confirmed eight visits to Key West this past year.”
Joey swore, then leapt to his feet. “Why didn’t I suspect he was involved in Rhea’s disappearance?”
“Because he’s good at what he does,” Lucky reasoned. “Hell, for twenty-four years he’s been living a double life without either one of us knowing it. That kind of determination makes me a little nervous. I wonder what else he’s been hiding.”
“If he’s as good as you say, then, by now he’s on his way here to confront me.” Joey pointed to the silver chain tucked inside his brother’s shirt. “I left my cross on Rhea’s pillow.”
The cross that nested in the thatch of black hair on Lucky’s chest was identical to the ones Joey and Jackson wore. Lavina had given her boys the crosses one night when hell had descended on them, and all three boys had survived because they had stuck together. The decision they had made that night had bound them for life.
Lucky arched a brow. “You leave the cross for revenge’s sake, or out of concern for her state of mind once she found Niccolo gone?”
Not willing to analyze his actions, Joey said, “I want her to come to me. Face me. If she cares about the boy, she’ll come.”
“My men tell me Frank arrived at Santa Palazzo a few hours ago. My guess is, he got a call that Niccolo was taken and he flew out there soon after. You’re right. If he knows it was you who took Niccolo, we can expect him back here within twenty-four hours.”
Joey paced to the window, rubbing his jaw. He hadn’t shaved in three days—or slept, for that matter.
“So what do you want to do about Frank?”
“I have my son. That’s what I went there for.”
“The only reason?”
Joey turned slowly. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying Frank’s been lying to us for years. Maybe it’s time we looked into why that is. Maybe we need to find out what he’s hiding at Santa Palazzo besides Rhea Williams.”
“I’ll go along with that.”
“And Rhea? What do you plan to do with her once she shows up?”
Joey wanted it to be all about revenge where Rhea was concerned. It would be easier that way. But when he’d walked into Rhea’s bedroom at Santa Palazzo he had been stopped cold, struck by her familiar scent filling his nostrils. Struck by the sight of her hairbrush on the vanity with blond strands of hair caught in the bristles. To his disgust he’d opened her closet just to look at her clothes.
“Do you think she knows that her ex-husband is in jail for murder?”
“That’s an interesting question.” Joey returned to the sofa. “It’s rather recent news. I suppose it would depend whether Frank thought it was news he could use to his advantage or not. Either way, at the moment, Rhea should be more afraid of me than her ex.”
“Rhea’s been through a lot in her life, fratello.”
“So I’m supposed to go easy on her because years ago she married the wrong man, and his favorite pastime was beating her up?”
“No. I’m saying Frank has more experience in deceiving people than Rhea.”
“The bottom line is, she’s been hiding my son from me like some dirty secret. And if it was Frank’s idea, and she was forced into it, she’s had plenty of time to find a way to get a message to me. But from what you’ve said, it sounds like she’s been living content at Santa Palazzo.”
Joey wasn’t going to accept any excuses. Whatever Rhea’s reason was, it wouldn’t be good enough. And the minute he laid eyes on her, this crazy feeling constricting his chest and tightening his jeans would burn itself out. He couldn’t possibly still care about her, after what she’d done.
“She looks different.”
Joey blinked out of his musing and saw Lucky studying one of the pictures. “She looks different because she’s not wearing a gauze bandage over her eye or a split lip.” He couldn’t disguise the anger and disgust that tainted his deep voice. He still hated the fact that he hadn’t been able to keep Stud from terrorizing her.
His gaze returned to the picture of Rhea walking on the beach. Besides being bruise free, he’d noticed that she’d cut her hair into a straight, carefree style, and it had been bleached almost white from the Florida sun. Her skin no longer made her look as pale as a ghost, and she wasn’t painfully thin. There was a gentle curve to her hips and more definition to her breasts. The only thing he could guarantee looked the same were her beautiful long legs.
Angry that he’d taken the time to dissect the picture, he said, “Not having bruises or gauze bandages doesn’t change the facts.”
“Which are?”
“That she’s a liar and a thief!” Joey swore softly, wishing he hadn’t raised his voice. He didn’t want his son to wake up to the sound of his father shouting like an angry fool. He didn’t want Niccolo ever to be afraid of him. Not in the way he’d been afraid of his own father when he was a boy.
He and Lucky had tiptoed around their father, beginning at an early age, to avoid his lectures on loyalty to the famiglia, but they hadn’t been able to escape the hourly drills Frank had forced on them to make his sons weaponry experts. By age thirteen Joey could nail a target dead center with a six-inch knife from twenty yards away. Lucky, at age ten, could empty a round of ammo into a dummy’s head with a 25-caliber Beretta and a .38 Special.
More softly, but just as angrily, he said, “She kept me from my son, Lucky.”
“Yesterday you had a right to be angry, mio fratello. But today you have the boy. Focus on what you want tomorrow. What you want next month. Next year. What you want for Niccolo’s future.”
“What I want for my son is for him to grow up happy, doing whatever the hell it is he wants to do with his life. I don’t want him to be like us. I don’t want him to feel trapped, or forced into chasing another man’s dream.”
Lucky raised his glass of scotch. “Then, we’ll drink to happiness, and to changing the future for him.”
Joey lifted his glass. “And we’ll drink to you, Lucky. For making a trip to Florida and buying that camera.”
Lucky nodded, his grin softening his dark eyes and the scar on his chin. “To Niccolo. May he grow up to be as wise as his father, and—” he grinned “—as handsome as his uncle.”
Chapter 2
The sight of the milky blue horizon over Lake Michigan was glorious, but it had been as fleeting a feeling as the absurd emotional tug that Rhea had somehow come home…home to stay.
Now, as she stood in the lobby of Masado Towers with a lump in her throat, clutching Nicci’s teddy bear, she knew the depth of what she was facing.
The night she’d left Chicago, escorted to the airport by two of Frank’s bodyguards, Joey’s dream had been nothing more
