* * *
A light tap on the door pulled me from sleep. Blinking my eyes open, I realized it was daylight outside the window, the sun glowing high in the sky. Frowning, I started to turn, only to have strong arms tighten like vises around me before steadily easing.
My heart melted as I turned enough to see Ryan’s face. It was relaxed in sleep, a ghost of a smile teasing at the corners of his mouth. The ache deep between my legs told me exactly why he was able to smile in his sleep. He’d taken me so many times, I was going to be walking stiff for a few days.
The tap came again, and I knew it was either Mom, Maria, or Cali. No way either Dad, Garret, or even Guzman would knock that softly. Especially not my dad after the way Ryan had hauled me out of the family room the night before.
Carefully, so as not to wake the man beside me, I untangled myself and climbed out of bed. Grabbing his shirt off the floor, I pulled it on as I walked to the door. Opening it a crack, I was relieved to see Cali and not my mom. I wasn’t ready to face my family after the night I’d had with Ryan. As loud as I was, there was no way the entire house didn’t know what was going on behind that closed door. Ryan had broken his promise to my dad to wait for until we were married, and I couldn’t be happier.
“Hi,” my friend said with a bright smile.
With everything that had been going on with Justice, Cali’s smile had been absent. But my beautiful niece was more of a fighter than any of us could imagine. The past week had been full of all kinds of milestones that we’d been celebrating. Cali was finally able to breathe easier, knowing her baby girl would be home with us where she belonged soon.
“Hi,” I greeted. “I thought you would be at the hospital by now.”
“We spent a few hours with Justice and then came home when Guzman called Garret to let him know our guests had arrived.”
My brows lifted in surprise. “What guests?” I hadn’t even been expecting Ryan the day before until Garret announced he’d made a few phone calls and both Dad and the man I loved were on their way. Apparently they were his birthday present to me. Although I’d been nervous about both men’s arrival, it was, hands down, the best gift I’d ever received from my brother.
“Anya and Cristiano Vitucci are downstairs,” she whispered, glancing down the hall as if to check we were alone. “They spoke with Jet last night while you were…occupied. From what Garret told me, Anya is worried about her son’s mental health. Only, your dad didn’t reassure her that Ryan wasn’t having hallucinations and that you didn’t suddenly come back from the dead.”
I swallowed a groan and motioned her back so I could exit the guest room. Quietly closing the door behind me, I started for the family wing of the house and my own bedroom so I could change. “How upset is she?”
“Well, Felicity told her that Ryan was sleeping peacefully, so they are downstairs drinking coffee and talking about everything but you. I thought it was kind of amusing until I realized that your mom is actually pissed.”
I froze outside my bedroom door. “Wh-why would she be pissed?”
Cali shrugged. “I have no idea. She’s just gotten steadily more tense and curt with Anya since her arrival. Honestly, I was so in awe of being in the same room with Anya that it took me a moment to realize Felicity’s mood. I mean, hello, Anya is intimidating as fuck, so I was already nervous, you know?”
I wrapped my arms around myself, but I nodded. “Yeah. I understand completely.”
“But I think I’m more scared of your mom than I am Anya at the moment.”
I could feel a headache beginning to pound behind my eyes. “And I understand that too.” Felicity Hannigan was the sweetest, most gentle woman I’d ever known. Yet once you got her pissed, she was…dangerous. I wouldn’t compare her to Anya, because Anya had skills that were deadly. But Mom wasn’t a meek little kitten who needed others to fight her battles. I didn’t doubt that she would pull a gun and pop someone between the eyes.
Cali stayed with me while I quickly got dressed. I’d showered sometime in the night with Ryan, but he’d only gotten me dirty all over again once we were back in bed. I should have taken another shower, but there wasn’t enough time. Mom and Anya had already been alone too long as it was.
Not exactly alone, though. When I entered the family room, Mom’s favorite room in the house, Dad and Cristiano were sitting beside their wives. The two of them were doing most of the talking, but from the set of their shoulders, I could tell they felt the tension between the two women.
Anya’s and Cristiano’s backs were turned to me, but Dad saw me as I entered the room, and his whole face transformed. I hadn’t spent much time with him the day before, but he’d more than made up for leaving me behind. With everything that had been going on at the time, everyone’s emotions were scattered. We were all damaged from what had happened, and I was learning that my experience was the lesser evil of the ordeal.
But while my experience might not have been as fucked up as what they had gone through, my emotional trauma had messed with my head and made me think that everyone abandoned me. Now I knew that if my dad had thought for even a moment that I was still alive, there wasn’t a force on this earth that would have kept him from getting to me. I didn’t know how Sheena had accomplished it, but she’d gotten even Ryan to believe that the girl he’d seen was me, and it was his belief in my death that had convinced my parents I was gone.
The change in Dad didn’t go unnoticed, and Cristiano shifted to follow his gaze. His eyes went to Cali first, and his brows pulled together until his dark eyes landed on me. Tears filled the mafioso’s eyes, his throat working hard as a choked noise left him. “Nova.”
The sound of something breaking drew my gaze to Anya. She sat there, her shaking hands no longer holding on to her coffee cup—that was now shattered into little pieces at her feet. Her face was pale, her eyes glazed with tears.
“You’re…” She jumped to her feet and took a hesitant step toward me. “Nova, you’re…”
“You trained her so well, Anya,” Mom said in a deceptively sweet tone. “How could you ever imagine any other outcome except for her survival?”
A painful knot squeezed my insides. Mom had hinted that she knew something when she’d sent me to retrieve Garret, but I’d tried to convince myself that she hadn’t guessed the full truth. Obviously, I’d only been fooling myself.
“She told you?” Anya asked weakly.
“No,” Mom denied, glaring up at the other woman. “But after what happened when she was thirteen, I had a theory. Nova came home with far too many bruises after her Paris trips for me not to wonder what the two of you were getting up to. Shopping is not a contact sport, after all.”
“What are you talking about?” Dad muttered beside her, his green gaze going back and forth between the two brunettes.
Mom ignored him, keeping her attention focused solely on Anya. “Raven taught her enough self-defense to get by, and between her father, uncles, and Ryan, I knew she could handle a gun. But a teenage girl taking on two grown men who outweigh her by at least a hundred pounds each—hired killers, no less—and her coming out the victor with nothing more than a knife wound? It makes a mother wonder. Then she magically comes back from the dead, is standing in my kitchen alive and well, with no visible marks on her? Between Guzman and Maria, I was able to put together what happened to her down in that basement. Raven sure as fuck didn’t teach her how to break a man’s neck with her thighs.”