The Kiss Thief

I sat back, digesting.

Ms. Sterling was Wolfe’s mother. Biological mother.

That was why she loved him so dearly.

That was why she begged me to be patient with him.

That was why she drove us into each other’s arms. She wanted her son to have the happy ending his brother never got.

“His brother was married.” I sucked in a breath, collecting all the pieces, fitting them into the screwed-up puzzle my father had created. “He had a wife.”

“Yes. Lori. They were having fertility issues.” Ms. Sterling nodded. “Went through several IVF treatments. Then she finally got pregnant. She lost the baby when she was six months in, the day after they delivered the news that her husband had died.”

That was why Wolfe didn’t want any children.

It was also why he knew so much about ovulation and when to have sex. He didn’t want the heartache, though heartache was all he knew. He’d lost the people he cared about the most, one by one, and all by the same man. It felt like someone ripped my chest open with a knife and watched as my organs poured out of me.

I plastered a hand over my mouth, willing my pulse to slow down. It was neither good for me nor for the baby. But the truth was scandalizing and too harsh to digest. That was why Wolfe didn’t want me to know—he knew I’d hate myself for the rest of my life for what my father did. Hell, I wanted to throw up right now.

“Thank you for sharing this with me,” I said.

Ms. Sterling nodded. “Give him a chance. He is far from perfect. But who is?”

“Ms. Sterling…” I hesitated, glancing around us. “I’m devastated over your revelations, but I don’t think Wolfe wants a second chance. He knows that I’m here and that I’m pregnant, and he still hasn’t showed up. He hasn’t even called.”

Every time I thought about this fact, I wanted to crawl into a ball and die.

By the way Ms. Sterling winced, I knew that it didn’t look good for me. I escorted her back to her car. We hugged for long minutes.

“Always remember, Francesca—you’re worth more than the sums of your mistakes.”

As she drove away, I realized she was right. I didn’t need Wolfe to save me, or for Angelo to come to my rescue, or even for my mother to grow a backbone or my father to start acting like he had one.

The only person I needed was me.

THE NEXT FEW DAYS WERE pure, unadulterated torture.

The stuff we should bottle up, write down, and use on convicted child molesters.

Three days in, I caved and picked up the phone to call Arthur. Now he was playing hard to get. The tables had turned. The only person I wanted to speak to—my wife—was tucked in Arthur’s kingdom, and the place was gated and guarded more heavily than the Buckingham Palace.

I arrived at my wife’s parents’ house every single day, at six o’clock sharp, before boarding my flight, then again at eight o’clock at night, to try and talk to her.

I was always stopped at the gate by one of Rossi’s muscle, and they were beefier and stupider than his usual variety of Made Men, and showed no signs of stopping, even when my own bodyguards flexed their biceps.

Calling, or texting her was ball-less and inappropriate altogether. Especially since Sterling admitted to spilling the beans about all the things that happened between our families. Considering Francesca was under the impression that my original plan consisted of tossing her in a dark tower and killing her father slowly by stripping him and his wife of everything they owned, I knew I needed a little more than a fucking “Sorry” GIF. The conversation was too important not to be conducted face to face. There was much I needed to tell her. Much I’d found out in the days since she departed.

I was in love with her.

I was dreadfully in love with her.

Ruthlessly, tragically mad about the teenager with big blue eyes who talked to her vegetables.

I needed to tell her that I wanted this baby no less than she did. Not because I wanted children, but because I wanted everything she had to offer. And the things she didn’t offer—I wanted them, too. Not to own necessarily, but to simply admire.

The realization that I was in love didn’t happen in one glorious, Hallmark-worthy moment. It spread across the week we spent apart. With every failed attempt to reach out to her, I realized how important it was for me to see her.

Each time I got turned down, I looked up at the window of her room, willing her to materialize behind the white-laced curtain. She never did.

And that was why I avoided connections, in general. That whole climbing-the-walls thing? It wasn’t for me. But climbing, I did. Kicking things. Breaking things. Rehearsing words and speeches I would say. Avoiding suits who called and called, telling me that I needed to make a statement about my current family situation.

It was my issue. My life. My wife.

No one else mattered.

Not even my country.

A week into the delight called heartbreak, I decided to bend the rules and rush fate. She was going to hate me for it—but frankly, she had enough reason to want to spit in my face even before my next stunt.

On the seventh day of separation, I dragged Felix White in all his sweaty, shiny-faced glory to accompany me to Arthur’s house, carrying an urgent search warrant.

The thing missing? My fucking wife.

White had no real grounds to issue a warrant, other than he didn’t want me to dish out the dirt on him. Forever the double agent, he texted Arthur hours before, so the mobster actually dragged himself back home to be there when I came over.

Anyway, that was the story of how I came knocking on Francesca’s door with the chief of CPD, a warrant, and two cops.

And they said romance was dead.

When Rossi opened the door, his forehead was so creased, he looked like a bulldog. He slid his head between the cracked doors and tapered his eyes into slits.

“Senator, to what do I owe the pleasure?” He completely disregarded White, knowing damn well why the letter compromised him.

“Now’s not the time to play games.” I smiled coolly. “Unless you really want to lose. Let me in or send her out. Either way, I’m seeing her tonight.”

“I don’t think so. Not after you paraded that Russian whore in front of the entire city, leaving your pregnant wife at home.”

“I didn’t know.” Why I was explaining myself to him was beyond me. If he was the moral police, Michael Moore was a goddamn health guru.

“At any rate, I’ve been trying to reach her for seven days, and I have it on good authority that you want to open up before I do something you’ll regret.”

“You will never do it. Not with your pregnant wife in the picture.” Arthur had the audacity to flash me a taunting grin.

White coughed from beside me.

“Mr. Rossi, if you don’t let us in, I’ll have to arrest you. I have a court order to search your house.”

It was apparent that one person on the threshold believed I’d throw my father-in-law to the wolves.

Slowly, Arthur pushed the door open and allowed me to walk in. White remained behind me, shifting his weight from foot to foot like a teenager wondering how to ask a girl for a prom date. The man possessed the charisma of a can of soda.

“S-should I wait here?” White stuttered. I waved him off.

“Go back to pretending you’re good at what you’re doing.”

“You sure?” He wiped the sweat off his forehead, the blue vein in his neck still pulsing.

“You’re wasting my precious time and what’s leftovers of my patience. Go.”

Arthur led me to his office, giving me his back. Last time I’d been in his office, I demanded his daughter’s hand. As I walked up the staircase, the memories flooded in. It was on the landing where we shared one of our earlier banters. At the top of the stairs, I recalled how I clasped her delicate wrist in my hand and tugged her down forcefully after I thought she’d cheated on me.

Fucking idiot. Going around labelling White and Bishop as stupid when you’ve proven to be a clown more than one time in the span of your short marriage.

I knew Francesca was somewhere in the house, and I longed to see her pink smile and hear her throaty laughter that did not match the softness of her being.

“Give me one good reason why we’re heading into your office and not into my wife’s old room,” I said when my mouth cleared from the fog of everything my wife.

“Despite our differences, my daughter cares very much for my approval, and my giving it to you would help your chances when you talk to her. Now, Senator Keaton, we both know it’s long overdue that we settle the score.” He stopped by the door to his office and motioned for me to walk in. Two of his muscle guys stood on each side of the door.

“Get rid of them,” I said, still staring at him. He didn’t break our gaze as he snapped his fingers, making both of them descend the stairs silently.

We got into his office, and he closed the door halfway, obviously not trusting me not to throttle him with my bare hands. I understood him perfectly. Even I had difficulty predicting how I’d react, depending on the outcome of this visit.

He leaned against his desk while I took a seat on the couch in front of him, spreading my arms over the headrest and making myself comfortable. I knew two things with certainty:

Today was the day my love for my wife was going to be tested.

I was going to pass with flying fucking colors.

Like a moth to a flame, my feet dragged me out of my room and to the hallway the minute I heard my husband’s gruff tenor. His voice was a poem, and I drank every word as if my life depended on it.

I caught his back, his broad shoulders and tailored suit as he glided through the corridor, ushered by my father into his study. I counted one, two, three, five, eight…ten seconds before I tiptoed my way to the study. Weeks of watching how Ms. Sterling eavesdropped had taught me some invaluable tricks. My barefooted figure was pressed against the wall, and I took shallow, measured breaths.

My father lit a cigar. The aroma of burnt leaves and tobacco hit my nostrils, and nausea washed over my gut. God, I felt sick every time someone breathed in my direction. I peeked into the room, fighting the bile bubbling in my throat. My father leaned against his desk, my husband on the red velvet settee in front of him, looking relaxed and nonchalant as ever.