by Kim Linwood
He brushes my hair back and kisses my forehead. “I—”
Whatever he was about to say is interrupted by his stomach rumbling loud enough to make me sit up and look at him with a laugh. “Hungry?”
Montana grins. “Well, I’ve been smelling food for an hour, and I feel like I’ve burned a few calories.”
“I could eat.” I flop back onto the pillow. “But clothes sound like work, and it’s so far away.”
He laughs and gets out of bed, giving me a great look at his ass before he pulls on pants. “Be right back, princess.”
I feel a little guilty. “You don’t have to.”
“I’m not doing this for you.”
“Oh?”
Montana gives me a slow, sexy look. “I like you naked, and I plan on keeping you that way for as long as possible.”
“Oh,” I repeat softly. “That sounds like a good idea.”
I close my eyes after he leaves. The feel of him is still all over—and inside—me, and I let myself enjoy it while it lasts.
I’m not sure I dare hope for forever, but we have right now, and I’m not going to waste a second.
38
Montana
The house is so quiet.
It’s eerie. No traffic, no sirens, no yelling neighbors. You never notice the noises of the city until they’re gone. Normally, I enjoy this time of day, but I’m too keyed up.
Taking a sip of my coffee, I glance up at the ceiling as if I should be able to see Andrea’s sleeping form in her bed. She doesn’t know anything about my plans.
Fuck, neither do I. All I know is that I have to step up and make this right, no matter the cost.
Which would be a lot easier if Marc would pick up his goddamn phone. My cell bounces off the leather cushions as I toss it onto the couch. If he doesn’t answer soon, I’ll try Mom, and if that doesn’t work… I might have to deal with the DiFieros first. What a shit-storm that would be.
I put the coffee down on an end table and relax into one of the deep chairs by the large bay windows. Outside, the wind is frothing the lake, pushing small waves towards the beach. My eyes drift closed as I watch. Maybe I should go back upstairs and join Andrea in bed. We wouldn’t get much sleeping done, though, and after I kept her up all night, she could use some. A smile pulls at the corner of my mouth.
She did her own share of keeping me up, too.
Footsteps come my way, softly from the front of the house. Evie’s unlikely to show before lunch. Andrea must have noticed I was gone. “Miss me already?” I ask, not bothering to look.
That’s a mistake.
My chair tips forward, slamming me into the window. I only just manage to get my arm up to take some of the hit, before someone kicks me so hard in the side, I’m gasping for air. Pushing the pain aside, I roll to the left, so the next kick only glances off my leg, then I spring to my feet, twisting to face my attacker. I make a grab for my gun before remembering that it’s still upstairs.
Shit.
“Going to shoot your own brother?” Marc stands a few feet away, two of his men blocking me in. Bruno is one of them, with an ugly leer on his face. Now I know who kicked me. Marc draws my attention back to him. “I should be worried, now that I know you’re not firing blanks.”
“What the fuck is this?” I snarl. “What are you doing here?” My side hurts when I breathe, making me painfully aware of every rib, but the ache is dull, without the sharpness indicating a break. “I’ve been trying to call you.”
His expression is impassive, but I know him too well. There’s fury in his eyes. “Yeah. Sorry about the surprise.” He doesn’t sound very sorry. “I felt I had to do this in person and tracking you two down hasn’t exactly been an easy task lately.”
The implication of his jab about not firing blanks slowly sinks in.
Marc knows.
“Marc—”
“Shut him up,” Marc orders, and his men grab me, pulling my arms behind my back.
They pull out a gag. My instinct is to fight, but I don’t want to make a bad situation worse. He’s angry now, but I know my brother, and he isn’t as rash as his father. “Take me, but don’t hurt Andrea.”
“You think I’d hurt her?” His obvious disgust is as much reassurance as I’m going to get. “Give me a little credit.”
I stare into his eyes, forcing my body not to fight as my hands are bound and a wad of cloth shoved into my mouth.
A scream echoes from upstairs.
Andrea.
Fuck cooperation.
I twist fast, ducking out of the grip on my arms before Marc’s guys react. I shoulder the closer one in the stomach and make a break for the stairs. It’s not fast enough, and the two of them tackle me to the ground, knocking over an end table in the process.
“Oh, for fucks sake…” Marc mutters, stepping around our struggle. “She’s fine. I’ll go make sure of it.”
They sit on my back instead of forcing me to stand. I can barely breathe, but I strain my ears to hear what’s happening upstairs. The voices are too muffled to make out what they’re saying, but there are female voices. From their tone, I’d say they’re pretty fucking pissed. Then they’re suddenly cut off, and I tense.
Steps of several people are coming down the stairs, and if the girls are hurt, there’s no number of Marc’s goons who are going to be able to keep me down.
Marc and two more guys march Andrea and Evie right down the stairs and out the front door, before I’m dragged to my feet and made to follow. They look like they were pulled straight out of bed and barely given time to get dressed. I know how I left Andrea this morning. I tense, trying to contain the seething inside me at the thought of Marc or his goons ogling the girls.
They’ve been given matching gags and their arms are cuffed behind their backs. We’re on a private estate. What the fuck is Marc expecting us to do against his little army here?
At the sight of me, the girls’ eyes go wide, Evie’s red and teary, Andrea’s narrow and pissed. Her gaze connects to mine, silent communication racing between us.
I’m sorry.
She’s okay.
We’re both fucked.
Despite that fact, she draws a quiet breath and straightens her back. She’s terrified, but she’s a DiFiero, and she’s not going to give them the satisfaction of seeing her shaken.
Good girl.
Two black SUVs with darkly tinted windows wait for us, their engines still running. The girls are pushed towards the front one, while my guards force me to the other. Neat and tidy.
How did they get in? Sure, I left my gun upstairs, but I sure as hell didn’t forget to lock up. Then Marc sets the alarm and locks the door with a fucking key. As the door clicks, he turns and approaches me with a nasty expression on his face. “You really thought you could use Mom to keep this from me? But don’t worry. It’s all out in the open now,” he hisses, brotherly love not exactly dripping from his words.
It’s nothing I didn’t anticipate. He thinks I betrayed him. I’d probably feel the same, but the anger in his voice hurts more than I’m expecting. For all he can be a little shit most of the time, he’s still my brother.
Andrea grunts and says something behind the gag.
Marc laughs coldly as he faces her. “If your parents know?” He holds up the keys and jingles them in her face. “What do you think?”
39
Montana
I’ve been sent to my fucking room. What am I? Twelve? Locked away without a fucking clue about what’s going on. Not a word—they just threw me in here and locked the door, leaving me with my questions.
Where is Andrea? What are they going to do to her? Is she here? Back home with her parents? Which is better? I don’t want Marc anywhere near her, but if Emilio and Gloria know about the baby, we’re both in serious shit.
Did I really think I was so damn smart by keeping quiet?
I was a fucking idiot.
Right from the moment I found out that Andrea was the girl fro
m the plane, I should’ve talked to Marc, worked something out. Instead I’ve danced around like an asshole, wanting to have my cake and eat it too.
She was never just some girl, and now I might not get the chance to tell her that.
But it’s not going to be for lack of trying.
I bang on the door. It didn’t do any good ten minutes ago, but ten minutes ago I was still trying to play nice. “Marc!”
Someone on the outside yells back. “Shut up!”
I chuckle. “I’m going to knock once more, and then blow the lock. So if anyone happens to be standing in the way… maybe you should consider moving.”
Did they really think I didn’t have a gun hidden in my own room? The safety clicks as I push it to off on my backup revolver. “One… Two…” I wait, but nobody makes a sound. “Knock.” I rap my knuckles lightly on the door and then make good on my promise.
The knob blasts apart in a shower of metal and wood.
“What the fuck?” It sounds like several bodies dive out of the way outside in the hall.
Well, I did warn them.
I pull open the door. Two big guys crouch out there, guns at the ready, but looking a bit like they just crapped their pants.
“For fuck’s sake…” Marc strides down the hall towards us. “Get out of here. I’ll deal with this. Alone,” he snarls at the guards before pushing his way into the room with me. The door swings back open when he tries to shut it behind him, so he pulls over a chair to hold it in place as I watch. “Did you really have to shoot it?”
I shrug, amused. “Asking nicely didn’t seem to be working.”
He looks down at the gun in my hand. “Going to shoot me?”
“I wasn’t planning on it, but you never know.”
“She’s being as much of a pain in my ass as you are. My boys are practically drawing straws to get out of watching her door. I just hope she isn’t as violent about it as you when she makes her move.”
Andrea? “I wouldn’t bet on it.”
He gives me a long, hard look. “You two fucking deserve each other, but unfortunately for you, she’s still my fiancée.”
“Like hell she is,” I growl.
Marc gets right up in my face. At some point my little brother must’ve grown up, because we’re nearly the same height. “Oh, poor baby. Is life being unfair to you again? Maybe you can go away for a few years, and then drop back in whenever you fucking feel like it.”
I shove him away. “What would you know about life being unfair? You’re the golden child, remember? Giuseppe’s heir. You get the family, the money, the respect. The girl.”
“Oh yeah, it’s great.” A sarcastic snarl curls his lip. “The pressure, the responsibility, the lack of control over my own fucking life. I didn’t even get to pick my own wife, and the one I got? You fucking knocked her up!”
I take a swing, landing a solid hit to his jaw, but it only stuns him for a moment before he’s right back, returning the favor. Years fall away. We might be grown men, but right now we’re the kids who couldn’t be left alone together for more than a few minutes before someone ended up bleeding.
I slam him into the wall, and he tackles me to the floor. Shit breaks, the door rattles, but I don’t care. Neither of us gives a shit about the gun anymore.
This is a fight that’s been a long time in the making.
We grapple for control, each briefly coming out on top, but unable to stay there. We’re too closely matched. I catch a solid hit to my jaw, before throwing him off me into a bookshelf by the wall. It cracks, spilling books on Marc’s head. He winces before he dives right back after me. “I’m going to fucking kill you!”
“Come at me!” I catch his charge, but I can’t stop his momentum, which drives me back over a chair, spilling both of us over it. Neither of us give a fuck, focusing on raining punches on the other. I get him a good one in the gut, he barely misses my balls with his knee, and then I push the back of his head into one of the legs on my old bed.
“Ow! Fuck you, Montana!”
We roll over and over until we’re up against the wall, where I find myself on top, looking down at him. Sweat drips off my forehead, a smear of blood trickles from his mouth and suddenly it all seems so pointless. What the fuck are we doing?
Hanging my head, I let out a hollow laugh. With a shove he tries to throw me off, and I let him, landing next to him on the floor. He doesn’t follow.
“Why are we doing this?” I ask, looking up at the ceiling like it might have an answer.
Marc is quiet for a while, our heavy breathing the only sound. “Because this wedding is too important not to. We’re dying. Man by man, they’re whittling us down, and the world isn’t what it used to be.”
“Maybe that’s not a bad thing,” I say softly.
He huffs out a laugh. “This is only a stopgap, anyway. Dad might not admit it, but the writing's on the wall. Unless we consolidate and adjust, we’re fucked. I know it, and the DiFieros know it. Andrea and I are just pieces of the puzzle.”
He’s not wrong, but it doesn’t change anything.
“You can’t have her.”
“What do you want?” Marc sits up and wipes his mouth on his sleeve, frowning at the red streak on his white shirt and leaning back against my dresser. “Is it the baby? You can have it.”
You can have it. As if it’s an old car, or the family silver.
I sit up and glare at him like he’s a stranger. “Are you that fucking cold? You can’t expect her to marry you and then what, just hand over her baby?”
“Why not? Seriously, just listen to me. Right now the only people who know are us and her parents. Nobody here has anything to gain from letting it get out. We’ll do the wedding right away, then take off to Tuscany. It’s what I had planned anyway, and with the heat from the FBI, it’ll be good to be gone for a while.” Marc’s face is animated. He really seems to think this is a good idea, and not the bullshit it sounds like to me. “She’ll have the baby over there. We’ll stay for a bit, and then leave you. We’ve still got enough business in Europe to cover you staying there for a few years, or as long as you need. By the time Andrea and I are back in Chicago, things will have quieted down, and we can get on with our lives.” Without me, he means, but doesn’t say.
“You’re crazy,” I snarl.
“Just think about it. Isn’t that what you want? A way out? It’s not like you love her. You’ve barely met.”
Do I? I’ve spent most of my nearly thirty years as an outsider in this family. If he’d given me this chance a couple of weeks ago, I might’ve jumped on it.
But a couple of weeks ago I didn’t know Andrea beyond a good laugh and a great lay.
Of course the baby’s part of it, but I’m not the man I was a few weeks ago. And strangely enough, after taking on the responsibility of the family, I’m not sure Marc is either.
So do I want out of who we used to be?
Or do I want in on who we could become?
“What if I have another suggestion?”
He looks at me cautiously, but with a curious gleam in his eye. “Like what?”
40
Andrea
Well, I didn’t get a fancy guest room, that’s for sure. No windows. A ventilation grate up by the ceiling in the corner. A couple of chairs and a table, but no other furniture. At least they left me a bottle of water and some food, if that’s what you call two slices of bread and something that looks like cheese.
The white walls and nondescript beige carpeting doesn’t make this room any less of a cell. I’m a prisoner, obviously. At least they gave me chairs. There isn’t even anything here for me to throw.
The basement beneath the Caporossi mansion looked huge, but my little part of it takes only four decent sized strides to cross. I know that, because pacing back and forth beats sitting down and letting panic set in.
My brain keeps playing this morning over and over in my head. The look on Evie’s face when they dragged her out of her bedroom i
s going to haunt me forever. Her hair clung to the tear tracks on her cheeks, and her eyes begged for help I couldn’t give. That image will stick with me longer than the nightmare of waking up to a gun in my face, and even longer than finding out that my own parents allowed it to happen.
Montana can take care of himself—I have to believe that—but I was the one who brought my best friend into this mess. If anything happens to her, I’ll never forgive myself.
And the baby…
I touch my stomach out of some maternal instinct to soothe my child, or maybe to soothe myself. Our secret might be out, but I’m too important to just vanish without questions being raised. So long as that’s true, my baby’s safe. For the first time in my life, I think I really understand what being a parent is supposed to mean.
It’s not things. It’s that feeling in my gut that knows if I have to choose between my happiness and the safety of my baby? I’ll do whatever it takes, even if it means marrying Marc. I understand Leah’s decision to come back to the Family so much better now. Do I like it? No, but I get it.
God, there has to be another way.
The doorknob clicks, and without thinking, I leap to put the table between me and whoever is coming in. My hands grip the edge, knuckles white.
Not Marc or Giuseppe, as I expect, but Leah. Think of the devil.
Other than different clothes, she looks as if nothing has changed since the engagement dinner. Back then I thought she seemed like what a mother was supposed to be.
But now she’s the enemy.
“Where’s Evie?” I demand, faking confidence. I might not feel it, but I’m a damn DiFiero. I’m not going to let an uncomfortable room and petty bullying break me. “What are you going to do with us?”
Leah recoils at my tone, and her lips tighten before she answers. “She’s upstairs, and she’s fine. She has nothing to do with this and so long as it stays that way, she’s safe. As for you… that depends on you.”
