know if the pain I’m feeling is for the Natalya you claim you love or for myself.”
He reared back and slid toward the opposite armrest. “You mean you see yourself as two people?”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t look so horrified. I doubt I have a split personality.”
A crease appeared between his brows. “I’ve cleared that with Gleason. He said that’s not the case.”
My mouth curved into a grin. “So you guys discussed it.”
He found the corner of the room interesting. “Yes.”
“You’re not telling me the whole truth.”
He jumped to his feet and walked to the window again, looking down at our son. He didn’t say anything for a while, running a hand across his face several times before he said, “The doctor who delivered Elias was here today.”
“Why didn’t I meet her?”
“Because it might trigger more memories and there’s a fifty percent chance it’ll be the bad ones again.”
“Were you an ass to me while I was pregnant?”
“Do you want me to answer that?”
Luca was like a petulant child who was sorry for what he’d done, but wouldn’t confess to the worst of his sins, and hoped for blanket forgiveness. “No wonder you thought there might have been a possibility that I had left you.”
“A slim possibility. I’d been trying to be a better husband and father by then.”
“If you say so.”
He scowled at me, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or get exasperated. Even if it was only two distinct memories that came back to me, they had tremendous impact. If I tried to piece those fragments together, my head would explode. “So, you’re keeping the doctor away from me, but you’re also telling me this because you want to warn me of bad behavior that I might remember in the future?”
His mouth thinned.
“You’re warning me in advance?”
“I’m just putting it in perspective. All marriages have good and bad days, and my position as boss has interfered. Although I would admit I hid behind the position because of the way you affected me,” he explained in a way that told me he didn’t feel like explaining.
“Papà.” Our boy had woken up. An expression of relief crossed Luca’s face, and he immediately went to check on him. “Hey, sport. You need a change.” He carried Elias under his armpits and strode to the bathroom.
This I had to see. “Need help? Not sure if I remember how to change a diaper.”
He laid Elias on the changing table and grabbed a diaper and wipes.
“I usually do this on the floor since I can lock him down with my leg so he doesn’t interfere.” Luca gave a slight smile. “But he’s usually calm when he wakes up.”
“Ungry,” Elias chattered.
“Soon, kid,” Luca mumbled. “Talk to him while I make a quick change here.”
“Hey, Elias…remember me?”
“Wafles?”
“Hahah, that’s not my name, but yes. It’s…what do I tell him?”
Luca had paused in his diaper-changing duties, and the intensity in his eyes made my heart pound. Something as basic as diaper changing in this tiny bathroom, and despite the god-awful smell of Elias’s soiled diaper, made this moment strangely familiar.
“Mamma,” Luca said. “Might as well start with the truth, and he hasn’t called anyone that in a long time.”
How could one word cause havoc inside me? Elias smiled at me, and I absorbed that smile to the bottom of my heart.
Without thinking, I extended a hand toward my son. I cupped his cheek, and he turned his mouth toward it as if inhaling.
“Mamma,” I repeated. The word still sounded foreign to my tongue.
“Now we take care of this shit.” Luca tossed the dirty diaper into a diaper trash bin and washed his hands. “We need to get this boy fed.”
I laughed. “That’s all they do at this age, huh?”
“Sleep, eat, shit. Play, watch cartoons.” Luca sighed. “I’m not sure our son and I are giving you a strong incentive to regain your memory.”
Elias, freed from his father’s ministrations rolled to his feet and he was staring down at me. “Catch.”
Oh shit. And the boy leapt.
I caught him, but I must have swallowed my heart. I glared at Luca. “Is this something you do with him?”
He was scratching the back of his head. “Yeah. Sorry, forgot to warn you. I wasn’t expecting it. He only does it when I’m around.”
Then Luca shot me a tender look that gave me more extra heartbeats. “Our son looks good on you.”
We spent the rest of the evening in the attic. Elias demanded I feed him his chicken and dumplings. Luca said our boy was testing my boundaries, and it was up to me to show him how much he could get away with. But when we watched cartoons, Elias sandwiched himself between his dad and the armrest, and that was how he fell asleep. Meanwhile, I was aware of the heat from Luca’s body, of his powerful legs confined by the fabric of his sweatpants. I had an eyeful of them this morning and then some.
“I’m going to ask Martha to get him.” Luca whipped out his phone.
I put my hand on his arm. “We need to figure out the sleeping arrangements between us.”
“Same as this morning.”
I shot him a look that said he was crazy.
A slow smile curved his mouth. “You think you can’t resist me?”
Exasperated, I threw up a hand. “Have you always been this cocky?”
He cupped my cheek in an intimate gesture like he was going to kiss me. I had no room to move unless I got up. “Tesoro, why deny us the pleasure while you regain your memory?”
I grabbed his hand and removed it from my face. “And why muddle up my memory with sex?”
He chuckled deep in his throat, not in the least embarrassed. “Did I say sex?”
“You know that’s what’s going to happen.”
“I agree that I have powers of persuasion, although in the last months of your pregnancy, you demanded sex from me.”
“If that were true, that was the hormones speaking.”
His eyes heated. “I should get you pregnant more often.”
“Luca!” I didn’t know whether my irritation was at him or at myself because my skin became too tight, too hot, and heat pulsed between my legs so unexpectedly, I thought he heard it. Not even with our son sleeping right beside him could we contain the flames of our attraction. I wondered if we burned too hot, our relationship turned to ashes. “Be serious.”
“I am.” His mouth twitched. “But I think you’ll remember me sooner if…” His teeth raked his lower lip and he thumbed his chin as if wiping away drool. “You will remember me sooner if I’m buried deep inside you.”
“You’re impossible.” The words came out in a croaked whisper.
“And yet you don’t move away,” he rasped, his hand clasping my thigh.
“Do not kiss me,” I warned.
He regarded me for long beats before he sighed, leaned away, and stared at the TV screen. “I can move to Elias’s room.”
“If he was used to me, I would offer. Unless you want me to sleep up here.”
A strange look crossed his face. “No.”
“You can have our bedroom. I’m sure there are plenty of other rooms—”
“You sleep in our bed.” His tone was terse. I didn’t even need to pretend why he was being bullheaded about this. He was possessive. And the marriage bed was a symbol of that possessiveness. It didn’t matter if he was in it. It was where he had taken me over and over.
“I’ll tell Martha to give Elias a bath,” he said.
“Why bother her? We could do it. Tell her to have the rest of the night off.”
“You always spoil our household staff. You’re bad for my reputation. People will say the boss has gone soft.”
“For taking care of your son? I would think they’ll say you’re very much a family man. Isn’t that what the mafia is all about?”
“And now my wife has kicked me out of our bedroom.”
The drama. Somehow, I expected it from Luca. There was a flair around him that suited him. People underestimated him for being petty and petulant, but I’d seen the deadly look in his eyes. He was a dangerous man who lulled you to lower your guard before he struck.
He picked up my hand and kissed the back of it. “I’m going to woo you again.”
A determined gleam entered his eyes. And I was the target of that determination. Elation fluttered inside me. What girl wouldn’t want to be wooed by a man like Luca? At face value, he was a good catch. He was attractive and if I didn’t witness him almost shoot Brad, the way my body responded to his kiss spoke of the sheer chemistry between us. If he were a stranger, he’d be the best candidate for a fling…maybe a one-night stand?
Where was this wildness coming from?
I was having trouble breathing normally. Everything inside me felt more constricted.
He searched my face. “You’re tired.”
“Or overwhelmed.”
“That won’t do.”
“It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours.” I cupped my feverish cheeks. “The memories are lurking…I just need to unlock some more.” I couldn’t believe I’d made significant headway in such a short period compared to the two years where I hadn’t. My memories seemed to be triggered by surroundings more than people. The dining room. The foyer.
“Have you been to the nursery?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I think that’s enough for you today.”
I agreed.
