Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 94076 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94076 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
“You don’t need to,” Mya says. “We’re family, right?”
This time I hug her and squeeze her tight.
And when I leave the clubhouse for the hospital, for the first time in a long time, I feel the warm arms of family around me.
I arrive back at the hospital the same time as Lars. When I see him walking down the corridor, I run to him and throw my arms around him, and he holds me tight.
“It’s okay, baby. I got you.”
I must be in shock. Or coming out of it. Or perhaps the adrenaline has left my body and that’s why I’m feeling everything. My emotions rise to the surface and pour out of me while I’m in his arms. I bury my face in his warm neck. The thought of my father being imprisoned in that cellar is almost too much to bear.
“What if the doctors are wrong and he doesn’t survive?” I sob.
Strong, assured fingers wrap around the nape of my neck as Lars holds me close. “We’ll face whatever happens together.”
I melt into his embrace, absorbing the comfort of his strong body.
And let the pain pour out of me.
Having figured out what he was drugged with, the doctors slowly bring my father out of his sleep.
It’s a gradual process.
For days he seems stuck in a place between sleep and consciousness.
The doctors tell me he may never fully recover. The prognosis is worse than they first thought. Or he might stay in this twilight existence for weeks. Maybe months, before regaining consciousness.
But he is alive.
And that is a start.
Every day, I sit at his bedside and squeeze his hand tight and ask him to come back to me. Refusing to believe he won’t.
I spend nights at the hospital talking to him while he drifts in and out of consciousness, and during the day, I try to keep spirits high as the physical therapist works on moving his arms and legs.
Through it all, Lars doesn’t leave us. He gives me alone time with my father, but I know he is on the other side of the door, ready to give me whatever I need.
Ready to hold me up if my father doesn’t make it.
But on the seventh day, my father finally wakes up.
At first, he is confused and not himself. He’s a man in his sixties who is afraid and weak and angry because of the drugs. But the more he is nourished and medicated correctly, the more he becomes himself again.
“My bambina,” he says, his voice raspy from being drugged for so long.
I let go of a deep breath.
He is going to be okay.
And the second week after he was found in the cellar, Angelo Moretti is able to tell us exactly what happened.
CHAPTER 66
Angelo
“Father, I have an idea that I’d like to run past you.”
I’m sitting at my desk in my home office reading reports when my son sweeps in. He’s dressed in a suit with a crisp white shirt open at the collar and thousand-dollar leather shoes. I know this because they’re the exactly the same as mine.
“Of course, son,” I say, ignoring the familiar stab in my chest every time my son enters a room. It’s a sharp twist in my gut. Almost like an extreme disappointment I can barely stomach. But I ignore it because I’m trying to have faith in him, that he will come good now that he is living with me and not his psychopathic mother. He is my son, and I should feel pride, not alarm bells, whenever I see him.
But it’s hard to do because Luca is an entitled brat who couldn’t organize a blow job in a brothel.
I indicate to the chair across from me, and he sits, crossing his legs and looking proud of himself.
“So what is this idea that has you looking like the cat who ate the cream?” I ask.
He smiles, and a tiny shiver crawls into my spine because it is the same smile as his mother’s. Carolina. One of the most frightening women I have ever known.
We were married only briefly. Six miserable months. She was pregnant, and her father insisted we marry—an insistence I would have ignored if he wasn’t such a dangerous man.
Immediately, the marriage was an unhappy one. When Luca was born, things worsened between us, and I secured a divorce from her with a colossal check big enough to ease her humiliation.
She took my son and left, making any access to him as difficult as possible for me.
Three months ago, she sent him to me, telling me he needed guidance from his father.
And she wasn’t wrong.
The man that showed up on my doorstep was a sniveling crybaby. Impatient and demanding. Prone to tantrums.
And fucking unlikable.
“Viktor Olicheckoff,” he says.
I pause, waiting for him to continue, but he doesn’t.
“What about him?” I ask, biting back my irritation.