****
Each time Dominic looked into Angela’s eyes, whether they were in his office, in her office, or in another part of the building together, he wanted to take her to his apartment and keep her there. This overwhelming urge to hold her close and protect her was nothing new to him, but he’d never felt it so keenly before.
Her question had caught him off guard, but it shouldn’t have. He’d let down the wall for only a second, but it had been long enough for her to pick up on the fact that he was hiding something huge and long-buried.
Then again, so was she, but what was it?
She was a loyal, hard-working employee who not only had already built a database that was perfect for their needs, but had taken the initiative to seek out Liane Peyton’s expertise in making sure that tool interfaced with hers.
All twelve men needed both databases to get to the bottom of this issue. They’d danced around it long enough, and no one was sicker of it than Dominic. He wanted his planet back as much as any of them, but his reason for pushing so hard had to do with the suffocating feeling of being stuck underground. It was easier to get to someone, in his opinion. There were fewer places to hide since no one could cross an ocean from any of the cities beneath the USA.
They could flee to a city beneath Canada or another country, but it was difficult to do. It meant using passports and enduring long lines with tight security checks. Dominic couldn’t afford to deal with something like that should his family find him, and he wasn’t going to chance running on the surface.
The sooner they could find the hackers and take back control of The Madeline Project, the safer he’d feel. He missed the wide open spaces and endless possibilities of places to disappear.
While his identity might be safe for now, if he was found, there were only so many places to go. Aside from that, how could he simply start over somewhere else? It wasn’t possible.
He hadn’t had thoughts like this in five years, and he had tried to tell himself for nearly three weeks now that Angela wasn’t the cause of them, but he knew she was. Not because she’d said or done anything overt to give him reason to suspect her. Far from it.
She was amazing, in and out of bed. He hadn’t had this much fun with any woman. But he simply could not shake the feeling that something lurked underneath the surface, ready to strike them both. It wasn’t like him to experience premonitions or anything that could be construed as supernatural, so Dominic didn’t enjoy feeling this way.
He also realized his feelings for Angela ran far deeper than any he’d had for another woman. He was falling in love with her, as impossible as that seemed. How could he have let her into his life so far while the past hung over his head in this way, and without knowing whether whatever had her so timid from her own past could rise up one day to ruin him?
The answer was simple. He couldn’t. Dominic wanted to share the rest of his life with Angela, but until he knew the truth, and until he figured out how or even if to tell her what he’d buried in his own past, he could do nothing more than they were now doing. And he hated that.
He didn’t want her thinking she was only a sex toy to him. She was far more than that. So it was time to do something concrete. It was time to dig into her background more thoroughly, and time to consult Viggo again for advice on how to handle this. He had no one else to ask.
****
Later that evening, after he and Angela had made love again and Dominic made sure she was asleep, he made his weekly checks on the Trapani and Rossi family members. Doing them last week had completely slipped his mind because most of his concentration had been on hiring more team members to work with Angela, and the rest of his focus had been on spending as much time with her as possible.
He nearly choked on the sip of bourbon he’d taken when he found something he hadn’t expected to see. Leo had a visitor recorded, two weeks ago, right after Dominic had done the last check. In all the years Dominic had been doing this, Leo had never had anyone show up to visit him at the federal penitentiary in CentralEast.
Dominic refreshed the screen, his hands shaking, and read the log again just to be sure. Nicholas Cordova had come to see Leo Trapani thirteen days ago, at two in the afternoon, and had stayed for an hour. Nicholas Cordova … Why did that name sound familiar? Where had he seen it before?
He searched for an hour and found nothing, which alarmed him even more. There wasn’t one scrap of online evidence that Nicholas Cordova existed. So where had he heard the name?
Finally, he checked on the rest of the Trapani family, and then searched for the Rossi brothers. Frank’s parole hearing should have occurred already, but Dominic still expected to see his name as a current inmate.
Mike and Danny were still there, but Frank’s name came up as having served his time. Dominic’s pulse raced once more, and he refreshed the screen again with trembling fingers. Then he read the message again. Frank Rossi was out of jail. No way. Was it coincidence that Frank had been released and Leo had a visitor?
He went back and checked again. No. The timeline was wrong. The visitor had been there before Frank was released. They weren’t the same person, but his instincts still told him the two events were connected somehow.
He brought up another database he had no business having access to, and it confirmed that Frank Rossi had made parole this time. Dominic pushed back from the desk, struggling to take full breaths.
It doesn’t mean anything.
He fought to calm his thoughts. Frank didn’t know that he was here in CentralWest, or that he was the same twenty-three year old greenhorn he likely remembered as Gene’s and Leo’s annoying cousin. There was no reason to panic. If his own grandfather and uncles had never found him, why would a man from a rival family be able to?
But what if Nicholas Cordova was someone from his past, and he and Frank both were on their way here now? He had to find that name. He had to figure out where he’d seen it before.
Dominic wiped the sweat off his brow and then searched for a recent photo of Frank, just in case. He’d alert Merrick and give him some excuse so they could track Frank online as a potential hostile threat to the company. Merrick didn’t need to know why. Dominic had never told any of the Weathermen except Viggo, of course, his real name or his real past, and he certainly had no intentions of telling an employee. Even a trusted one like Merrick.
The three brothers were the only Rossi family members on which he’d found evidence of having survived the storms. Now that one of them was out of jail, he needed to know what Frank was doing, and what he looked like today.
He finally found a photo, but it wasn’t current. It looked to be from when Frank was around thirty years old, judging by the fact that Dominic knew the man’s birthdate, and by the clothing in the picture. It had been taken above ground, with Frank standing outside a drug store with his arm around a very pregnant woman who smiled up at him like he had hung the moon. His wife, perhaps?
The photo was on an obscure site that showed old photos of life in and around Chicago. Nothing identified who had taken it, or who the woman in the photo was. It didn’t even identify Frank by name, but Dominic recognized him. The woman, however, could be anyone.
Dominic studied the woman’s face, and his blood ran cold as a thought entered his mind. The only thing he could recall about Frank’s wife was that her name had been Marilyn, but he’d never seen a picture of her. Was this her with Frank, someplace in Chicago?
Marilyn was a common enough name, and until this very second he hadn’t thought anything about the fact that it also happened to be Angela’s mother’s name. The woman’s face was a profile shot, and the photo was too pixelated to sharpen it into better detail, so he returned to the felon data base and typed in Marilyn Rossi as a general associate.
Nothing came up, which made no sense because if Frank had a wife when he’d gone to prison, she should be listed here. Surely she’d visited him at least once in all these years, unless she died shortly after he’d been incarcerated.
Then he tried searching for Marilyn Rossi to see if he could find a death certificate, or anything, and found nothing. Not one scrap of online evidence that woman had ever existed.
What the fuck?
Had she changed her name? Was she in the protected witness program because Frank had turned in most of the Trapani family to the FBI?
Holy fuck.
No. It wasn’t possible.
But as soon as the thought took shape, he couldn’t get rid of it.
Were Marilyn Rossi and Marilyn Teresa Davidson one and the same person? If they were, that made Angela Frank Rossi’s daughter. It also would explain her cryptic comment two weeks ago about wishing she could help her mother find peace, and the fact that both their online presences were so whitewashed and generic.
Angela couldn’t have been more than eight years old when all that shit went down between the Trapani family and the Rossi brothers. She likely had no clue who the Trapanis were or what exactly had happened, but her mother certainly knew. She’d done what any mother would do. She’d kept that shit from her daughter’s knowledge for her own protection.
If this were true—and Dominic didn’t want to believe it—Angela was in as much potential danger as he was, and from the same people.
Would Frank have also gone into witness protection once he’d been paroled? If he had, Dominic would never find him, but that also meant Frank couldn’t find Angela or his wife. The DOJ and WITSEC wouldn’t allow it, would they? Would Frank try anyway? Would he attempt to find Mario, Gene, or Leo? Or one of Mario’s sons? Would he look for Antonio? Hellfire. This changed everything.
Holy fuck.
He and Angela were hiding from the same people, but for very different reasons, and she couldn’t tell him. It would break WITSEC rules and she and her mother would have to be moved. The thought of her carrying this burden for the past eighteen years, day after day, nearly broke his heart. No wonder she’d hidden from life and had never let a man in this far before.
Holy shit. She’d finally taken a chance and what had happened? She’d let in the very man who was not only hiding from the same family, but was one of them.
What the hell was he going to do?
Chapter Fourteen
Angela woke to the smell of bacon frying, and tried to remember if it was one of the days Burt and Judy were in the apartment. She couldn’t remember Dominic making bacon, but it smelled delicious. He wasn’t in the room, and the bathroom didn’t look as though it had been used recently. Had he worked all night again? He’d done that several times in the past three weeks, and each time she’d found him still at his desk in the morning, sound asleep.
She showered quickly and dressed casually, since it was Saturday. She’d spent the last two weekends in this apartment with him and most of the weekday nights as well. He had a kick-ass gym and she’d really enjoyed keeping up with her workouts, and adding new routines that he had helped her with.
He’d also joked only days ago that she might as well move in with him, but she hadn’t agreed to do that. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to, but she still hadn’t figured out what to do.
Asking her mother wouldn’t help. She already knew the answer. Even suggesting to her mother that she tell Dominic the truth would bring down a firestorm of fear, and she couldn’t do that to her. She had even considered telling Lesli, but that was worse than telling Dominic. She couldn’t involve another family.
Fresh guilt washed over her as she thought about Lesli. She hadn’t talked to her best friend in over a week. She needed a girls’ night out, and decided to call her now, even before she went in search of who was frying bacon. Lesli answered on the first ring.
“I thought Dominic kidnapped you. You answer my texts with monosyllables now, and I can’t reach you. Where are you?”
“His apartment.”
“Is he holding you prisoner?”
She chuckled. “Of course not. We’ve been having that hot affair you predicted, and now I’m in search of food.”
“No shit. The only texts I get from you anymore say you’re busy or you were occupied and couldn’t get to your phone. That’s pretty standard code for ‘I’m boffing someone silly. Call me back later.’ But are you all right? I miss you!”
“I miss you, too, which is why I called. We need a night out.”
“Great. Tonight?”
“Let me make sure he hasn’t made plans. Last weekend he surprised me with a trip to the symphony.”
“Oh, the symphony. Well. My, my. I can’t compete with that.”
Angela laughed again. “Stop that, okay? I promise I’ll call you in a bit.”
“Holding you to that, Davidson. Otherwise I’m coming over to kidnap you for the evening.”
After she disconnected the call, she peeked into Dominic’s office, but he wasn’t there. As she approached the kitchen she heard voices, but they didn’t belong to Judy or Burt. She recognized Dominic’s, but not the other man’s. They both looked up when they heard her bare feet on the floor, and she smiled at the stranger. This must one of his friends.
He had dark brown, wavy hair and piercing hazel eyes. He looked her over like a kid in high school would have done so, and didn’t seem the least bit concerned that she noticed him checking her out. “You must be Angela.”
Dominic rose from the stool and came toward her, planting a quick kiss on her lips, but he didn’t look her in the eyes. “Angela Davidson, Viggo Ingram, one of the Weathermen. He also lives here in CentralWest, and is CEO of Ingram Properties.”
She raised her brows. Impressive. She knew the company name, of course. They had developed most of the underground cities this side of the Mississippi after they were initially built, and currently managed nearly all the rental properties up and down what used to be the Pacific coast. She walked toward him and extended her hand. “Nice to meet you.”
He shook her hand and held onto it much longer than necessary, but she didn’t mind. He was Dominic’s friend so she knew she had nothing to fear. “And it’s very nice to meet you. He hasn’t shut up about you for three weeks.”
Heat rose to her face, and she shot Dominic a quick look, just in time to catch him watching her with a suspicious look in his eyes. She nearly recoiled, even though he reined it in quickly and replaced it with the warmth she’d grown used to. But there was no mistaking what she’d glimpsed. What the hell was going on?
“Dominic and I are going over the database you made, which we’ll all begin to use now. Between this one and Liane’s, we’re going to nail these bastards.”
She cut her gaze toward two laptops open on the counter. One was Dominic’s, so the other must belong to Viggo, but neither screen showed a database she recognized. The one on Dominic’s machine looked like a government site, and Viggo’s laptop was open to a website she didn’t recognize. Viggo closed the lid on his machine before she could get more than a brief glimpse.
Dominic did the same. Now she knew something odd was going on, but she wasn’t about to ask him in front of someone she’d just met, so instead she glanced around. “I smelled bacon. I hope you saved me some.”
Dominic took the frying pan off the stovetop and pierced several pieces with a fork, placing them on a clean plate. “I made eggs, too.” He picked up another frying pan and shoveled a generous amount of them next to the bacon. “Coffee is fresh as well.”
“Thank you.” She took the plate from him, and then poured herself a cup of coffee. “I’ll eat in another room so I don’t disturb you two. You look like you’re busy.”
“No, it’s all right. Sit down.” Dominic pulled a stool out for her and she took a seat next to him and across from Viggo, but as the three ate, it was clear she’d interrupted them. They cast furtive glances at her, at each other, and at their laptops. If what they’d been doing was truly work-related, why would they close their screens and not ask her to work with them? She and Dominic had worked in his apartment together for the past three weeks.
She drained her coff
ee cup and ate faster than usual, and then she placed her dish in the sink and poured one more cup. “Thank you. That was delicious. I’m going to do some work of my own, if that’s all right. You two are busy, and I don’t want to get in your way.”
Angela faced Dominic, and the relief on his face was impossible to miss. She swallowed hard against the tears that threatened. What the hell was going on? “Oh, before I forget, I haven’t gone out with Lesli in two weeks. Would you mind if we did this evening? I wasn’t sure if you’d made plans for us.”
“No, that’s a great idea. Viggo and I will be working on this all day, and now I won’t feel guilty if our work extends into the evening. You should go out with your friend and have some girl time together.”
“All right.” She forced a smile to her face, and then nodded toward the closed laptops. “If you need any help with those databases, please let me know.”
“We will.”
She met his gaze, but had to look away after a second or two because it was so uncomfortable. What on earth had she missed? They hadn’t argued about anything. In fact, the past three weeks had gone so smoothly that she’d kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.
It just did.
Was he acting so distant because Viggo was here? Was it a male bonding thing? She hadn’t done anything to upset him between last evening and this morning. How could she have? She’d been asleep.
Angela went into the spare bedroom where he’d given her free rein to use the closet and bathroom as her own to call Lesli back. “Hey, he’s busy all day with a business associate. Can you get out now?”
“I’ll meet you at the Red Dog in an hour.”
She changed her clothes and then peeked into the kitchen, where both men were bent over their laptops again. “Lesli has plans later tonight, but she can go out now. Is that all right with you?”
The Price of Secrecy Page 10
