by Bethany-Kris
Penny said nothing.
She couldn’t.
“Did she know?” Roz asked as Allegra slipped down the hall and Penny’s heart shattered into a million and one pieces all around her.
“Know—what do you mean?”
Oh, good.
There was her voice again.
At least, she hadn’t lost it forever.
“Sorry,” Roz muttered, obviously hearing the pain in Penny’s tone. “I’ve never asked about ... the things your father did to you. I never wanted to push. It’s none of my business. You can forget I even asked if you want. I just ... wondered for a second.”
Ah.
Penny understood. “You meant ... did she know my father was sexually abusing me and selling me to other men to do the same while it was happening?”
Roz let out a hard breath. “Yeah, see, when you lay it all out like that—it’s a harder pill to swallow than the way I make myself think about it, Penny.”
Honesty was a killer.
But ... “That was my life, though.”
“And I’m so sorry.”
“I know, Roz. I do.”
“But it doesn’t help, does it.”
Well, that was the thing about it.
Penny smiled faintly, whispering, “It does help.”
Baby Cross reached for her, and she held his tiny hand with three fingers that he tried to pull into his drool-filled mouth.
“It helps to have people who really love me,” she added, not looking Roz in the eye. “Because you mean it—you really are sorry for the things that happened to me even if you weren’t a cause or able to stop it. For the first time ever, I didn’t feel crazy, Roz. When I felt bad ... when I knew things weren’t right, I was told I was wrong. It’s the people who love me and tell me they’re sorry for what others did to me that taught me I wasn’t wrong at all. In a lot of ways.”
“Oh, Penny—”
“Do you really want to know?” she asked Roz, swallowing hard. “If she knew ... the truth?”
Unshed tears filled Roz’s eyes when Penny met her gaze. “You told me once ... one of the first times we met, actually, that if you opened your mouth and started talking about everything, nothing would be the same, right?”
“But I only talked a little.”
“Enough to put your father in prison,” Roz returned.
“Enough to be free. Do you want the truth?” Penny asked again.
Roz blinked, the tears falling when she whispered, “I do.”
“She always knew.”
The silence came without mercy.
Roz held a little tighter to her infant son, glancing down the hall where Allegra had disappeared to return to her lawyers. “Sh-she smiled and seemed purposefully nice and—something felt wrong about it. He wouldn’t let her touch his hand. Did you see that?”
Baby Cross was back to babbling and smacking the side of his hand against his mouth. A typical baby. But for a second, yes, Penny had seen the way the baby pulled away from her mother. Like a part of him instinctually knew she was all wrong.
The same way Penny knew.
Just like Roz said it all felt wrong.
“Are we ready or what?” Luca asked, breaking Penny and Roz’s locked gazes as he came around the corner of the hallway with dripping wet hands. “Ignore the water—they only had blow dryers, and everybody knows that shit spreads everything. They’ll airdry. Are we ready to go now, or what?”
“Yeah,” Roz said, “we’re ready. Let’s go.”
Penny was happy to follow along, only wanting to get as far away from her mother as she possibly could. At the same time, all she could think about was her mother’s parting words to her.
I’ll be watching you. All of you.
Allegra’s threats against Penny and anyone close to her weren’t empty. But what could she do now?
How could Penny protect anyone? She hadn’t even been able to protect herself.
PENNY LET NAZ AND ROZ throw a party. For her eighteenth birthday, that was.
She wished she hadn’t.
If only she could have foreseen the way a single conversation with her mother could send Penny flying back in so many ways ... Her nightmares were back. She could barely breathe when someone stood too close to her. Every room was too small to be inside for any length of time, but the outside was even more terrifying.
Nothing was right.
Everything was entirely wrong.
Just like her mother.
Roz brushed off Penny’s snappiness and quiet demeanor as stress leading up to the massive eighteenth birthday party. She even told the teenager that she would be more surprised if Penny wasn’t in a mood lately.
That only made her feel worse.
The guilt was a killer.
Still, she couldn’t tell the truth.
Didn’t dare.
What if her mother—
Penny slammed the heavy door of the mansion’s library closed behind her, dragging in a breath that shook and ached the whole way in. Her palms pressed against the wood as she listened to the hum of the party and music down the hall while she tried to soothe the panic attack clawing its way through her nervous system.
Too many people.
Too many smiles.
Too many lies.
Because she was putting them all in danger—every single one of them. Just by being there. What happened if her mother changed her mind ... what if just telling wasn’t a good enough reason for Allegra—and all the people connected to her mother’s business—to kill Penny?
She sucked in a ragged breath, letting go of the door to wipe the wet tears that had fallen in her haste to get away from the party before anyone could even notice she was gone. No doubt, someone would come looking for her soon.
Wasn’t that the entire point?
This was supposed to be her night.
Her eighteenth birthday party.
Fuck.
It was something she wanted. For the first time, she wanted to be celebrated. Why did her mother have to ruin something else that should have been just for Penny?
“I’m not equipped to deal with the tears of a teenage girl—should I leave?”
The new—male—voice had Penny swinging around on the spot. The library doors pressed against her back as she found a familiar man watching her from the other side of the room. Behind the large desk in the library, he stood drinking what looked to be whiskey on ice as he observed her mental breakdown with nothing more than a cocked eyebrow. His eyes were dark—soul-deep, some might say, but cold, too.
In the time she had been with Naz and Roz, she could count on one hand the number of conversations she had had with the man staring at her.
Cross Donati, that was.
Naz’s father.
Head of the family, she knew.
It was never said.
Just ... understood.
“I could get my wife,” he suggested, tipping his glass her way when more tears spilled down Penny’s cheeks. “Or even Roz, if you want. I mean, it’s your call but—”
“It’s fine,” she rushed to say.
She didn’t want anyone to know something was wrong. Not when she wasn’t sure what that might mean for them to know in the first place. Or worse ... because she did know exactly what it would mean.
Her reply had Cross narrowing his gaze on her. “You’re lying.”
“What?”
“You’re lying to me. I don’t know why, maybe it’s not important. But you are lying, and that’s ... interesting.”
“Wh-why?” she asked, more confused than anything.
“Because that means something really is wrong. But if it was the kind of something Roz could handle, and she usually does with you, I know that for a fact, then you wouldn’t have just refused my offer to get her. So, something is wrong ... and it’s bad, isn’t it?”
Penny swallowed hard, unsettled with how the man had been able to read her without any effort at all. That was a gift most people d
idn’t possess—she also didn’t know what to do about it.
Except stay silent.
“Penny—”
“It’s fine,” she said again.
Nope.
It didn’t work.
He rounded the desk, taking slow, short steps until he stopped in the middle of the room. “You were doing well—Naz said so. He did mention you’ve been a little off for about a week. Since what, the day your trust and restitution was handed over, right?”
She didn’t reply.
He didn’t need her to, apparently.
“I heard your mother was there,” he said.
Cross stared at her like he knew ... but what?
How could he?
Who was he if he did know?
“No Roz, then?” he asked quietly.
Penny nodded. “Please.”
“Okay. Is it bad? Whatever happened ... is it bad?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you need help?”
“Everyone does,” Penny admitted. “They all need help because of me.”
He dragged in a heavy breath and scrubbed his hand back through the slick strands of his dark hair, peppered with gray only at the edges. “Then, tell me. Can’t I help?”
She hesitated. Only for a second. Then she thought ... what do I have to lose now? The answer was scary.
Everything.
Penny whispered to the man still looking her way, “They call themselves, The Elite.”
And she told him all of it.
Every sordid detail she knew.
17.
Luca
FOR once, Luca hadn’t been late to a party. He was starting to think his family and friends might withhold invitations—joking, of course.
Naz slapped Luca on the shoulder as the two of them faced the large rose gold three-tier cake with the sparkling 18 resting at the very top proudly. “Didn’t think we were going to make it to this point if I’m being honest. It’s not a bad thing for me to want to ... celebrate that as a personal accomplishment, is it?”
Luca grinned his friend’s way, knowing the truth. Naz and Roz had nothing but goodness in their hearts where Penny was concerned. So ... “Yeah, I think you earned a bit of celebrating.”
“Me, too, man.”
Turning back around to face the rest of the room, they surveyed the people milling between the grand rooms of the Donati mansion. Another party that everyone decided was better thrown at someone else’s house because of space. Given the number of people who showed up to support Penny’s birthday party, he had to admit the suggestion wasn’t a bad one. There had to be at least a hundred people.
Or more.
He found his parents in the crowd standing next to Naz’s. As usual. His sister drifted between guests with a smile on her face, talking to everyone like she did because that was just Roz in a nutshell. Servers from the company his family liked to use for larger events—when the ladies couldn’t handle making all the food themselves—kept everyone’s hands full with either treats or something to drink.
The party was in full swing.
Had been for a while.
And that’s when Luca realized he needed to ask, “Where’s Penny?”
He was sure he’d gotten a peek of her earlier talking to Naz’s grandmother, Emma, but it was brief before he was pulled away. Shit, he hadn’t even been able to tell her happy birthday—even if he did tell her the day she actually turned eighteen.
“I don’t know,” Naz said, sucking hair through his teeth. “Fuck, I wonder if she found somewhere to hide for a bit. There’s a lot of people here. We told her it was okay if—”
“Want me to find her?”
Naz laughed. “Would you?”
“Yeah, why not?”
It wasn’t like he was doing anything but standing there. At least this way, Luca would look busy. Maybe then his father would quit shooting looks his way like Zeke was going to come over and find something new to run his mouth about.
But who could say?
Certainly not Luca.
“I’ll find her,” he promised his friend.
At his back, Naz called, “But don’t make her do shit if she’s not in the mood. We’re still surprised she even let us do this.”
That was fair.
Luca was surprised, too.
It took him longer to find Penny in the mansion than he cared to admit. She wasn’t anywhere that he thought she would be. Certainly not mingling with the people or sneaking sweets from the kitchen where the caterers had been set up. He even checked in the rear of the mansion to see if she might have slipped outside for a breather.
No such luck.
It was on his way back from checking outside that he finally found her. At first, though, he didn’t even realize it was Penny. The royal blue skirt of her dress fell over her hips and the pert roundness of her backside in such a way that he couldn’t help himself but stare when she bent over the side of an infant’s Pack ‘n Play to rest baby Cross at the bottom.
The baby was already sleeping, from what he could see of the still infant at the bottom of the bed. And Luca was still staring at Penny’s ass when she leaned further down to kiss the baby boy on his forehead.
It took him entirely too long to realize it was Penny. That was half the problem. In just a short couple of months, a lot about Penny had started to change. She tried more things—new things that he didn’t expect her to. Like makeup and clothes more suited to a young woman. She still liked an oversized hoodie every once in a while, but at least now, someone could actually see that she did have a shape under all those layers of clothes.
He just wished he didn’t notice.
Luca didn’t need that problem. He refused to even admire the fact that the dress, the matte, flesh-toned stockings, and the matching blue, pointed-toed heels made her calves look fucking perfect.
Too late, stupid.
He shook those thoughts off. And the indecent feelings.
She was only eighteen. Still way too damn young for him and hell ... Luca hadn’t even seen Penny in that kind of way before. He wasn’t about to start now. It wasn’t happening.
Nope.
Stepping back out of view of the doorway, he waited for Penny to finish her business in the baby’s makeshift bedroom for the night. At least, it gave him a few extra minutes to get out of that crazy fucking headspace.
One good thing.
There wasn’t much else.
He hadn’t expected Penny to be wiping away tears when she stepped out of the room and closed the door behind her. To be fair, she hadn’t expected him to be standing there waiting for her, either, if the way she jumped and swallowed a half-shriek into the palm she slapped over her mouth was any indication.
“Sorry,” Luca said. “Naz wanted me to find you. I guess you disappeared. You okay?”
Penny shrugged and played with the long sleeves of the royal blue dress that dipped low at her chest with a cut V neckline. The skirt swished from side to side where it fell a few inches below her knees when she shifted from heel to heel. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
“Tears don’t usually mean okay, Penny.”
She rolled sparkling blue eyes.
Oh, now they sparkle.
Luca ignored his taunting inner thoughts.
Fucking prick.
“I’m fine,” she said, peeking back at the door she had closed. “Just saying goodbye.”
“Goodnight, you mean?”
Because goodbye implied—
“Yeah, goodnight,” Penny rushed to say, laughing at her mistake. He still thought it sounded ... wrong. Fake, maybe. “Tonight has me all messed up. Too many people, you know?”
Luca grinned. “Yeah, I know. They’re over the moon that you let them do this, though. For the record.”
“I know. I do.”
“You wanna head back to the party or do you need a few more minutes?”
Penny turned her smile on him, and for a second, he just blinked. The soft, natural tone
s of her makeup really set off the shape of her face while her white-blonde hair had been left down in soft waves to frame her features and fall over her shoulders. She might have been only eighteen, but he was not blind.
She was stunning.
Finally shedding her shell.
Luca thought she deserved to know. “You look beautiful, by the way. Who picked the dress?”
Penny beamed even through the pink blush that colored her cheeks and rushed down the exposed part of her chest. She didn’t meet his gaze when she replied, “Me, but Roz convinced me to wear it when I second-guessed it today.”
Ah.
Good going, Roz.
He didn’t say that out loud.
Barely.
“The shoes kind of hurt,” she added.
Both of them looked down at the pointed toe, blue heels.
“Shame, they make your legs look fantastic.”
Fuck.
Penny’s head lifted slowly, her gaze finally finding his, but he did his best to stare down the hall and pretend like that thought hadn’t slipped out of his mouth. His incredibly stupid mouth. Such was his luck, Penny hadn’t missed it anyway.
“Luca—”
“It shouldn’t be me,” he muttered, his stare snapping back to hold hers strong while he spoke. “You shouldn’t break your teeth in on me while you figure out what you want with men or sex ... whatever, even if I could handle it. I said I was gonna be your friend, Penny. A safe place, right? And I’m not sure I can be that if there isn’t a line.”
There.
He said it.
The truth was out there.
“Okay,” she whispered.
He couldn’t even pretend like he was incapable of seeing the line of water in her bright eyes. She did her very best to keep them from falling when she blinked them away, though.
“And I’m sorry,” he added, clearing the thickness from his throat.
Penny’s brow lifted when she asked, “For what?”
“I’m a shitty friend, anyway. I didn’t get you anything for your birthday.”
He was still running like a madman for Naz and trying to keep up with college, after all. He was lucky that he even made it to this goddamn party on time. Accomplishing anything in his life currently felt like a feat. When would that change?
