Femme Fatale Loved (Pericolo #3) (11 page)

Dante moves into the room, pulling Ryleigh with him as a woman with an ultrasound machine enters, and I know this isn’t some joke anymore.

“Ready to see your baby?” he asks, waiting for my nervous head nod. “Do you want to keep everyone in the room?”

I nod again without a second thought, too nervous for words. Although I want Zane here for this, I can’t have that, and I can’t go back to Manhattan not knowing if my child is okay. I can’t go back without the definitive truth that Zane and I are truly a family. Before I knew it, now it’s finally being set into stone.

For now, this is the only family I know.

Setting the ultrasound by my side, he pushes the on button and Alessa positions herself close to my side, still holding my hand. As the doctor asks me to lift my gown, I do, and he places the sheets across me to protect my modesty. I lay with my bare stomach on show; I look down and wonder what it’ll look like in a few months when Zane’s and my baby is developing. The thoughts are melodic to me, and the excitement is igniting every fiber of my being. I watch goose bumps travel across my entire abdomen and catch sight of the scars that stand out against my lightly tanned skin, and I look up when I sense I’m being watched carefully. Dante stands looking at me, his eyes trained on me. I see his shoulders squared, his eyes tracing the ugly markings before he meets my eyes.

I guess he didn’t know that part – the part where I nearly died.

I watch as a red-hot anger pulsates over every part of him. Even Ryleigh notices it, and Alessa does too, but none of us flinches. We’ve seen all degrees of Dante Valentino. His anger is quite probably the one emotion he clung to most before it all went down and he ran.

There’s a palpable silence as the doctor studies the fuzzy images on the screen. I struggle to make heads or tails of what’s happening, but then I see it, a flicker in the grains of black and white. I don’t need telling twice what that is. I wonder if anyone can feel how fast my heart is racing seeing as I can feel it right up into my throat, the noise radiating into my ears. A jellybean shape flutter in the middle of the screen and then it comes into focus. The moment I gasp, my eyes water. I struggle to keep the tears at bay, but the moment a loud resounding whooshing fills the room, I know this is real.

“That is one incredibly strong heartbeat,” the doctor mentions happily. He reaches to turn the monitor to face me, allowing me to see what he does on the screen. “There’s not much to see, but you can just work out at the shape of the baby here. Looks a bit like a blob to some people, but that flutter is your baby’s heartbeat.”

I can’t stop staring, not even as he lifts the Doppler from my stomach and offers me some paper towels to clean myself. He tells me he’ll get some images printed, and I barely register asking if I can have some sort of recording of the heartbeat. I don’t know how this all works, but he is quick to oblige, and it causes my heart to beat harder. The anticipation of what this could mean for our family fills me with such an abundance of hope.

“I have to ask,” I say, wiping my stomach clear of the gel as I sit up. “I was told I wouldn’t ever conceive, not on my own anyway, and if I ever did, it’d be dangerous for me. What does this all mean for my baby and me?”

I want to know what’s going to happen before I give Zane his unexplainable happiness. The swell in me is healing all those last cracks that I never thought would be heal. Hearing that baby’s heartbeat was the finale to this all. My life hung in the balance waiting for a forever love; Zane gave me that, and this baby solidified it.

“I saw in your file that you were the victim of a stabbing, and it was listed that there was a lot of abdominal trauma, but from what I’ve seen with the baby itself and the uterus, I see no issues. Of course, due to the nature and locations of the injuries you sustained, when you’re back home, your own OB-GYN may just insist on seeing you a little more frequently than a normal pregnancy.” He then reaches out, placing a hand on mine and giving me a reassuring squeeze. “For now, you’re an extremely healthy woman, and that baby is in perfect health for being seven weeks. I sense no problems that would require major decisions.”

I try to take it all in, but all my mind keeps finalizing is the fact I’m pregnant!

“I’m going to get you a prescription for pre-natal vitamins, and I’ll get those discharge papers, and you can leave.” He looks around at the three faces staring at me. “Please, make sure she doesn’t skip any more meals.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Dante remarks, his voice hard, his eyes boring into me as he makes his final statement. “I’ll be force feeding her if need be.”

“Great,” I mutter, following back onto the pillows.

“Before I go, how’s the head?” the doctor asks. “You had a nasty hit on the way down, but if you have a headache, I can prescribe you something for that which won’t harm the baby.”

“It’s not bad as it was,” I admit, enjoying the ache in my head disappearing.

“I’ll get you a script just in case.”

When he leaves, the air in the room is stifling, and I just stare in front of me, not focusing on anything. I’m trying to make sense of everything, but every time I do, I keep imagining the many ways in which I can tell Zane the news. It has to be perfect and unforgettable.

“Zane is going to freak,” I say, looking up at Alessa. She’s grinning like a damn fool, and it’s fucking infectious. “After everything, he’s going to be ecstatic, but he’s going to freak. We haven’t planned this! I mean, we haven’t exactly not tried, but after what happened, we never tried much to prevent it from happening. We just did it ... a lot!”

The moment that sentence ends, my eyes widen, and I find myself blushing. I’ve been rambling on without thinking first, and now that I’m aware of what I said, I can feel all eyes on me.

“It’s a good thing you realized,” Alessa praises, trying not to laugh.

Dante clears his throat, entering the room more to stand at the foot of my bed. While I’m feeling at ease, he’s in a maelstrom of dark emotion. “Just so you know, I’ll kill that bastard. That brother of yours won’t know what fucking hit him!”

“Dante,” Ryleigh growls, putting a hand on his arm. She has enough savvy about the Abbiatis to know how we act – or how we used to. “How do you know they haven’t already?”

“Well?” he asks, disregarding her for a moment, blinded by his rage.

“He ran,” I meekly reply. “But you aren’t part of that life anymore. You aren’t going to do anything stupid!”

Much like I used to with Bruno, I will fight to make sure Dante doesn’t destroy what life he’s found. I saw the man he becomes once she crashed through his walls, so I would never ask him to jeopardize any of the progress he’s made.

“He hurt you,” Dante manages to say between grinding his jaw together. He puts his hands into his hair and roughly tears at every strand.

“I survived.” I return my reply, trying to make him calm. “I have everything I want now. I don’t work for my father, haven’t in nearly a year.”

“One more thing.”

I raise an eyebrow, crossing my arms over chest. “What’s that?”

“Do we need to discuss the Zane Maverick matter?” Dante asks, gripping onto the footboard of my bed. “I saw what he did to you once. What mess he left you in, Amelia. How could you go back there again?”

“Because I love him.”

My statement is simple but effective. The conviction that carries my words whips around Dante and his face softens. The reason I went back with Zane is cutthroat. I love him, he loves me, and we both have fought all manner of beasts and demons to be here. Most women would run from a man that shattered their hearts once, but when you know true love – that undying, unequivocally love that makes your heart throb – you’ll do whatever to make it work. We did and will always will.

“He fought for me, he saved me, and I cannot live without him anymore. I tried before, and I wasn’t better for it. It made me careless and miserable. I’m not either of those anymore. I’m happy, Dante. Just like you are with Ryleigh. You’ll fight for her whatever, right?” He nods, shooting his girl a crooked grin. “Well, I’ll do whatever for Zane in the same manner.”

“I still want to meet him. Properly
introduce
myself,” Dante replies, unable to relinquish a need for control. “I want to see those brothers of yours, see what they’ve become of themselves.”

“What does that mean?” I ask, bristling slightly at the veiled threat I detect in his words.

“Seems we have our vacation destination, Mia Regina.” Dante kisses Ryleigh, calling her his queen before turning back to me and grinning wickedly. “Manhattan.”

All hell is about to break loose.

We head back to Alessa’s house united and admittedly buzzing.

Dante drove us back, and while I had a million and one questions to ask, I also wanted nothing more than to take a shower, change into some clean clothes, and spend the rest of the day doing nothing. Aside from that, I wanted the easy route home – snap my fingers and be in my bed at my house with my man. I knew the latter wasn’t so easy.

I’ve been fussed over, offered every type of food under the sun, and kept hydrated – all by Dante. He’s worse than my brothers are as he stands watch, making sure I’m okay. Multiple times I’ve joked with Ryleigh to see if she can train him to heel, but that’s done nothing to calm him, much to our amusement.

Now, however, he’s left me for two golden minutes of silence.

It’s been enough time for me to grab my bag and pull out the small ultrasound image. I gaze down at that tiny little blip on the printout, the one that hours earlier I watched on the screen. My first introduction to my unborn baby was mesmerizing, but while I’m on cloud nine, I have to think of Zane – how do I break this news to him?! I can’t just tell him; I can’t just blurt this news out and treat it as if it’s insignificant because it’s anything but that. Our lives are changing, morphing into a delicate shade of perfect, and I can’t stand for it to start on a mediocre admittance. He needs to know in the most spectacular way possible.

“You might burn a hole through the first image of my nephew.” Dante’s voice breaks into my reverie.

“Your nephew?” I query, shooting him a look while my eyebrow rises. “You’re convinced it’s a boy already?”

“All good Italian bloodlines start with boys.” He shrugs, taking a sip of his drink. “Yours did, and mine did.”

“And look where both those families have ended up.” I’m teasing him, and I love how easy it is. Gone is the worry and stresses of murders, and while neither of us has forgotten what we were, I won’t allow it to dampen the fact that I feel like I have my best friend back. “Plus, Zane’s not Italian.”

“Okay, so my niece will be the cutest badass little girl ever!” he exclaims, setting his beer down to grab the throw Alessa left out for me.

She and Ryleigh have been gone all of ten minutes, both deciding to pack up my stuff at the hotel and check me out and pick Alessa’s car up from the rehab parking lot. They both wanted Dante and me to catch up, but I sensed Ryleigh was a little more reluctant to offer us time than Alessa was. I’m sure we appear to be an old married couple, affectionate and caring, but Dante and I have never felt more for each other than a strong bond. I won’t lie – he’s my soul mate – but not in the way Zane is my ultimate, and Ryleigh is his. Our relationship has been platonic; we tried to exceed the boundaries of the friend zone, but never been dangerously close enough to escaping into something else. We flirt, we joke, we have banter, but we’re also the other’s secret keeper.

I’ve never looked at him sexually, never had forbidden thoughts of falling for him, never worried myself with the lust I could have had with Dante. It was never there, not when people tried to make it happen. Dante and I are partners in crime, bound by sins, both Italian thoroughbreds, and both reckless when in love.

“Are you comfortable there,
piccola
?” Dante asks, throwing the blanket over me.

I smile at the use of that nickname. It’s been a long time since I was called babe and no one, not even Zane, has ever called me it – let alone in Italian. It makes me more grateful for having this shot at having him back. It’s a reminiscence I lived within but never expected to happen.

“Yes, thanks,” I reply, appreciative of the sudden warmth.

The air conditioning from the hospital has me chilled to the bone even after I’d walked out into the California heat. I was so cold, I shivered in the car a little, but now that I’m settled at Alessa’s, the heat is returning to me.

“Y’know, when Alessa called me, I was terrified. She was hysterical, and she had no idea who to call. I’m really pleased she chose me.” He gazes at me with a hooded look. He sighs, rubbing a hand over his face as he tries to make sense of everything. “I’ve thought about you every day since Ryleigh and I fled Brooklyn. After that explosion, I saw my out, and I took it.”

“I don’t hate you for it, so stop making it sound like an apology is coming.”

“It is,” he states, shaking his head more so at himself. “I didn’t escape that life; I left you behind in it, Lia. We had a pact. Since we were little, it was always us two together for life, and I walked out on that.”

“For the right reasons,” I remark, rebuking his concerns. “I’m sure had I done the same with Zane first, you’d have never found a reason to forgive me because there isn’t anything to forgive. We always dreamed of finding our get-out clause. You just found yours sooner.”

“Still,” he starts, sounding uncertain. “We were always thick as thieves. Then I cut ties.”

“But I got you back,” I say, giving him a wink. “I never expected to make Alessa come back with me, get you back, and find out I was pregnant in one day. Miracles happen.”

“I was always coming back for you, Amelia Abbiati.” He stands, picking up my empty glass, and leans down to press a kiss to the top of my head. “You want another?”

“Please,” I tell him but stop him. “I can get it myself, you know?”

“And have Alessa kill me?” he asks, chortling as he leaves me to head to the kitchen. “Yeah, right.”

I watch his retreating figure, and I feel overwhelmed at the difference three years has done for him. He’s a different man than the one who sought revenge. He isn’t broken, he isn’t warped, and he seems at peace; he’s not even hidden in the tormented, dark character he wore for so often. He is the person I always hoped he’d become, and I hope I’m the Amelia I always spoke about being.

As he comes back, handing me a fresh glass of water, I accept it and keep my eyes trained on him. He watches, and I giggle.

“What happened to the mean Dante?”

“He died the moment I fell in love,” he says, grinning wildly, picking his beer back up. “What happened to my tough Amelia?”

“She fell in love,” I retort, feeling that same electric buzz of happiness. “If someone had said we’d be like this a few years back, I’d have laughed so hard.”

“I know, right?” he muses, chuckling at the lunacy of the thought. “I regret it all, though, Lia.” He looks down at his bottle of beer, a sober look on his face. “Every moment of it, every kill, everything I did to Ryleigh – I do regret it.” He looks back up, and I feel as if I’m looking at a wounded man. “I still see it all in my sleep. I relive it most nights. I hate myself for trying to destroy Ryleigh when I was only ever hell-bent on killing my grandfather. She was just another person to exercise my power over. I feel like, at times, I manipulated her and forced her to be someone she wasn’t. I tried to make her a monster.”

“Do you really think she’d have married you having felt the same?” I ask, giving him total empathy. “I noticed the wedding band.” I change the subject, nodding to his left hand. I then grin cheekily at him. “You seem happy now, Dante.”

“You seemed hysterical,” he quips, joking with me, and I throw a small throw pillow at him. The laughter that he evokes in me is the same that Zane always did – carefree and natural. “But you seem happy, too.”

“I am,” I agree. “Coming out to California was just a part of my plan to make it a permanent state.” Saying that begs one question to awaken within me. “How come you kept in contact with Alessa?”

“It just happened,” he replies, reaching forward for his beer. He relaxes back, drawing his right leg up so the ankle rests on his left knee. “She came into my bar, and I was shocked when I turned around to serve her. Now, I can’t get rid of her.”

That’s when the shoe finally drops.

“Mia Regina,” I whisper, thinking back to that bar and why it felt so familiar. I heard how Ryleigh became Dante’s queen – his very own
Mia Regina
. “That’s yours?”

“Always will be,
piccola
,” he muses chirpily, looking quite smug over the fact. “Ryleigh was my muse, my trigger. She quickly became my queen. I wanted a tie to my old life, the one I couldn’t go back to, so she told me to start my own chain of bars, and when Mia Regina really made it big, I did a repeat of what Jackson and I kick started. We made a chain.”

“I’m so happy you chose her,” I tell him, just touching on how happy I am for him. “I know I wasn’t her best friend to begin with, but I hope there’s some hope I can get her forgiveness.”

“Not necessary,” Dante insists, waving his hand at me. “That little lady of mine loves you. She knows all about you, Amelia. When she became a part of my life, I kept no secrets. When I chose her, I also took an oath of total honesty. Our past drew us together, gave me the world, and now, it’s brought you back to me.”

“Sometimes, our pasts are a bad thing to run from.” I regard him, giving a small smile. “You’ll always be a part of my past I loved.”

“Much like Zane?” he asks, and I don’t even have to answer Dante for him to know my answer. “Is he treating you well?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” I reply, happy not to give Dante any opportunity to go all alpha male on me. “If you’re coming back, you can’t go beating your chest and reading him the riot act.”

“I’ll do whatever the fuck I want to,” he replies, the old Dante striking an appearance. “I love you,
piccola
. Not like Zane clearly does, but I will always protect you when I can. I only have your best interests at heart. You are where my true family started.”

“I know. Just like I love you.” I watch him, waiting for him to strike again. When he doesn’t, I continue. “But the boys already lived with Zane when he joined the Dio Lavoro, so they know where his loyalties lie.”

Dante splutters on his drink, my comment spoken as he took a sip. He quickly wipes his chin of the spat drink and leans forward. “He joined the Dio Lavoro?” I nod, and he laughs incredulously. “Well, fuck me sideways, I never thought he’d have that in him from all the stories I heard.”

“He’s a dark horse,” I gloat, feeling my eyes glisten with pride. “If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have held on like I did. Our relationship might not be perfect, but it saved me. It gave me this life.”

“And the worries about being pregnant?”

“That’s down to Giovanni.” I try to make it seem like a joke, but Dante is enraged over the news.

“All those scars?” Dante asks, pressing for answers. I nod and gulp as I watch that thunder consume his green eyes. “He should’ve been murdered the moment he laid a hand on you.”

“You’re telling me,” I scoff, scratching uncomfortably at the back of my neck.

“Why didn’t your brothers do anything? Sal, I can understand – he loved Giovanni – but why not Enzo or Carlo, hell, Manuel could’ve done something, surely?!”

I can’t look at him as he makes that statement. I knew Enzo and Carlo had spoken to Dante, and he had offered help in any way he could offer, but that was apparently when we were still a family with Manuel living his own love story with us.

“Amelia?” Dante’s voice cuts into me. I sense him move, but he doesn’t invade my personal space.

“Manuel’s dead, Dante.”

The statement burns my throat and mouth, and I close my eyes. Although Dante doesn’t move, I can sense the despair he’s feeling. Dante may have been some people’s worse nightmare, but within the Abbiati fold, he was only ever family. He loved us as much as we loved him. We fought so hard with loyalty that it was hard to admit who we really were to anyone outside of our families, but we offered that solace in a dark world. He loved all of us as much as we loved him.

“I didn’t know,” he says, leaning forward to cover my hand with his. “Amelia, had I known, I’d have come back.”

“I know,” I say, but I don’t know that. Not really.

After Dante had left, we had no contact details. For a while, we all suspected he had perished in the end game with Ryleigh and his grandfather, but when Carlo found him, I was relieved – if not a little envious – that he had gotten out and found freedom. We weren’t granted contact with him because of the low-key status he was trying to uphold. It was like Bruno all over again. They ran off, and we were left waiting for the call to grant us access back into their life.

“I don’t know what to say,” he utters, unable to speak as he sits at a total loss. “I knew Giovanni went crazy, which is why I wanted to kill him, but I didn’t know this was how it ended.” He runs a hand over his jaw, rubbing away some of the grief that’s filtering. “Fuck! I don’t know what to say, Lia.”

“There isn’t much you can say.” I give him a tight smile, applying my thick bravado. “We recovered and moved on. It’s hard some days, but we are making something of our lives. I came here to reunite Enzo and Alessa and then this happened.”

“You being pregnant is not a bad thing,” he admonishes, setting me straight on that matter. “As for Enzo and Alessa, it’s been a long time coming. That girl still pines over that man like you wouldn’t believe.”

“He still pines for her,” I say, giggling. “It’s time I repaid a little gratitude.”

“You really think he’ll forgive you for dragging Alessa back to Manhattan?”

I shrug. “I don’t think he’ll get much say when he gets back and gets his ass kicked by her.” I laugh at the thought, my mind conjuring up every scenario possible. “I hate how he drew the short straw when he fought for us. He deserves the absolute best, and while fighting for us to have it, he left himself short.”