On Her Terms (Premiere Companions Book 2) (8 page)

Mama had married Papa after a whirlwind romance. Too late she’d realized who he was, and once she found out that she was expecting Nicole she’d run away. At least that was the story she’d always told her until that fateful time.

“I didn’t want that life for you, but perhaps I was wrong to keep him from you. He could have had me killed, yet he didn’t. I’m sorry, I …I wronged both of you.”

Those had been the last words Mama had ever spoken to her. They’d made no sense at the time, not until Luigi and Stefano had turned up with Don Cabrizi at her mum’s funeral. Nicole had had no idea who the silver haired man laying a huge wreath at her mother’s freshly dug grave had been, until the two goons had stopped her from leaving and she’d been
invited
to ride in her father’s limo.

A ride which had ended up with her installed at his South London mansion, and just like they had done then, the wrought iron gates shut behind them with ominous silence as they pulled up the long drive.

It wasn’t until Nicole was safely back in her own rooms and standing under the power shower that she allowed her tears to fall.

Jamie had said that her father loved in his own way, and perhaps he did. He certainly had gone out of his way to make her feel welcome, and to get to know her. It had been a huge shock to see her mother smile down at her from the life sized portrait in the Don’s study. She’d looked so young and happy. Likewise in her wedding pictures and the video which Papa had shared with her, but perhaps the biggest shock had been the phone call she’d had just two months into living her new life. Lord only knew how they got her new number, but she recognized the voice on the phone straight away. Growing up she had only known him as Uncle John, an old friend of her mother’s, who showed up from time to time, usually to help them move at short notice. Only
Uncle John
turned out to have been her mother’s handler.

Anna Simpson had been placed in witness protection for testifying against her husband, and Papa had served twenty years in prison, having been released a mere eighteen months before her death.
Uncle
John wanted to make sure Nicole was okay, and not in duress.

It had been all far too much to take in, and for the longest time Nicole hadn’t known what to think. She still wasn’t entirely sure what to make of any of this, but one thing was becoming abundantly clear. Love made people do the strangest things, and Papa, at least, must have truly loved Mama to not seek revenge for her actions. As for her Mama… Nicole had loved her dearly, and it hurt, truly hurt to acknowledge the fact that her mother had not simply been an innocent party in all this. She must have known, on an instinctive level, at least, who the Don was when she’d married him. No one was that naïve.

Jamie had called Nicole naïve, but she wasn’t—not really. She’d known what the consequences of her actions would be. She just hadn’t expected for them to hurt that much. Maybe, for Mama, love had not been enough to see past the Don’s business. Nicole suppressed another sob at the thought. She didn’t want to think ill of her mother. If only she could ask her what to do.

Chapter Seven

“Oh, you look beautiful, radiant even.
Bellissima,
Nicoletta.”

Her maid’s enthusiastic praise made Nicole want to cry. She’d done far too much of that over the last three days, leading up to her wedding. But hearing Lisetta call her
bellissima
… It was too much.

“Now, there, don’t cry. Your groom, he will be so pleased.”

Nicole snorted her disgust at that, and Lisetta took a step back and threw her hands into the air in such a manner only a true Italian could. Despite the situation it made Nicole smile. Lisetta had been with the Cabrizis forever. She’d been her mother’s maid once she’d married Don Cabrizi and had been overjoyed when Nicole had been returned to them as she put it. Fiercely loyal to the Don, he could do no wrong in her eyes, and vice versa. Lisetta was the one person who dared approach the Don when he was in one of his black moods, and watching the elderly woman now, Nicole blurted out her feelings.

“I can’t marry him.”

Lisetta shook her head and looked all set to argue, but something in her expression must have stopped her, because her maid frowned and murmured to herself in Italian.

“If you are worried about the wedding, night,
cara mia
, then there is no need. Mr. Jamison, he experienced man, he make it right for you, he—”

“No, you don’t understand. It’s not that. I…”

Nicole looked around her room, and spotting the makeup remover on her dressing table, squeezed a generous dollop onto a cotton pad, and rubbing her neck revealed the still far too visible bite mark there. One she’d been at pains to cover up for the last few days, lest anyone see. Lisetta’s sharp intake of breath spoke volumes as did the hasty sign of the cross she made, while muttering to herself in Italian.

Then much to her surprise she engulfed Nicole in a bear hug.

“Oh,
cara,
you should have said. It changes nothing. The Don, he’ll make this right. That
figlio di puttana,
” she pulled back and actually spat on the floor, “he’ll not get away with this.” At the same time she ran her hands all over Nicole as though to check for any other injuries, and Nicole pulled back, as the horrifying realization dawned on her that Lisetta had gotten entirely the wrong end of the stick. Then again, to a fiercely loyal, devout Catholic like her it would never occur that Nicole might have consented to anything like this.

“No, God, no. It wasn’t like that. I wasn’t assaulted, Lisetta.” Lisetta crossed herself again, and just to prove the point home, because the other woman still looked far too worried, Nicole clarified further. “Or raped, or whatever scenario your mind can conjure up. I chose this. I wanted … I wanted … well I thought … damn it.”

Nicole couldn’t continue, because if she did, if she put it into words then the tears she was desperately holding in would start and she would never stop.

“Let Papa disown me. But I can’t marry a man I’ve never met. Not when I love another, I just can’t.”

A furious string of inventive Italian swear words erupted from Lisetta, and in any other circumstances Nicole would have found Lisetta’s sudden potty mouth most amusing, as the woman never used a cuss word, normally.

However, this just brought home how royally Nicole had fucked up, and Lisetta’s anger would be nothing compared to her father’s. Her foolish actions might well place Jamie in real danger, and while he clearly could look after himself and seemed to have experience at dealing with men like her father, it didn’t bode well, if the Don ever found out who had dishonored his daughter. And seeing Lisetta struggling to compose herself, Nicole knew that’s exactly how her father would see things. She had been so utterly selfish to think she would ever get away with this.

Having seemingly gotten her volatile temper under control, Lisetta turned to her, and patted her arm.

“Nicoletta,
cara,
why?”

There was no censure in her maid’s eyes this time, just quiet compassion and resignation to the facts, which should have made Nicole feel better, but didn’t.

She shrugged and Lisetta fixed her with her best
don’t give me that crap
look
.

“It seemed a good idea at the time. I wanted to choose who, where and when—I just didn’t expect to … you know…”

Lisetta sighed and threw her hands up in defeat.

“You love this man, Nicoletta?” she asked.

Pain ripped across Nicole’s bruised heart. Utterly unable to get her mouth to form the words past the huge lump of misery in her throat, she simply nodded.

“Good then, he will marry you,
capisce
? I tell the Don.”

Oh good God, this is getting worse by the minute.

Before Nicole had even recovered from the shock of Lisetta’s conclusion to her problem, her maid had sailed from the room, and Nicole sank down on the edge of her bed. It was that or fall down. Her father’s bellow minutes later was loud enough to wake the dead, and she wasn’t at all surprised to see the door fly open with so much force the handle imprinted in the wall of her room. The vibrations rocked the little table closest to it, and the crystal vase in which her bridal bouquet rested teetered precariously and crashed to the floor. Her delicate bouquet of spring flowers ended up in a crushed mess on the soggy carpet, and in a fitting act of violence the Don crunched it into smithereens stepping on it in his fury.

Lisetta gasped, crossed herself again, and Papa’s fury deflated as he looked at the mess. He looked old, suddenly, and far less forbidding, when he pinched the bridge of his nose, and then sat down next to her.

Neither one of them said anything, and the sound of Lisetta closing the door to presumably give them some privacy was far too loud in the quiet room.

Nicole stole a glance at her father’s closed off expression, and seeing the dejected fall of his shoulders made her blurt out an apology.

“I’m sorry, Papa.”

Her father flinched and took one of her tightly clenched hands in his.

“Why do you defy me so?” he asked, and cupping her chin with his free hand studied her.

“I told you, I don’t want to marry him. You wouldn’t listen. You left me no choice.”

Don Cabrizi’s eyes narrowed, and her stomach churned at the flash of temper in his black eyes before he smiled.

“You are too much like your mother, so willful and romantic. She always thought love would conquer all, but I have responsibilities, lives to protect. I never should have married her.”

Nicole’s heart beat faster seeing this unexpected side of him. Papa never talked about the circumstances of Mama leaving him, so his opening up this much was a huge thing.

“Then why did you, Papa?”

His eyes softened and took on a faraway look. When he smiled he looked years younger, much more like the happy young man she’d glimpsed in the wedding pictures in his study.

“I loved her. Try as I might I couldn’t get her out of my system, and by that time she had been exposed to my world. People would want to hurt her to get back at me. The only way to keep her safe was to marry her. No one would dare touch the Don’s wife.”

He let that statement sit in the room, and the ice cold hand of dread snaked around her throat and squeezed, until breathing became difficult.

“I thought she would adapt, eventually, but she never did. She couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t just walk away from it all.” He sighed and squeezed her hand, and Nicole had to ask. It was now or never.

“Would you? Have walked away from it all for her?” Nicole held her breath, because her father went so still she couldn’t be sure he was even breathing. When he eventually exhaled it was one long, deep sigh.

“I was trying to do so in my own way, still am, really all these years later.” He patted Nicole’s hand and offered her a tired smile. “These things take time, and your mother…” Another one of those wan smiles which made him look so much older. “She was young, and impatient. I thought I had gotten my point across, because she seemed better at dealing with everything. When she told me she was expecting you, she made me the happiest man alive, but there were shadows in her eyes even then. I knew I was losing her, but the more I pushed to keep her safe, the more she pulled away. When you were born,” he raised her hand and kissed the back of it. “I thought I had it all. She was happy again, or so I thought, but then she took you and ran away. The police came with a warrant and enough evidence to put me away for a long time. My uncle, he wanted to have her killed.” He smiled grimly at Nicole’s sharp intake of breath. She’d only met her father’s uncle once, shortly after her arrival, and he’d given her the creeps then. Confined to a wheelchair due to his advanced age, he’d still held an air of menace, as he ran his gaze all over her and had dismissed her with a wave of his hand. She could well imagine a younger version of him ordering the kill of his nephew’s wife for having betrayed the family.

“You stopped him?” she asked.

Another deep sigh was her answer.

“
Si,
I could no more hurt your mother than I could hurt you. Besides, had I not been so selfish, she would not have been in this position.”

Nicole mulled this over for a while before she responded.

“It sounds to me as though perhaps Mama was the truly selfish one.” Her father jerked in surprise, and she shrugged. “She didn’t give you much of a chance, did she? And if you truly were the love of her life, like she always told me, then, surely she shouldn’t have shopped you to the police. That’s just mean, and you what? Just let her go?”

Papa pulled his hand away and stood up.

“I watched over you both. I saw you grow up through a photographer’s lens, but when Anna died … I couldn’t let you live in that hovel. You needed protecting, and the only way to do that was to bring you here. Even so, I’m an old man. You needed someone strong as your husband. Someone who would eventually take over from me in the absence of any son of mine.”

Nicole gasped and hugged herself.

“Jamison?”

“
Si,
he would have been good for you. Now…” He ran a weary hand over his face. “Now, well, he will not want soiled goods.”

Nicole bristled at that, but the look of disappointment Papa gave her before he turned his back on her and left made her want to cry.

How in all that was holy had she managed to get this all so wrong?

****

Jamie pulled up outside the Don’s mansion pissed beyond reason that Nicoletta would appear to be going through with this wedding. The big marquee in the Don’s garden mocked him, as did the number of guests already milling about.

Two of his own team of security nodded toward him when he got out of his sports car, and Jamie reached into the back to pull out the formal suit he’d have to wear for this farce of a wedding.

He’d thought he’d been pissed when he found her note in the morning, but that had paled into nothingness compared to the roiling emotions which churned in his gut. That little madam would so regret her actions when he got his hands on her.

Taking a deep breath to cool his temper, he approached the wide open doors leading into the spacious foyer which made up the Don’s house, and the fine hair on his back rose. Something was very wrong with the atmosphere in this place. He’d have expected the busy hubbub of a house readying itself for the big day, but a depressing silence filled the big place.

Luigi Armantero, one of the Don’s best men, supposedly—Jamie reserved judgment on that—after all Nicoletta had slipped away from his and his brother Stefano all too easily that night—stepped up to him and gestured for him to follow.

“Don Cabrizi is in his study. He wants to see you.”

The man looked far from happy. Then again, so he should. Jamie had no intention of letting such tardiness go.  When Luigi pushed open the heavy door guarding the Don’s inner sanctum, that itch of foreboding Jamie had had on entering the mansion magnified tenfold. Don Cabrizi sat at his desk, cradling a brandy glass in his large hands, which he raised in silent salute to Jamie.

“Want one?” he asked.

“A bit early for that, don’t you think?”

The older man gave a short humorless laugh, and downed his large shot of the amber liquid in one go, before he slammed it back on the desk.

“I hate women. They’re nothing but fucking trouble.”

Jamie hid his smile at that outburst.

“Maybe, but they do have their uses.”

A snort was his answer this time, and he watched with growing alarm as the Don filled another glass to the brim. At this rate he would be stone drunk at his only daughter’s wedding.

“Go easy on that. You don’t want to stumble up the aisle when you give her away.”

Another one of those grim laughs which made Jamie wonder what the fuck was going on.

“Okay, what has she done this time?” he asked.

“The wedding’s off.”

The Don’s curt response sat in the room, and Jamie struggled to keep his expression neutral, as the other man downed another glass and eventually looked up at him.