CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Will
Sometimes it takes the worst fucking day of your life to put things in perspective.
All the money in the world can’t get me to New York on time. I’m not more powerful than the weather and thus, the woman I can no longer deny being gut-sick in love with has a five-hour jump on me. Knowing Teresa, she wouldn’t have wasted any time getting from the airport to Staten Island, so there’s no chance she’s waiting for tomorrow to get herself killed. It’s all happening now. Or it already happened and my life has been reduced to ashes.
I’m in the backseat of a black police SUV, weaving through traffic on the goddamn Verrazano Bridge. Two officers are taping wires to my chest and repeating the same words over and over, but I’m barely aware of their presence. My mind has retreated into an almost trance-like state, forcing me to think painfully clear thoughts to distract me from the reality I could be facing ten minutes from now. Money. It couldn’t help me when I needed it most. It means nothing to me. But that’s not some major revelation. I’ve been driving in the opposite direction of New York and my bank accounts for weeks now, trying to figure out which man I’m meant to be. The man my father built, or the man I was originally.
What I’ve learned today—on my hellishly long flight from Arkansas—is that my father could not have built the man who loves like this. Loves his dog—who is on the way home in the backseat of another vehicle. And loves a woman like the earth is ending. I am the man I set out to be. The path I took to get here changed, but I didn’t.
He didn’t touch the man on the inside. He didn’t even come close.
More words spoken by Teresa in the dark. Even when I was livid with her for deceiving me, I should have known the parts that mattered hadn’t been an act. There’s no way I could have been changed for the better by something or someone false. No way I could have been this affected. Why didn’t I listen to my instincts? If I lose her, if I let her walk away and get herself killed, it doesn’t matter what kind of man I am. He’ll be ripped clean out of me, leaving nothing but an empty husk behind.
I’ve been confident that my father would one day be held accountable for the lives he’s ruined, including my mother’s. I didn’t expect to be racing the clock, waiting for some sign that he’s got Teresa. Or that he’s…hurt her. But my call to bring in the cops led to them asking me to cooperate. They think there’s less of a chance of Teresa and Nicky—or any officers—being hurt in a crossfire if I go in and negotiate her release.
If it means Teresa walking out of this unharmed, I’ll go to hell and back.
Another NYPD unit is staking out a restaurant called Tommaso’s and Silas’s house, but he hasn’t left the restaurant for an hour—and he’s alone. They assured me Teresa is nowhere to be seen. So where the hell is she? They’re working on finding her brother, Nicky, but apparently he’s so far off the damn grid, even the expert I’ve got working for me can’t even find the beginning of a paper trail.
The tires of the SUV squeal as we floor it through a yellow light. The worst of the storm has passed, but water still sprinkles the windshield of the car, the droplets illuminated by passing headlights. I’m distracted by the memory of Teresa arm wrestling in Texas, when one of the officer’s phone rings.
I sit forward as he answers. “Yes?” A pause. “The girl, too?”
Frigid cold grips me. We’re going eighty down a residential block I don’t recognize and I can barely keep myself from throwing myself out the nearest door. “Where is she?”
The officer takes a sharp turn and tosses the phone down. “Teresa Valentini and her brother, Nicholas Valentini, were brought in through the back entrance. She appears to be injured, but managed to walk on her own accord—”
Relief is like a whip cracking over my head, even though it’s tempered with white-hot rage. Someone hurt her. Someone is going to pay. I don’t hear the rest of what he says. I can’t. I just focus on getting there. Getting to where I need to be. And when we’re parked a few blocks away, I’m out of the still-running vehicle like a demon hell-bent on revenge, taking only the barest of seconds to compose myself before trying the restaurant door and finding it locked.
If any more proof was needed that Teresa was right and the man I’ve always tried to subdue inside me is alive and well, it comes when I step back and kick the door in. A man spins around in the doorway and reaches inside his coat, but I’ve taken him by surprise and he doesn’t get there in time. I’ve got a few inches on him, so I swing in a downward arc and his face contorts in pain. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t satisfying. What kind of a monster stands guard while a woman needs medical attention so close by? He might even be the one who inflicted her pain. That possibility has me reaching down and gripping his collar, dragging him up for the punch that puts his lights out.
Adrenaline is pumping like motor oil in my veins, making everything else move in slow motion. It speeds up and narrows down to one thing when I turn at the end of the hallway, the dining room coming into view. Teresa. She’s slumped on the floor with her hands tied behind her back. There’s blood matting her hair and running a river down the side of her face, stemming from a hideous blow at her temple. Her eyes are so glassy and she’s clearly disoriented, barely able to react to me walking in. I don’t realize I’m shouting until my hearing returns with a sharp vengeance. The sound cuts off when I see the gun pointed at her head, all remaining oxygen leaving me in a rush.
“If you pull that trigger,” I tell my father. “I will murder you with my bare hands.”
The man I believed to be a hero for so long continues pointing the gun at an injured woman. My injured woman. Black blinks in front of my eyes, the motor oil in my veins turns to cement. Some part of me must have still thought he wasn’t all bad. He is, though. He’s a motherfucker without a conscience. And that means he’d pull that trigger.
Looking at Teresa, Silas tips his head toward me. “And here you thought he’d already forgotten your name.”
“Teresa.” Her name sounds like it’s being strangled out of me. I want to shout at her that me forgetting a single second with her is an impossibility, but I won’t do that when it can be used against us. Still… “Look at me.”
She doesn’t. Even if—when—we get out of this alive, she could already be lost to me. I doubted her. I shamed her. Let her walk into this inferno alone. Why the hell would she forgive me? “Nicky,” Teresa says finally, shivering. “Don’t let him hurt Nicky.”
For the first time, I notice the huddled figure across the room. A young man with the same coloring as Teresa. It’s a testament to how distracted Teresa makes me, because he’s seething so hard, I can’t believe I didn’t see him before. His hands are also tied, his wrath is aimed at my father’s back. And I don’t know what it is about this kid, but I’m instantly on his side. I’d built up some resentment without realizing it, thanks to his existence putting his sister in danger, but through his anger, I see it’s about fear for his sister. So we’re on the same damn page.
“I won’t let him hurt either of you,” I say, forcing my blood to go from a rapid boil to a simmer. “He wanted me in New York. Here I am.”
“Too late,” says Silas. “She chose what was behind door number two. A certain pawn shop owner is going to turn up sooner or later in the landfill and she’s a loose end, along with her brother. Aren’t you, sweetheart?”
The venomous look she sends my father makes me fall even more in love with her. Fierce, beautiful woman. “What about me?” Subtly as possible, I take a step in her direction. “You going to kill me, too?”
“You won’t say shit about this, son.” He turns his face up, half of his sickening smile illuminated in the dim light above. “You’re going to get back to work now and protect both of our interests. Your little vacation has your investors spooked and there’s talk of them pulling out. I can’t have that.”
My neck goes tight. “Why do you give a shit?”
“You made your mother an investor. She made me her partner. Turns out it pays to go straight. I’m making a nice income off your company, and you fucking off to God knows where isn’t going to jeopardize that.” By the time he finishes, my blood is rapping in my temples. “There’s dirty money running through the lifeblood of your company, son. All traceable back to me. You get me arrested and expose me, you’re going down, too.”
Am I shocked? Yes and no. I knew this man was capable of anything. Knew my mother had a weak spot when it came to my father. But on some level, I must have still believed he wanted my success for the right reasons. Not just so he could use me for his own ends. None of this matters now, though. Only getting Teresa and her brother out of here alive.
“I never gave a damn about the company. I never wanted any of it.” Remembering the wire taped to my chest, I focus on keeping him talking. “Until now. When I found out what you really are, I looked at the company and saw something you built.” I shake my head. “That’s bullshit, though. It’s mine. Nothing is going to take it away from me. But if you pull that trigger, make no mistake, I will burn it alive.”
I feel, rather than see, Teresa’s glance shoot toward me, but I’m afraid if I look at her injuries again, I’m going to lose my temper. “This is all hinging on a woman, huh?” He sounds almost curious. “I lied to you. She lied to you. What makes her sins excusable?”
“Your reasons were selfish. Hers weren’t. And I don’t need to explain another goddamn thing to you. Put the fucking gun down.”
“Will.”
Teresa’s scream pierces the air a second before pain cracks down on the back of my head. Red coats my vision, a ringing starting in my ears. Ignoring the expanding throb pushing behind my eyes, I spin around and catch a fist to the ribs. Not the man I took down upon walking in—no, this is the second man I would have remembered to be aware of if Teresa wasn’t hanging in the balance. I’m so pissed about the attack taking my attention off what’s happening behind me, I barely take the time to square up before I tackle the motherfucker and deliver my first blow. A second, third. He reaches for a gun in his waistband and my father’s no sounds like it’s coming from another planet. No matter, though, because I secure the weapon first and waste no time pointing it where it counts.
At Silas. Who is now pointing his gun at my attacker, not Teresa.
There is some humanity inside him. Or maybe it’s still about money, just like it has always been. Whatever the reason, though, it’s decades too late.
“Drop your gun. It’s over.”
He tries to swing the gun back toward Teresa and I don’t hesitate. I fire. And maybe there’s some love leftover for my father, because the bullet only catches him in the side. I’m moving before he even jerks back, throwing myself in between him and Teresa, knocking the gun free of his hand in the process. We both dive for it, just as loud shouting fills the room. Cops. Weapons drawn. My father stops attempting to grab the gun and simply goes still on the floor, his eyes closing, fingers threading together at the back of his head.
I spare him a final look, then turn away as an officer presses a knee into his back and cuffs him. I’m desperate to get the goddamn ropes off Teresa’s wrists and have her in my arms. Even as I untie her, she still won’t look at me, and God, it makes my heart drop to my knees, but I’ve been paying close attention to this woman. I know her. She takes pride in being independent, especially when it comes to protecting her brother, and she’s considering what happened tonight a failure on her part. She doesn’t want to be rescued when she’s always been the cavalry. Not to mention, she shut me out the second I walked away. I might as well be a ghost here untying the knots around her wrists. I get that.
When the final length of rope is unwound, she mutters a thank you. Then she’s off like a shot toward her brother to make sure he’s okay where he sits on the floor, giving a statement to a kneeling policewoman. Letting Teresa walk away from me after almost losing her is like having my organs pried out, but I command myself to be patient.
Almost.
“Someone get her a fucking medic. Now.”
*
Teresa
I’ve given my statement nine times about what happened at the pawn shop and later, at the restaurant. I’m not sure I’ll ever get the memory of that man tied to the chair out of my head. I’m grateful I wasn’t conscious to witness what happened to him, but tomorrow I’m going to find out his name. I’m going to do what I can to make things right for whoever he left behind. The blood has been cleaned off my face, a bandage applied to the right side of my head. I would normally hate people fussing around me, but Nicky is sitting next to me, safe and free, so I can pretty much deal with anything.
Except for Will.
I can’t deal with the way Will is watching me from across the room.
Damn him for coming after me. For proving me wrong and not only saving me and Nicky, but eradicating the evil that sent my family on the run to California. Who knows how many people have been terrorized by his father? Forced to pay protection money, forced to abandon their sense of right and wrong out of fear. Now they’ve been freed. I’m not naïve enough to think someone new won’t pop up in Silas’s place, but his deeply rooted influence on this neighborhood is over.
The way Will is watching me says this battle between us isn’t over, however. I know he wants to speak with me—among other things—and his restraint is making me edgy. What does he want? Since boarding the plane to New York this morning, I’ve been numb to the broken heart he left me with, kneeling on the hotel room floor. But that self-administered novocaine is beginning to wear off and I can’t decide if I should let myself feel the fresh pain, to remind myself of how vulnerable these feelings for Will make me. Or if I should re-inject myself with a double dose of painkiller.
“Are we done here?” I ask the detective.
“I am,” Nicky drawls, jerking his chin at Will. “You’re not.”
“Shut up.”
My brother squints an eye at me. “Have a heart, Resa. He saved our asses.”
“I know.” A knot forms in my throat, remembering how I felt sitting on that floor, knowing I couldn’t do anything to save myself or Nicky. The utter disbelief and horror of being seconds from losing everything. The traitorous joy and relief that gripped me when Will arrived when I’d given up all hope. “I’m grateful. I’m just…”
Confused. The things I discovered about myself in Will’s bed conflict with how I feel right now. I like the illusion of being grateful, being his possession, but after having him throw those new discoveries in my face and walking out, I don’t appreciate feeling grateful toward him. At all. Not in the cold light of day. So while I could never thank him enough for coming to our rescue, my stung pride is reverberating like a plucked tuning fork.
“It won’t hurt to hear him out,” Nicky says, breaking into my thoughts. “He had a bad night, too, you know. If you’re into him, might want to consider that.”
“I have,” I whisper. Silas is going to be fine, health-wise, but Will pulled the trigger and chose me over the potential opposite. I want to embrace the gratitude that continues to pile on, but then I remember him throwing the money on the ground and my heart rebels. Will seems to realize it, too. Seems to be reading my thoughts from his tense position among the flurry of police activity. “What are we going to do?” I ask Nicky to distract myself. “Go back to LA?”
His gaze traces my profile. “Is that what you want to do?”
“I don’t know.” There’s a welling in my throat pushing the honesty free and for once, the moment feels right. Unavoidable. “Maybe it’s time to be on your own, Nicky. I love you. I’ll always have your back. But I need to have my own, too.”
I turn in time to catch his nod. “It’s okay to let someone else watch it once in a while, you know.” His smile makes his eyes—so much like my father’s—twinkle. “Maybe not as much as I do, but…once in a while. Okay?”
We share a laugh and I lean into him. My eyes clash with Will’s. “We’ll see.”
*
Will
My patience runs out right around the time someone else gets to put their arm around Teresa. I don’t care if it’s her brother. I almost lost her tonight—technically, I still don’t have her back—and not comforting her when she was almost killed is like a screwdriver twisting in my ribs. Enough of this. When the detective dismisses her and she stands, sending me a look from beneath her eyelashes, I stride toward her. And I don’t stop until I’ve picked her up and started toward an empty storage room, away from the multitude of detectives.
Her brother’s laugh cracks through the room around the same time Teresa starts to struggle against me. “Put me down.”
“In a minute.”
“Now.”
I kick the storage room door closed behind me. “Fine.”
As soon as she’s on her feet, I back her into the wall, leaving only the barest space between us. Hands at my sides, I let her shove me, but I don’t budge. “There’s nothing to talk about,” she says, her voice all over the place. “I was just acting the whole time. None of it was real.” Her shrug is jerky, her gaze glued to my neck. “Sorry.”
Despite the fact that I know the truth, her strategy catches me in the dead center of my stomach. “Bullshit, Teresa. I know better.”
Her eyes are full of unshed tears as they lift to mine. “How?”
Jesus. There’s so much vulnerability packed into that single word, I can’t wade through it all. I did a fucking number on her this morning and I’ll never forgive myself. After seeing tonight with my own eyes what she was up against, however, I do forgive her lies. She needs to believe that. She needs to know I trust her. Above all else, though, she needs to know I believe this thing between us is real. That it has been real since day one, whether she had an ulterior motive or not. “How do I know better? Because you and that act crumbled underneath me the first time we kissed. Remember that? You looked up at me and I saw right inside your gorgeous head. You might have pulled your little topless seduction performance off without a hitch, but you went down in the second round. Me? I went down in the first. For you, Teresa. When my fucking heart feels like it’s being ripped out over here, it’s not because of some performance.” I reach back and pull the GoPro out of my pocket. “I knew what we had was real before I heard this, but hell if I didn’t listen to it a hundred times on the way here.”
Her frown clears when I hit play, the sounds of her sobbing river confession filling the tiny storage room. I could love him. Maybe I already do. As soon as past Teresa says those words, the gathered moisture spills out of eyes and down her cheeks. “You call that proof?”
I pull her into my arms, wrapping them as tight as they’ll go. “I’m sorry, baby,” I rasp into her hair. “I’m sorry. Tell me what my father said was bullshit. Forget your name, Teresa? I know it as well as my own.”
She stills a moment. “I…think I know.”
“You don’t think anything,” I growl.
“Okay, fine. I know.”
Just for a second, I allow the flame of relief to flicker in my gut. She knows I’m her man right down to my soul. The war isn’t over yet, though. “I was fucked up and angry. You’re so damn important to me and I didn’t treat you that way. I didn’t act like the man who earned your trust.” My hands tunnel through her hair, bringing it to my nose for rough inhales. “You want to shove me again? Do it all night. I’m not moving.”
“Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Taking all the blame. I’m the one who lied.”
“Yeah. And I forgave you as soon as I pulled my head out of my ass.” I drop her hair in favor of cupping her face. “You were protecting your brother. You’ve been doing that alone for a long time. Breaking that habit in a matter of days—”
“I should have.” Her eyelids drop and she breathes. In, out. “You never would have let someone hurt Nicky. Same as me. I should have known it was safe to break my habits for you. You showed me that tonight. Before tonight.”
“Why does that make you mad?”
Her eyes flash up at mine, swimming with uncertainty. “It doesn’t feel right to be grateful to you right now. Or owe you. Even though I really, really do.”
Understanding dawns and I suck down the insight like oxygen. The money. I can fucking see it sitting there on the floor where I left it. The trust between us got twisted. I’m never going to let it happen again. Thankfully, it’ll only take the truth to fix this. “You came here to take your brother’s place. And Jesus, baby, I heard what you almost had to do tonight.” Some residual anxiety crops up thinking about her in that position, but I banish it and focus on Teresa. Never again. “If your brother had gone instead tonight, he might have made the wrong decision. You taking his place is what saved him. Not me. All I did was follow you.”
“You did more than that,” she whispers, her hands softening where they remain wrapped in my shirt. “A lot more.”
“I never would have gotten the opportunity if you hadn’t been brought back here.” I heave a shaky breath. “Fuck, Teresa. I might not have been able to find you.”
Without warning, she goes up on her toes and presses our mouths together. Not a kiss. Just a locking of lips, a trading of breath that slays me where I’m standing. “You did.” She runs her tongue along my bottom lip, turning my dick to stone inside my jeans. “You did find me.”
“I refuse to lose you ever again.” In a move I didn’t plan, I go down on my knees, running my hands over her hips and kissing her stomach. “You knelt down this morning and begged me to listen. I’m doing the same now.” I lift her shirt and rim her belly button with my tongue. “You going to have mercy on me and give the answer I didn’t? The answer I was too stupid to give?”
“Yes,” she breathes, pushing her lower body toward my mouth. “I’m listening.”
I trail my tongue along the waistband of her jean skirt. “I’m the grateful one. I always will be. As long as I can call you mine.” Tucking my tongue deep into her belly button, I reach down and unzip my pants, the sound making her moan. “You don’t owe me the chance to live my life for you, but I’m asking you to give it to me. As a gift.”
I glide my hands up the backs of her thighs, ending in a tight knead of her ass. “Will,” she says in a husky voice. “Come up here. Please.”
“You want me, woman?”
“Yes.”
On my way to my full height, I bring her with me, levering her off the ground and fucking into her tight body, capturing her cries with a cupped hand. “You were hurt. You were hurt and I couldn’t touch you,” I growl into her hair. “Fair warning, I’m going to spoil you rotten to make up for that shit, Teresa.”
“I love you,” she whispers, taking me off guard and squeezing my chest until I can’t breathe. “Not because of the spoiling. Just because of you.”
“I love you, too.” I lay kisses all over her face, her lips, her head. “That’s what I should have said this morning. I should have picked you up off the goddamn floor and said it until you got sick of it.”
“Never.”
I rear back with my hips and drive her up the wall, earning a close-mouthed scream. “Let’s test that theory.” I’m slamming into her like a madman and I can’t stop. Her legs are wrapped around my hips like ivy, her eyes blind, fingers clutching my shoulders as I work us through the nightmare day we spent apart. A day that could have ended without us together, like this, and just the possibility makes me jerk her legs higher, thrust harder, waiting in agony for her to come before I shove my cock as deep as I can and release in hot, mind-blowing waves, our mouths moving in a frantic kiss…until we’re left groaning each other’s names as the aftershocks pass.
Several moments later, when our immediate fever has cooled, I smile against her temple and she lifts her head, returning it with a drowsy one of her own. “What?”
“Remember that trip to the vet this morning…?”