Finding Beauty in the Darkness

“She was driving your Lambo. Doing over a hundred.” He has the sense to hide his grin. “They pulled up your plate and called me immediately, wanting to let you know. They’re holding her at the station until you can get there.”

“Jesus fucking Christ!” I get to my garage and sure enough my goddamned Lamborghini is missing. While the car isn’t my most expensive, it’s sure as fuck my favorite. Of course, that’s the car she would steal. I grab the keys to the BMW and jump in as Johnny gets in on the passenger side.

We ride in silence for the first few minutes until Johnny says, “Cici told me Aria might be working here.”

“Over my dead body.” It feels like I’ve said that same sentence a dozen damn times in the past twenty-four hours.

“What do you care?” he challenges. “You’ve said for years you don’t want to settle down. Have you changed your mind?”

“She’s better than this shit.” I see Johnny shake his head out of the corner of my eye. “What?”

“You’ve never been ashamed of this life.”

“And I’m not. But it’s not a life for her. She’s good. She’s been through too much.” And that’s the goddamned truth. Getting to know Aria, there’s so much more to her. She’s the bright in a world full of dark. She sees the good in everything. She’s been through more shit than anyone I know, but it doesn’t bring her down. A weaker person would be in the corner licking her wounds. But not Aria, she chooses to see the roses in a pasture filled with shit. Chooses to stand tall and face the world head on. It’d be so easy for her to play the woe-is-me card, but she doesn’t. She takes what life has thrown at her and moves forward.

“Speaking of which, before I got the call from the cops, I was coming to tell you we got into the safes. They were exactly where she said they would be. A bunch of papers and contracts. But you won’t believe this. Her birth certificate… The name listed under father: Angelo Moretti.”

My head jerks toward Johnny, the car jerking as well, but I straighten it out quickly. “The real estate conglomerate from New York?” And then it hits me. “Holy shit.”

“You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“I sure as fuck hope we’re both wrong.”

“That Aria’s boyfriend being related to the man who was business partners with her alleged father isn’t a coincidence?”

“How long ago was Angelo killed?”

“I looked it up. Only eight months before Aria’s mom was killed in the car accident.”

“If Angelo was Aria’s dad, that would make her his heir if he recognized her as his daughter, which he clearly did according to her birth certificate. She would be worth millions. So where the fuck is all the money?”

Johnny shrugs. “And that’s the million-dollar question, my friend.” Literally.

We pull into the police station where I see my two-million-dollar limited edition Lamborghini sitting in a parking spot. Johnny chuckles under his breath as we get out.

We walk inside and Dan Mills, the chief of police—who is also a member at my club—gratis, of course—greets us and walks us back. “Dan, thank you for calling me before taking any legal action. I can handle it from here.”

“Sounds good, Giovanni. She’s lucky one of my guys pulled her over, otherwise she’d be behind bars right now for driving reckless, and your car would be impounded. She was clocked at doing one-oh-five in a fifty.”

“I can assure you this won’t happen again.”

We shake hands and Dan opens the door to the small interrogation room where Aria is sitting with her arms crossed over her chest. Even being faced with reckless driving, she sits there tough as nails, ready to take on the world.

“Hey Johnny, can you drive the Lambo home? I’ll drive Aria back with me.”

He agrees and heads back up to the front with Dan. I stand in the doorway for a few seconds watching Aria without saying anything and thinking about my conversation with Johnny in the car on our way over here. Have I changed my mind about wanting to settle down? No. Not until I look at Aria that is, and then as clear as day, I can see an entire future with this woman. Her light shining down on my dark, illuminating my world. But am I going to act on those feelings? No. Aria will never understand this life, and just like her dad stayed away because of the dangers, that’s what I’ll do as well. Locked up in my house, it’s easy to create a bubble for us. But outside those walls is reality, and bringing Aria into my life…my reality, isn’t what’s best for her.

“Did you have a nice drive?” I ask, stepping into the room.

“You have a fast car.” She looks up at me, her eyes filled with unshed tears.