Page 96 of Stolen Mafia Vows
The house feels silent, watchful, as we make our way through some kind of utility room and into a mud room filled with boots and coats and blankets. Then we’re outside, and the lights surrounding the pool cast a surreal glow across the garden, the trees in the distance like giant sentinels trapping us inside the boundary.
My foot stings, a painful reminder of what happens when someone tries to escape, and I don’t know if Olivia remembers the dogs at the same time, but she hesitates as voices follow us outside.
Before I can get away from Olivia, her arm is like a vise around my waist, and the tip of the blade is back again, drawing bloodway too close to the pulse in my neck. She drags me backwards until the smell of chlorine replaces the dizziness, and I can hear the water lapping the edge of the pool at our heels.
“Don’t come any closer.” Her voice is strong and steady. I guess that’s because I’m protecting her.
Eoghan is standing outside the glass doors, but he isn’t alone. My dad is with him, and so are my brothers. I glimpse movement behind them from inside the spacious living room and it feels as if the house is crawling with gangsters, none of them bratva.
Them against us.
I almost feel sorry for Olivia.
Almost.
Then she drags the blade tip down the side of my face, leaving behind a damp scratchy imprint, and I remember how it felt when she held me underwater.
“Caleb, why don’t you call off the pack so that we can speak in private?” she calls out.
She’s even more deluded than I gave her credit for. She still believes that Caleb should be with her, even when she’s holding his sister hostage.
“Let Emily go.” Caleb lowers his gun to the floor at his feet, his movements slow and careful, one hand raised above his head as he straightens to his full height. “Then we’ll talk.”
“You must take me for a fucking idiot. I’ll let her go and her trigger-happy dad will shoot me in a heartbeat. Try harder, Caleb.”
“What do you want, Olivia?”
I study Eoghan’s face as he follows the exchange between Olivia and Caleb. His eyes flicker around the garden as he tries to figure out a way to free me without getting me killed, and my heart starts knocking like it wants him to hear. Like it wants him to know that it still beats for him. Because despite everything, I can’t imagine my life without him in it.
For the first time since I discovered that he knew about my family before I did, I allow myself a glimmer of hope that we can get through this.
If Olivia Dragonetti doesn’t kill me first.
“I want what’s rightfully mine.”
Caleb’s expression is neutral, even though he must be raging inside at the thought of this woman ever thinking that she could take Victoria’s place in his world.
“Let Emily go, and I’ll agree to an alliance with you and Ilya.” I’ve no idea how he sounds so calm.
“I don’t want a fucking alliance, Caleb!” Olivia’s voice is shrill. “Do you seriously think I’d go to all this trouble for a fucking alliance and a share of your empire? You were supposed to marry me!”
“We dated ten years ago. I never asked you to marry me, Olivia.”
The moving shadows inside the house seem to settle as if holding their breath, waiting for the signal to strike. I wish I knew which way this was going to go, or what I should be doing. Are they all waiting for me to get Olivia into the pool to make their life easier, or do they expect me to leave it to them? They’re the experts, after all.
Anger flares like a firework inside my chest.
Did they never anticipate this kind of situation arising given their line of work? Or were they so confident that they could keep me packaged up with an untouchable bow all my life that they believed it unnecessary to teach me the facts of life mafia-style?
“But I love you, Caleb!” The hand holding the knife quivers, and I hear the emotion in Olivia’s voice, feel her heart beating heavily against my back.
She sounds exactly how I feel when I think of Eoghan, but she has a seriously warped idea of what love is. If she loved Caleb, she wouldn’t want to hurt him. She wouldn’t have framed him for Ruairi’s murder, or started a war with a rival Irish family, or abducted his little sister.
This is the point of no return for Caleb. If he tells her that he loves Victoria, this will get messy, and it will only take one twitchy finger for the knife to slice open the carotid artery in my neck.
Feeling strangely calm, I say, “Caleb loves you too, Olivia. That’s why he doesn’t want to see you get hurt.” I hold Caleb’s gaze and deliberately avoid looking at Eoghan. If I do, I might just fall apart.
“Emily is right, Olivia.” Caleb’s voice easily carries across the decking. “I care about you. I always have.”
