The Kiss Thief

by LJ Shen

  My head reared back, and I shot her a helpless glance.

  “How are you feeling, sweetheart?” Her eyes crinkled with naked joy.

  He knew. They both knew. Yet Wolfe still hadn’t come for me. Contradicting, fierce emotions of excitement, dread, and fear stunned me into silence.

  “Francesca?” Ms. Sterling probed, nudging my hand. I ducked my head down, not daring to see what was on her face.

  “It doesn’t matter. Too many things have happened. I cheated on him, and he cheated on me.”

  “Love is stronger than hate.”

  “How can he love me after all the bad blood between our families?” My head shot up, tears clinging to my lower lashes. “He can’t.”

  “He can,” Ms. Sterling insisted. “Forgiving is one of his more beautiful virtues.”

  “Right.” I snorted out a laugh. “Tell that to my father.”

  “Your father never asked for forgiveness. But I did. And Wolfe? He forgave me.”

  She put her tea down and straightened her spine, delivering the information with a schooled chin and a steady voice.

  “I’m Wolfe Keaton’s biological mother. A recovering alcoholic who was too busy drinking herself to death to fix my son dinner on the night he watched his brother, Romeo, get shot to death by your father. After that happened, the Keatons took him. I couldn’t fight the system, and Romeo’s death shook me out of my addiction. I went to rehab, and after I completed my time in the facility, I trickled back into Wolfe’s life—his real name is Fabio, by the way. Fabio Nucci.” She smiled, looking down. “At first, he wanted nothing to do with me. He was blind with anger about my alcoholism, getting thrown into the system, and about how I couldn’t bring myself to fix him dinner so he dragged his brother to Mama’s Pizza. But as time passed, he allowed me back into his life. His adoptive parents hired me as his live-in nanny even though he was a pre-teen. They just wanted us to be together. After they were killed in that explosion…” She sucked in a breath. Tears glittered in her eyes when she spoke of her late employers. “It was two years after I completed my work at the Keatons. When Wolfe turned eighteen. I was working at Sam’s Club when he rehired me to run his mansion. He is taking care of me more than I’m taking care of him after I betrayed him in the worst possible way. I wasn’t able to protect him and his brother from the cruel neighborhood they grew up in.”

  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.

  My husband, metal and steel.

  Formidable and untouchable.

  With a stone-carved heart I’d do anything to soften.

  “I suppose you think that you can walk into her room and claim her back. Hang White and Bishop over my head again as leverage,” my father said, puffing on his cigar, his legs crossed at the ankles. He had yet to acknowledge my existence since I’d moved back into the house, but he didn’t let that deter him from blackmailing my husband. With every fiber of my body, I wanted to burst through the door and set the record straight. But I was too humiliated and hurt to risk another rejection. Wolfe might’ve come here to let me go, and I was done begging.

  “How is she doing?” Wolfe ignored his question.

  “She doesn’t want to see you,” my father replied curtly, sending another waft of smoke into the air and ignoring the question at hand.

  “Have you taken her to the doctor?”

  “She hasn’t left the house.”

  “What the hell are you waiting for?” Wolfe spat.

  “As far as I can remember, Francesca was old enough to get pregnant. She is therefore old enough to book an appointment with an OB-GYN. Not to mention, if anyone should help her, it should be the man responsible for her dire situation.”

  Dire situation? My nostrils flared, hot air coming down from them like fire.

  It was the moment in which it dawned on me that my father was completely irredeemable. He didn’t care for me or the baby. The only thing he cared about—ever—was The Outfit. He loved and adored me when I was his puppet. And at the first sign of defiance, he discarded me and shook off any responsibility toward me. He sold me. Then lost his interest in me when he could no longer marry me off to another strong Italian family. Wolfe, however, stuck around through thick and thin. Even when we antagonized each other. Even when he thought I’d slept with Angelo and saw me kissing him, and when I defied him again and again and again. The word divorce never left his mouth. Failure wasn’t an option.

  He showed me more loyalty than my father did.

  “Good point.” Wolfe stood up. “I’ll take her to the doctor right away.”

  “You will do no such thing. In fact, you will not be seeing her tonight, at all,” my father retorted.

  Wolfe strolled toward him unflappably, stopping a few feet from my father and towering over his head. “Is that her request or yours?”

  “Her demand. Why do you think you haven’t heard from her yet?” My father put his cigar in an ashtray, sending a plume of smoke in Wolfe’s face as he spoke. “She requested I make sure that you grovel properly.”

  “Let me guess—you have plenty of ideas.”

  “I do.” My father unknotted his ankles, pushing off the desk so he was nose to nose with Wolfe. I wished I could see my husband’s face at that moment. My father was lying to him, and he was too smart not to see that. Then again, love was like a drug. You didn’t think clearly under the influence.

  “I’ll let you see Francesca if you comply.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “White can personally come and arrest me today, and you can burst through Francesca’s bedroom door armed with police force. I’m sure she’d appreciate it. Especially in her current state.”

  W
olfe was silent for a moment.

  “Do you realize she misses you?” he asked my father.

  My heart clenched painfully. God, Wolfe.

  “Do you realize that I’m a businessman?” my father retorted. “She’s a damaged asset. We all have a price tag, Fabio Nucci.” He laughed in my husband’s face. “I was born on the streets and left at the steps of a church door to almost die. My mother was a prostitute, and my father? Who knows who he was. Everything I have, every square foot in this house, every piece of furniture, every fucking pen, I’ve worked for. Francesca had one job—to be obedient. And she failed.”

  “Because I set her up for failure.” Wolfe raised his voice, spitting in my father’s face.

  “That may be, but her only value to me right now is to be a pawn against you. You see, I’ve made the mistake of undervaluing a person once in my life. When I decided to foolishly let you live.”

  Something dropped between them, and it thudded against the silence of the room. Jesus. He actually said it. My father regretted not killing my husband.

  “Why didn’t you?” Wolfe seethed. “Why did you let me live?”

  “You were frightened, Nucci, but you were also strong. You didn’t cry. You didn’t piss your pants. You even tried to snatch one of my men’s weapons. You reminded me of my young self when I ran on the streets barefoot, stealing food, pickpocketing, and working my way up. Hustling to the core and making ties with The Outfit. I knew you had a chance to survive this part of the neighborhood. More than that—I knew you were a savage. Wolfe Keaton plays nice with the law, but let’s admit it—Fabio Nucci is inside you, and he is out for blood.”

  “I will never be your ally.”

  “Good. You make a fascinating enemy.”