chapter five
Noah knocked on Nonna’s front door. It occurred to him that he probably should have called first but as soon as he’d had the idea, his feet had started moving. Honestly, he wasn’t even sure what he was going to say. He was completely winging it here. Lucia would be pissed if she knew where he was, but he needed to talk to Nonna. He was that worried, and Lucia’s grandmother was quite possibly the only one who could help.
Footsteps sounded inside and a second later the door opened. Nonna was wearing a beautiful rose-colored sweater and had her hair twisted back into a low bun. Although he knew objectively that she’d aged over the years, to him she would always be the same. Elegant. Angelic. One of the only people who’d looked at him and seen more than what was on the outside.
As usual, when she saw him she smiled like she was getting a visit from a celebrity. Noah grinned back, thinking as he always did how lucky he’d been that day that Rafe had dragged him here for dinner. Rafe had done more than mentor him; he’d saved him in every way that mattered. When a man got used to having a family that treated him like this, it was no wonder he’d lay down his life for them.
“Noah, come in. Don’t just stand outside. I don’t know why you don’t use your key. You’re family.” She welcomed him with a hug and he stooped down slightly so she could kiss his cheek.
Her protestations made him smile, although he would never tell her why he didn’t use his key. The friend he’d tasked to watch over Nonna had been strangely closemouthed about her activities over recent years, and Noah had a sneaking suspicion that it was because they were more than just friends. Noah didn’t have any true family anymore. Nonna and Lucia were the closest things to it he had, so he valued them highly.
The last thing he needed was to walk in on his pseudo-grandmother in a compromising position. An unfortunate mental image popped into his mind, and he shut it down immediately. Noah shuddered. There were just some things you couldn’t unsee.
“I never know where my key is, so it’s just easier to knock,” he lied, feeling no shame for it. If he believed in God, he was sure any benevolent being would forgive him an untruth under these circumstances.
He followed her into the interior of the house and instantly felt at home. It was a talent that Nonna DeMarco had, making visitors feel like family within seconds of entering her home. He glanced around at the old furniture and handmade throw blankets covering the back of the couch. Nonna DeMarco despised waste of any kind so everything in her home was either handmade or secondhand. It was the most comforting place he’d ever been in.
Not sure how to bring up the reason for his visit, Noah allowed her to fuss over him, making him a cup of coffee even though he’d already had some. By the time the coffee was ready, he’d had a chance to think about how he wanted to bring up Lucia’s recent behavior in a way that wasn’t going to alarm the older woman.
When they were settled on the couch, Nonna raised her eyebrows at him. If he’d been younger, it was the kind of look that would have made him think he was in trouble for something or other.
“What?”
“Just wondering when you’re going to tell me the real reason why you’re here. I know it’s not just to visit.”
Feeling like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar, he smiled. “Maybe I just wanted to check on you.”
“Hmm. You know I’m fine.”
Noah sighed. There was no point in trying to ease her into it. Just like when they were young, Nonna had radar for when one of her ‘children’ needed something. “You’re right. I’m not just here to chat. It’s Lucia. She isn’t doing well.”
Immediately Nonna’s face lost its teasing smile. “She’s been through so much. I think the stress is finally catching up with her.”
Noah didn’t want to voice his true thoughts, that this was so much worse than stress. Lucia had lost all grip on reality. After days of wondering what was going on with her, she'd finally confessed why she'd asked to go to the clock tower and what she'd found there. She was convinced her brother was alive, which didn’t make any sense considering that she’d watched him get shot. Noah had shot him point blank. He’d searched for a pulse before taking Lucia away to safety.
There was no one outside of Lucia or Nonna who wanted Rafe to be alive more than he did, but it just wasn’t possible. Her insistence on something she knew to be impossible worried him more than anything else could have.
“Give her time.” Nonna’s softly creased face bore the signs of her worry for her granddaughter.
He hated to drop all this in her lap and cause her worry, but he truly didn’t know who else to talk to about this. No one else understood their situation, and she was also the only person he believed could get through to Lucia. Nonna could make her see that pursuing this was just asking for more heartbreak. She was the only one on the face of the planet who loved Lucia as much as he did. He knew how much she’d sacrificed to take in Rafe and Lucia after their parents’ death.
“I’ve given her time. Maybe too much time.”
Maybe he’d been a fool to think that they could just move past it once she remembered their traumatic shared past. Watching the man you love shoot your brother wasn’t the kind of thing one could just get over. Lucia likely needed more therapy. A lot more. Not that he could convince her of that.
The whole thing was a fucking mess.
“There’s no such thing as too much time when mourning a lost family member,” Nonna murmured. “I’m still not over losing Luca.”
Noah could understand what she meant, but he feared that he’d already done too much of that. The way he felt about Lucia was dangerous. He would forgive her anything, and he was worried that his love for her blinded him to serious issues. If she really needed help, he wanted to make sure she got it. There was a very real danger that he’d bury his head in the sand because he didn’t want to admit that she needed help.
For her sake, he had to be stronger than that.
Apparently his thoughts were evident on his face because Nonna reached over and grabbed his hands. He startled but forced himself not to jerk back. Noah wasn’t used to physical contact. Usually when he got this close to someone, it was because he was about to take their life. But when Nonna touched him, all the stress and pain of the last few days hit him at once. Her fingers curled around his and Noah had to avert his gaze, afraid he was going to cry like a baby at the show of tenderness.
“Noah, I know you don’t understand yet, but women are different. Lucia is like me, strong on the outside but she is dolce, sweet and soft, on the inside. There were times right after Rafe’s death when I wasn’t able to accept that he was gone. I would catch a glimpse of a man on the street and be convinced it was him. I would hear a voice in a crowd and follow it, sure it was Rafe. These things haunted me. I was like a walking ghost searching for what I’d lost. I wasn’t ready to let him go yet. Lucia needs time to sort this out on her own.”
Noah lifted her hand to his lips. Her skin was paper thin and soft as tissue. She smiled at him tremulously when he leaned over and kissed her forehead.
“Thank you, Nonna. I’ll try to be patient.”
Her smile was slightly smug as she watched him stand. “I had a feeling that you were going to be the one. Ever since Rafe brought you home all skinny and haunted-looking, I knew.”
He laughed then. “Well, you knew more than I did. Sometimes I still can’t believe I’m this lucky.”
Nonna regarded him for a long moment, her shrewd eyes moving over his face. It was tempting to squirm under the scrutiny but Noah forced himself to hold still. It mattered to him more than he’d ever thought it would to have her approval. She was the person that Rafe and Lucia had loved more than any other and he desperately wanted to know that she approved of him for her little girl.
“No, you wouldn’t believe it, would you? Sweet boy. All you’ve ever known is disappointment and pain but this is for real. My bambina loves you. So this is not luck, this is fate. You are strong in all the ways she needs you to be. When she loses her way, you’ll bring her back. Take care of her for me.”
Noah hugged her gently. “Always.”
Lucia moved her stapler to the left and organized the papers on the top of her desk into a neat pile. It should have been strange to be back at work after everything that had happened. Instead it was comforting. For once, all she had to do was focus on whatever ridiculous demands Adriana came up with and drink her coffee. Compared to worrying about killers and conspiracy theories, this was a breeze.
She took a long sip of her coffee and savored the witches’ brew she couldn’t live without. The coffee she made at home was never as good as what she got from a proper barista.
JJ had taken care of everything in her absence so she wasn’t even coming back to a bunch of work. Honestly, it might have been better if she had been. That would have kept her mind too busy to focus on everything that had happened lately.
“So you went to the clock tower, and because you saw sunflower seeds, you think it means your brother is alive?” JJ said.
The way their cubicles were angled, she could only see a flash of her friend’s blond hair every now and then while she moved around.
“Um, not exactly.” Lucia wasn’t sure how to respond. Especially since technically that was how it happened, but it sounded much crazier saying it aloud now that she wasn’t in the moment.
Things were quiet for a moment before JJ leaned back again. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said it like that.”
Lucia shrugged. “It’s okay. We’ve always been honest with each other. Let’s not change that now.”
“True. But that doesn’t mean I want to hurt you. You’ve been through so much lately. Hell, not just lately. Your mind is just trying to give you the one thing you want more than anything else. No wonder you saw sunflower seeds and came up with my brother has risen from the dead.”
Lucia took another sip of her coffee. When put like that, she supposed it did sound a little crazy. All weekend she’d been over the evidence, if you could call it that, and had come up with a million and one scenarios that would explain how Rafe could be alive. She’d gone from the entire thing was an elaborate dream sequence to her brother was actually a mutant that was impervious to bullets.
But the one thing she wasn’t willing to consider was that this was all a coincidence. Despite her conscious mind telling her it was ridiculous, there was a part of her that just couldn’t let it go. Even if the other things could be explained, she hadn’t imagined hearing Rafe’s voice.
It might sound crazy to someone else, but she knew what she’d heard and it hadn’t been grief or longing or whatever else Noah seemed to think she had going on. It had been in the heat of an extremely scary situation, the last place her mind would have been prone to delusions. After all, she’d adored Rafe, and her mind had no reason to associate him with some scary kidnapper.
But if it was Rafe, why would he have done that? He almost killed your friends.
Lucia brushed the thoughts away. She had no explanations for that part of things, but she’d figure it out.
“It’s not just that. It’s everything. The voice, the weird kidnapping attempts, and yes, the sunflower seeds. When you put it all together …” Lucia held out her hands.
“Put it all together and you get a very thin case for something that is not likely to be true,” JJ finished with a gentle smile. “This is all just speculation at this point. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
Lucia reminded herself that her friend was just looking out for her and trying to keep her from getting hurt. JJ wasn’t trying to hurt her feelings by dismissing the idea. Plus, she was objective enough to admit that if the tables were turned, she would be pretty sure that JJ was off her rocker to believe that someone dead and gone for six years was magically alive.
“I agree. It’s early days, and there’s no need for me to draw any concrete conclusions yet. All I’m doing is reporting to you what I experienced over the weekend. Also, Noah and I had insanely hot sex under that clock tower.”
JJ leaned her head out of her cubicle so she could see Lucia. “You should have led with that. Damn girl, that’s what I’m talking about! How is my favorite alpha asshole?”
“Cranky. And hot as hell. The usual.”
Noah would probably object to the characterization, but it was definitely true. It made Lucia smile. He definitely was a cranky thing. Hot but cranky.
“God, you have all the luck. Ugh. Put in a good word for me with the sexy German, will you? That man looks like he was carved out of concrete.” JJ made an exaggerated panting face and fanned herself dramatically.
Lucia laughed at the idea of putting in a good word with Oskar. He was so cantankerous that it was impossible to imagine him with the vivacious JJ. They’d probably kill each other inside of a week. Although knowing JJ, she’d kill him with sex. Oskar might not mind meeting his maker if that was how he got there.
“I’ll tell him you said hello,” she finally conceded.
JJ scoffed. “Don’t tell him I said hello. Tell him I said I want to suck his–”
Adriana appeared at the edge of their cubicles, and JJ went silent. Lucia had just taken a large gulp of coffee and struggled to swallow it without sputtering or spitting it all over herself. Of course, a large portion of it went down the wrong way, and she ended up coughing like she was hacking up a lung. Adriana backed up a step with a look of disgust on her face.
Lucia sucked in a few breaths and then cleared her throat. “Sorry.”
Adriana ignored her and instead turned around to speak to someone behind her. “And this is where the real work is done, Mr. Nelson. I pride myself on having the best and brightest in the fashion industry. It takes a great team to create the fashions you saw on the runway.”
Lucia refrained from rolling her eyes. Every so often Adriana would bring investors around to see how they operated and to convince them to part with their money to fund her international expansion. That was the only time she seemed to think that what they did was a ‘team effort.’ On any other occasion, it was all Adriana, all the time.
“Jessica Jones is our extremely talented makeup artist who has been instrumental in creating our signature runway looks. And this is Lucia DeMarco, a design intern who shows great promise.”
Adriana widened her eyes at them as if to say, look alive, so JJ stood and extended her hand.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Nelson. I hope you’ll be joining the Adriana Fashions family soon.”
JJ was smiling so widely that Lucia could tell the guy had to be cute. She only acted like this around the investors she thought were hot. Lucia pasted a smile on her face but couldn’t see past JJ since her friend was still hanging on to his hand. She was glad that JJ was so good at the schmoozing stuff because she wasn’t. All she’d ever wanted was to hole up and work on her own designs, not convince someone else that it was worthwhile.
“Glad to meet the people on the front lines. Perhaps I could get a tour while I’m here. Miss DeMarco could show me around, perhaps?”
At the sound of her name, Lucia choked slightly on the last sip of coffee. Adriana frowned at her, and she hurriedly grabbed the napkin from her lap to dab at her lips.
“Sure, I mean … of course. I can give you a tour. There’s not much to see though.”
“There’s plenty to see,” Adriana interjected with a sideways look at Lucia that was sharp enough to cut glass. “Show him the samples closet and the design floor at least.”
“Yes ma’am. Follow me, Mr. Nelson.”
He stepped from behind Adriana, and Lucia immediately noticed the cut of his suit. It fit perfectly and looked like it had been designed and tailored just for him. Then he turned his head and she got her first look at his face and realized why his voice had sounded so familiar.
The coffee cup in her hand fell and would have hit the floor, but his hand shot out and caught it in midair. He placed it gently on the edge of her desk.
“Careful. We don’t want to make a mess, do we?” His eyes narrowed meaningfully as Lucia just stared with her mouth open.
It was Rafe.