by Nicole Fox
Fuck.
“I… I went down to see what was going on and… and…”
“The prisoner?”
She nods. “I found him in the same room I was kept in,” she bawls. “I… he was beaten and bloody… he begged me for some water….”
God fucking dammit..
“I had the glass in my hand… and he looked… I couldn’t say no…”
I pull Charlotte’s chin up, forcing her to face me.
Her eyes are thick with panic. With fear.
“What happened?”
“He grabbed me.” Her eyes fall again and the sobs start to rack her whole body silently.
She frees herself from my grasp and stumbles a few steps away. As though she can’t bear to face me.
“I’m sorry, Lucio,” she whimpers. “He grabbed me, forced me to unlock the grille…”
“He was restrained,” I say in disbelief.
“He wasn’t restrained when I found him,” Charlotte says. “He forced me to let him go. He said he’d kill me if I didn’t. So I… I… let him go.”
And there it is.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I grab my cell phone and make a call to security.
“Check the borders,” I bark the moment the line picks up. “Our prisoner’s on the loose.”
I look at Charlotte. She’s got her arms wrapped around her body and she’s rocking back and forth on her heels.
The bruise on her cheek is getting worse. He narrowly missed giving her a black eye.
That motherfucker.
I should never have brought him into the house.
This is my fucking fault.
“Lucio?”
Her voice is small. I’ve never heard her sound so… helpless? Apologetic? Regretful?
I can’t even find the right word.
None of the ones I’m thinking of suit her.
“I’m so, so sorry,” she says, meeting my eyes properly for the first time since showing up at my door. “I… you don’t know how much.”
The depth of her apology takes me by surprise.
Then I realize that she’s probably going off my reaction.
She’s seeing the anger on my face and assuming it’s directed at her.
“Hey,” I whisper gently, moving towards her. “You don’t have to apologize.”
Surprise flickers across her eyes.
“But I let him go…”
“He attacked you,” I say. “He forced you to. You shouldn’t have been down in the cellar at all. But I should have told you what was happening.”
She lowers her head. I take her hand and lead her into my bathroom.
She follows me without a word, and I feel something in my stomach twist into a thin cord of rage.
I pick her up and place her on the bathroom counter in front of me. Her eyes are thoughtful, maybe even a little confused, as I examine the bruise on her cheek.
“That motherfucker,” I growl.
“I deserve it.”
“Don’t fucking say that,” I hiss. “There’s no way you deserve this.”
Her eyes cloud over. She refuses to look at me.
Before I can figure out what to say next, my phone starts ringing.
I pick it up immediately, hoping that they’ve caught the bastard trying to sneak out.
I already know exactly how I’m going to deal with him. He ruined any chance he might’ve had for a quick and merciful death.
When I get my hands on the son of a bitch, I’m going to make him suffer.
“Tell me you’ve got him.”
I hear a muted sigh. “Boss… he’s gone.”
“How the fuck is that possible?” I demand.
“He managed to find the ivy gate on the northeast side,” Raffaele tells me. “It’s completely hidden, so we usually leave it unmanned.”
“The ivy gate?” I repeat in dismay.
There’s no fucking way that that beaten-half-to-death dipshit managed to stumble across the lone unguarded path in and out of the compound.
For one thing, it’s completely hidden.
And for another, some of my own men don’t even know about it.
Which means…
Someone helped him.
Kazimierz’s words sound ominously in my head.
The world is full of snakes. The most dangerous are the ones you least expect.
My teeth clench so hard I wonder if they’re about to shatter.
“We’ve got two teams scouring the surrounding area, boss,” Raffaele informs me. “We’ll get him.”
I already know we won’t find him, but I decide to allow it anyway.
“Call me if there’s news.”
I hang up and set my phone aside. I can feel Charlotte’s eyes on me.
“Did your men catch him?” she asks hopefully.
“No,” I reply. “But we will. And when I get my hands on him, I’m going to squeeze the life from his lungs myself.”
I take a small face towel and run it under cold water from the tap. Then I press it gently to her bruised cheek.
She flinches slightly but she doesn’t try to move out from under me.
Gently, I stroke the cold towel against her cheek. After a few moments, she closes her eyes in relief.
“That does feel good.”
“I’ve nursed a few facial bruises myself,” I tell her. “This always works for me.”
“I used to just ignore my wounds,” she says. “I was young and dumb enough to consider them a badge of honor.”
I raise my eyebrows. When she peeks out from one eye, she notices the question on my face.
“Oh, uh, just one of my mother’s boyfriends,” she explains, almost embarrassed. “He had anger issues. I was an easy target.”
“Jesus,” I breathe. I didn’t think it was possible for me to be angrier. “Who is this guy?”
She laughs. Or tries to at least, but it turns into a pained wince.
“Does it matter?” she asks. “He’s long gone. He only lasted a couple of months.”
“Your mother sounds like a piece of work,” I remark through gritted teeth.
Charlotte shrugs. “She’s broken. How can you expect a broken person to fix someone else?”
We fall into silence, but I continue treating her bruise. I go on longer than I need to.
“You don’t need to do this,” she says, breaking the silence.
“What?”
“This,” she emphasizes, gesturing to the towel in my hand. “You don’t need to take care of me.”
“You took care of me,” I point out.
“That was different.”
“Why?”
“That was a gunshot wound, you clown,” she laughs. “This isn’t nearly that serious.”
Then her laughter softens into a mournful kind of seriousness.
“I’m glad Evie isn’t here tonight,” she says quietly.
“Agreed,” I grimace. “I’ve already traumatized the kid enough.”
Charlotte’s blue eyes glance towards me. She doesn’t say a word, but I can sense her question anyway.
Normally, I’m not big on explanations. But for some strange reason, I feel I owe her one.
“I know I said I would keep this shit out of the house…”
“It’s your house,” she says quickly.
“It’s Evie’s house now, too,” I say. “And she needs to come first. It was an error in judgement. It won’t happen again.”
“Wow,” Charlotte says in a kind of dazed shock.
I frown. “What?”
“Nothing. I just… I never thought I’d ever hear you admit to making a mistake,” she explains.
“A real man isn’t afraid to admit when he’s wrong.”
She looks like she wants to say something, but she just gnaws at her lip instead. I can guess what she’s thinking about: the long line of asshole males her mother paraded in and out of her world for Charlotte’s entire childhood.
It makes me angry. Damn
near furious.
Those “men” were no men. They were cowards. Parasites.
A real man protects what’s his.
And when he fucks up—like I did tonight—he wades through hell and high water to make things right.
“Let’s get you to bed,” I say. “You can sleep here tonight if you want. You’ll be safe.”
She just stares at me, her eyes a conflict of different emotions I can’t decipher.
“Why are you here, Lucio?” she asks.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what are you doing here with me instead of out there with your men?” she clarifies.
It’s a good fucking question.
One I haven’t asked myself—probably because I already know I won’t like the answer.
“My men can handle this,” I say vaguely, offering her my hand. It’s not much of an explanation. But it’s the best I can do right now.
“I can go back to my room,” she says hesitantly, as though worried she might offend me.
“Whatever you prefer.”
“I just… I don’t want to put you out.”
“I wouldn’t have offered if that were the case.”
She nods slowly, and I can see that she’s seriously considering it.
“Charlotte.”
“Yeah?” she says, her eyes rising to mine again.
“Stop thinking so much.”
A troubled smile flits across her face. “That’s easy for you to say.”
“Come on,” I say, pulling her down off the bathroom counter.
I lead her into the bedroom. When I take her to my bed, she doesn’t resist. I pull back the covers and she crawls underneath.
I should leave her.
But once again, despite my better judgement…
I stay.
I take a seat next to her on the edge of the bed and open up the top drawer of the teak nightstand.
“There’s some ibuprofen and Advil here,” I tell her. “For the pain.”
“I don’t really feel it anymore.”
“That’s just the ice numbing you,” I say. “Trust me, you’ll start to feel it in a few hours. Just take a pill. It’ll help you sleep.”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight.”
The flash of fear across her face tells me it’s not the pain she fears.
It’s the man who inflicted it on her.
“You don’t have to worry about him again, Charlotte,” I assure her fiercely. “That fucker is not going to be breathing for long.”
“He’s on your enemies list, huh?” she asks with a hint of a smile.
“Without a doubt.”
“He must have really pissed you off.”
“He did,” I reply, grazing her cheek with the back of my hand. “He hurt you.”
I can see the confusion in her eyes. She’s trying to determine what I mean. She’s trying to feel out the strange energy between us.
She’s trying to determine if it’s real or imagined.
“I’m nobody,” she says softly.
“No,” I refute. “You’re not.”
She looks at me, and I know I can’t just leave it there.
“You’re Evie’s ally,” I continue. “You’re the only one she trusts completely. You make her feel safe and comfortable. That makes you important.”
“Oh,” Charlotte says.
Her face falls, though she tries her best to hide it behind a smile.
But the smile comes off sad.
There’s more to be said. I know that.
I want to tell her that her worth to me is not based solely on her connection with Evie.
But I can’t bring myself to say the words.
Maybe that’s why I find myself leaning in, pressing my lips against hers. It’s just a fluttering, the softest of kisses.
And when I pull back, she looks even more confused than before.
“What are we doing?” she whispers.
“I don’t know.”
“This is wrong,” she says quietly. “It’s all wrong.”
I frown, wondering what exactly she means by that. Her eyes rise to mine for a second, then she drops them again, as though facing me is too difficult.
“We’ve never spoken about what happened between us,” she points out.
I pull back a little.
“No, we haven’t.”
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” she says. “Any of it.”
Her eyes kind of glaze over and I have the feeling she’s talking about something else. I can see the trauma in her eyes, years and years of it, staring back at me.
“Maybe not. I’ll leave you now,” I say, preparing to rise from the bed.
But her hand shoots out and clings to my arm.
I can tell from the look in her eye that she didn’t mean to do that. She didn’t mean to stop me. It was automatic, instinctive. Purely primal.
“I… I’m sorry,” she says again. But she doesn’t quite let go.
“Stop apologizing. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
I want to shake her like a ragdoll to free these self-hating thoughts from her brain. I want to force her to look in a mirror and see what I see: a strong woman. A proud woman. A fierce woman.
“I let him go…” she murmurs.
“He attacked you,” I repeat, my hand rising again to her face. “What choice did you have?”
“There’s always a choice,” she says softly. “Even in impossible situations, there’s always a choice.”
“Charlotte,” I say, looking at her with concern. “You need to get some rest.”
“I can’t sleep.”
“Try anyway,” I insist. “You need it.”
She opens her mouth as though she wants to protest, but then she snaps it shut again. She lies down against my pillow but her eyes remain open.
“Is Evie okay?” she asks.
“I checked on her just before you appeared at my door. She’s fine. She’s safe.”
Charlotte sighs with relief. “Good,” she replies, her eyes fluttering closed for a moment. “That’s good. She was so excited about this sleep… over…”
Charlotte’s hand is still clutching my arm as she falls asleep. Her grip loosens somewhat but she doesn’t release me.
I don’t mind that at all.
42
Charlotte
The Next Morning
I wake up in Lucio’s room.
Sore.
Tired.
And utterly alone.
Feeling a weird surge of shame, I slip out and retreat to my own bedroom. I stay there until Evie comes home with Enzo.
It’s easy to lose myself in her stories as we spend the day in the pool and the garden.
Easy to forget about what I’m doing here. If this is all some crazy, fucked-up dream. If I did the right thing by letting Xander go, and then lying to Lucio about it.
It’s been lie after lie after lie.
I’m starting to feel like they’re catching up to me.
Explaining my bruise to Evie is just one more added to the mix.
I tell her I walked into a door when I wasn’t paying attention. She shrugs and seems to believe it, then turns to marvel at a butterfly on a nearby hedge.
If only all my lies went down that smoothly.
Later, we come back from a long walk through the gardens to find glittering evening dresses laid out on our beds.
I stop short at the doorway and frown. Evie does the exact opposite. She races forward and fingers the expensive fabric with huge, surprised eyes.
There’s a dress for each of us.
Evie’s is an elegant silver that matches her eyes perfectly.
Mine is aquamarine and seems to glow like moonlight on the ocean.
I’m wondering what all this means until I see something. There is a note lying on top of the duvet. It’s written in a spiky, masculine scrawl.
Dinner at 8. I think these dresses will look beautiful on you both.
But most precious of all is the last piece of the surprise: another little gift, with a similar note in the same handwriting.
I let Evie tear open the wrapping paper to reveal the contents.
A smart black bowtie.
I’m confused until I read the note.
For Paulie, it says. He should look dapper as well.
My heart clenches again. Twice as hard.
“What’s the note say?” Evie asks me.
“Your papa is taking us to dinner,” I explain with a soft smile.
Evie immediately hoots and claps in excitement.
I don’t want to discourage her happiness—I feel some of it, too, a kind of drunken giddiness that I’ve learned to associate with Lucio.
But I also feel a whole lot of confusion.
I’ve learned to associate that with Lucio, too.
I try to fight my mixed feelings back as the two of us get ready.
Evie lets me blow out her hair and style it the same way I do mine, in long, loose ringlets cascading down our backs. We sing and dance and laugh, and for a little while, it’s easy to pretend there’s nothing at all to worry about.
But as soon as it’s time to go downstairs, I feel like I might vomit on the spot.
What are we doing? I’d asked Lucio last night as he tucked me into his bed.
He hadn’t answered. I didn’t have an answer of my own.
I still don’t.
All I know is that, whatever this is between us, it’s very quickly driving me insane.
Evie and I go down the stairs together, pretending to be princesses. When we round the curve in the staircase, he comes into sight.
He’s wearing a tuxedo, much to my surprise.
Less surprising is how damn good it looks on him.
He has the kind of frame tuxedos were made of. As if the designer of the tuxedo had Lucio Mazzeo in mind when he dreamed it up.
Broad shoulders, crisp black-and-white lines. Dark tousled hair.
And of course—those eyes, shining like stars as he drinks in our descent.
When we reach the floor, I whisper in Evie’s ear. She beams, then scampers over and gives him a curtsy.
Lucio’s eyes widen and he laughs, then bows right back.
“You look beautiful, tesoro,” he murmurs to her.
