Only to find that he was, in fact, blocked.
My hands turned clammy instantly, and I nearly dropped my phone as they began to shake. I hadn’t blocked him, so who the fuck had?
Mind racing, my heart pounding against my rib cage with my growing fear, I tried to remember the last time I’d actually spoken to Jordan on the phone or via text, and I couldn’t recall. It had been at least two weeks before Christmas, I was sure of that much.
The only time my phone was ever out of my sight was at work. I usually kept it in my dressing room with the rest of my things so it didn’t distract me while I was filming.
Had…?
I began to tremble.
Had the stalker been in my dressing room? Did he know my passcode? That was the only way anyone could have unlocked my phone without using my face to do so.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. Getting sent pictures and dead birds was one thing. But to know this person may have been close enough to touch my things—my phone that was my lifeline—was enough to make me feel light-headed.
Telling myself to calm down, I unblocked Jordan’s number and was seriously glad I’d turned the phone to silent before entering the church earlier. Almost immediately, text alerts started blowing up my screen. By the time it was done, I had close to a thousand texts from Jordan.
My hurt and anger at him evaporated, and I looked up at him with regret. “I didn’t block you,” I whispered. “But…”
His brows shot toward the ceiling. “But what? If you didn’t block me, who did?”
“I-I don’t know.” I was trembling so badly, my teeth began to chatter, and he started rubbing his hand up and down my arm in an effort to warm me. But that did nothing to help.
With a curse, he pulled off his suit jacket and wrapped it around my shoulders. “Baby—”
“I’ll explain,” I promised, keeping my voice low. “Just not right now. Th-this isn’t the time or the place.”
Seven
Jordan
After I left Arella Christmas Eve, I went straight to my parents’ house and told my dad I was done working in the Italy office. What I really meant when I said that was that I was done babysitting Letizia or anyone else. Aunt Gabs was right. I did need to make a choice, and I was tired of essentially being pimped out to stay in my father’s good graces.
Jared Moreitti had been pissed at me when I bailed on college. I hadn’t told him that I was bored to tears at school and that all I did was drink myself into a stupor just to get through the bullshit that was expected of me. The idiotic fraternity I’d had to join because it was my father’s chapter. The classes that made my eyes glaze over because after spending most of my life shadowing my father in the business world, I already knew everything the professor was spouting on and on about.
My boredom had led me to drinking almost every day, and Mia had been scared I was developing a problem. It was because of her I’d realized just how unhappy I was with the way my life was going. Once that first semester was finished, I dropped out of college and told my father I was going to work my way up in one of his many companies.
I started out as an intern and quickly advanced to junior executive within a few years. If I’d stayed in Italy, I would have earned a VP position within the next six months. I worked my ass off to get to where I was, but fuck, it wasn’t worth it if I was so unhappy there.
I hated having to go out to one club after another almost every night with people I disliked—or, in some cases, all-out hated. It disgusted me that I had to fight off Letizia and a few other clients’ daughters because they thought I was going to fuck them, and then they got pissed when I wouldn’t let them kiss me. The next morning, my face was usually all over the gossip pages and tabloids with those people. My
entire personal life was front and center in that trash—or at least, what the world assumed my personal life was like.
But more than that, it killed me that I was so far away from Arella and that she probably thought the same as the rest of the world. That I was fucking all those girls I had to take out.
Christmas Eve, as I’d stood in my parents’ living room, I told them everything. That I was quitting but would find a replacement and tie up any loose ends before I came back. My father had been pissed, saying I was flaking out on him yet again. First, with school. Now, with work.
But while he’d been raging on, my mother had just sat there and given me the brightest smile.
“Is this about Arella?” she finally murmured when Dad lost steam and eventually shut his mouth.
“I love her,” I confessed. “And this distance thing is killing me.”
“You have to be fucking kidding me.” Dad had started up again. “This is over some girl? You’re going to give up everything you’ve worked for the past five years over some…some…”
Mom jumped to her feet, but without her cane, she stumbled, and Dad and I both moved to steady her. When Dad grasped her hips, she’d slapped his hands away angrily. “I want you to think about the mistakes you made in the past, Jared. I want you to remember how you broke me and went on about your life while I had to face one nightmare after another. Alone. And when you realize what a fucking asshole you are being to our son right now, I want you to apologize to him.”
“Dolcezza,” he whispered in a choked voice. “I…”