“Hey, Luc, what’s wrong,” he says, right off the bat. Because like most people our age, he’s not used to getting actual phone calls unless somebody’s died or some crazy shit like that.
“You still got that friend at Blade Mobile?”
“Yeah, Brad. What’s up?”
“I need him to track a phone for me.”
“Uh…should we be talking about this on the pho—”
“Just do it,” I say like I’m still the incoming crime boss with no time to deal with a by-the-books foot soldier, too worried about the Fed’s listening in to take an order.
“Alright, gimme the number. It’s going to take like thirty.”
I give him Amber’s number, but add, “Tell Brad I’m coming down there myself if he doesn’t get me her location in fifteen.”
“But—”
I hang up before he can start mealy-mouthing about that, too.
And then there’s nothing left to do but wait…and read, with all the Frank Sinatra heartbreak songs I don’t listen to anymore clanging in my head.
Nothing from Naima after that, but the day before the pork chop fight in the kitchen there’s a text to Peter. “Hey, can we have a talk tomorrow? Need some advice.”
Peter agrees but less than twenty hours later sends a new message, “Sorry about the argument, Bella. I’m just worried about you. Ferraro is bad news. I don’t care about how he’s trying to act now. You don’t get raised the way he did and decide you’re just going to live life on the straight and narrow. He’s an animal, and there’s no telling what he’ll do when he finds out about this.”
Finds out. My heart’s all the way iced over now, and I can feel the freeze spreading to the rest of my body, as I grimly continue to scroll through a bunch of texts with clients. The thing is Peter’s wrong. If Amber’s doing what I suspect. If she’s trying to leave me for another guy, it’ll be easy for anyone who knows me to tell what I’ll do. Kill him. With my bare fucking hands.
But that murderous thought disappears from my head when I see the next text that appears soon after Peter’s from Naima.
“Sorry, the talk with Peter went so bad, but don’t worry, girl, you know I’ve got your back. And for what it’s worth, I don’t agree with Peter. I think you’re making the right choice. And I know you didn’t ask, but I did some research and here’s the name of a doctor in Brooklyn who’s handled a couple of blind births. Her site’s not at all accessible (ugh! no surprise), but I called ahead, and she said she’d be happy to talk with you on the phone before you come in. Contact info below. Just let me know, and I’ll make you an appointment and take you myself.”
I don’t get to the contact info. The words blur. And the Atlantic Ocean suddenly takes up residence between my ears, roaring with the realization….
Amber’s not cheating on me.
She’s pregnant.
She’s pregnant with my baby.
I don’t know how much time passes with me staring down mutely at my phone, but it suddenly erupts in my hand with a call from Rock.
“Where is she?” I demand on what feels like the first breath I’ve expelled since finding out Amber’s pregnant.
I can’t stop thinking about how close I almost came to losing this baby with her. She was so worried about money and how I’d react to the news, and all I did was act like an ass who couldn’t be bothered to wash out a pan. She didn’t know…still doesn’t know the plans I have for us. And that kids were always included, even if she is blind. She could have gotten rid of it, and I would have never known.
“Luc,” Rock says, and he’s got that same hedging tone he used when he was trying to convince me not to go after Amber in the first place.
“No, Rock, I need to find her,” I say. “Right fucking now.”
“Okay…I hate to tell you this—” Rock expels a huge breath of his own, “—but her phone’s saying she’s at St. Joseph’s Hospital.”
17
Going Out Of My Head
At St. Joseph’s…
My heart slices open, ice churning in my gut. Amber’s at the hospital just a few blocks over from our apartment. And she’s been there since four. Over two hours. The whole time I was spying on her messages.
I tear out of the apartment. And forget a cab, I run the whole ten blocks to St. Joseph’s. Needing to see her. Needing to know she’s alright, even as I assure myself she’s just with a client, as I tear down city blocks in wingtips.
That’s got to be the reason. But I guess I don’t believe me, because after busting through the ER’s doors, I cut straight to the front of a long line and say to the nurse, “My wife, Amber Reynolds. Is she here? Was she brought in?”
I’m a sweaty mess, and I guess not quite as distracting as Kevin thinks I’ll be across a negotiating table, because the nurse glances up and says, “Get back in line, sir. We’ll help you when it’s your turn.”
“No, I can’t wait in line,” I tell her. And even though Amber once threatened to cut off my balls if I ever pulled the disabled wife card behind her back, I say, “My wife is blind. If she’s here, she’ll need me to assist her—”
I stop, my heart beating erratic with dread because the nurse’s expression changes from stern to sympathetic as soon as she hears the word “blind.”
“Yes, she was brought in,” she says, without having to consult her computer. “Here, let me get someone out here to talk to you.
So, no…Amber isn’t here to see a client.
When a nurse walks me into the room they’ve put her in, my heart shrivels inside my chest. All the blood freezing in my veins.
The doctor warned me, as did the police officer still hovering outside the room, waiting to ask me a whole lot of questions after “you visit with your wife.” But there’s no warning on Earth that could’ve prepared me for the sight of Amber in that hospital bed.
I rush to the side of her hospital bed, but then stop short, afraid to touch her. Everything on her face is swollen, her nose, her lips, even the spaces underneath her eyes. The beautiful brown skin I watched her clean and moisturize last night is now a mix of unnatural colors that tells me she took more than one punch to the face. Just like I did. God…
My eyes slam closed, the image of that basement overtaking my head. Hanging above that tarp. A meaty fist pounding into my face, just like it pounded into hers.
But I don’t open my eyes. Because the sight in front of me is even worse.
I wish…I actually wish to God I could go back to that basement. Take another one of the beatings that haunted my nightmares before Amber agreed to be my wife. In exchange? I need him to roll back time. Taking back what I just saw and make it so that when I open my eyes, Amber’s no longer in that hospital bed, but back in her office. Pissed off because her husband keeps calling during her meeting with her IEP clients.
But I’m Catholic enough to know that’s not how God works. I open my eyes, and everything’s still the same. The scene before me just as horrifying as it had been before I shut it out with a desperate squeeze of my eyes.
She’s still there. More than hurt. Broken. She’s lying on her side, her breath coming out with a stunted noise, somewhere between a wheeze and a gasp.
The doctor said she was lucky the family of three she was supposed to be meeting with at four, walked in early, causing the two men they found punching and kicking her to cut and run. But at least she wasn’t bleeding internally. She’d made it out of her severe beating alive, with a concussion and a broken rib.
But lucky ain’t what I’m thinking as I look at her. And with her eyes swollen shut the way they are, I can’t tell if she’s sleeping or awake.
I should have gone straight to her office, I think to myself. I should have never let her get an office. Those and a hundred other thoughts punch me in the gut, paralyzing me where I stand.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” the nurse says beside me. Then, with a scratching roll of a curtain closing, she’s gone.
“Ambs…”
I say, voice low and choked. Not wanting to wake her if she’s asleep but needing her to know I’m here now at the same time.
She’s not asleep. “Luca,” she answers, immediately, like she’s just been lying there, waiting for me to talk. And her voice is softer than I’ve ever heard it as she asks, “Did they tell you about the baby?”
Her eyes don’t open. And technically, I get that they don’t have to. I walked in on her studying to Aron Amarath with her eyes closed enough times to know that keeping her eyes open whenever a sighted person is in the vicinity is a conscious choice she makes. When she’s in private, she often keeps her eyes closed. She told me once it helps her concentrate. But as soon as I walk into our apartment, she opens them. Just for me.
Just for me…
My throat clogs with what feels like a scream, trying to get out. But I clench my teeth and swallow it back down to say, “Yeah.” One word’s all I can manage at this moment, and it takes more effort than running the ten blocks to get here.
“I was going to tell you tonight,” she says, her voice distant like she’s talking more to herself than me. “When I first found out, I wasn’t sure what to do. I’d just signed the lease on my office, and I knew now wasn’t the time to have a baby—”She stops, coughs, then grimaces hard against the pain that involuntary reaction must’ve caused with a broken rib.
“Ambs…” I start to say, wishing to both God and the devil that there was some way for me to trade places with her and take on her hurt. “You don’t have to explain anything to me. I understand, baby.”
“No, let me finish,” she gasps out. “Please.”
So, I stand there. Not knowing what else to do but listen as she continues.
“I’m blind, just starting out, super newly married—I mean, we never even talked about kids. It seemed crazy to consider anything but getting rid of it. But I…I just couldn’t. It…it felt like the baby represented something…this new beginning we’d started—”
Another cough and this time her body jerks so hard with the pain, I reflexively reach out again, my hand grazing hers, right before I snap it back with the fear of hurting her.
But she recovers and is already talking again, by the time I lower my arm.
“I couldn’t stand lying to you about my period, and getting rid of it without telling you, felt wrong. Like I was getting rid of us. That’s what it felt like, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it, even though I wasn’t sure if you’d want it—” She chokes on the it, her voice giving out. And it takes her a few moments before she’s finally able to say, “But now the baby’s dead. Dead inside of me. I shouldn’t be upset about it. I mean, I only decided to keep it a couple of days ago. It’s stupid to be so sad it’s gone.”
I’m trying to let Amber speak her piece, but I can’t hold back anymore. “No, Ambs, I get it. I’m fucking broken up about it, too.” I grab the hospital bed rail and squeeze it like I’m wringing somebody’s neck. “And I swear to you, I’m going to find out who did this. Then I’m going to make them pay.”
More than pay. She’s hurting, she’s in incomprehensible physical and emotional pain. And there’s nothing I can do about it. No way for me to fix this. I’m not going to just end whoever did this, I’m going to fuck them up so bad, they’ll be begging me to die by the time I’m done with them.
“I already know who did it,” she says, her voice going so completely flat.
I’m suddenly reminded of the girl I met in Public Health. The one who pronounced the name I fed her like it was AssDouche.
“Who?” I say, fist balling. Already planning the torture session for whatever names come out of her mouth.
“It was you,” she answers.
I falter, and for the first time since meeting her, I wonder if her blindness has affected her perception of what actually happened. “No, no Ambs, I would never—”
“You would never what, Luca?” she asks, her voice dipping viciously. “You’d never say to my face that you weren’t going to kill Greggi Deltano’s sons, then go ahead and do it anyway?”
My veins, which had been coursing with rage just a few minutes ago, ice right back over at her words. How did she find out?
Her next words answer the second question like I asked it out loud.
“People get really talky when they think beating you to death is next on the agenda, and apparently Greggi Deltano’s nephews didn’t appreciate how you did his sons.”
My brain stutters as all the pieces finally fall into place and form an arrow, pointing at me. My throat thickens and my chest bands so tight with guilt and self-recrimination I can barely breathe.
The Deltano nephews…
I actually remember those fucks. Two kids from the old neighborhood guys that Greggi kept trying to get recruited into our family as foot soldiers after his older son bailed for Miami. But after meeting them once, my father had denied the requests for one vague reason after another.
“Greggi’s proven himself a value-add, but those nephews of his are too smart to be wise, and that makes them dumb as shit far as I’m concerned,” Dad once told me privately when I asked why not just let them into our crew.
And apparently, Dad was right. They were dumb as shit to come after my wife, but their plan had probably made sense to them. I was no longer connected to the Ferraro family, which they would’ve mistaken for weakness. But at the same time, I’m still my dad’s only son. No way in hell the Ferraro crime family would let that lie if they tried to kill me. So, Amber, it was. The black wife that wouldn’t be avenged by anyone in my family.
Technically, it was a good plan. They just hadn’t taken me into account.
Because yeah, I might look weak on paper. Good schools, no arrest record, soft life, and then instead of taking my place at my father’s right hand, I got married and took a nine to five—that must be what it looks like to them. The Deltano nephews probably don’t even know it was me who killed the Deltano sons with my own hand, that I didn’t just have Stone dispense with them like most made men my age would.
And they’re right, on the outside, I look weak. “I’m sorry, Ambs. So sorry they did this to you because of me.”
But on the inside…something dark and vicious moves through me. It’s the animal I made lie down for the last year. It opens its red eyes and seeing what the Deltano nephews have done to my wife, it snarls, “I’ll kill them. I swear to you, baby, I will not rest until—”
The eye that isn’t swollen shut suddenly pops open, angry and fierce. “Killing is why I’m lying here with a baby inside of me that no longer has a heartbeat!” Amber spits, her voice harder than concrete.
My breath cuts off at the sight of that eye, red with shed tears, but dry now.
“Ambs,” I start to say, again, wanting her to understand that I know this is my fault. That I should have protected her better. Should have made sure nothing I did ever blew back and hurt her.
But before I can say any of that, she says, “Luca, in an hour, a nurse is going to come in here and take me to an operating room where they will put me under and then D&C this dead baby out of my body. About thirty minutes after they do, I’ll wake up, and I will no longer be pregnant. I’m going to take a week off work after that.”
“Of course—” I start to say.
“Let me finish and do not interrupt me again until I’m through.” She cuts me off before I can offer to take a week off too to take care of her.
The dumb half of me wants to shout her down, wants to try to explain what I did and why I did it. Defend myself against the accusing eye. But the smart half of me…God…that half knows she’s right. And that there’s nothing I can say that will make someone who’s been beaten into a miscarriage feel any better about what happened to her.
So, I shut up like she wants me to. Shut up and listen as efficient words spill out of her mouth in a near-monotone stream.
“I will tell the police that I don’t know who broke into my office. And after my week off, I will draw up divor
ce papers and send them to you. It will be a very simple process. No fault and I won’t ask you for a dime. I don’t want anything from you,” she says. “And in return for me not talking to the police and not asking you for a single thing, you and everything you own will be out of the apartment by the time I come home from this hospital. You will not visit me. You will not call, text, or email me. You will just sign the papers. Because I was wrong about us. So wrong about you...”
Here her voice cracks, emotion pushing up like something suppressed. But her open eye remains dry and fierce, as she tells me, “We’re poison to each other, and we have been from the start. This just proves it.”
As she speaks my heart does a slow shatter inside my chest before turning to dust.
“No, we’re not, Ambs. Don’t fucking say that. Don’t…”
“I’m saying it,” she hisses. “I have every right to call it over right now. So please, please don’t try to Jake me on this. Just let me go. Leave me in peace to grieve, and recover, and try to forget I was ever stupid enough to think I could spend the rest of my life with a man who’s done nothing but lie to me from the start. We’re over.”
We’re over…
At that moment, I want to kick. I want to scream. I want to pull a gun and eat all the bullets inside.
Because she’s serious. Not serious, like the girl who told me to get out of her assistant seat, but serious like a woman in pain. Because of me. A woman who’s been beaten. Because of me. A woman who’s lost our baby. Because of me.
There are a thousand things I’m thinking. And none of them come close to being something worth saying out loud. All I want to do is hold her. And beg my way back into her heart.
But holding her would hurt her. And I suspect begging her would, too.
She’s serious, and more fucking importantly, she’s right. Right in ways I’ll never forgive myself for, even if she changes her mind tomorrow and decides to love me again the way I still love her.
Ruthless Tycoons: The Complete Series (Ruthless Billionaires Book 3) Page 56
