Strapped: A Second Chance Mafia Romance (26 page)

As he speeds off in a direction that I haven’t been before, I can’t help but wonder what’s about to happen next. We’ve been through so many life-changing things recently, and I can’t help but feel like I’m about to go through another…

I
speed
along the road with a clear-cut focus in my mind. This is it now, the moment that I grasp my future with both hands, and I make it my own. It’s exciting and terrifying all at the same time, but with Sophia by my side it doesn’t feel quite as scary after all.

“Are you okay?” She asks, moving her hand over mine. I can tell that she thinks I’m acting crazy, but she’s going along with it anyway because she knows that’s what I need to do. When I think about the way my life has gone, and everything and everyone within it, I realize that Sophia truly is the only one to have seen beneath my outer layer, and witnessed the person within.

“I’m fine,” I tell her, sending her a loving smile. “I just… I really
do
want to put all of this behind us now. It’s been such an awful few weeks, and I think we all need a break.”

As my eyes flicker back to the road, I start to think about Liam once more. Of course, I feel terrible about Jason’s death too, but he wasn’t someone that I knew very well. Liam was
my
guy and
my
friend. Losing him is heartbreaking, in the same way it was when I lost Mike. He was a good guy too – the voice of reason through all of it. I know that he didn’t have a family of his own, but his mother and brother are still alive, so I will have to let them know what happened.

In our line of work, it isn’t essential to let family members know about deaths because it leaves more witnesses than we’re comfortable with, but this time I want them to know that Liam died heroically.

I didn’t tell Sophia the details, but he was stabbed in the back, and while he was tumbling to the ground, he fired his gun into the heads of three of our enemies. He made his last action on this planet a heroic one – one to help us with our cause – and for that I will be forever grateful.

“Is this your dad’s home?” Sophia asks, as we finally pull up outside the building where we first met. “What the hell are we doing here?” There’s an unnecessary panic in her eyes, so I pull her toward me to try and squash that right away.

“Just trust me,” I tell her in a calm and reassuring tone of voice. “We need to do this. Nothing bad will happen here, I promise you.”

She nods, but she certainly doesn’t look confident in my words, and as we enter the building and go inside, she grips tightly onto my hands and hides behind my back. This might have been a bit of a crazy move really, considering what Sophia has only just been through, but I hope that she understands why I did it when we get the hell out of here.

I stand proudly in front of my dad as he leans back in his desk chair, pressing his fingers together and staring at me with contempt. I can already tell that this conversation isn’t going to go well, but this time I don’t care. He won’t be able to intimidate me or make me feel bad about myself, not anymore.

“Hi, dad,” I start. “It’s nice to see you
here
.”

My meaning is loaded, and he can clearly tell that, but he chooses to disregard that. “What are you doing with her, Enzo? What the fuck is all of this about?”

Sophia whimpers with fear, and an intense anger consumes me. How dare he make her feel bad when the Irish have already put her through so much? What the fuck is his problem?

“Dad,” I say in a controlled tone of voice, really trying to keep all of my emotions in. “Aiden is dead now – I killed him. So the Irish mafia won’t be bothering you for a while now…”

“I know,” he smirks. “Don’t you think someone has already told me that? What I want to know is why you’re here and not out there cleaning up the mess you made?”

“Because I’m done,” I snap back quickly, needing him to understand that. “I’m done with all of this. I want out.”

“What the fuck?” He stands up, looming over me to really demonstrate his rage. “What the fuck are you on about you want out?
No one
gets an out, you know that! What is your problem…?” But then a realization crosses his face and he starts to peer his eyes around behind me. I instinctively step around Sophia, not wanting him to even look at her, but it’s too late. My dad has a bone, and he won’t let go easily. “Is this because of
her
?” He demands. “Is
she
making you do this?”

“No…” I start, but he has no intention of letting me get any words in.

“Your wedding is a fucking sham. Why are you taking it so seriously? Patrick is dead now so this isn’t even necessary anymore…” He stops talking for a second and starts to rifle through his drawers. “In fact, Sophia…”

He pushes me to one side and stares at her, practically baring his teeth in anger. I try to get back in the way, to be a barrier between them, but my dad has no intention of being bested by me again. I watch in shock as he holds out an envelope with Sophia’s name written across it in handwriting that I don’t recognize.

What the fuck is going on now?

“As we made the peace treaty, your dad had fears that it wouldn’t work out. He suspected that there was a mutiny rising.” Patrick knew that he might be killed? And he married Sophia off anyway? What sort of person does that? “He wanted to have you protected, and I think he assumed that with us was the best place for that.
But
, he did give me this.”

He hands her the envelope, and I watch her open it with trembling fingers. Nerves course through my veins and it takes every scrap of my self-control not to intervene. I feel like I need to do something at the moment, but at the same time it doesn’t feel right.

“What is it?” Sophia asks, as she pulls a single piece of paper from it.

“It’s a letter to the lawyer who has the Irish mafia money – your dad left it all to you. It can only be picked up by you, which is exactly what he wanted.” My mind reels as Sophia’s face turns a weird shade of pale. “So what I’m going to say to you Sophia Murphy is this… take the money, leave my son alone, go and start a new life away from all of this. You don’t need to be involved in any of this madness for another second longer…”

Whoa
.

I start to panic, realizing that Sophia might actually be considering taking up this offer. Of course I want her to be happy and if this is what she wants, then I’ll accept that… but I
really
don’t want her to go.

“Right… thank you…” she says, before walking from the room, leaving us both behind.

I instantly start to walk out after her but my dad places his hand firmly on my shoulder. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” He demands.

I shake his hand from my shoulder, and glare at him angrily. “My decision has nothing to do with Sophia. I am out no matter what decision she makes, I’m done. I can’t stand the violence, the anger, the aggression, the crime…”

“Don’t be so fucking stupid, Enzo,” my dad yells. “You haven’t got anything else, you can’t
do
anything else. This is all you have…”

“I don’t care,” I shake my head and carry on leaving. “I really don’t care.”

“If you walk out this door right now, then I don’t ever want to see your face again.”

“I know,” I tell him quite seriously. “And if that’s honestly how you feel, then you’ve really never been a father to me. So I really am out, and I guess this is goodbye.”

As I walk out of that building for what I know will be the very last time, there’s a horrible sadness within me. It’s liberating to finally be able to do what I want to do, but it’s really sad too. I never started out thinking that I would lose my entire family, but that’s exactly what I’ve done. I might end up with no friends too – they might not be able to continue talking to me while keeping up the life that I’ve left behind – but that’s a sacrifice that I’m willing to take.

It isn’t just for Sophia, it’s for me too. I need something different, something more. My dad might be right that I have nothing else, no way of making a future for myself, but I have to give it a go anyway. I need to at least try or I’ll never know.

As I see Sophia sitting in the passenger seat in my car, my heart flickers with nerves. This could be the moment where she tells me that she wants to leave everything behind, and I find myself alone. Maybe her feelings towards me have been circumstantial and now that she no longer needs me, she will move away – just like she always wanted to do.

I stop for a second, just drinking in her appearance, allowing myself one last second of happiness that I want to commit to memory forever, before stepping forward and finding out exactly what the future holds for me.

“Are you okay?” I ask, as I strap myself in. “Did you want to go back to the apartment?”

She nods a little too quickly, and stares at me with a shining happiness in her eyes. “Ten million dollars, Enzo.” She tells me. “My dad left me ten million dollars – do you know what that means?”

“Wow,” I reply weakly, doing my best to sound happy for her. “That’s amazing, what are you going to do?”

“What do you mean?” She asks with a confusion on her face. “That isn’t a decision that I’m going to make alone. It’s what are
we
going to do. You are my husband after all.”

My heart leaps with happiness at her words, but I feel the need to reconfirm. “Wait, are you saying that you still want to be with me? That you want to stay married? I mean… are you sure? You don’t have to anymore, all of this is done now. You could… go and have the life that you’ve always wanted, you could get as far away as possible from here if you wanted…”

“Don’t you get it, Enzo?” She asks seriously. “Do you still not understand after all this time? I love you – you aren’t just my sham marriage, you’re my husband and I love you. It might not have started off in the best way, but we’ve really developed something here. We’ve become something, made our lives our own. I still want that, I don’t want to let it go now,
especially
considering everything that we’ve been through.”

Tears fill my eyes and a lump of emotion sits firmly in my throat. “Do you know that’s the first time that you’ve ever said that to me?” I ask. “I don’t… oh my God, I don’t even know what to say.”

“It might be the first time that I’ve said it, but it isn’t the first time I’ve thought it.” She strokes my cheeks lightly, and it takes all that I have no to completely fall apart there and then.

“I love you too,” I tell her with an absolute certainty on my tone. “Of course I do – you’re amazing. I’ve never met anyone quite like you! I just… I can’t believe that you want to spend the rest of your life with me too… it’s amazing. I can’t even begin to tell you how happy I am.”

“So…” she continues, as we pull up outside my home… our home now I suppose. “I guess this is it then. We stay married and we make a new future for ourselves.”

“Oh my God,” I sit back in my seat and stare dreamily into the distance for a moment. “What are we going to do with our lives?” A million bright futures fill my mind and I grow increasingly excited with each and every one. Nothing is out of reach now –Sophia and I can really have everything that we’ve always dreamed of… “Wait!” I cry out, turning to stare at my wife. “I’ve got it. Let’s go to LA – it’s far away from here, and you can try and get the career that you’ve always wanted.”

“That’s a pipe dream,” she laughs with a light shining in her eyes. “I can’t really do that.”

“Of course you can!” I tell her. “We have plenty of money now, so there’s nothing to hold us back.”

“I suppose you’re right,” she grins. “I suppose we can do anything now!”

I feel a steely determination creeping up inside of me. She’s done enough for me – now it’s my turn to make her dreams come true. And that I will, no matter what it takes…

“
I
can’t believe
that it’s been a whole year,” I sigh happily, leaning back in the sun seat that we have around our pool. “Isn’t that crazy?”

“Not to me,” Enzo smiles at me and hands me a lovely fruit drink. “I think it’s whizzed past. When I think back to the day we arrived here, with only the couple of boxes of stuff to our name… it feels like only yesterday.”

“Yeah, a couple of boxes and ten million dollars!” I grin, still unable to believe that my dad did that for me. Maybe this was his plan all along, maybe he was much smarter than I even realized and everything that he did for me was all with my best interests at heart. I can never ask him now to find out for sure, but I like to think as much. It’s nice to think that I’ve always had someone on side, even if he’s no longer around.

Of course I think about my mom a lot now, wondering where she is and what she’s up to, but I already know that’s a box that I won’t reopen ever again. She made her decision, and it wasn’t me. I miss her in a way, just because she’s my mom, but that’s it.

I don’t worry about it too much anymore… I have my own family to worry about.

“Mama,” my gorgeous baby grumbled, stretching his arms out, wiggling away from Enzo and wanting me.

“Yes, my little Patrick Liam Carbone?” I snuggle into him. “How are you?”

Finding out that we were having a baby was a little shock that we had not long after we got to LA – but a very happy one. Once we got past the initial stunned silence, we screamed with happiness, feeling like our future had been solidified for us once and for all. We already knew by that point that we wanted to be together forever, but it was a little sign that it was meant to be.

“I think he just wants a cuddle with his mommy,” Enzo smiles at me with such love in his eyes that it makes my heart melt. It feels so much nicer now that we can both be so open with our feelings. All that time we had to keep it all inside, just because of everyone else, it was stifling. Now we’re free to just be and that’s it. It’s wonderful. “He looks pretty tired, so I think that he’ll be asleep soon.”

As he steps back, leaving me alone, I can see him tug his phone out from his pocket. “Are you going to ring Diego?” I ask him, feeling a fluttering of nerves in my chest. I’m happy that the two of them are still friends, despite their difference in lifestyles now, but their phone calls always makes him feel a little sad. I don’t think he misses his old life, but I do think he feels sad about losing his friends and family. His dad will have nothing to do with him anymore, which is gutting for all of us, but we muddle through.

“Actually no,” he grins, with a twinkle in his eye. “I’m about to ring my
brand new boss
!”

“Oh my God!” I whisper scream, because I don’t want to disturb Patrick who has just drifted off into a slumber. “You got the job?”

Enzo didn’t have to work when we got to LA because we had all of that money, but he really wanted to, to make a real genuine life for himself. Unfortunately because he didn’t have any qualifications or legal work experience, all he could get were monotonous jobs in factories, which didn’t make him happy at all. But I’ve known for a while that he’s been taking tests and training to become a manager for an up and coming IT company, and it looks like it might have finally all paid off!

“I did,” he grins. “And I start on Monday.”

“That’s so amazing, I’m so proud of you.” I want to stand up and hug him to demonstrate how happy I am for him, but I need to lay Patrick down in his crib first. “I love you so much!” I cry as I can finally pull him towards me. “You’re so amazing.”

“Thank you – and what about you – did
you
get the job?”

Of course, Enzo never forgets what I’m up to!

I came to LA with dreams of becoming an actress or dancer, without really realizing how hard that was going to be. My lack of experience, combined with my unexpected pregnancy, put my dreams on hold. However, I managed to find something else that I love along the way. Modeling – primarily beauty shots. The fact that my face is the only thing in the pictures, meant that having a baby bump doesn’t matter.

“I did…” I grin excitedly. “The makeup brand loved me. But that isn’t the only news I have.”

He steps back to give me a curious look, and I feel like I’m about to burst at the seams with what I’ve been hiding inside. We’ve been trying for another baby ever since Patrick was born, and I know that Enzo is really excited about it, so I wanted to wait before I was
really
sure before I told him.

“We’re having another baby,” I tell him, smiling happily.

“Oh my God, are you serious?” He presses his lips up against mine passionately, allowing the love to flow between us. I feel safe at last in his enveloped arms, which is amazing for me. It took me a while to stop looking over my shoulder at every single opportunity, but I got there, and now I’m happier than ever. According to what Enzo has heard from Diego, there is some semblance of the Irish mafia left – although I have no idea who it’s being run by these days – and there is something of a war between them still, but it’s nothing like it once was.

They aren’t coming after us anyway – if they were, we would know about it by now.

“I’m serious,” I tell him happily. “Everything is really coming together for us now. We both have jobs we love, an amazing house, one gorgeous baby and another on the way… who would have thought it on our wedding day?”

We laugh, reminiscing over that awkward day that neither of us wanted to happen. I didn’t want to even imagine what my life would be now if it hadn't. I could be anywhere, as could Enzo. We might have never found our way to one another, and that would have been terrible – unthinkable!

“Do you remember when we met, and I told you that you were mine?” I nod, also recalling the shiver that those words sent through me. I hadn't wanted to admit it to myself at the time, but it was desire. I wanted him even then, and that chemistry hasn’t dulled even slightly. I still adore him like crazy, and want him every single day of my life. I don’t think that’s ever going to change.

“I remember,” I smile. “I just can’t believe that they came so true. If you’d told me back then that we would end up here now, I never would have believed you!”

“I know,” he chuckled. “Me neither – but I’m so glad that we are.”

Together forever.
I thought to myself.

“I love you,” I told him, never tiring of saying those words – or hearing them too. “I’m so glad we did make it here.”

“I love you too – forever and always.”