Page 98 of Sweet Poison

"I'm so sorry, sweetheart. I am so sorry," I said.

“What about Mommy?” she asked.

“She’s going to be okay,” I said with a smile.

“Really?”

“Yes. Soon you might be able to visit her.”

My daughter’s face broke into a big grin. “Daddy. She’s never going to come live with us again, is she?”

“No, honey. Your Mommy and I are not meant to be together.”

She thought for a while. “What about Miss Moore? Are you meant to be together?”

“Would you like that? Would you like Miss Moore to come live with us?”

She nodded. “Yeah, she’s nice. And brave. She was very brave today, Daddy. Mommy’s scared of creepy crawlies and snakes and rats. Miss Moore is scared of nothing.”

I laughed, and suddenly out of the blue, I remembered something Anya had told me about her nightmares. In them, her mother was lying on a black bed and she was very still. That was indeed how I found Arianna. She was lying on a black bed and she was so still and pale she could have been dead. I wondered if somehow, on some psychic, subconscious level Arianna had connected with her mother and seen and felt the danger she was in.

I hugged my daughter once again and swore to myself that I would never, ever, put her or anyone else in danger ever again.

Chapter 59

Montana

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2lxEVnhox0

-Felicita-

After my mother died, I hated hospitals in a way that I didn’t think I could put into words.

Every chance I got to avoid them, I took it, but here I was in one of them again as I sat by my father's bedside.

Thankfully, he wasn’t dying.

They had brought him in just in time, and as Cole had said, it was a clean shot through his shoulder, so more or less a flesh wound. God, I had been so frightened when I saw him fall to the ground after they shot him. I wanted to kill those men. If Cole, I should stop thinking of him as Cole … if Luca hadn’t done it, I would have.

My father was going to be fine, but I didn’t know if I would be.

There was still so much to process. In so many ways, the last few hours felt like a surreal nightmare, and as I watched my father sleeping, I couldn’t help but wonder if I had dreamed it all. I was still waiting for someone to pinch me awake … until I looked down at the cuts and bruises all over my body. Then I couldn’t deny that all of it was real. Even the dead body with the axe in its face, totaling my beloved old Volvo, running through the woods like hunted animals while those monsters came after us, and watching my father fall, thinking he was dying or dead …

I felt so much love for my father that my heart hurt. I squeezed his hand, but softly. I didn’t want to wake him up.

Right now, everyone that mattered was okay, but I was very aware of how badly it could all have ended. I was so exhausted and so unhappy about my own situation, but I couldn’t sleep. There was one person I needed to speak to. I knew he was waiting outside. He’d refused to leave, even after the doctor had discharged Anya, oh well, Bianca, he still couldn’t go home. She was in the next room resting while he was outside waiting.

I rose to my feet, pressed a kiss on my father's head, and walked out quietly.

Luca was sitting on a plastic chair with his eyes closed and his arms folded across his chest, as though in need of comfort. I wanted to go over to hug him. Even more than me, he had taken the biggest emotional tumble, but he was physically okay, and for that, I was incredibly relieved. But still, I needed an explanation, and I hoped he would finally give it to me.

I needed him to tell me the truth himself. I needed it so desperately I felt actual dread that he might try to lie to me again. Slowly, I headed over and took a seat by his side. His eyes came open then. He hadn’t been sleeping like I’d thought, but it took me a while to work up what I wanted to say.

"Who are you exactly?" I asked.

He smiled, but it was a sad smile. It made me want to reach out and touch his suffering face.

“I’m just a guy who is good with numbers and because of that, I got caught in a trap set by the Mafia boss my father worked for. I was forced to clean his dirty money for him or risk losing my unborn child."

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