Page 17 of His Playground (Owning Vegas #2)

Chapter Sixteen

A fter spending the morning house shopping with Carlo and Jazzy, I had enough time to make my last class for the day. I’ve missed so much school. I really need to focus if I’m going to actually graduate.

And not graduating has never been an option. Although a part of me has to wonder… now that I’m not under my father’s house, can I choose a different path? I don’t think Carlo would care. I should ask him.

Scratch that. I don’t need his permission.

I need to think for myself. I might be stuck being married to him.

But I’m going to make the most of this new semi-freedom I have.

Carlo isn’t my father. He’s not going to lash out at me.

He won’t even raise his voice when Jazzy’s around, and most of the time, she is.

It’s been on my mind to mention her schooling and ask what he plans on doing about it. The kid needs to be in school.

The only reason I haven’t is because I don’t want to overstep.

He’s seemed to back off a lot when it comes to my interactions with her.

I get that he’s protective of her, and he has this hangup of me thinking he married me to become her nanny.

But I don’t think that. I don’t know why he married me.

I haven’t discovered what he gets out of the deal.

I don’t even know what my father gets out of the deal. I just know I was the pawn.

Nothing like knowing your life is a currency, an exchange between two powerful families, and there is not a single thing you can do about it.

The text message from yesterday is still playing on my mind.

I can’t let someone hurt Carlo, because hurting him will hurt Jazzy, and I refuse to hurt that little girl more than she already has been.

I also promised her I wasn’t going anywhere.

Do I want out of this marriage? Yes. But not because of her.

I want out because I don’t trust Carlo not to break my heart again. I don’t trust him to keep his vows.

And I want to be in a marriage based on love, not a damn business deal. I should accept the fact that’s never going to happen for me. I should, but it’s hard to let go of the fantasy.

At the end of class, I pack up my bags. I’m always among the last to leave the lecture hall. I like taking my time, and the fact that I have two beefcakes following me kind of makes me wait until everyone else is out. So we’re not fighting the crowd.

A woman makes her way up the aisle. I’ve never seen her before.

She looks frail. Almost like if a wind blew, she’d fall down.

She’s wearing a baseball cap low over her face.

I can’t see her eyes. But she stops at the row I’m in and drops something on the table two seats down from me.

She glances in my direction before hurrying out the door.

“Wait! You dropped this…” I stand and pick up my bag and then the envelope she dropped. I’m about to chase after her when I notice my name is written across the front in cursive lettering.

“What is it?” Beefcake one asks me.

“I don’t know,” I tell him, tucking the envelope into my bag. “I need to get home.”

I follow number two, and number one follows me as we make our way out to the SUV. People stare but I’m used to it. They’ve always stared at me. I’ve always been the daughter of a mob boss—or at least a suspected one.

When I get back to the penthouse, the place is quiet.

I have no idea where Carlo and Jazzy are.

I also have no intention of asking him either.

I drop my bag in the living room. After grabbing a soda and a bag of chips from the pantry, I settle in on the sofa and pull out my laptop. I have assignments to do.

The letter I shoved into my bag sticks out of the pocket. I pull it out and tear it open.

Dear Antonia,

You don’t know me, but I want you to know how grateful I am to you. I hope that you will be able to love Jasmine as if she were your own. I hope that you give her a chance to make your life as full as she made mine.

I know Carlo will love her and protect her and give her the world, but every little girl needs a mother figure and I wish for Jazzy to have that too.

You don’t owe me anything, but I’m asking anyway. Please watch over her. Guide her. I know with your guidance, she will grow up to be a wonderful woman. I’ve watched you for the past week. I know you are kindhearted. I’ve seen it.

I can go with knowledge that my little girl will be looked after and cherished by both Carlo and you.

Eternally grateful,

P

Oh my god. This is Jazzy’s mom. That woman was Jazzy’s mom. Shit.

I pick up my phone and call Carlo. “Mrs. Bianchi?” he answers.

“Where are you?” I ask him.

“The office on the ground floor. Why? What’s wrong?”

“Is Jazzy there?”

“Yeah, why? What’s going on?”

“Can you get someone to watch her? We need to talk,” I tell him.

“Sure, where are you?”

“The penthouse. It’s about her mom. I don’t want her to hear anything and get upset,” I explain.

“I’ll be right there.” The call cuts off, and I stare at my phone. I know what I have to do.

I pull up the message from the unknown number, the one that said they had a way for me to get out of this marriage.

Me:

I’m not interested.

Unknown:

You’ll be sorry.

I block the number. I really doubt they can do anything. When I hear the elevator door ping open, I stand and meet Carlo in the foyer. Letter in my hand.

“She was in my lecture hall. She dropped this on her way out. I just opened it,” I say as I pass him the note.

He reads it over and his brows draw down. “She’s been watching you? What the fuck?” He crumbles the paper in his hands.

“Don’t do that,” I tell him.

“Why?”

“Because if Jazzy ever has doubts that her mother loved her, that letter proves otherwise.” I snatch the note from him and do my best to uncrinkle it.

“She left her. She’s writing notes to you—she’s basically admitted to stalking you, Antonia. Who knows what this woman is up to? What she’s capable of? And she got that close to you. Fuck.” Carlo storms down the hall and into his office.

“I don’t think she has ill intent. She didn’t look right, Carlo.”

“What do you mean?” He turns around.

“She looked sick, really frail,” I tell him.

He picks up the phone on his desk. “I want the CCTV footage from the lecture hall Antonia just left. I want to know every person in that room and I want a picture of their faces.” He hangs up. “I’m sorry. I’ll increase security for you,” he tells me.

“She’s not going to hurt me. She’s asking me to look out for her daughter. Those aren’t the words of someone who wants me gone,” I say.

“Probably.” Carlo sits on the sofa. I walk over and sit next to him.

“There’s something else you should know.” I open my phone and pull up the texts from the unknown number. Whoever this person is, they’re more of a threat than Jazzy’s mom.

Carlo reads the messages and looks up at me. “You considered their offer?”

I shake my head. I did momentarily, but I’m not stupid.

Whatever they want, it’s not to help me.

“I promised Jazzy I’m not going anywhere.

I plan on keeping that promise,” I tell him.

“No matter how I feel about our situation, no matter what happens between us, I’m not breaking my promise to that little girl. ”

“Us? Antonia, nothing is happening to us. We’re married. We will be married until the day we die.”

“You don’t know that,” I say. “You’ll meet someone else, and that’s okay.”

“I’m not looking for someone else. I love you. I’ve always loved you.”

“People who love each other don’t cheat, Carlo,” I snap at him. I can’t hear his empty promises of love. I can’t let myself fall for them.

“Okay, since we’re laying everything out on the table, I need to show you something.

” He stands and walks over to the wall. Moving a picture out of the way, he opens a safe and then shuffles around until he’s pulling out documents.

“This was delivered to me three years ago. A week before you saw what you saw,” he says, handing me the folder.

“What is it?”

“I didn’t ever want you to see this. I didn’t want to hurt you, Antonia. I didn’t have a choice. I needed to keep you away from me to protect you, and the only way I could do that was to make you believe I was cheating,” he says.

I sit down and open the folder. My hands shake as I shift through picture after picture. Then the documents. Real estate titles, marriage certificates, birth certificates. “What? How did you get this?”

“After I received the threats—there at the bottom—I started digging to make sure they were legit.”

I flip through until I find the letters that were sent to Carlo, telling him he had to stop seeing me or the woman in the pictures would be killed, along with her children.

The thing is, the woman in the pictures was supposed to be dead already.

I’ve been told my whole life she was dead.

Because this woman is the spitting image of my mother.

I know, because my father has pictures of her up all through his house.

He always said she was the love of his life, and he kept her pictures up to remind himself of the good in the world.

It was the only time he seemed like he had a heart, or any semblance of one. He loved my mother; he just hated me.

“I didn’t want to be the reason your mother and siblings died, Antonia, even if you didn’t know about them at the time,” Carlo says.

“Are they… they’re alive?” I ask him.

“Yes.”

“What about the threats?”

“The asshole who sent them is gone,” he says.

“He’s gone and you didn’t think to come tell me about this? To try to fix us? You just left us broken? For how long, Carlo?”

“It took me a year to find him. And after that, I figured you were better off away from me anyway,” he says. “I swear on everything in me… I didn’t do it. I never cheated on you, Antonia.”