Antonio watched them. “He told me …us …that you and Indio had cheated on him. That he had proposed, but you had slept with Indio.”
Elli sighed. “Partially true. We were not engaged, nor did Aldo ever propose, but yes, I did cheat on him with Indio. Once. And I told him straight away, and he said he forgave me. I now know that not to be the case. I don’t want to make excuses for what we did, but it happens. But, Antonio, Aldo had stalked me for years before he made himself known to me, even manipulating my career. He hid cameras in my apartment, tried to run me down, and then became ‘my savior’ when I fell. He had known about me for years, and had planned to kill me for just as long.”
Antonio pulled his hand away and hid his face in his hands. “He was …I guess I didn’t know him that well, but he was always good to me. Dad is …distant. Not that I care, but when I was a teenager, Aldo was the one I went to. I just don’t get it.”
Elli drew in a deep breath. “Antonio, you’re making the mistake of thinking someone is wholly good or bad. I don’t blame you. That’s what I thought for a long time. But,” she let out a shaky breath. “Aldo had his good points too. He was generous with his wealth and his time.” She shot a look at Indio, who was trying not to roll his eyes. “And he spoke about you with a great deal of fondness. I believe now you were the only person he actually loved.”
Antonio gave her a small smile. “You’re nice to say that, given the circumstances. Zane, too. He loved Zane.”
Elli grinned then. “How could he not? Zane’s a force of nature. That surname, though.” She pulled a face.
Antonio smirked. “Yeah. I’ve given him some shit over that too.” He looked down at his hands. “Look, I’m sorry. I don’t think I ever came here intending to hurt you …I just wanted …god, I don’t know what I wanted.”
“Closure,” Indio said, then. “For both of you. Els, I know that these few years since what happened, you’ve been living a half-life …no …listen to me,” he said with a smile as Elli tried to interrupt him to protest. “I don’t mean us, I mean you, your work, and your sense of self-esteem. You’ve been haunted. Antonio, what your brother did to her and to Yvetta, I can never forgive. But I’m sorry it had to end that way.”
“I get it,” Antonio said quietly. “I apologize on behalf of my family for what Aldo did to you. To both of you.” He looked at Indio. “It must have changed you, taking a life.”
Indio nodded. “It did. I never, ever want to be in that position again, but I would do it again to protect Elli.”
“As you should. God,” Antonio swept his hand through his hair. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m sorry. To both of you.”
They all heard the crunch of stones as a car screeched up to the house, then, a second later, Zane calling his brother, sounding hysterical. Elli got up and went to the door.
“Zane, we’re in here. Come join us.”
She saw the actor, his eyes half crazed with worry. She put her hand on his arm and made him look at her. “It’s okay, Zane. Breathe. Everything’s okay. We’re having drinks. Come in.”
She led him back to the kitchen. Zane blinked at the scene, Antonio stood, and Zane clutched his brother to him. “God, thank god, thank god.”
Elli sat back down with Indio and pressed her lips to his before leaning into his embrace. “Hey, you two, come sit.” She glanced at Indio, who nodded. “Look, it’s late. Why don’t you both stay here with us tonight? I’ll make some food. We have plenty of wine and beer. Let’s get to know each other. Maybe something good could come out of all of this, after all.”
Later, after a good meal, she showed Antonio and Zane up to their room. Antonio hugged Elli shyly. “I’m sorry, again, and thank you.”
She kissed his cheek. “It’s forgotten. Friends?”
He nodded, and they said goodnight. Zane followed her back out to the hallway. “I cannot begin to thank you enough,” he said, his voice faltering, “I swear I didn’t know what he was planning. I don’t even think Antonio knew what he was planning.”
“It’s okay, Zane. In a way, I think it was meant to happen like this, that our families needed to come together to heal all of us. Aldo was a sick man, but he was still the brother who loved you and Antonio.”
Zane pulled her into a hug, and Elli could feel his tears on her shoulder. “I’m sorry for what he did. I truly am.”
Elli let out a deep breath. “Thank you …” It felt like a weight had been lifted from her entire body. It was truly over now. She held Zane as he sobbed, and when, eventually, he pulled away, he smiled at her.
“You are lovely, Ms. Moretti. Just my luck you’re married.”
Elli laughed. “Seriously, you cannot stop hitting on me, can you?”
“It’s my default position. Listen, I still want to do the book …and I think, now, we can truly tell the full story. What do you say?”
She smiled. “We’ll talk about it in the morning. How about that?”
“Sounds good. Goodnight, Elli.”
“Night, honey.”
Indio was sitting up in bed, waiting for her. She wiggled her eyebrows and shot his bare chest a lustful look, which made him grin.
“Get naked and get that body over here,” he said, and she laughed, slipping quickly out of her clothes and launching herself at him. He caught her, laughing, and rolled her onto her back, kissing her, his tongue sweeping into her mouth and caressing hers as he covered her body with his. Elli hooked her legs around his waist, already feeling how hard he was for her.
Indio smoothed the hair back from her face, studying her. “You’re amazing. You were so calm.”
She smiled. “I don’t know why …actually, I do. I was calm because this was meant to happen. We were supposed to meet Zane and Antonio and purge the evil of their brother. I feel like I can breathe again.”
Indio kissed her fiercely. “I feel it too …thank god. Thank god.”
Elli spread her thighs further. “Come inside me,” she murmured, her lips against his, and she felt the tip of his diamond-hard cock notch into her entrance, then his cock was in her, filling her, and she sighed happily. They made love slowly, drinking each other in. Elli gazed up in the eyes of the man she loved. “Indio?”
“Yes, il mia amore?”
“I love you so much.”
Indio grinned, thrusting harder and making her moan. “As I love you, beautiful Elli.”
“I hope he or she looks like you, “she said, and Indio stopped, gazing down at her, shocked.
“What?”
She grinned widely, tears in her eyes. “I went to the drugstore to get some ovulation sticks and some pregnancy tests. I did an ovulation test, but the readings were weird. Just on a hunch ... I took a pregnancy test. Then I took another. And another. We’re having a baby, Indio.”
Indio exploded with joy, and she laughed as he kissed her passionately, tears dropping down his cheeks, and they began to make love again, Indio’s hand on her belly, as they gave themselves to each other over and over again.
Eight months later …
Elli flicked the TV. over to the entertainment channel and grinned as she watched Zane Miller—as he now was called—as he talked and laughed with Jimmy Kimmel on his late-night show. Zane had won his first Oscar and was telling Jimmy why he had dropped the surname L’Amour.
“Jimmy, I met an incredible woman last year …no, not like that. A friend …well, actually more like a sister to me now. She taught me that whatever your past is like, it is still your past. I wanted to go back to my original surname. Sadly, even my Mom now calls me Zane, so that had to stay, but I feel like my adopted surname didn’t reflect who I really am. It’s that boring.”
“And unusual. Typically, in Hollywood, it’s their old faces people want to change …”
Elli rolled her eyes at Jimmy’s bad joke and flicked the television off. Zane would be arriving in Venice soon to meet his new pseudo-nephew. He and Antonio had become as close as brothers to her now, and she
loved having them around.
Enzo Navaro, named for Elli’s late brother, had been born two days previously, a healthy six pounds. He already had a head of dark curls like his father and his bright green eyes, much to Elli’s delight. Indio had been awestruck when he was handed his son. He couldn’t stop kissing both his radiant wife and his newborn child. “If it’s possible,” he said, tears in his eyes, “I love you even more. You have given me everything, Elli, everything.”
He sat on the edge of her hospital bed as she cradled their child and wrapped his arms around his family. He pressed his lips to her temple and knew that nothing could ever touch them again.
The End.
Revenge Marriage Sneak Peak
A Submissives’ Secrets Novel
By Michelle Love
A young woman is the nurse to an old male billionaire. He leaves everything to her when he dies, infuriating his one grandson who’s had nothing to do with him for the last 20 years.
The grandson decides to seduce the nurse and get her to marry him. His plan is to be utterly charming until after the marriage then be so neglectful of her that she cheats on him with a friend of his that he pays to be supportive of her. Then he can divorce her and get most of his grandfather’s money back.
Sounds simple, only it’s not because the woman is a sexy saint-like person who not only gives her heart away but her virginity too. She won’t cheat no matter how hard her vengeful husband and his friend try to make her turn her back on the man she fell in love with and married.
Through her undying devotion to her husband, he falls in love with her and admits all he’s done. Will what he’s done be too much for her to take? Or will the love she has for him be so strong their marriage will survive?
Kaye
Morning dew covered the rose bushes that grew along the sidewalk. With a skip in my step, I tried my best to break the melancholy mood which struck me most mornings I went to work.
It always made me just a little bit sad to go to work.
Not because of the patients. I knew I was one of the rare people who didn’t mind working with people who needed Hospice care. Most of the other nurses did it, and did it well because it was their job, but there was always this air of resentment. Hopefully not around the patients, but around each other.
It’s never easy to know every single one of your patients will die under your care. Terminal diseases would take them all, no matter how well you cared for them. It took a particular kind of person to withstand all that comes with facing death head on and helping others accept their fate.
For me, though, I found it fascinating to interact with people in their last days. Not only did I get a chance to help them, to ease their pain and suffering, but I got hear the stories these people had in their heads. The times they’d lived through, all of the things they’d said and done, it was all there. With just a little bit of patience, these human beings had the most interesting things to say, and insights to give from another time.
Theodore Black, however, had become my favorite patient. By far. It was sort of funny, but I could still remember how terrified I had been to meet him since he was something of a local legend. The epitome of the local boy who succeeded in spite of everything that was stacked against him.
He’d ended up to be nothing but a teddy bear. An old, almost deaf, teddy bear, to be sure, but one without a mean bone in his body. A sweet, gruff old man who had won my heart almost immediately.
So it wasn’t him. He wasn’t the reason I’d been sad to come to work. Or not the whole reason. I was sad that I was going to lose him, but I knew I’d be richer for having known him.
The reason I was sad was that, in all of the time I’d been going to see Theodore , as he had insisted relatively early on I call him, I had never, not once, seen anyone with him who wasn’t a health care professional. No friends, not even any family.
This man was the richest person I knew, but that certainly hadn’t made him happy. And that was what really depressed me, made me almost sick to my stomach when I thought about it.
No one should have to die alone, and if I were the only person who could be with him in the end, then I would be. Months ago, I’d made the request to be transferred full time to Theodore, and I had never been given cause to regret it.
“Kaye?”
Theodore had been in a particularly sour mood when I first became his nurse, and it hadn’t taken me long to figure out he mostly wanted to be left alone. Upon entering his home, I often stayed quiet, unobtrusive, until he called for me. To find him calling for me as soon as I walked in was a novelty.
The cancer inside him was eating him alive, and he had become too weak to do most things for himself. Once such a strong man, then cancer turned him into an invalid who had to be diapered, spoon feed baby food, and bathed by his caretakers. I blinked at the thought, trying to push back my tears.
The last thing a nurse should do was cry for their patients. Not in front of them, anyway. Though I knew when the inevitable happened, I would cry plenty. I had been doing this since I was twenty-two. Four years ago I started my career as a nurse for Hospice Care. During that time, I had seen far too many very incredible people die.
Theodore was something else, though. I knew his death would be even worse than any of the others I’d nursed until they passed. But I wasn’t going to let that get in the way of giving him the best possible care. So I pasted a smile on my face and bustled into the room.
“Hello, Theodore! Are you hungry?” I didn’t really expect the answer to be yes, though I was hoping it would be. In the year I’d been nursing him in his home, he’d never been a huge eater, but it had gotten to the point where he was eating almost nothing.
He looked at me, his dark eyes seemed to burn as they ran me over, from head to toe. He was taking my measure, I knew, and I looked at him right back, wanting to seem like I was the sort of person he could trust.
“Kaye,” he repeated my name, and I fought the urge to bite my lip. He clearly wanted to know if he could count on me, and I didn’t want to show any sign of indecision.
“I’m here, Theodore,” I murmured, letting my voice be soothing. “What is it? What can I do to help?”
For a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to do it. That his old habits of secrecy would go with him to the grave. I knew who he was. A big deal businessman who had made a fortune and who had had two different wives try to take that fortune from him. I knew that from the stories about him that seemed to be pretty much common knowledge in Portland, though, not from him.
He had never spoken much about his past. The things I did know, mostly came second hand.
His eyes had once been blue, from the photos I’d seen around his opulent home. They’d gone to such a pale color. Those pale eyes drooped at the outer edges. His lips quivered with the energy it took just for him to speak, “I need you to do something for me.”
I kept my smile firmly in place. I didn’t let it widen, no matter how much I wanted to. He’d finally asked for a favor. Before now, he wouldn’t leave himself vulnerable like that.
“Anything.” I couldn’t think of a single thing he would ask for that I wouldn’t be willing to give him.
One hand pulled up from his side. A long bone thin finger pointed across the room. I followed the direction and saw he was gesturing to the landline telephone which sat on the dresser. “I need you to dial a number for me.”
My eyebrows wanted to rise, but I kept them schooled carefully. This was a big deal. He’d never asked me to make a phone call before, but I couldn’t act like it was strange, or it could alienate him.
Though a knot had formed in my throat as emotion threatened to take me over, I managed a smooth tone, “Of course.”
Just treat it as routine.
When I went to the phone, I found it had a very long cord. I took it over to sit by his bed. It was one of those old kinds, with the curled cord that always ended up tangled. Picking it up, I half listened to the dial tone. I staye
d silent, somehow sensing that, whatever happened, it was going to be a big deal. I was going to find out something about this man’s life, and I didn’t want to do anything to derail it. I didn’t want him to change his mind about letting me help him this little bit he was finally allowing.
I waited. The silence stretched on, and I turned my gaze toward Theodore. He didn’t look back at me, being apparently fixated on his own wasted hands resting on his comforter, which was far thicker than most people would need with the heat of the summer lingering on into September. He was always cold, though.
Gently, I dropped the phone back into the cradle, and he turned his eyes on me. “What are you doing? I need you to call someone.”
He had always been courteous to me, even when he was in massive pain from the cancer that was eating him. The fact he wasn’t now meant this was even more serious than I thought.
All in a rush, the digits of the phone number burst out of him. “Five, five, five, six, three, one, twenty-four hundred.”
I thought it might actually be one of the more courageous things I had ever seen when this scared, sick old man trusted me enough to share his life with me. It wasn’t something he’d done much of in his life, I knew that very well.
It was a good thing I had been paying so much attention. I was able to pick the phone up again and dial the numbers before I forgot them all. Breathless, I handed the phone to him and then tried to give him some space. To act as if I wasn’t eavesdropping. Though, to be honest, I totally was.
Theodore didn’t ask me to leave, though, and that meant a lot to me, too. It was all more trust than I thought I deserved, but I couldn’t help but be deeply honored by the whole thing.
I could hear the phone as he clasped it in his shaking hand. I heard it ring, once, twice, a third time, and then the line abruptly went to voicemail. I heard a strong, confident, deeply masculine voice pick up, but there was a canned quality to it that let me know it was a recording.
Dark Masquerade: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance Page 19
