Chapter 4 - SHADOWS OF THE PAST
Three weeks passed inside the golden cage of the D’Angelo estate.
In those three weeks, my world inverted completely. I traded my cramped one-bedroom apartment for marble halls, my late-night restaurant shifts for quiet afternoons in the sunlit gardens, and my solitude for the endless, sweet demands of an eight-month-old baby.
Leo had become my entire world. The boy who had reportedly refused to let anyone touch him since his mother’s death was now inseparable from me. He would cry if I left the room, his little hands reaching out, babbling incomprehensible words until I picked him up. And truth be told, I needed him just as much. In his innocence, I found a purpose I had been searching for my entire life.
But it was his father who truly unsettled my heart.
Nicholas D’Angelo was a man of terrifying contradictions. To the outside world, he was the ruthless King of the Northern Syndicate—a man who made million-dollar decisions with a flick of his wrist and ordered his enemies eliminated without blinking. I saw him execute orders from his study, his voice cold as ice, commanding armies of men in dark suits.
But with me and Leo, the monster shed his skin.
I watched him sit on the oriental rug in the nursery, shedding his heavy suit jacket to let Leo climb all over his chest. I watched him laugh—a low, rich sound that made my skin tingle—when Leo spilled porridge all over his expensive silk tie.
And I watched the way his eyes followed me whenever I entered a room. It was not the glare of a man holding a hostage. It was the burning, hungry gaze of a man starving in the dark, slowly realizing that the light he had been searching for was standing right in front of him.
"You're staring," I said one evening, standing near the grand piano in the main living room. Leo was fast asleep upstairs in the care of Rosa.
Nicholas stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, a glass of scotch in his hand. The storm outside lashed against the glass, matching the dark intensity in his eyes.
"I'm observing," he corrected softly, walking over to stand beside me. "You're learning to play?"
My fingers hovered over the ivory keys of the piano. "My mother taught me a little. Simple melodies. She said music was the only thing the monsters couldn't steal from you."
Nicholas paused, his face softening. "Your mother was a wise woman. Paranoid, but wise."
"She was terrified," I corrected, looking down at my hands. "She spent her whole life looking over her shoulder. She never got to love anyone. She never got to be happy. Is that what my life is going to be now, Nicholas? Hiding behind stone walls, waiting for a bullet?"
Nicholas set his glass down on the piano lid with a soft click. He stepped behind me, his chest pressing lightly against my back. The heat radiating off his body was overwhelming. He leaned down, his breath tickling the sensitive skin behind my ear.
"No," he whispered, his hands coming up to gently rest over mine on the keys. His fingers were broad, covered in tattoos, yet his touch sent a jolt of pure electricity straight to my core. "I promise you, Mara. I am going to end this war. I am going to destroy Julian Moretti, burn his empire to ash, and give you the freedom your mother died trying to buy for you."
I turned my head slightly, my lips inches from his jaw. "And what if I don't want to leave when it's over?"
The question hung in the air, loaded, dangerous, terrifying.
Nicholas’s grip on my hands tightened. His gray eyes burned into mine, stripped of all dark composure, revealing a raw, desperate hunger underneath.
"Mara..." he rasped, his voice rough. "Don't say things like that unless you mean them. I am not a good man. I have blood on my hands that will never wash off."
"I don't care about your blood," I whispered, completely hypnotized by the proximity, by the scent of him, by the wild beating of my own heart. "I care about the man who holds his son like he's the center of the universe. I care about the man who saved my life."
"I didn't save you," Nicholas whispered, his face descending, his lips brushing against mine so softly it made me gasp. "You saved me. The day you walked into that restaurant, I was already dead inside. You and Leo... you brought me back to life."
His mouth captured mine.
The kiss was not gentle. It was a collision of suppressed desire, hunger, and desperate longing. Nicholas groaned, his hands shifting to my waist, pulling me up against his hard body as if he wanted to meld us together. I wrapped my arms around his neck, tangling my fingers in his dark hair, giving into the heat consuming us both.
For two years, he had been grieving a memory. For my whole life, I had been running from shadows. But in that kiss, the past dissolved. There was no Elena. There was no ghost. There was only us, burning in the middle of the storm.
Suddenly, the heavy double doors of the room burst open.
Nicholas snapped back instantly, shielding me behind his back, his hand pulling a hidden pistol from his waistband in a fraction of a second.
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His chief lieutenant, Marco, stood in the doorway, bleeding heavily from a wound on his arm, his face pale as chalk.
"Don Nicholas!" Marco gasped, clutching his side. "The perimeter... it's breached. The Morettis... they used heavy explosives on the sea wall. They're inside the house!"
