“Marcello,” Frank Fitzgerald says as he smiles at me, “you have chosen an excellent venue for this evening. I hear the food is marvelous.”
“The best tiramisu in the city,” I reply with a satisfied grin. “Or your money back.”
He lets out a booming chuckle that echoes around us. “You’re a good man,” His dark eyebrows knit together in a kind of frown. “Good enough for us to continue in joint business deals, I hope?”
“Yes, I look forward to doing business with you,” I tell him without breaking his gaze. “There is much we need to discuss.”
A server sets glasses of bubbling golden champagne down on the table. “Of course, Marcello. But first, a toast!” Frank chuckles. Everyone takes a glass and holds it in the air. “To the future.”
“To the future,” we all murmur.
We spend the next hour enjoying dinner and talking about irrelevant things, the atmosphere calm.
“How’s your food?” I ask my mother with a wink. She smiles back and squeeze my hand. Her wine-dark hair reflect the light from the above, and the jewelry on her wrists jangle.
“Delicious,” she answers softly.
“The desert will especially be to your taste, Camilla,” my father boasts.
“Marcello, you were not joking about the food. It is all too good. I don’t know if I’m going to have room for this legendary tiramisu you promised me,” Frank jokes as he wipes the corners of his mouth with a serviette.
Just then, the glass windows explode in a maelstrom of shards. I blink once. Just once, and the entire place is set alight with gunfire. Masked soldiers pour into the restaurant, and bullets fly all around us. My mother’s food flies through the air as her hand comes down, fork and all. Her body slumps, going limp against the chair. The vacant look in her eyes barely registers with me.
But when I reach for my gun and turn to our attackers, my vision goes dark.
Two weeks later, I wake up in a hospital bed with a police officer standing at my side. When my eyes open, his eyebrows shoot up, and he rushes out of the room. I want to yell to stop him, but my mouth is too dry to form words.
The nurses come in shortly after, but they’re all shoved aside by a tall, grim man in a trench coat.
“Marcello Dellucci, my name is Detective Anderson. I’m working your case. I was wondering if you might be able to provide me any detail on what happened.”
A police officer? Fuck. Can’t tell him too much about who I am or we risk exposure.
I tried to think back, but the effort makes my head explode in a vicious migraine. “I … I don’t know,” I murmur.
It’s not a lie. I can’t remember anything but my mother’s hair, the blood, and the pain.
One after the other like a hail of bullets, the memories start to tear my world apart.
My father took a bullet to the gut. My mother was shot in the head.
Oh, God.
Horrifying emotions bombard me.
“Who did this?” I manage to rasp at the end of the detective’s explanations.
He shrugs. “The surviving kitchen staff reported the assailants all had Russian accents. That’s all we know for now. There wasn’t much evidence left after the attackers burned the place down.”
Russians.
Of course it’s the fucking Russians.
Grinding my teeth, I look out the window, swearing to myself then and there … I will never be caught vulnerable again.
Present
In the days and weeks following the attack, I didn’t know where to focus my energy. As I stood at the foot of my mother’s bed while she recovered from surgery after surgery, all I could think was, What the fuck do I do now?
I once swore an oath that meant the world to me.
But now, as I sit at my mother’s side in the middle of the night, I feel like I’ve broken that oath. Not just by getting blindsided by my enemies.
But also by letting Harper into my heart.
Harper
I’ve been walking circles in my room the entire time, hoping, waiting for a sign. It’s ridiculous, but I don’t know what to do anymore. My heart and mind are conflicted, and it’s making me so anxious.
If only he hadn’t kissed me.
If only he hadn’t turned my world upside down.
Maybe I wouldn’t be so fucking confused.
I growl to myself and keep pacing around, hoping to shake off these nerves, but nothing I do works. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. This man is my captor, a criminal, a guy no one should ever fall for.
Yet I let him kiss me … and I actually fucking liked it.
When his lips were on mine, it almost made me beg for more.
That’s when I pushed back and left. I couldn’t take seeing myself in that position, so needy, so willing to do whatever he wanted just for a taste of the don.