A Love Most Fatal (Morelli Family #1)

14. Vanessa

14

VANESSA

Despite how much I’ve had to do today, it’s somehow still Tuesday. As soon as we sat down for what I anticipated would be a quiet, awkward dinner, I watched out of the window over the sink as Leo rushed out of the guest house with his phone pressed against his ear.

I took a long breath to steady myself for whatever fire he was about to bring, and sure enough, as soon as he came through the back door, he was waving me over. I grabbed a full plate for me, and one for Leo, and led him into my office where we’d work through dinner and for another three hours afterwards.

By the time the problem was sorted out, it was almost 10 PM, and I swear I could feel the weary tiredness between my bones making me move slower. I took as searing of a shower as I could manage and tried very hard not to shed any tears, not until I was done for the day and in bed where I could cry as much as I needed.

I’m not one of the hardened people who never lets themself cry; that would be emotionally inefficient. Instead, I allow myself a small amount of stress crying at least twice per month, and that helps keep me level-headed.

Now, I stand at the door of my guest room and listen to Nate moving on the other side. I imagine him pacing, or rifling through his duffle for something soft to sleep in. I imagine the dog already asleep somewhere, getting its hair everywhere.

I knock.

He answers it immediately, poking his head through the crack. I spot a bare shoulder too, and it’s more defined than his shirts let on. When he sees it’s me, he does a double take, maybe because I’m wearing no makeup, my hair dripping water onto the shoulders of my nightshirt.

Or maybe I really do just look as bad as I thought when I was applying my third layer of eye cream.

“You came,” he says, thankfully lacking that note of derision that’s been there all day.

“I said we’d talk. So, let’s talk.”

A long moment passes before Nate jerks his head and steps back from the doorway letting me in. I follow behind him and look at his pale back as he pulls a T-shirt on. He’s got freckles on his shoulders.

The room doesn’t look very settled into, his clothes are still in their bags, but the bed looks like it was slept on, and his hair is damp too, so he’s at least showered and rested some. The dog is passed out on the little dog bed Nate brought, his tongue lolling out of his mouth.

“Please sit,” Nate gestures to the chair, my chair, in my house, but I do as he says, and he settles on the bench at the end of the bed.

“The stuff you want to know about,” I start, then pause attempting to communicate this in a way that won’t immediately earn more of his scorn. “You can’t un-know it.”

“You said I was safe,” he reminds me.

“You are safe,” I agree, “But you aren’t totally tangled up yet. You still have some plausible deniability.”

His lips twist up into what is almost a smirk, which is the last thing I thought I’d see from him after today.

He waves his hand around, gesturing at the room. “Seems I’m already pretty tangled up.”

I let out the big breath I was holding. “What would you like to know?”

“Are you a drug dealer?” he asks first.

“No,” I answer, which is true for the very most part. True enough that I don’t feel bad.

I, personally, am not dealing drugs. That is for the lower families to facilitate.

“So, the cartel?”

“No involvement there.” If I can help it. I can’t always, though. They want smart weapons as much as anyone else.

“Your dad—was he like The Godfather?”

“Something like that, yes,” I admit. “He was a powerful man.”

“And you, what? Inherited his job? “

“Yes. Family business.”

He mulls on this. “You’re a boss, then?”

“I am,” I agree.

“In the,” Nate lowers his voice like someone might overhear, “mafia?”

I don’t tell him that I’m moreover the boss, depending on who you ask (baby steps here), but I tilt my head in assent.

Even though he was the one who supplied the guess, he still looks shaken by my answer.

“We sell weapons, mostly,” I explain. “All sorts of technologies. We build a lot of security systems, too. That’s the primary thing.”

“And your construction business?”

“That’s real. Just another thing. We do a lot of totally above-board projects, but we also do. . . specialty builds,” I say.

“For illegal stuff?”

“Yes, for illegal stuff.” There can be no subtlety here, apparently.

“Have you ever been to jail?”

“Never.”

“Are you worried about getting caught?”

“Not presently.”

My dad made sure the police in this town were with us, and the ones that weren’t knew not to mess with us. He laid a lot of that groundwork, and now my sisters and I just maintain the relationship. I give out a lot of presents and bonuses come the holidays. The list includes our few contacts in the larger agencies—the departments who theoretically want nothing more than to stop organized crime entirely, but in practice much prefer the benefits of looking the other way.

I make sure it stays that way.

“Who attacked us the night of the wedding?”

“Two privately hired hitmen from a non-affiliated organization.”

“And who hired them?”

I press my lips together in a tight line. “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out.”

“And until you do?”

“Until I do, I think you should stay here. You’ll be safe in this house. It’s not forever, just for a while. Not even the whole summer. You’ll be able to sleep easy and leave the mafia far behind you by the time you have to go back to work in the fall.”

I watch Nate’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallows.

It’s a crazy offer, I know that, but I’m desperate. I won’t have anyone else killed because of my one-night lapse in judgment. As soon as we figure out who is targeting us, hopefully Nate will be persuadable about moving back to Connecticut where I can be sure that he is free to live his happy little life of pickleball and kickboxing classes.

He’ll marry a nice local girl, a baker or someone who owns a bookstore, and they can have as many tall, bookish kids as they want and we will keep tabs on him, but he will be safe, and this will all be a wild memory that I will pay him handsomely not to share.

“Okay,” he finally says.

I know he’ll have more questions tomorrow, but I think that this was more than enough after the day we had. I stand and offer my hand for him to shake.

He stares at it warily, before standing himself. He sort of towers over me when I’m not in my heels, and I lift my gaze to meet his. Slowly, he raises his palm to meet mine, and when I take it, it’s so warm wrapped around my hand. My index finger falls at the base of his wrist and beneath his skin I can feel his thrumming heart.

“Alright, then. The summer.” I give his hand one definitive shake and then step back, ready to make my hasty exit and bury myself in my bed.

I’m almost out of the door when he says my name.

“Hm?”

“What about my class for the rest of the week? Can I leave?”

I chew on my bottom lip thinking about this.

“You’re not a prisoner here,” I say. “If you want to go, I’ll send you with Leo, but I wouldn’t advise it. I can’t guarantee that someone won’t come for you again. They obviously think you’re a way to get to me, making you valuable.”

He bobs his head. “And vulnerable.”

“Yes,” I agree. “That too.”

With as much of a smile as I can muster, I bid him goodnight and stride down the hall until I finally sink into bed behind the safety of my closed door.

When I come downstairs in the morning, my mom is in the kitchen (expected) in total stitches laughing at something Nate’s just said (unexpected, unsettling, and frankly unfair that he’s won her over so immediately). She’s cradling the ugly little dog in her arms and scratching its neck while obviously enamored by a story Nate just told.

He notices me first, standing in the doorway like a specter, and stands up straighter before holding his mug up in greeting—it’s my favorite green mug, surely poured by my traitorous mother.

“Morning,” he says.

“Vanessa, baby,” Mom says. “You didn’t mention that he has a dog.”

I look at the creature, who looks back, apathetic to me, secure in its knowledge that he’s aligned himself with the most powerful woman in the house.

I try not to sneer at the dog, which is more gremlin than canine.

“Yes, well.” I pour my coffee into a just-fine mug and pretend it makes no difference to the quality of my morning.

“You’ve got a beautiful garden, Mrs. Morelli,” Nate says.

Mom practically purrs. That garden is her pride and joy in the summer months, sometimes I think she likes it more than her daughters.

Not more than her grandchildren, though.

“My dad has a garden. It’s smaller than yours, but I helped with it growing up. You can’t find better tomatoes than from a garden.”

I’d swear someone was feeding him lines, Mom basically says this every night we eat food that comes from the garden or greenhouse.

“My girls used to help, but now they’re too busy to be bothered.”

“Oh, Ma.” I let her kiss my cheek as she slides by me towards the oven. She’s making a frittata, nearly done, just ten more minutes , the smell of which is making my mouth water.

“I would love to help you with it today if you have any work to do on it. And maybe a tour of the greenhouse?” Nate says, and that answers the question of whether he decided to go to work or not.

Mom, ever delighted, tells him how she would love that, calls him such a nice boy, and then repeats the sentiment to me five times. Seriously he should put Mom Charming on his résumé because what the hell?

The dog starts wiggling, and upon being placed on the floor, runs in quick circles and huffs out of his nose until Nate takes the myriad of hints and excuses himself to let him outside.

Mary shuffles into the kitchen looking somehow more tired than I feel and I hand her my mug which she is quick to drain. Mary is ever the definition of the corny “don’t talk to me ‘til I’ve had my coffee” shirts, though she’ll bite your head off if you say as much.

She sets my now-empty mug down on the counter and I pour us both another.

“Mom, you can’t fall in love with the math teacher,” Mary says, obviously having heard some of Mom’s awestruck fussing. “He’s had his tongue in your daughter’s mouth.”

“Mary!” I say at the same time as Mom says, “He has?”

“Why didn’t you tell me you kissed? He is very handsome.” She raises her eyebrows a bunch of times.

I groan.

“He also called Vanessa mean things,” Mary points out.

“Yes, but he had quite the shock. Who can blame him?” Mom says.

“Enough, please ,” I refrain from dragging my hands down my face, but it’s a Herculean effort. “Can we talk about anything else?”

“Patrice called,” Mom says, and I can’t help my sigh this time. It’s too early to be sighing like that. It’s an omen for the rest of my day, I think.

Patrice, or Patty as we call her, is one of the mob wives from my mom’s generation. She, much like Willa, can’t keep from butting into other people’s business.

“Okay, maybe not anything else.”

Mom ignores me and keeps on. “Her cousin’s boy is thinking about moving to town. Wants to be closer to family.”

“Closer to someone’s family,” Mary mutters.

“He wants a job?” I ask, too hopeful that this is all he’s looking for.

“He wants a wife.”

Because of course he does.

“I thought Patty was on my side about this. She told me last month she’s a feminist.”

“She was,” Mom agrees. “She is. But then her cousin heard you were still single and going on dates.”

“One date. One.” I’m whining now, I can’t help it.

Even if the men are seen as the ones “in charge” of their households, we all know that their wives hold more power than they’d ever admit. If they think I need to get married too, their husbands will be trying to throw anyone they know my way.

“Who else?” I ask. Patty works in a very tight-knit clique of other mothers, my ma included, and if she’s got it in her head that I should be married, the rest of them do too.

Mom stands straighter, but she can’t hide the truth written all over her face.

“Please, not all of them,” I groan. When she doesn’t deny it, I do plant my face in my palms, makeup be damned. “I cannot deal with this right now. Not when I’ve got,” I motion in the general direction of the backyard, “all of this going on.”

“Then you might need to show them you’re serious about finding a husband,” Mom says. Her lips are downturned.

She doesn’t like this either but knows even more than me that we are nearly powerless to stop it. These women are determined, which I love about them until their determination is aimed at changing something about me .

“She’s right,” Mary says. “It would take very little prodding for their crusty-ass husbands to try to revolt against you. Until now, they haven’t wanted to cross you out of respect for Dad. Your position too, sure, but their fear of you has only rivaled the fear of their wives.”

“This is so twisted.” They are two of the few people who I’d let see me like this, griping about the inherent unfairness of everything slouched over the counter with my head in my hands. Mom rubs a circle on my back.

“It’s not that they don’t want you in charge, they do, but they want you to uphold tradition too. Family is very important to them.”

“Family is important to me. The most important thing,” I say. Both my immediate family and the larger family as a whole. It’s why I do everything that I do, I’m not just building a fortune for myself, there’s a whole network of people I am looking after.

“Ultimately, no husband means no baby,” Mary says. I hate when she’s practical. “And no baby means no heir.”

“I don’t have time to try to find a husband.”

“I know, baby.” Mom pushes my overgrown bangs behind my ear. It makes me feel like a kid again. “There’s never enough time for matters of the heart.”

I set my shoulders and take one last big breath, holding it for four seconds before letting it out.

“Will you make me a list?” I ask my mother. “If you can get the names of everyone interested, I can start looking through it this week.”

“I think that would do it,” Mom says. “You show them you’re seriously considering their options, they’ll back off. At least for a while.”

The egg timer that’s lived in the kitchen for as many years as I’ve been alive dings, though I barely have an appetite for the frittata at this point.

When I look out the kitchen window to the backyard, Nate is standing on the grass with his eyes closed and head tilted back, like he’s getting in his morning photosynthesis. The dog rolls on the lawn like it’s the most spectacular grass he’s seen in his life. It’s surreal to see him there. Neither of them belongs.

“So he’ll stay?” Mary asks at my side, also peering out the window.

“He’s staying,” I agree.

Mom wraps an arm around my shoulders and pulls me towards her. “This is going to be fun.”