Page 41 of Stolen Christmas
She hands it to the officer, who almost loses the driver’s license to a swift breeze. “Whoa.” He has proof that, in fact, this is her home.
Their radio goes off about a major accident nearby that requires them to report to the Bridgeport neighborhood. “Sorry, we can send over a forensics team, but the city isn’t going to want to spend their resources on a tainted scene.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I grunt. I don’t have any intention of involving the cops any more than they already are. Fields is going to pay with his life, and Torcello will die slowly and at my hand. “We’re not filing another report.”
“Very well. Please let us know if there is anything we can do. We’ll be patrolling the area, but we’re pretty busy with several accidents.” We wait for them to drive away, and I bundle Angel up. Sammy enters first to examine the house to ensure no one else is waiting inside. He sends a message that it’s all clear and that there’s something we need to see in her bedroom. We’re just about to go up the steps when there is a loud boom and then another, followed by flames. We both fall back into the snow, and my men are all around us.
“Fucking hell, Angel.” I’m crowding her, looking around to see how hurt she is, but she sits up in the snow, swaying dizzily.
“Luca, my home. Luca.” The cops rush back with their sirens on.
I rush my woman to our vehicle, and Marco takes the driver’s seat. My men check on Sammy, but it’s too late. The house has already collapsed on itself. If he’s still in her room, hedidn’t make it out. Damn it. If we’d been any closer, we would be dead. Torcello played us.
The cops notify us that there are remains in the building that are obviously too burned to identify, but we all saw him go inside. He’s gone. That bastard and his men are going to pay for what they did to Sammy.
We spend an hour with a flood of firefighters, cops, and detectives, and finally they let us leave. The entire time, all I can do is stare at Angel’s face and see how fucking broken and sad she looks. She has lost so much, and it’s unbearable. I want them all to be dead, and I’ll have my revenge. My poor girl is devastated, and I brought this world upon her. If she hadn’t worked for my shady company, they wouldn’t have targeted her.
“Thank you, Officers.”
“I’m so sorry, Angel.” He killed one of my oldest associates, and I want to destroy the bastard. There’s no way Angel is safe here in the city. I have to take her back to the estate. Nothing in my mission has changed, but I have to get my head on straight. I’ve been so fucking focused on Angel that I’ve lost the demonic fucking concentration I had, and Torcello easily used it against me.
“How am I going to tell Noah?” she mutters, shaking her head through the haze of her pain and sadness.
“We’re not.” She looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “At least, not yet. He’s already resistant and ready to bolt. If he knows about the fire, he’ll be more defiant.” Or depressed, just like my pretty fiancée.
When I take her home, she goes into the bedroom and washes up, refusing to say another word to me, which I’m going to see as a good thing. I have way too much to lose to allow thatto happen again. My obsession with Angel has to come second to everything else.
Chapter Thirteen
Angel
It’s been two days since the terror of my home exploding into smithereens, nearly killing us, and Luca’s behavior has shifted. The wedding is almost here, and yet, it’s as if it’s not going to happen. It’s like he’s grown cold toward me. Losing Sammy hit him hard, and I wonder if he blames me for it since it’s my house and I wanted to go there. He hasn’t initiated sex even once, and he hardly touches me. The best I get is the gentle caress of my hip when another man enters the room. All other times, he keeps his distance; at night, he barely comes to bed and when he does, it’s well after I’m asleep.
As the wedding grows closer, we grow farther apart. Maybe he’s reconsidering the wedding, and we won’t get married. I want to ask if he’ll just let my brother and I go, but I’m not sure if that’s an option. A part of me doesn’t want him to say yes, and it’s not just because we don’t have anywhere to go.
What if he gives me up? Can I handle the rejection? A dark, sad part of my soul will be broken for good if he does.
The fire has changed everything inside me. Fields has destroyed my entire life from before I met Luca. He wanted me to become a stripper and wanted me to sleep with him, even though he’s married. If anything, I feel closer to Luca than I did before, and yet he’s pulling away from me when I need him most.
Luca is a mobster, and even he isn’t as fucking cruel as Fields and definitely doesn’t pretend to be someone he isn’t. Brushing off the sudden sadness, I finish getting ready for the morning because I’m meeting with his mother and I can’t let her see me this miserable. I pick up Luca’s suit coat off our bedroomchair and bring it to my nose to get a whiff of my insane crush, only to spot glitter on the collar. I breathe in his coat, and it doesn’t smell like a new woman, but a pang of jealousy and hurt still rips through me.
We haven’t had sex since the morning of the fire. I wonder if he’s just having a change of heart and he’s been seeing someone else. That would explain the long hours and the sudden lack of desire.
Luca is working again this morning, so Marco drives me down the road to his parents’ property. I love the way it looks surrounded by the blankets of snow and the Christmas lights. It’s straight out of a holiday movie and feels so inviting. As I pull up, an ache from missing my parents hits me. They weren’t close to us, but they did their best to give us a nice life. This is our first Christmas without them. Well, the first where I know they won’t even call. For the past two years, they took vacations together, little romantic getaways to escape the cold. My mother hated winter and the snow, so my father worked hard to afford their trips. God, I miss them.
The door opens, and his mother greets me at the entrance. “Sweetie, don’t you look lovely today,” Luca’s mother says. She’s the perfect mother; she’s everything you would want your mom to be. I don’t know how she ended up with this crazy-ass child, but she is amazing. My parents would be shocked and in awe of her. I’m not too sure how they’d feel about Luca.
“Thank you. You’re always too kind to me.”
She cups my hands in hers and pulls me into a hug. As we pull back, she smiles and says, “Hardly. I’m the one blessed to have you become my daughter-in-law. I’m certain my son can’t do better.”
“I’m sure he would disagree.”
“No, he wouldn’t.” She looks over my head, and I realize right away that he’s standing behind me. Over the past few days, I’ve become completely attuned to his presence. For an extremely tall and fairly well-built man, he’s insanely light on his feet. You can hardly hear him enter a room, and yet his presence is most certainly felt. There is no mistaking that my fiancé is here.
“My mother’s right.” He comes up to me, leans down to kiss my cheek, and whispers, “You do look lovely today, Angel.” It sends a delightful shiver down my spine that I’ve been missing these past two days.
“We were just going to go over the last-minute plans for the wedding. Do you want to join us?” she asks him so sweetly that I’m sure it’s just an act.
