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“You’re the one with that reputation, Matteo. Not us.”
“As if yesterday’s performance on the yacht was something to look up to,” I snap back. How I was in the past with women is just that: the past. “If Gigi gave you hell, you deserved it.”
“Fuck me,” Stephano grunts as he stands. “I need a drink.”
When he comes back minutes later, we’ve both cooled off, if only on the surface. I’m no longer in the mood for his company. At times like these, a private jet feels like a cage.
I take my laptop and shove it back into my backpack, careful to slot it in next to the two cans of sardines I’ve been hauling along for the Don. I take the offered whiskey and walk over to where Tasha is sitting. She looks up and takes the earphones off.
“What are you watching?” She’s opted for the smaller seat screen and not the massive one on the wall that cordons off the bedroom. Burley is occupying the bedroom with bullet butt, giving me no privacy to initiate Tasha into the mile-high club.
“Ghost. I’ve watched it like a hundred times.” Her gaze follows me as I sit down next to her. “It’s comforting.”
“You like horror movies?” Didn’t peg her as one of those.
She blinks at me, her jaw going slack. “It’s not horror… it’s… it’s like the most romantic movie ever.”
Should have known. I’ll put it on the to-watch list. “Come here, kitten,” I murmur and as if she reads my mind she comes to curl up on my lap. I don’t know when this woman has gone from invading my mind to easing it by just sitting on my lap.
“What’s up?” she asks as she cuddles into my embrace and plays with a shirt button.
“We’re getting married as soon as we arrive in Boston.”
“Like on arrival?”
“At city hall—it will be after hours, but an official is waiting for us.” Money makes the world go round.
“Oh… that’s very soon.” She doesn’t pull away but seems to want to get even closer to me. “I was hoping my dad could be there.”
Really? Hasn’t she realized by now that her dad is a fucking loser idiot? The beat of silence between us stretches way too long. “I don’t want him there.”
She presses on my chest to sit upright, and now she has tears in her eyes, and they wreck me. “I can’t be estranged from him, Matteo. He is the only family I have left.” She wipes at her face. “Up until you… we were each other’s everything.”
“I don’t expect that, kitten,” I say as I brush at a tear she missed. “Just don’t expect me to invite him over for Sunday brunch.” Or for him to ever see his grandkids.
Thinking about Peter Armstrong’s grandkids comes out of left field, and I blink. A wave of protectiveness fills me like a rage, and I press Tasha to my chest again, hugging her close. The Don is another grandfather that will never see his grandkids. Funny thing: cancer is going to take him before it ever comes to Tasha having my baby, but if it didn’t…
There’s no chance in hell that the Don gets anywhere near my children. Never mind holding my first—his first grandchild—I won’t allow him to set eyes on them. And to guarantee that, I’ll kill him.
52
TASHA
That was the longest flight of my life. I was stuck with too much time to think clearly now that my life is no longer in danger.
And this has just been the shortest wedding ceremony I’ve ever attended. Impersonal, functional, and so far removed from my dream wedding that it was like taking a bathroom break. There was a yes in there somewhere, and a reassuring kiss from Matteo, but now that we’re driving through the familiar streets of Boston, my stomach is in a knot.
Everything is hurried, surreal, and emotionally I’m just trying to stay on an even keel. Questions have been building in my head, each one of them a brick, pushing down on my heart. I’m weighed down with unanswered questions, and even though I know Matteo can answer them all, I don’t want to hear the answers from him.
Dad. At some point, when this whole debacle started, it was clear that if either of us did something wrong, the other would die. Now, and maybe from the start, holding Dad at gunpoint was just a smoke screen. I need to see him, but I don’t want to see him. I’ll have no peace until I’ve had the truth from him, but after everything I’ve learned while being captive I don’t know if I want to know the truth. It’s going to change my life. It’s one thing to grow up and know your place in the world, see your dad in society’s hierarchy and understand where you fit in. It’s another thing altogether to have that whole structure shattered, leaving you hanging with bated breath to see where the pieces will fall.
My life has changed so drastically I don’t even recognize myself anymore, but not recognizing the place I left behind is going to be a mind-bender.
“Where’s Burley going?” I ask. He’s been with us all the way, but once we landed in Boston, another SUV picked him up.
“He’s going for some x-rays to see if they can remove the bullet.” Matteo squeezes my hand where he’s holding it on his lap.
“Which hospital?”
