Chapter 24
Luke
I loud pounding on the door had me up in no time at all. I had been sleeping lightly all night, subconsciously staying alert.
“What’s that?” Anna asked, awake now, too. I doubted she had been in a deep sleep, either.
“Someone’s at the door,” I said.
The pounding started up again and I jumped out of bed, pulling on jeans and a sweatshirt.
“Oh, God. He found me,” Anna wailed.
“I’ll handle it,” I said. “Stay here. Stay safe.”
I walked to the front door. The pounding hadn’t stopped.
“Open up the door!” a man shouted. “I know you’re in there.”
Anna hadn’t stayed in the room as I had ordered. She had pulled on clothes as fast as I had and came to the front door with me.
“Anna!” the voice shouted outside and there was no guessing who they were after, anymore.
“We have to answer it,” Anna whispered. Her face was panicked, her eyes large, and I could see her pulse in her neck, her heart beating way too fast.
“I’ll handle it,” I said again, but Anna wasn’t going to leave. She had let me take care of everything until this moment, but now she was adamant to stay by my side, even though it was dangerous. I didn’t understand it. Why was she getting involved when she had relied on me to take care of it until now?
“Anna, why don’t you go wait in the room?” I asked.
Anna shook her head. “I’m not going to make you take care of this. It’s my dad, my problem.”
“This doesn’t make any sense. You were fine with me taking care of it all until now.”
Anna had been emotionally unstable for a while now and even though I had understood it, it had been different than the woman I had gotten to know the first few days she was here. Now, she was being unpredictable. I was trying to look after her, and after she had been asking for exactly that all this time, she was making it hard for me to follow through.
“Anna Giuliana Santora, open up this damn door, or I will break it down!” he shouted, and it was such a dad-thing to do, to use all Anna’s names to reprimand her. It took the edge off how dangerous the situation was. But Anna’s eyes widened when her dad spoke to her that way.
“He’s pissed,” she said.
I shook my head. “So, let me handle it,” I bit out. She was making it very hard for me to be a knight in shining armor when she wouldn’t let me save her. “Go back to the bedroom and stay there.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Anna said.
This was not the time for her to stand up and insist on equality.
“I’m trying to do what you asked me to do,” I said. “You wanted me to help you out, to protect you. This is what I’m trying to do, but I can’t do it if you’re standing here next to me.”
I was starting to get irritated. And I was acting like there was something I didn’t know, something more dangerous than she had let on. Well, if that was the case, I could handle myself just as well.
“I’m going to tell you one last time, I’ll deal with that,” I said. I had vowed to take care of her, and no matter what, I was intent on following through. I wanted to take care of her, to make sure she was safe.
I pushed past her and walked toward the mantelpiece where the rifle was mounted. I took it down and checked it, making sure I had ammunition.
“What are you doing?” Anna asked. “You can’t shoot him!”
“I’m keeping you safe,” I said.
“No, Luke. He’s still my dad.”
I groaned, exasperated. Anna was set on taking care of this herself no matter how scared she had been until now. She reached for the front door and opened it before I could protest.
“It’s about time,” her dad said behind the door and stepped into the room.
My body ran cold, and all I could do was stare.
“What are you doing here, Dad?” she asked.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. Anna’s dad, the person she had been running away from all this time, was none other than Frank Santora, the man I had been running from myself. How was this possible?
Frank turned his head to me and his face twisted into a cross between a grin and a snarl.
“Well, what a surprise to see you here, Luke?” Frank said. “We all thought you were dead.”
That explained why no one had found me here. They hadn’t been looking. I had been hiding out for over a year, and it had all been in vain—I could have gone home and spent time with my parents. I felt cheated.
“You know him?” Anna asked me. “Why does he know who you are? What’s going on, Luke?”
Frank laughed, and it was a horrible raspy sound from years of smoking. “He didn’t tell you, did he? No, he wouldn’t. Luke played his cards very close to his chest, so close that his loyalty belongs only to himself.”
I shook my head, unable to adjust to what was happening.
“What is he talking about, Luke?” Anna asked again.
“I used to work for Frank,” I finally confessed. “I left when I realized I wasn’t living a life I wanted.”
Anna’s mouth dropped open, and a look of pure betrayal crossed her face. Well, that was rich. I wasn’t the only one with a secret, but she wanted to look like I had betrayed her? What about the other way around? What about the fact that her dad was the very person that had made me flee for my life, that had taken everything I cared about away from me?
“This is beautiful,” Frank laughed. “Neither of you told the other what you were doing here. And it turns out you’re both running from the same man. Pure poetry, if you ask me.”
Frank was being a mocking asshole, and I was getting angry. Angry that Anna had lied to me, angry that I had been running for months but Frank hadn’t been looking for me, angry that I looked like an idiot. In my anger, I was quiet. I balled my fists, but I didn’t scream and shout. I didn’t make a scene.
“I’ll deal with you, later,” Frank said to me before turning back to Anna. It was a threat. I was pretty sure he was going to kill me. Well, not if I got away again. “You’re coming home with me, right now. We’ve postponed plans for long enough.”
“I’m not coming with you. I’m not marrying him, Dad,” Anna cried.
Not marrying him? Where the fuck had this come from?
“You’re engaged?” I asked incredulously. Everything Anna and I had shared threatened to crumble before me. I thought about all the moments we had had together and considering that she might have belonged to someone else all the time made me sick to my stomach.
“Why are you running?” I added. “How can you do this to me?”
Anna shook her head. “I’m not engaged to anyone. I’m not marrying anyone.”
She directed the latter to her dad.
“This is not open for discussion,” Frank said. “You’re coming with me, and you’re marrying Sam. End of story.”
“Sam?” I asked. This was becoming more and more unbelievable. Sam was a shady son of a bitch, the type of man that I had hated from the start. “You’re marrying Sam?” I couldn’t picture the match. Anna and Sam would make the worst couple. He would try to dominate her completely, and Anna was too strong. She would fight him on it constantly. They would never be happy, and in the end, she would fade away.
“It’s my dad’s idea,” Anna said, and she sounded like she was close to tears. “There is no way I’m going to marry Sam, Dad. I can’t do it. I won’t.”
“You don’t have a choice,” Frank said.
I was still trying to figure out how the hell this had happened—how did Anna know everyone I had known from my past. How was it possible that Frank’s daughter was such a stunning person? Why was Sam the lucky bastard that got to have the woman I had fallen for?
“Anna,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t understand, why didn’t you tell me any of this?” I was confused. I was angry. I had no idea what I was feeling and seeing Anna, the woman I loved—and Frank, the man I hated—in the same room was a downright mind fuck.
“Do you tell the person you just met every dirty little secret?” Anna asked. And she was right. I hadn’t exactly been truthful with her, either. I had kept secrets of my own. But this, the fact that our secrets were so closely intertwined, made everything that much worse.
“I’m not coming with you,” Anna said again. “I’m not going to marry Sam. He wouldn’t want me anymore, anyway.”
Anna looked at her dad defiantly, and Frank frowned.
“He will take what I give him,” Frank said. God, he spoke about Anna as if she was something he could trade off. No wonder Anna was so unhappy. No wonder she had run away. I understood it. I understood Frank. I knew he was a fucker, but I had never thought he would be this heartless with his own daughter. I had heard he had a daughter and I had imagined he would treat her like gold. Turns out I’d been wrong.
“He won’t have me. I’m secondhand goods, now.”
Frank shook his head, confused. My stomach turned. If she was going to tell Frank we’d been fucking, I was going to die. There was only one thing worse than fucking with a mafia boss and that was fucking with his daughter. How the hell were we going to get through this one?
“Anna, don’t,” I said.
Anna looked at me and her face was apologetic. Her eyes welled with tears, and she squeezed them shut as if she was trying to swallow the tears and she had to focus to do it.
“I’m pregnant, Dad,” Anna said.
All the air sucked out of the room, and I couldn’t breathe. I had expected Anna to tell Frank that we had been sleeping together, that she wanted to be with me, that she didn’t want a part of that life anymore. God, I would have accepted anything along those lines. But the words that had come out of her mouth had hit me from left field, and I was left staggering.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Frank yelled.
“I want to know, too,” I said. My body had gone numb.
“You little tramp,” Frank snarled.
“Don’t you talk to her like that,” I said, defending her even though I wasn’t sure why I was doing it. She had betrayed me as much as she had betrayed her dad, by the looks of things.
“You!” Frank shouted, and he stormed toward me. Frank moved fast for a big guy, and he was in front of me in no time with a gun that he had whipped out of nowhere. He raised his hand and hit me on the head with the butt of the gun. A sharp pain shot through my temple, the edges of my vision blurred, and the last thing I heard was Anna scream before everything went black.