Page 32 of Possessive Vows
I reach the foyer and run into Matteo as he and his men enter the house. Matteo has a smear of blood on his face, which he wipes away with a grin.
“Killed the men out front. Now what?”
“Now,” I say, “we find Tommaso, and I kill the motherfucker. You search the rest of the downstairs. I’ll look upstairs.”
Despite Tommaso’s mansion being a mansion, it doesn’t take long to search the entire house.
The fucker is nowhere to be found.
Matteo, our men, and I regroup in the foyer. The house is eerily quiet since the sound of gunshots has stopped and all the guards are dead.
“Did he know you were coming?” Matteo asks.
“No. There’s no way. He must be hiding out somewhere else. He knew I’d come back here to finish him off. Fuck!” I kick the side table in the foyer, and it lands on the floor with a bang. “Now, where the fuck am I supposed to find him? He could go after Pia and take her back. I can’t let that happen.”
“We’ll find him,” Matteo tells me. “Don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry? You don’t have a wife to worry about, Matteo. Have you ever cared for anyone besides yourself?”
He doesn’t respond.
“Fuck!” I yell again, then storm out of the house. Tommaso may have eluded me this time, but it won’t happen again.
I’m still angry once I return home. Adelina comes into the foyer after I bang the front door shut.
“You ok?” she asks.
I storm past her. As I head upstairs, I hear Serafina ask, “What crawled up his ass?”
I barge into my bedroom to find Pia on the bed, reading a book. She jumps and sets the book down.
Dario?she signs.
I shake my head. “I didn’t kill him.”
Her face tightens before she nods slowly and motions with her hand for me to continue speaking.
“He wasn’t there. At his home. He wasn’t there. And I have no fucking clue where he could be.” I rub my hand over my face, letting out a deep sigh. “I let you down. I couldn’t keep to my promise and kill him.”
Pia rushes over to me, signing, but I don’t understand. She huffs, pulls out her phone, and types,You didn’t break your promise. You came back to me alive.
Her words soften me. “Yeah, I guess I did do that, huh?”
She smiles.I know my father is a problem, but I don’t want to think about him any longer. I’m done with him. I just want to focus on building my new life. With you.
I pull her in close to me and rest my chin on her head. “I want that, too. You know, when I first planned to take you, I never knew I would grow to care about you in such a short amount of time. But the minute I saw you, I knew I needed to protect you. I cared for you even before I met you.”
I care about you, too, she signs.
And that’s all the encouragement I need to know that taking Pia was the best decision I ever made.
CHAPTER11
Pia
I’m determined to make a new life with Dario. He’s taking to learning sign language very well. Even Adelina has joined in and is learning, too. It warms my heart to know that there are people in this world who can truly understand me. It’ll be a while before they’re fluent in sign language, but at least I don’t have to type every time I want to speak.
So far, Dario and I have kept to just kissing. I’m tempted to go further, but I’m still protecting myself. Once I give myself completely over to Dario, he’ll own my heart, and then what will I do? He’ll have the power to hurt, and I’m not quite ready for someone to have that kind of control over me again.