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She hissed in a sharp breath. “Maybe she will be. God, she better be.” Annalisa sounded unsure. “Can I tell you what I did and you won’t get mad?” She didn’t even wait for his answer before she pushed on. “I gave her three of my sleeping pills. Usually it only takes one to knock me out, so I knew she’d fall asleep quick. Just what I needed her to do so I could get to see you.”
Jesus. Annalisa had at least fifteen pounds on Cat and she only took one. Cat would probably sleep for days with three of the pills in her.
“That was a bit extreme, don’t you think? Giving her three of your sleeping pills?” he bit out.
Annalisa shrugged as if she hadn’t a care in the world. “I wanted to make sure she was good and passed out. Trust me, she was very determined to see you. And so angry with me! I’ve never seen her so mad. I really pushed all of her buttons. Cat is usually so quiet and calm.”
Unlike you, crazy-from-hell bitch. “So you forced pills on her and knocked her out?”
“It was nothing like that. I made her tea, smashed up the pills in the bottom of her cup and served it to her. She was out within minutes. It was quite amazing to see, she got so loopy and incoherent. Poor thing.” She laughed, actually laughed, and Rafe was tempted to smash her face in.
He wasn’t a man prone to violence, especially against women. He’d always respected them. He adored his sister, his mother and now Catalina.
But he’d love to wrap his hands around Annalisa’s neck and throttle her senseless.
“Turn there,” Annalisa said, waving her hand at the street to the right just up ahead. “Then go all the way to the end of the drive. Our house is the last one on the right.”
He knew that, of course, since he’d just climbed through Cat’s window not too long ago. He hated that he was returning to their family home under such horrible pretenses, but it had to be done.
The original plan had been for him to accompany Cat to the house so they could talk to her mother and let her know they were going forward with their wedding plans, and soon. Rafe had promised her on their last night together he would do whatever it took to help take care of her mother too. All the burden couldn’t be put on Annalisa, he’d told Cat. Her mother Anna had been a part of his life long, long ago, before she became the quiet, depressed woman that she was now.
When he’d been very small, he’d loved Anna Campioni. She always gave him and his brothers freshly baked cookies. He’d envied the easy friendship his father had with Carlo Campioni as well. The two men had been friends since they were children and had such an easygoing camaraderie, his father and Cat’s father had behaved like brothers. Brothers who didn’t want to beat each other up, which was the norm in the Renaldi household back then. But the kind of brothers that grew up to be friends. Rafe was thankful he felt like his brothers were his friends.
It was sad, what happened to the Campioni sisters. They weren’t friends.
They were enemies.
A rapid, staccato knocking was what woke her first. It pounded in her brain, reverberated throughout her entire body, and Cat squeezed her eyes shut tight, rolling over on her side so she faced the wall.
The knocking never stopped—she wanted to yell at whoever it was who wanted her to open the damn door. Licking her dry lips, she tried her best to speak, but it was as if the words flat out refused to form.
“Catalina! You must wake up! Your sister is back!”
Cat slowly opened her eyes, staring at the familiar, faded wallpaper of her childhood. She’d lived her entire life in this room. So many memories were made here…but she couldn’t remember this.
How exactly did she get into her bed? The last thing she remembered was fighting with Annalisa and going into the kitchen with her to have some tea…
“Mama?” she called out feebly, her voice more like a croak. She cleared her throat, the sound ripping through her foggy head and she buried her face in the pillow.
