Angel Reborn, page 29
Even if she did, I wasn’t concerned that it would amount to anything. She’d threatened to report me for engaging in shadow contracts, but I’d poured over the Code prior to entering the contract that made me human. Though the Council frowned upon any exchange of payment for the use of powers, it was only forbidden between a descendant and a human. There was nothing that forbade such a transaction between two descendants.
And as far as her intention to petition the council to investigate my father’s death, I welcomed any assistance in solving that painful mystery.
What had concerned me most when Valentina went off on me the night of the ball was that she and Matteo felt I’d slighted them in some way or that I’d somehow had something to do with my father’s death.
But the more I learned about my father’s choices, the more I was beginning to question everything and everyone.
In the letter Papa left for me, he’d indicated that his death was not unexpected. So obviously, he’d known he might be killed. But who would want to kill him and why?
His use of an attorney from outside the Gilde was proof he didn’t feel he could trust his own team, and the attorney he’d hired had said my father was adamant I was the only one he could trust.
Why did he not trust Valentina or my mother? Or the people he himself had put in place around him?
The fact that he’d stopped using his beloved paper and pen in favor of a computer system that could be encrypted indicated he was trying to protect something he was working on, but what if the files he’d hidden were more personal in nature?
And why on earth would he have them spelled? I couldn’t begin to imagine what might have been in those files that would drive my father to rely on magic to keep them hidden.
But all those questions would have to wait, because my phone rang with Aria calling.
“If you’ll excuse me, ladies, I need to take this call.”
“I need to get to my office for a conference call anyway,” my mother said as she followed me to the door. “Francesca, I look forward to hearing further updates.”
I stepped outside the conference room and walked in the opposite direction of my mother and Francesca, answering the phone as I went. “Hi. How did it go with Angie?”
Aria huffed out a sigh. “About as well as can be expected. She’s upset with me for not telling her everything before now, and she’s concerned about me going to Florida to meet with my mom, but curious about what Mom has to say, of course. The good news is she’s willing to come and stay with Sage on Saturday. She suggested we book a room in Pensacola for the night so we’re not rushed to get back in case I need more time, but I can’t imagine anything my mother is going to tell me that would make me want to be there any longer than I have to be. I already called Mom to let her know I can come on Saturday. She said it’s harder for her to get away from my dad on the weekend, but I told her that’s the only time I can come. So, if you can get the jet, we’re all set to go to Pensacola this Saturday. Yippee.”
Her exclamation sounded decidedly un-yippee.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked again for what felt like the tenth time since we’d first discussed her going.
“Yes. I mean, given the choice, it’s definitely not something I want to do. But we need answers. I can’t keep hiding out at the house forever. I need to go back to teaching. I need to go back to my classes so I don’t fail this semester. I need to be able to go out in public without fearing that I’m gonna blow something up. If my mother can shed some light on why this is happening to me, then I have to believe that could set us on a path to learning how to manage it.”
“And what if whatever she has to say has nothing at all to do with the powers you’ve developed? I fear you’ve built this up in your head, and you’re clinging to this hope that your mom has some big revelation that’s going to clear everything up. But that may not be the case. You have no idea what she plans to tell you.”
“You’re right. I don’t. But even if it’s not helpful, I need to go and rule that out.”
“If you refuse to come, do you not think she’ll agree to tell you over the phone?”
“Honestly, I just want to go and get it over with.”
“If that’s what you want to do.” I wasn’t as certain that this was the right decision for her, but it was her decision to make. “I’ll arrange our transportation.”
“I need to go to the New Windsor house to get some clothes for the warmer weather in Florida. I thought maybe we could take a ride over there this evening. Sage has been asking when she can go over to Marleigh’s, so I’d like to call Steph and ask if the girls could hang out for a bit. If you think that would be safe.”
“Zeck’s men haven’t detected any activity at the house, but I’ll call ahead and let them know we plan to be in the area so he can reinforce security around the neighborhood.”
“I’ll be glad when this is all over and life can get back to normal. Not that anything’s normal anymore. Or ever will be again.”
When we’d ended the call, I went to Carla, the assistant Mam had assigned to me, and asked her to make our flight arrangements for the weekend.
“Yes, sir,” Carla said as she wrote down my request. “Departing Saturday morning at nine, and when will you and your wife be returning?”
“Some time Saturday evening. I won’t have a specific time until we’re ready to depart. Just have them wait at the executive airport there, and I can correspond with the pilot once I know more.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I told you there’s no need to call me sir. I’m good with Nick.”
“Yes, sir.” She grinned and shook her head. “Yes, Nick. Sorry. That’s going to take some getting used to. Madame has always been strict about that.”
“I’m well aware, but my mother and I have differing opinions on how we wish to be addressed. Among other things, but that’s neither here nor there. Thank you, Carla.”
I turned to go and then thought about what Angie had suggested, so I turned back. “On second thought, let the pilot know we may stay on the ground overnight. And could you book a room in Pensacola for Saturday night in case we decide to do that?”
“Yes, sir—um, yes, Nick. Would you and your wife prefer a location on the beach or near downtown?”
Times spent at the beach were the only memories from Pensacola that had ever made Aria smile when she told me about them. “Beachfront. Thanks.”
I moved to depart once more, but then yet another thought brought me back. “Oh, and Carla?”
“Yes, Nick?” she said, grinning.
“Can you locate a phone number or address of a former employee for me? Leonard Murphy. He was head of security prior to Francesca Giatelli.”
“Oh, yes. I remember Mr. Murphy fondly. I’ll see what I can find.”
“Thanks.”
I walked past Carla into the elaborate office that had come to me with my new job title. It had been my father’s, but he never spent any time there, preferring to do all his work in the lab.
It still felt wrong to claim it as mine, though. As if I was pretending to stand in my father’s shoes. I’d yet to sit behind the desk and conduct any meaningful VCBI business, and I wasn’t in the mood to do so today with so many unsettling ideas consuming my thoughts.
I’d addressed one area of unease by having Carla track down Leonard in hopes he could give me insight into my father’s decision to let him go.
Now, it was time to check off another worrisome thought, so I dialed Graeco and asked to meet with him as I left the forlorn office space and headed to the elevator.
Thirty-One
Aria
“Let’s do this,” I said as I got back in the van with Nick after dropping Sage off at Marleigh’s. “I told Steph we won’t be long.”
“Did she ask where we’ve been?”
“Yeah. I didn’t know what to say, so I told her your family has a house in Nyack, and we’d be staying there for a while.”
“And she seemed to accept that?”
“She didn’t question it any further. Of course, the way the girls were carrying on made it hard for us to have a conversation, so I just told her we’d back in a few.”
“I take it they were excited to see each other?”
“Over the moon. You’d think from all their squealing and giggling it had been months since they’d gotten together instead of a week. And they’ve seen each other every day at school.”
“School’s different than just hanging out and having a friend over, though,” Nick said as he turned into our driveway and pressed the button to open the garage.
“I guess. I was never allowed to have friends over.”
“Me either,” he said. “Not that I had any friends my age as a child. My parents were terrified of what the Council might do if they discovered a Turpisi child had been created, even though they’d birthed me in a lab rather than turning me in the traditional forbidden sense. I was pretty much in quarantine out at Garrison until I got old enough that I could pass as a—quote-unquote—normal Turpisi who’d been turned like anyone else. I didn’t make friends until I was in my late teens. Damned near an adult.”
“I remember you saying something like that when we first met…that you didn’t have any friends your age. Honestly, I thought you were exaggerating. That maybe you knew other kids your age but just didn’t consider them close friends. It makes so much more sense now. That’s pretty sad, babe.”
He looked at me and grinned as we got out of the van. “It’s okay. My mother spared no expense to ensure that I had an efficacious and fulfilling childhood at the estate, and then when I got older, I made friends. Great friends, in fact.”
I frowned at my beautiful pink Jeep sitting there with nowhere to go and no one to drive it. It hadn’t even been a week since I’d driven it, but I missed the ability to just hop in my car and go wherever I wanted without worrying about security guards and drones and the need to look over my shoulder and around every corner.
Other than now and our trip to the emergency room with Sage, I hadn’t left the house in Nyack since we’d arrived there, and I longed to just get in my car all by myself, crank up the radio, and drive the curvy, hilly roads around New Windsor as I sang along to a Taylor Swift song.
“Perhaps we should think about moving back to this house sooner so Sage can be near Marleigh again,” Nick said as he unlocked the door leading from the garage into the house.
He stepped inside to key in the code on the new alarm panel, but I hesitated before going through the door.
I wanted to be happy about returning home, but my stomach felt queasy at the thought of going inside.
I’d always felt safe and secure in our little house, and it had been our home in every meaningful way for our family.
But so much had changed.
I’d discovered Nick’s true nature in this house, and though I’d chosen to forgive him and move beyond that, every time I sat on our couch I was reminded of the moment when he first revealed his fangs to me.
It had been difficult for me to come back to the house alone when I’d asked him to leave, and even after we’d reunited, a shadow of heartache had lingered in the house.
It had also been hard for me to return after the night Greg King and his brother had broken in and lay in wait to attack me. I didn’t know if I could ever walk into my kitchen or reach for my pantry door without those memories attached.
And now, a different intruder had breached our security system to walk around our house doing God only knows what.
So as Nick and I crossed the threshold from the laundry room into the kitchen, instead of any relief at being back on my own turf, I only felt uneasy and on alert.
It didn’t feel like home anymore.
Hugging my arms around my waist, I followed Nick from the kitchen to the living room.
Each of the rooms seemed smaller after spending so much time at the more spacious Nyack house, and having fewer windows and darker curtains made it feel claustrophobic, like I couldn’t get enough air or light.
“What’s wrong?” Nick asked, pausing to wait for me at the bottom of the stairs.
“It just feels weird to be back here, and then it feels weird that it’s weird, you know?”
“Yeah. I guess.” He wrapped his arm around me and planted a kiss on my lips. “You wanna wait in the van while I grab whatever you need?”
“No. Don’t be ridiculous. I’m fine.”
But as I climbed the stairs, the unease didn’t subside.
Of course, it didn’t help matters that I was gathering clothes so I could go and see my mother for the first time in years.
“I was thinking about Angie’s suggestion,” Nick said as I tossed a pair of shorts into a tote bag. “Why don’t we spend the night in Pensacola? We haven’t had any time away just the two of us in…I don’t even remember the last time…and it might be nice to have some space to process whatever you learn.”
“No. I don’t want to be there any longer than necessary. I want to get back here. Or, uh, to Nyack. To Sage.”
“Then, that’s what we’ll do.”
Once I’d packed the shorts and a summery top, I went into the closet to find a pair of sandals. And then, I grabbed some other clothes to take back to Nyack so I’d have more choices there.
When the tote bag was filled, I moved to the vanity and began opening drawers and cabinets to see if there were any cosmetics I thought I might need before we came back here again. Whenever that might be.
“I still can’t find my hairbrush,” I said to Nick when I left the bathroom. “It’s the strangest thing. Where the hell could it be?”
“Did you ask Cricket? You said before she might have accidentally taken it while she was here doing your hair for the ball.”
“No, I forgot.”
“I’m sure it’ll turn up. Things were kind of hectic trying to get out of the house for the ball. You probably set it down somewhere and don’t remember doing it.”
He came to stand in front of me, putting his arms around my waist to tug me toward him.
I frowned as I stared up at him, and he bent to kiss me, softly at first, and then with a bit more fervor, but I was too preoccupied with the traffic jam of worries in my head to return his enthusiasm.
He ended the kiss and pulled back to look at me, and now he was frowning too.
“You okay?” he asked, his gaze tender. “Stupid question, huh? Of course, you’re not okay.”
“I just can’t stop thinking about all the things.”
“What if, instead of all the things, we chunk it down and just deal with one thing at a time. What’s the most pressing thing at the forefront of your mind right now?”
I fidgeted with the collar of his shirt as I weighed whether to reveal which worry was actually at the forefront of my mind. “I hate to bring it up, but do you think I should try and talk to Mike while we’re in Pensacola?”
“That’s what’s at the forefront of your mind?” Nick’s brows rose as he pulled back a bit. “I can answer that one easily. No. Absolutely not. Why would you even consider that?”
“Because I was thinking maybe I could reason with him and have him drop this ridiculous legal request to establish paternity.”
“Have you been able to reason with him in the past?”
“No.” I bent my head to avoid his gaze. “But I’m worried what will happen if he succeeds in getting a DNA test. There’s no way I can keep the court from finding out she’s his, and then what? What if they grant him visitation?”
Nick pulled me in closer, and then he tucked his thumb beneath my chin to lift my face to his. “I already told you I won’t let that happen.”
“But how can you stop it? Her DNA won’t lie, babe. No matter what we put on her birth certificate or any other paperwork, biology is biology.”
“Promise me you won’t get in contact with him, Aria. Promise me you will leave this to me. I don’t want you anywhere near that asshole.”
“Okay, I won’t contact him. But I don’t think we can trust the courts to make the right decision here. And I know Mike says he’s gotten sober and cleaned up his act, but a rotten egg is a rotten egg. His issues run far deeper than the drugs he uses to mask them. I don’t want him around Sage. Ever.”
“He won’t be. One way or another, I will find a way to protect her. I’ve given you my word on that, Aria, and I mean it. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to keep her safe. To keep both of you safe. So put that out of your head. Now, what’s the next thing worrying you?”
It wasn’t that simple to just put it out of my head, and there was no way we could resolve any of my worries by talking them over tonight.
But this man loved me enough to try, and I was an idiot to be thinking of anything else when I could be finding escape in his arms.
Grasping his face in my hands, I raised up to kiss him, putting enough passion in my efforts to ensure there was not a shred of doubt in his mind about how much I loved him, needed him, and wanted him.
He didn’t need much convincing. The spark of desire I’d doused moments earlier reignited immediately, and soon he was backing me toward our bed in a tangle of hands, lips, tongues, and hips.
We’d only planned to stop by the house for a few minutes to gather clothes and other necessities, so it felt oddly wicked to be sneaking in a quickie. And since my relationship with the house was complicated at the moment, it somehow felt like we were visitors having spontaneous sex in someone else’s home. But if anything, the urgency and sense of impropriety only boosted the potency of the desire consuming me.
Nick lifted the hem of my shirt, and I grabbed it from his hands to pull it over my head, tossing it aside while he bent to press kisses between my breasts.
He unfastened the front clasp of my bra, and I shimmied out of the straps and let it fall, sinking my fingers into his hair to pull him closer as he flicked open the button of my jeans and began to push them down.
Lifting first one leg and then the other, I kicked free of the denim and then watched Nick kiss his way across my abdomen just above the red lace waistband of my panties.
