A lot of the story was the pieces Cora had heard a million times over the years. A lot of it was new. The sadness in her mother’s eyes was new. Usually, the story was filled with laughter and sly glances. It was like hearing a whole other side of it.
“What happened?”
Elise shrugged. “Nothing. Months passed. I continued to model. Work was picking up. I was getting international jobs that took me to Japan and Africa. It was everything I ever wanted, but I was miserable. My agent tried to get me on medication, but I refused. Drugs weren’t going to help me with this problem.”
“You missed Dad.”
Eloise offered her a rueful smile. “I missed him, and told myself I was being ridiculous. He clearly wasn’t losing sleep over it. If he cared at all, he would have found me. It wouldn’t have been very hard. But it felt like my heart had literally been broken. I threw myself into work, unable to stand my own thoughts. I worked until I landed in the hospital, stress, not enough food or sleep. I had overworked. I needed a break, but I refused to listen. I was at the top of my game. Everyone loved and wanted me. I was attending the best parties, I was wearing top of line clothes. I was flying around the world, first class, and staying in places that cost in the thousands. I was living the dream.” She chuckled humorously. “My next gig took me to New York. It was December and it was for some up and coming fashion magazine I’d never heard of, but they were making big splashes across America. The owner had asked for me specifically, which wasn’t unusual. They put me in the most amazing dress, silver and so exquisitely crafted I was terrified of moving in case I wracked it. My hair and makeup was done and I was placed on the set of a winter wonderland. Then told to wait. The owner wanted to talk to me about the set before we began.”
Cora couldn’t help herself. “It was Dad.”
Elise smiled. “It was. He walked into that room and I was transported back to Milan and the first time I saw him. He didn’t say a word as he crossed the room and took me in his arms. He grinned when all I could do was stare, and said, ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you.’ then he kissed me and it was like coming home.”
Cora’s heart melted as it always did on that moment. Her parents’ story had always been her favorite. No fairytale love story could ever surpass it.
“Okay, now tell me the rest,” Cora teased. “This other woman.”
The glow in her mother’s smile vanished into one of pain and annoyance. “Her name was Allara. Beautiful just like she was. She was part Egyptian so she was just stunning. Thick dark hair, enormous brown eyes, skin soft and dusky. If she ever tried her hand at modeling, she could have easily given me a run for my money. But she was cold and cruel. Gio’s father and hers had been at war for decades over turf. So much blood had been shed on both sides, and through all that, they’d come to a tenuous agreement to align their clans through marriage.”
“Dad agreed?”
Elise squinted indecisively. “Your grandfather was a very hard man to say no to. He was the head of the clan up there in Italy, one of the biggest. You never met him, but Giuseppe De Marco could scare the mane off a lion with no more than a look. Your father fought the decision for as long as he could, but he knew it was inevitable.”
“What happened?” Cora pressed when Elise went quiet.
“Well, he met me that night in Milan. He’d been there to shake the photographer down for the money he owed the clan and we met. He went home after I left and told his father he wouldn’t marry Allara that he was in love with someone else. Gio never told me what happened after that or why it took him so long to find me. But he cut ties with his clan and his family, and no one does that easily. He never talked to or about his father again.”
Cora had always known her father leaving the clan was the reason her grandfather refused to speak to him, why he never cared that he had a granddaughter. It had never mattered, because she always had the rest of the family and her parents. But it finally made sense.
“What happened with Allara?”
Elise shrugged. “Gio walking away from their arrangement was an insult. Her father ordered a bounty on my head and she tried to claim it. She broke into my hotel room and ... I won.”
Cora squinted warily. “But that still doesn’t explain why you waited five years to get married.”
“Because I loved the courting.” Elise grinned sheepishly. “I loved the flirting and the dance of dating a man who’s crazy about you. But mostly because his world scared me. It was nothing like mine and I didn’t know how to adapt. Gio was building his own clan here and I was constantly worried he might not return. Honestly, and I have never told your father this, but there were days I wanted to walk away, days when I didn’t think I could handle being the thing he was turning me into. I couldn’t be the wife he wanted. I told him that once. A mafia wife ... he should have married Allara. He’d been an idiot not to. No one, especially not some twenty-five year old supermodel, could simply slip into those shoes and be expected to perform. It’s terrifying. I was terrified. I couldn’t do it.”
A dry, pasty sensation had begun to fill Cora’s mouth, contradicting the shimmer of relief over hearing she wasn’t the only one afraid of taking on that task.
“How did you decide?”
Elise stared off into the distance as if the whole thing was playing on repeat on a screen only she could see.
“I made a choice. I could leave and return to my life before, and eventually fade into nothing as someone younger and prettier took my place, or I could stand by the man I love and become one of the most powerful women in the world.”
“Power? That’s why you—?”
Elise sighed. “I love your father, Cora. I have loved him like I have never loved any man before or since. I have killed for him. I have kept secrets for him. I have been his wife, his lover, his confidant, his right-hand, his friend, and his shoulder. In return, he has been all of those for me. So, when I say power, I don’t mean against the world. It’s the exchange between two people who trust and respect each other impeccably. With him by my side, I am given strength, confidence, a poise in everything I do, because I know he will always have my back. That, my darling girl, is power.”
Cora turned that over in her mind, trying to garner as much wisdom from it as possible and still not getting her answer.
“James wants me to take that role for him,” she mumbled at last. “He wants me to become all the things I’ve avoided my whole life and I don’t know if I can.”
“You can,” Elise said with confidence. “Because you’re strong and capable, and because it’s already in you. The question isn’t if you can, though. It’s if you want to. It’s not an easy step take and an even harder one to take back. So, whatever you decide, make sure you can live with it for the rest of your life.”
“Have you ever regretted it?”
Elise smiled. “Not once, but I also took five years to decide.” She rose to her feet. “Now, come. We have a mess downstairs to clean up.”
She followed her mom down, only partially present as her mother explained the importance of the right flowers. She made the appropriate noises, but she kept going back to everything Elise had told her, all the new information about her parent’s pasts, and the road that had led them to the present.
There was so much.
They’d gone through impossible feats to get to where they were, to be together. Did she and James even stand a chance? How could they when he refused to love her, to allow her to love him? That wasn’t a partnership at all. It was like lovers with benefits.
She wanted his love.
She wanted to love him.
She wanted him to accept that willingly.
A deafening crash shattered her thoughts, sending her plummeting back to the present and the raised voices echoing through the corridors. She and Elise both froze on the bottom landing as the yelling raised in volume.
They started towards it.
“What I do in my own home is none of your concern!” G
iovanni’s roar met them halfway down the corridor.
Elise grabbed Cora’s arm, stopping her from going into the parlor.
“I don’t give a flying shit what you do in your home, De Marco,” came James’s snarl. “Kill the whole fucking city for all I care, but flaunting that bullshit now, only days from Cora’s big night, that shit needs to fucking stop!”
“My daughter was raised in this. She knows—”
“Knows what?” James cut him off. “That her dad’s a mental case going around slaughtering people she considered family her entire life because he’s a paranoid fuck?”
Cora winced.
Elise did too.
“Don’t you fucking talk to me like that, boy. I was doing this before your mother even opened her legs—”
Something crashed, the thud of a body hitting something and sending it splintering across the floor.
“Talk about my mother again and I will tear your tongue from your throat, De Marco.” The eerie calm in James’s tone sent a chill down Cora’s spine. “This isn’t about what you know. It’s about what I’m telling you, and I’m telling you that if I hear about one more dead person between now and Saturday, I will bury you. I will make you dig the hole and I will fill it with you still breathing. Your need for blood will have to wait the next three days. After that, kill them all. I’ll help you. Hell, I’ll hold their children down so you can pop them in the fucking head. Anything to feed your sick need for death.”
Cora started forward. “We should...”
Elise shook her head, gaze fixed on the door. “Not yet.”
“I don’t kill children,” De Marco sounded resigned. “People I do kill, deserve it.”
“And how many people would agree that you deserve to die?” James countered. “You’re not a saint. You’re a monster. You’ve killed more innocent people than anyone I know.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Cora held her breath, so certain that this was the moment James would tell Giovanni about Annie. That they would see once and for all that her father was not capable of those things.
“Would you even remember if I told you her name?” James murmured. “Is it written somewhere in your little death book?”
“Who?”
“My sister. Annie Crow.” There was a tinge of dark amusement when he said her name. “You’d have to go back several years. Fifteen, actually. Look it up. Let me know when you find the red stain where her name was in your ledger.”
Neither Elise nor Cora were prepared for him when he stomped out of the room. He skidded to a halt at the sight of them. His gaze found hers and the violence, the pain in his eyes cut into her. But just as quickly, he regained his footing and stalked off before she could utter a word.
“Did you know?”
Cora looked away from the sharp line of her husband’s retreating back to her mother. “What?”
“About his sister.”
Cora nodded.
Elise sucked in a breath. “Oh dear.”
Cora left her mother and hurried after James, sprinting slightly to catch up before she lost him in the maze of corridors.
But he was throwing himself out the front door when she caught up. She barely caught it from shutting behind him.
“James.”
“Not now, Cora.”
He kept walking, long, angry, defeated strides down the driveway.
“Please don’t walk away from me,” she called after him.
He paused. His chin turned over one shoulder.
“I’m not walking away from you. I’m walking away so I don’t break my promise.”
Cora scrambled down the steps and hurried to him.
“Come back inside. I’ll make tea and we can—”
He laughed. “Did you just offer to make tea and crumpets?”
Cora wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t say crumpets.”
“Do I look like someone who drinks tea?” The question was asked with silent laughter in his eyes.
She shrugged. “I can make yours extra Irish.”
He snorted a chuckle and shook his head. “I’m fine. Go back inside.”
Cora sighed. “You’re picking fights with my parents for me. Don’t deny it,” she scolded when he opened his mouth. “You talked to my mother and you’re yelling at my father ... for me.”
His gaze left hers, averting to some place off to his left. They narrowed as he sucked his bottom lip between his teeth.
“I told you marrying you the way I did hadn’t been my plan.” He met her eyes once more. “If I’d had a choice, it would have been done the way you wanted. The way you deserve. I’m giving you that, even if I have to yell at your parents to make it happen.”
Right.
Don’t love him.
At all.
As if that was even a fucking possibility anymore.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Saturday couldn’t come fast enough in James’s opinion. It had been the month from hell and every new day was a fresh wave of torture. Albeit, once he’d sorted out Cora’s parents, it hadn’t been too bad. There was less tension in the air, less signs of misery in Cora’s eyes. Granted, it was brimming with stress now. But he’d expected that. Welcomed it in comparison.
The evening approached with the arrival of everyone who wanted to kill him. They pulled into the driveway, one after the other, a carousel of death and pain waiting to happen and flooded into the manor.
Voices rose into the air, a cacophony of laughter and greeting. It swelled up to the ceiling and struck James where he stood at the top of the grand stairway.
Elise had originally wanted him and Cora to greet everyone at the door.
She’d inexplicably changed her mind that morning and insisted they wait to make a grand entrance once everyone had arrived.
James wanted to do neither.
His idea was to slip in while everyone was having a good time, steal a few of those shrimp paste things, and sneak out.
After all, these were Cora’s people.
Cora’s family.
Cora’s party.
He’d done it for her.
It made no difference to him how it all came together.
He already had the girl.
He was already married to her.
The rest was just to make her happy.
“Are you ready for this?”
De Marco joined James at the railings overlooking the foyer.
“Probably not.” James straightened. “Shouldn’t you be down there with your wife? It’s your family.”
De Marco chuckled. “They like her better.”
James didn’t blame them, but didn’t say as much.
“Any luck finding your mole?”
De Marco adjusted his bowtie and smoothed his hands down the silk lapel of his tux. “Not yet, but that’ll change tonight.”
James wanted to ask, but there was something else that had been nagging at him, something that kept rising back up no matter how much sand he tossed over it.
“You set Cora’s apartment on fire.” He didn’t bother placing it as a question. He didn’t need to. “That was why you weren’t in a hurry to find the person responsible. It was you.”
De Marco continued watching the steady flock of party goers flood into his foyer and stream towards the ballroom. He absently adjusted the diamond cufflinks on his sleeves.
James turned his body to fully face him and continued keeping his tone low. “You could have fucking killed her, you sick son of a bitch.”
A muscle twitched in De Marco’s cheek. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but if I did,” he tipped his chin towards James, “I would have made certain she got out. One way or another.”
James chose to ignore his ignorance. “Why? Because you wanted me to buy that Carmichael house that badly that you would risk her life? That you would risk her hating you forever if she ever found out?”
De Marco paused, possibly to consider the questions carefully
before speaking. “Where is my daughter right now, Captain?” he said at last with a glimmer of barely suppressed triumph. “Under my roof, with me, where she belongs. And how will she find out? Admit it or not, you love her and you know this will crush her ... if what you say was in fact true.”
He stepped around James and started for the stairs without a backwards glance.
It infuriated him that the man was right. James wouldn’t tell Cora, as much as he wanted nothing more than to grind that smug smirk off the man’s face. It would devastate her to know the man she loved so dearly, had sacrificed herself for over and over again had lit everything she cared about up in flames, all to prove a point.
But it didn’t mean James would allow De Marco to get away with it. If he thought he would continue having access to her, an opening to continue hurting her, he was about to have a rude awakening.
“Captain.”
Elise smiled and waved at him from the bottom of the stairs, looking radiant in an off the shoulder burgundy gown. Her dark hair was twisted up into an elegant knot and woven with a dozen tiny pearls. She extended a bare arm to him, small fingers splayed.
“Walk a lady in?”
James would have preferred not to. He was still too angry to be anywhere near people. But he descended the steps and joined his mother in law at the bottom. She gave him a broad grin and slipped her arm through the crook of his elbow.
“Now, I’ve made it clear, no weapons,” she told him smoothly as they followed the last of the herd towards the ballroom. “No killing, or hitting, or stabbing, poisoning, assassinating, bashing, shooting—”
“Basically all the fun stuff,” he interrupted.
Elise laughed. “Exactly. You’re perfectly safe. I made sure of it.”
Blood Script Page 36
