Page 48

Chapter 47

Whewww, this is going to be hard.

I shored up my resolve and began speaking to my family. “First of all, I want to tell you all that I love you, and I’ve missed you so much. I had to make a lot of choices.” Inhaling a breath, I pushed my tears away so I could continue. “Choices that ripped my heart out to make, but please know that I had my reasons.”

My father gripped my hand in his. I could see the effects of aging on his face and in the silver of his hair, but he was still so handsome. “It’s okay, baby. We’re here to listen, not to judge.”

God, those simple words touched my heart and gave me strength.

My eyes darted around the room and saw the love reflected back at me. “As you know, I was in Cancún with my friends. There was a bonfire party on the beach, and we all had a really good time. When I got to my room, I realized that I’d lost my phone at some point in the evening.” I shot a glance at my dad and decided not to bring up the fact that I’d gone back downstairs to find it so he wouldn’t be mad at me. That would only serve to make him somehow blame himself.

“I wanted to go find it, so I retraced my steps to the beach. When I got down there, it was deserted. Except for one person,” I continued, staring at the fireplace across the room because I wasn’t sure I’d get through this if I looked at anyone. ”I had danced with a guy named Felipe, and he seemed nice. When I told him I was looking for my phone, he pulled it out of his pocket.”

“Do you think he pickpocketed it?” Monty asked from my right where he was sitting on a love seat with Kassie. Auburn and Gianna were on a matching sofa to my left, and Cruz was seated in a chair across from me.

“I’m not sure. It’s possible. It was pretty dark down there. Anyway, we started walking back to the resort, and we passed a copse of palm trees.” My mind took me back to the darkness and fear of what happened next, and I felt paralyzed for a moment. Dane, always able to sense my moods, laced his fingers with mine, and I flashed him a grateful half-smile, accepting the strength he was offering.

Just say it, Evie. This is the scariest part, so get it over with.

The words spilled like a waterfall from my lips in one run on sentence. “Someone was hiding in the trees and grabbed me from behind and put a rag over my face, and I thought Felipe would help me, but he was in on it.”

I huffed out a long breath, and my shoulders sagged with the relief of finally saying it. Gianna broke up the iceberg of silence in the room with a hammer of levity.

“Well, I would like to kick Felipe in the damn nuts.” I didn’t think she was actually trying to be funny. The firm set of her lips told me that, but I laughed anyway, just a brief chuckle that soothed my nerves a little.

“I did. I kicked and scratched and punched, but there were two of them, and there was something on the rag that was making me sleepy.”

“Fuck,” I heard Monty mutter, and his wife leaned into his side as if to comfort him with her nearness.

“Yeah, I heard them say something about getting me to the boat, and then I don’t remember anything until I woke up in a warehouse. I think I was still in Mexico, but I’m not sure. There were four other girls there too, and we were told we were being sold.”

“Goddamn,” Auburn grunted, swiping a hand down his face. “You were trafficked?”

I nodded. “Yes. They transported us to a house in New Orleans where our owners were to pick us up.” I decided to skim over some of the details. “Then Dane showed up and rescued me and took me to a safe house. He was going to bring me home the next day.”

“Safe house?” Cruz questioned and looked at my husband. “Are you a cop?”

“No, I’m a baker,” he replied, throwing the occupants of the room into a state of confusion.

Moving on before anyone could ask anything else, I said, “He told me he was getting me away from the person who’d bought me. Luca Cappitani.”

I could tell the name resonated by the shocked gasps from everyone around me. Then Monty’s eyes met Cruz’s, and they seemed to be communicating.

“What’s that look about?” I asked, pointing a finger between the two.

Monty answered. “Cruz worked in a SWAT team capacity for a while. He was at that raid on the Cappitani estate.”

“I’m the one who killed him,” Cruz said quietly, and my brain almost fucking exploded.

Everyone except Monty seemed surprised, but none more than me. When I was finally able to find my voice, I pulled my hands away from the men holding them and pushed at the air with both palms.

“Wait, wait, wait. You’re telling me that the brother I didn’t even know I had killed the man who was going to buy me?”

“Seems so,” he replied, and I shoved off the couch and rounded the coffee table. Cruz stood as I approached and accepted my overzealous hug.

“Thank you. I wouldn’t have been able to come home if you hadn’t done that. I know you didn’t do it specifically for me, but thank you anyway.”

When I looked up at him, his cheeks were flushed pink. “I was just doing my job,” he said modestly, and I patted his face.

Returning to my seat was like wading through a swamp of disbelief. Everyone’s eyes darted between me and the brother who had made this homecoming possible.

“Well, that was unexpected,” I announced, and the tension broke as everyone chuckled. “Where the hell was I?”

“You were saying Dane rescued you from Luca,” Monty said, his eyes suspicious.

“Yes. Right. Well, he was going to bring me home on a helicopter the next day, but then he found a bomb on it.” Everyone gasped, and I shook my head. I was getting ahead of myself. “Sorry, let me go back for a second. Luca saw a press conference and recognized my picture as the person he was buying. He realized this was going to get very high profile, so he freaked out and decided to get rid of me.”

My father made a little strangled noise beside me and I swiveled my head to take in the pain etching his features. “Are you okay, Dad?” I asked quietly. “Do I need to stop?”

With his thumb, he traced a soft stroke over my cheek. “No, baby. I need to know what you’ve been through.” I stared into his blue eyes and read the resolve there.

“Okay, but if it’s too much, we can save it for later.” He shook his head, and I returned my gaze to the black stones making up the fireplace, my eyes tracing the grooves between the rocks to give me something to look at besides the pitying looks I knew were on the faces of my loved ones.

“From what I was told, if Luca Cappitani wanted you dead, he wouldn’t stop until you were dead. So, Dane and I faked our deaths and went undercover.”

“How did you fake your deaths?” Auburn asked. “We never heard anything about that.”

“A friend took the helicopter up and then parachuted out before it blew up over the Gulf of Mexico. That made Luca think we had blown up too.”

“Wow,” Kassie breathed. “That was smart.”

Monty chimed in. “How did you know all that about Luca? How did you know he planted the bomb on the helicopter?”

“I had… an inside source,” I hedged and noticed the scowl of disbelief on my brother’s face. “We changed our names and appearances and went into hiding.”

Monty’s attention went to my husband. “So your name isn’t really Dane Osbourne?”

“It is now,” he replied, and Monty’s jaw tightened.

“What was it before?”

Fuck. I was hoping to avoid this topic of conversation, but my brother had been a detective for too long to let anything slip through the cracks.

Dane moistened his lips and announced. “My former name was Damiano Cappitani. I was Luca’s son.”

The room erupted in gasps and cries of shock, but the expression on Monty’s face turned absolutely volcanic. He boosted himself off the sofa and was on Dane in a second, yanking him up by the front of his charcoal-gray T-shirt.

“You son of a bitch.”

He cocked his fist, and with my heart pounding like a tightly tuned timpani drum, I jumped up and wedged myself between them. “Monty, stop!”

“Evie. Move,” he bit out, and I shoved at his chest until I formed the slightest bit of wiggle room between the two men.

“No. You’re acting crazy.”

“Me? Crazy? Jesus fucking Christ, Evie. You show up here after seventeen years, three months, and eight days—yes, I keep count—and you tell us you’re married to some piece of shit Mafia asshole. And you want us to just accept that?”

Dane’s voice was low and dangerous behind me. “Yes, it’s true. I was a piece of shit Mafia asshole, but you will not speak to my wife that way.”

Fucking hell.

I reached behind me and gripped his thigh—hard—in warning as I faced Monty. His face was murderously red, and his eyes were narrowed on my husband. This was a damn nightmare.

“Did you plant the bomb that was going to kill my sister?” Monty asked.

Before Dane could piss him off more, I answered. “No, he didn’t. His father directed someone else to do it. Luca was going to blow up his own fucking son, Monty. That’s the kind of depravity I’ve been running from for the past seventeen years, three months, and eight days.”

That took a bit of the wind out of his sails, and his body seemed to droop a little. “I feel like you’re skimming over things, Evie. Leaving out details. Like what happened to the men who took you?”

Dane answered that with a curt, “They’re gone.”

Monty threw up his hands. “What the fuck does that mean? They’re gone as in they disappeared on the streets of New Orleans? Moved to Zimbabwe? What?”

My husband’s voice was scarily low. “Gone as in you never have to worry about them again.”

Monty’s mouth dropped open for a second, and then he closed it, his eyes fixed on Dane. “Ever?”

Dane’s stare was wrapped in steel. “Ever.” He’d just told my brother he’d killed them without saying the actual words.

Something passed between them, and Monty gave him a nod that felt a lot like grudging respect. His voice was slightly less confrontational when he asked his next question. “Okay then, why did you run instead of coming to us?”

“Because,” I gritted out, “Luca Cappitani was a piece of shit criminal, but he was never convicted of a single crime. You want to know why?” I rammed my finger into Monty’s chest. “Because he killed anyone who tried to testify against him. Or they disappeared like that.” I snapped my fingers in his face.

Monty closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, but I wasn’t done yet. “Or his other favorite tactic is killing or threatening to kill their families. Do you remember the case a few years back where the eyewitness changed her story once she got on the stand?”

“I heard about it,” my brother admitted, “but we could have protected you.”

“How?” I demanded. “Go look it up, Monty. Every person who went into the government’s witness protection system ended up dead or coming out of hiding when Luca administered a warning by killing or maiming one of their family members. Every. Single. One.”

My voice broke, but I mended it with all the strength I’d developed over the years. “How the hell do you think I could have lived with that? How could I have let him hurt you? Any of you.” I turned in a circle and threw my arms wide to encompass all the people I loved as my voice rose. “I know it sucked not knowing what happened to me, but I’d rather have you all feel that internal pain than have to deal with the guilt of your deaths on my hands. Maybe that makes me selfish, but I did what I had to do to keep my family safe. I took the only control I could grasp on to, and believe me, it wasn’t much. As for Dane, he’s done nothing but protect me. He turned his life around because he loves me.”

The muscles in Monty’s chin relaxed, and I saw the slightest tremble of his lips before he pulled me into a crushing embrace. “Fuck, I’m sorry, Evie,” he whispered. “So sorry. I just want to know what you’ve been through so I can put it behind me. The not knowing is agonizing. Every victim I came across while I was a police officer, I saw a little bit of you in them.”

As Monty hugged me, Dane gripped my shoulders and spoke in a soft voice. “She’s not a victim, Monty. She’s a survivor. Evie is the strongest person I’ve ever met.”

I couldn’t see them because my face was pressed against Monty’s chest, but I could sense the two men looking at each other over my head. Assessing each other. I loved them both so much, and I wanted them to get along. Or at least not to hate each other.

“You’re right,” my brother said. “She is so damn strong.”

Dane spoke again. “You said earlier that you wanted details. If you’ll have a seat, I’ll give them to you. At least what I saw from my perspective.”

My brother released me and kissed my forehead sweetly. “I’m sorry I lost my temper, Evie. I love you.”

“I love you too,” I croaked. He took a couple steps back and sat beside his wife, who had both her hands pressed over her mouth.

Dane positioned me between the couch and one of the love seats so I was facing the room. Though he was addressing everyone else, he remained facing me.

“The first time I saw Evie Bouvier, I didn’t even know her name. It was a video the traffickers sent out to potential buyers.” His tone was laced with disgust. “While the other women in the video looked scared as shit, the last one had bright blue eyes and two middle fingers held up to the camera. I think that’s when I first started to fall in love with her. She was so goddamn strong and brave.”

Dane’s eyes held me spellbound. “I was ordered by my father to go pick her up, but I already knew I wasn’t going to turn her over to him. There was no way I could. I wanted to save her, but this little wildcat turned it around and stole my heart. She’s the one who saved me.”

“I love you,” I mouthed, and his face was the picture of serenity when he said it back.

“When I arrived to pick her up, she was giving the kidnappers shit, even though she was bound to a chair.”

“Oh god,” I heard my dad say, though I couldn’t look away from my husband. I was as invested in his account as everyone else in the room.

“I made them uncuff her and leave the room. She had a bruise right here where Felipe had hit her.” His thumb brushed over my right cheek before touching the barely there scar on my lower lip. “And her lip was split, courtesy of Ethan the fatass.” We shared a small smile as he repeated the words I’d said to him that first night.

To my surprise, Dane sank to his knees in front of me and brushed his fingers over my chest, just below the hollow of my throat. “Her skin was raw here from where they’d taped a goddamn number to her chest.”

Someone, Gianna, I think, let out a sob, but my husband wasn’t done. He gently wrapped his hands around my upper arms. “There were finger-shaped bruises here where she’d been grabbed too roughly.” His hands slid down to my wrists. “She had raw patches and bruises around her wrists and her ankles from the restraints.”

As every eye in the room followed along, Dane detailed every single bump, bruise, and scrape he’d found on my body that night, his gentle fingers tracing over the ghosts of the brutality. When he was done, I cradled his face with my hands.

“And you took care of every wound I had.”

He covered my hands with his palms and gazed up at me. “And I vowed that no one would ever hurt you again.”

The room was silent for a long time before our family surrounded us. There were hugs and a whole lot of tears, but what touched me the most was when Monty reached for Dane’s hand for a shake. I could see his mouth moving, but he was speaking too quietly for me to hear. They shared the tiniest of smiles though, and I prayed everything would be okay.

After the hug fest, everyone settled back into their seats, and we filled the family in on the rest of our life. The bakery. Our friends. My work at the Turtle Hospital.

“You always did love turtles,” Auburn said, cracking a smile at me. “I kinda hated going to the zoo with you because you wanted to just stand there and stare at them.”

“And you always said they were boring,” I replied before letting my eyes drift around to the other faces.

Dane squeezed my hand and whispered, “It’s time.”

I nodded and took a deep breath. “And there’s one more thing we have to share with you.” All attention popped to me as I announced, “Dane and I had a baby last year.”