I awoke to the glare of incandescent lights and angry voices. I was lying on the floor with my brain about to pound out of my skull.
“You nearly killed our meal ticket! Are you stupid or what?” a man yelled. He was taller and wider than the first man I saw. Both of them still had their masks on.
“She was going to hit me with a rock.” The statement sounded like the whine of a rottweiler beaten by a chihuahua.
The other man scoffed, “She’s what? A hundred pounds?”
My thoughts were fuzzy as hell. I must have made a sound because I felt, rather than saw, two pairs of eyes pin me down with the weight of their stares.
“Elias,” I whispered, forcing my elbows to prop me up on my side. “Where’s my son?”
“He’s with the nanny.” The first man who spoke crouched in front of me. A tattoo of a knife through a skull was inked on the back of his hand. I’d seen that tattoo before. But it was as though cotton had replaced the network in my brain and my neurons refused to fire. Tattoo Man dragged me to a chair. My laptop was waiting for my password.
He put a piece of paper in front of me.
“Transfer the money you stole to these accounts.”
He wasn’t making sense. All I could do was stare at the numbers on the paper, then at the screen, and then back at the paper again. He slapped the back of my chair, jolting me. “Are you stupid or what?”
“I can’t think…” I mumbled. “Concussion.”
“She’s just faking it,” Whiner said. I heard the click of a gun and then the cold barrel touched my temple. My fingers went numb.
I typed in the password thrice. My fingers moved like limbs that had been left in the same position for so long that they forgot how to bend.
“I’m so sorry,” I sobbed, my body shuddering. “I just don’t know…”
Confusion seized me. That was when I realized it was the wrong computer. “I can’t get you all the money. Where are the ledgers?”
“The what?” Whiner asked.
“She meant these…hard wallets, right?” Tattoo Man asked.
I nodded. “I have fifty thousand—”
“Bullshit. I was told you have three hundred fifty million total.”
“I don’t have them here. I just can’t right now…” They were going to kill me. “I’d give you the money if I could.”
“Well, we can’t shoot you, but you know what? We can start with Nessa,” the man said. I caught the sadistic tone in his voice.
He whipped out his phone and turned away from me. “We don’t have it yet. She got feisty, and uh, our guy hit her…yeah…yeah…she said she was concussed. Yeah…that’s what I thought.” Long pause. “Fuck. And if that doesn’t work?” Another long pause. “Okay…okay.”
When he ended the call. He turned to me. “One last chance, Natalya.”
Even if I wanted to, my concentration was toast, and I wasn’t sure if it was from my blurry vision either. Besides my brain being hazy, it was panicking at the intricate hoops I needed to go through to get at the money from this laptop.
“We need to go back to the mansion. The things I need are there,” I told them.
Tattoo Man glared at me, then flicked his eyes to Whiner. “Kill the nanny.”
“No!” I jumped to my feet and started after Whiner, but the other guy grabbed my arm and twisted it behind me.
A shot rang out.
“No. Nessa!” I screamed. I went wild with fury and stomped on Tattoo Man’s foot. He cursed and let me go, but when I scrambled in the direction where Whiner disappeared, fingers yanked my hair and a stinging slap spun me around. I didn’t know where the pain was coming from. My scalp, my jaw, or my heart. “You asshole!”
I couldn’t see through the blur of tears. “Nessa…”
“One last chance.”
Whiner appeared. “That was a waste.”
Tattoo Man jerked me again and shoved me back in the chair. I could only sob in front of the laptop.
“Your son is next.”
“I can’t…” My ragged breath caught on a sob. They wouldn’t do it, right? But I wasn’t sure, and I wasn’t going to risk it. My son was all alone. I could hear him crying. My mother’s heart ached to go to him, but I had consigned him to death. I didn’t deserve him. “They didn’t bring what I need.”
“You should have told them,” Tattoo Man said. “Kill the son.”
“No! Luca will give you what you want. Whatever you need. He can match it.”
“That’s not what we want.”
I shot out of my chair despite the pounding in my head and went after Whiner when he headed back to the room.
Bang!
Nooooo!!!
“Nooooo.” I woke up to hands pushing against my shoulders. Weighing me down. I punched, clawed, and kicked. I tried to bite an arm trying to pin me down.
Someone cursed and then, “Natalya!”
“You killed Elias. You killed him!”
“Our son is fine!”
The hands that were restraining me disappeared, and I was engulfed in a familiar embrace. I struggled some more until Luca’s reassuring voice finally cleared the dark haze of the nightmare of memories. “He’s fine. It was a dream.”
I couldn’t stop shaking. I was not cold. Warmth surrounded me, but the shudder rippling through me was uncontrollable, and so were the tears that wouldn’t stop.
At one point Luca talked to someone else in the room, but mostly, he was murmuring words of comfort. That he was with me. That Elias was fine. That I was safe with him now. He said those words over and over until the meaning of them sunk in and quelled the terror and despair in my heart. Finally, I was able to focus on what was real and my crying subsided.
I noticed I wasn’t in the nursery, but in the bedroom and it was daytime.
He was rubbing my back. The action comforted me. I exhaled a deep breath and pulled away.
“I’m better.”
Luca studied my face. “You gave us a fright, baby.”
My mouth tipped up at one corner. “I passed out, I guess?”
“Yes. You were unconscious for hours and wouldn’t wake up.” His jaw clenched. “I never want to hear the sound that came from your lips again.”
I gave him a puzzled look.
“A sound like a wounded animal.” His voice pitched low. “Do you remember that night?”
“Part of it replayed in a dream…a nightmare. I must have slipped from unconsciousness to sleep.” I probed the memories of that night. “I remember everything until the second time they knocked me out.”
Luca’s face turned murderous. “So it was more than that one time Nessa told us about?”
“I think the second time was when my amnesia took hold and they broke my wrist.” My voice cracked, and I felt tears coming on again. “When I thought they killed Elias.”
Luca’s eyes slid shut, his mouth tightened as if he was trying to keep from asking me more questions. When his eyes opened, they were calm, but I wondered what passed through him in those few seconds as he processed my words. “I don’t want to push you. Gleason is on his way. When you’re ready, you can tell me.”
Doc checked me over and told me to take it easy, but I needed to get everything off my chest. It was nine in the morning anyway. I felt like death warmed over, my pounding headache wouldn’t go away, and there was that phantom twitchiness from my previously broken right wrist, so I relented when he offered painkillers.
After breakfast, I met with Luca and Dario in the study.
My husband eyed me warily. “We can leave this for a few days.”
“No, we can’t because I want to move on from this.” I brought the laptop with me. Before I connected to their network, I quarantined and neutralized the Trojan they installed on my laptop. If anyone had messed with my laptop, it would have been that time I gave birth to Elias. I learned from Martha they found oral Misoprostol in Yvonne’s room, a drug used to induce labor. That would mean they had access to my DEC-phone and knew how to use it. My stomach soured at the thought that Doriana was involved. And The Friar? To think I admired that hacker. Many things made little sense. Doriana could have asked me to transfer the money to her accounts.
Luca gave a brief nod and rounded the desk and took his seat. Dario and I sat in front of it. I had the computer on my lap. My fingers were flying over the keyboard as I lined up all the screens I wanted to share with them. I glanced at Luca and then at Dario. “I work for a hacking network involved in stopping human trafficking. Santino and Frankie didn’t kidnap me because I was Vincenzo’s daughter…”
“Holy fuck,” Luca whispered. I could see the cogs turning in his brain, and he’d already come to the right conclusion. “You have Orlov’s money.”
I rolled my lips. “Yes.”
Dario was also staring at me with narrowed, semi-accusing eyes. “That night of the power outage. One of his lieutenants had an auction that got hit by hackers.”
My head sunk between my shoulders. “Yes.”
“Son of a bitch.” Luca’s chair scraped back, and he walked to the window. He didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “Three hundred fifty million dollars.”
“I haven’t checked yet.”
“Where are they?”
“Swiss banks and cryptocurrency.”
“I don’t understand,” Dario said. “Why is the money with you? You said a hacking network. Didn’t they demand the money be turned over? Why leave it with you?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t the only one who nearly got in trouble. My handler did too, and she was uneasy about receiving the money.”
“That’s a lot of money. She could have disappeared,” Luca said, face grim. “Are you going to contact her?”
“I will.”
Luca moved away from the window, but instead of returning to his chair, he walked to me and turned my chair slightly. Then he got into a crouch. His whole body was locked tight, jaw clenched hard. I could feel the aggression thrumming through him. He voiced it in measured words. “We could have avoided a lot of heartache if you trusted me with this.”
I inhaled a ragged sob. “You didn’t give me enough reasons to trust you.” This was it. The moment of truth I’d waited years to find out. I turned my screen toward him and played the video. Luca’s brows furrowed, then he recognized what was playing on the screen. Dario got up from his seat and went behind Luca.
“Madone,” Dario muttered. “How? There were no cameras in that room.”
“We had a drone planted in it.”
“We?” Luca stood, glaring down at me. “We?” he repeated. “Your handler?”
“No. Someone I tag-teamed with.”
“This was the night you got abducted.” Luca wasn’t asking a question. He sounded like a lawyer entering evidence in court. “The footage got cut off. What happened?”
“The hacker discovered we’d been compromised.”
Luca sneered. “Convenient, don’t you think? To leave the video out of context.”
My spine stiffened. “Are you denying you were involved in the sex trafficking of minors?”
Luca stared at me for a charged, furious minute. Even if he was motionless, the earlier aggression morphed into rage. It was pulsing at his temple, in the clenching muscle at his jaw, at the tensed cords of his neck. His hands at his sides barely moved. A minute expired, and he wordlessly stepped up to his desk and picked up his phone. Soundlessly scrolling through it before handing it to me.
My attention fell on the headline of a news article that was two years old. “Zavarida Group members exposed.” It went on to say that law enforcement groups around the world apprehended several high-profile businessmen and politicians belonging to a sex cult linked to human trafficking.
“You…”
“Carmine and I coordinated that operation for months. If you and your partner screwed up the transactions, that would have alerted those men and it would have risked those kids.”
I inhaled sharply. “None of the Lillies were over eighteen.”
“You should have trusted me, Natalya.”
I was shaking my head because I wasn’t sure now if I did the right thing. The memories were too new, but they were still memories from two years ago and not every detail was clear. I returned his phone. He tossed it on the desk and crouched in front of me again. “That night, Carmine was not there for the auction. He didn’t respond until that morning when the cops came to the house.”
“You suspected him of my disappearance?”
“Did he know you were doing these things?”
“No.” I gave a brief snort of derision. “But come to think of it. He’d been asking me if I’ve been hacking again, but he wouldn’t put those kids in danger. There was nothing Carmine despised more than human traffickers. He hated Santino for working with the Russians.”
“So he knew about Santino’s arrangement with Orlov before your father found out?”
“I don’t know.”
Luca walked back to his desk, leaning back until his chair creaked. Dario returned to his seat.
“You know what I think?” Luca linked his fingers across his torso, drumming them in the way I’d seen him do when he was analyzing information. “I’ve long suspected your cousin was trying to drive a wedge between us. We never figured out the drive-by shooting incident in front of the club. I bet Carmine set it up, and he thought I would remain in Chicago and miss your first checkup. I’m beginning to see what his endgame is.” Luca looked at his consigliere. “What do you think, Dario?”
“I agree.”
“Surely you don’t think…” I started but trailed off. It was like I was hit by a freight train. “Oh my God…”
He nodded. “He wants to control the Galluzo and Chicago. I wouldn’t be surprised if he manipulated Santino to overthrow Vincenzo and gave him a list of his inner circle to get rid of. He told Santino to kidnap you. He was the one who told me you were with Frankie Rossi, and made sure Vincenzo knew the information came from him to curry favor.”
“And we brought that snake into our midst where he gathered supporters from both our organization and Orlov’s,” Dario added. “Planted seeds of discontent to empower them to overthrow Luca and Orlov. The money they planned to get from Natalya was to finance their coup.”
“I can confirm one of the men in that burnt house was Turo—Yvonne’s boyfriend,” I said. “Although they wore masks, I recognized the knife through a skull inked on the back of his right hand. The voice also matches.” I was too concussed to make the connections that night, but it seemed clear as day after my dream. Luca and Dario didn’t look surprised. “But…you already know this.”
“Two of our capos were involved including a group of Russians from Orlov’s organization. The Russians were the ones who abducted you from the house. Nessa also confirmed that she thought she heard Yvonne.”
“The night I gave birth was the only time I could think of that someone could have messed with my laptop. Yvonne was left to mind the mansion. I didn’t have the teddy bear then. My laptop was in a backpack. She could have let anyone in to install the Trojan or she could have done it with simple instructions. Once I logged in to the auction, I was compromised.”
“They didn’t count on you getting amnesia. No money meant no funding. My bet is still on Carmine. He panicked and erased all evidence of the conspiracy. That’s why he turned on Turo and burned the house down. I couldn’t believe he had the audacity to show up at the mansion.” Luca’s jaw worked reflexively and he stared at me directly before saying, “He gave me ammunition to manipulate you.”
A phantom pain speared my womb and an involuntary cry escaped my lips, my hand instinctively lowering to the area where I’d felt Elias move frequently as a baby.
“Are you all right?” Luca rose from his seat, his eyes widening in panic. “Should I call Gleason?”
I closed my eyes and shook my head. My brain and my heart were in survival mode while I exhumed the layers of events in the hierarchy of pain. The pain that changed my feelings for Luca forever. The night he missed our son’s birth.
When I peeled my eyes open, Luca’s eyes were focused on my hand that was splayed on my abdomen and his throat bobbed. “So now you know.”
“Now I know why you kept me from meeting Rachel.”
“And?” He speared Dario a look before returning it to me. His consigliere mumbled his excuse and left the study.
“Are you asking me if I forgive you for that night you missed Elias’s birth? Because I’m not sure if it was a matter for forgiveness. I don’t understand the pain I’m feeling because you were simply doing your duty to family.”
He nodded briefly, his gaze watchful. “I understand.”
“Do you?” I shook my head. “But that’s not the end of it, is it? I don’t know if your worst transgression was promising our firstborn to Papà.”
Luca dropped his gaze, his shoulder slumping in defeat. He moved away from the desk and I thought he was rounding it so he could plead his case in front of me, but instead he moved to the window and looked outside. “I don’t want to make excuses anymore. Ambition blinded me, but please know these past two years without you, our son has taught me so much about what mattered the most, what was important.” He raised his arm and sliced it in the air in a careless wave. “To see what’s bullshit.” He turned around. “I can only promise that I have changed, Natalya.” He swallowed hard. “I love you. I’ll always love you. Time hasn’t change that and I promise to make it up to you for being a shitty husband.” He erased the distance between us and crouched in front of me. “Let me prove it to you, tesoro.” He searched my face. “Give me this chance, please?”
There was humility and sincerity in his plea, but the return of my memories was an avalanche of jumbled thoughts and emotions. Now that I’d eliminated Luca’s role in the sex trafficking of minors I could concentrate on the conflicts of our relationship. Knowing who I was now, could I live with this man who had caused me so much pain? “I need to sort through my feelings, so I’ll be needing some space.”
A muscle twitched at his jaw. “Of course.”
“I hope you can be patient with me.”
“However long you need,” He pressed a kiss to my forehead, and when he leaned away, a wry smile tipped his mouth. “As long as it doesn’t take another two years.”
Luca
It had been a week since Natalya regained her memory. In that week, there was no progress in our relationship.
Patience was easier declared than done. Patience was definitely not my strong suit when Brad Bailey was staring at my wife with longing eyes and indulging my son with a fatherly smile that should belong exclusively to me.
Gleason told me the coffee shop owner was threatening to go to the cops unless he saw Natalya and the doctor with his own eyes. The doctor also said there was nothing more he could do for my wife, and it was time for him to go home.
I questioned my sanity for allowing Bailey to pick up Gleason, but I had a masochistic desire to see how my wife reacted to him. I didn’t know whether I was relieved or disappointed that Natalya gave me no reason to go homicidal over Bailey.
“You’re surprisingly calm,” Rachel said beside me as both of us watched Gleason, Bailey, my wife, and Elias linger in front of the barista’s Ford Expedition. Rachel came by to say goodbye to the doctor.
“Did Natalya ask you here to stage an intervention in case I went gonzo?” My wife had daily sessions with Rachel, and it annoyed me they invoked doctor-client-privilege bullshit and kept me in the dark about their discussions. I asked if I should be part of Natalya’s therapy, but Rachel thought I would only hinder my wife from opening up if I were present.
I was offended, even if I agreed with that assessment. I hated feeling helpless, and I wanted to understand why my wife was avoiding me. Was there something else she wasn’t telling me?
Bailey and Natalya hugged one more time. The man shot me daggered looks past her shoulder. I awarded him with a slow smug grin, even when it hurt my jaw to maintain that smile when his hug went on a bit too long.
I cleared my throat and stepped forward. “Bailey, you should get going.”
Natalya stepped back from the barista and glared at me for my rudeness. “Luca.”
“No, it’s all right. I get where the man is coming from.”
“You mean you get where her husband is coming from?”
Bailey, for all his wisecracks, extended his hand. “No hard feelings.”
I raised a brow and shook his hand.
“Just make her happy.”
Oh, for the love of God. Despite his martyr-like declaration, the extra squeeze in our handshake didn’t go unnoticed. We locked gazes for a while longer, and I was sure the expression in mine reflected the veiled threat in his.
“Well, this was an interesting vacation.” Gleason came to our side, angling his arm between us, his purpose clear. Bailey and I broke our stalemate so I could shake the old man’s hand.
But a shake wasn’t enough for Gleason. I pulled him in for a hug. “Take care of yourself, Doc. Come visit us sometime.”
I felt him stiffen, and I wanted to laugh. When we broke apart, I said, “Or we can drop by for a visit on our way to Grafton. We have business there.”
“That would be nice,” he responded feebly.
“Maybe Dario and you can go fishing.” While the doc and I made small talk, my eyes followed Bailey as he made his way to the driver’s side. Natalya stepped back with Elias and stood beside Rachel.
“Maybe. I wish you all the best, Moretti.”
“There’s always a spot for you in my organization.”
“I’m an old man. I don’t need the excitement.”
I clapped him one more time on the back and squeezed his shoulder before I sent him on his way. I’d grown fond of the old bugger and I didn’t mind having him around.
“I’m going to miss him,” Natalya said as the taillights of the SUV blinked some distance down the driveway.
“I’m sure you meant Doc Gleason, right?” I gritted.
Natalya glared at me, and without answering me, she picked up Elias and marched back into the mansion.
My eyes followed them. I realized Natalya and Elias had grown closer. My boy didn’t even bother with me this week and was all about his mother. A seed of anxiety started to grow in my gut.
“Don’t say a word,” I growled at Rachel.
“I wasn’t,” my friend remarked dryly. “I enjoy seeing you dig your hole deeper.”
I cast her an irritated glance before I started after Natalya. “Do you have a session with her today?”
“No. She doesn’t need therapy, really.” Rachel matched my strides.
“If you’re thinking I do, think again.”
“No, but your idiocy is tiring.”
I paused right in front of the door and veered toward the gardens at the back of the mansion. Rachel sighed and followed me.
When we were in front of the Botticelli angel fountain, I faced her. “What am I doing wrong?”
“The question is, what are you doing right now?”
“I give her flowers every day. Different ones each time because she has to remember by now that she loves them, yet I’ve seen her give them away to my men to give to their wives or girlfriends—” I paused when Rachel burst out laughing. “It’s not funny. I’m trying here. She kept the peonies from yesterday. She seems to like those. Hates the white roses.”
Rachel raised a brow. “Those were her wedding flowers.”
Her innuendo was so strong, I smacked my forehead in realization. “Her mother.”
My friend shrugged. “Yes. And those chocolates are good, by the way.”
I scowled at her. “I’m going to ask her out to dinner tonight.”
“What, like a date?”
I prayed for patience. “Of. Course. Like. A. Date.”
“Well, good luck with that.”
I started to pace. “Then what the hell do you think I should do?”
Rachel gave a long-suffering sigh. “All right. I’ll clue you in.”
I made an elaborate, if not a derisive wave with my arm. “Please do. Because I’m out of fucking ideas.”
“You’re waiting for Natalya to remember she loves you.”
Confused, I looked at her. “She already knows she loves me. She remembers everything.”
“Memories evoke emotions, but those emotions are different from the ones people experience when they fall in love.”
“I’m not following.”
“At the risk of sounding unromantic…what is falling in love if not brain chemistry? How did she fall in love with you?”
I sighed heavily. “Paris.”
“Where you manipulated her…” At my scathing look, she quickly added, “But she did fall in love with you.”
“If you’re suggesting we take off to Paris, I don’t think she’d be willing to leave Elias. And she’s in a vulnerable situation right now.” I had horrific nightmares that Natalya had amnesia again and was running barefoot through the cornfields, with Turo and his crew chasing her.
“But you have to bring back that rush for her. Falling in love is broken down into chemicals and hormones in the body. Adrenaline and dopamine among them. There’s attraction definitely, and that’s an altogether different set of hormones. You just need to bring in the swoons, Luca. For her, she knows in her head she loves you, but the heart needs to catch up because she’s been without those feelings for two years. And she’s been obsessing about the bad parts of your marriage because those memories came back first. Her mind at the time of amnesia was protecting her from the heartbreak. And that’s why it’s harder for the emotion of love to manifest.”
“In a weird way, you’re making sense,” I muttered. “Should I kidnap my wife somewhere? Maybe to an island?”
Rachel rolled her eyes. “You need to make her feel secure that Elias would be fine, but both of you need alone time to reconnect.”
“I have an idea.”
