High Stakes Seduction - Book 5 (17 page)

I took a deep breath, grateful that someone in authority was taking action. Sometime during our call my shaking had stopped. But the ache in my chest at the thought that something bad had happened to my sister was still there. I did my best to breathe around it.

"Thanks, Ryan. For the suggestions and for the help. I didn't know who else to call," I paused. "She likes you, you know."

"Yeah, but she likes somebody else better."

What could I say? I knew he was right.

I set down the handset and picked up the local phone directory. I had calls to make.

Chapter Forty-Five

ANTONIO

I burst into Walker's office, knowing a confrontation was the only way to keep this man in line. His secretary jerked her head up from what she was doing, staring at me with big eyes, surprised by the commotion I'd created.

"I'm sorry, what… can I help you, Mr. Mancini?"

"Where's Walker? I need to see him now."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Walker isn't here right now. You should be able to reach him by cell phone, do you have the number?"

"When's the last time you saw him?"

"Yesterday, just before quitting time. He had some visitors, but I didn't wait around for them to leave."

"Visitors? Who were they?"

"He came in late with a couple of people. I didn't want to interrupt, so I didn't even say goodbye. I just closed up everything and left at my normal time."

"What people? Who were they?"

"Well, Mr. Carmiante was here, I recognized him. Mr. Anderson, the accountant, of course. But they had a woman with them I didn't recognize."

"What did she look like?"

"Oh, she was quite beautiful. She had jaw length, platinum blond hair, red lipstick."

"Naomi
,
"
I hissed under my breath.

"I didn't catch her name, but it's not unusual for Mr. Walker to have women I've never been introduced to in his office."

My phone buzzed, and I pulled it out of my pocket. "
What the hell is going on?
" Said Brad's text.
"Get your ass over here, we gotta talk,"
said the second one that popped up immediately afterwards.

I shut my phone and stuffed it back in my pocket, then turned to the woman. "Okay. Thanks. If you see Walker, tell him I want to see him immediately."

Chapter Forty-Six

ANTONIO

I stood outside the front door, waiting for Maria to answer. I wasn't totally sure how much I was going to tell her, but the time had come to clue her in about some things she needed to know.

"Antonio! What are you doing here?" Maria's eyes held concern. "Have you heard from Angela?"

"Not yet," I told her, not wanting to alarm her unnecessarily. "May I come in?"

"Oh certainly! I'm sorry, excuse my manners."

I stepped through the doorway, noticing the paintings stacked against the wall. "Looks like you've been doing some organizing."

"Well, yes. I'm trying to get things in some kind of order before going to the hospital. Or at least I was before… " she paused. We both knew what the 'before' was.

"Maria, there's something we need to talk about. Something it's time you should know," I said abruptly as I sat on the sofa.

"What?" she asked. "Is this about Angela?"

I looked over at her, the worried look was still on her face. I sighed. "I suppose I should start at the beginning." Leaning back, I steepled my fingers against my lips, looking for the right way to start. "Have you ever wondered about your Uncle Benito?"

Maria looked startled. "How do you know about Uncle Benito?"

"Because, he's not really your uncle. Maria, I'm sorry, I need to be blunt. I hope you'll forgive me, but there isn't a lot of time to be diplomatic. 'Uncle Benito' is… was… my father," I said, crossing my arms and watching her face.

Maria shook her head back and forth, the surprise still lingering on her face. "What does this have to do with me? And why are you telling me this now?"

"Because I believe Angela is in grave danger. And I think it's because of me. It isn't fair that you don't know, and I want you to understand as best you can. Benjamin Mancini, my father, was involved in some pretty shady dealings. I never really knew him when I was growing up, because he was always gone on business."

Suddenly I felt restless, so I stood up, pacing to the edge of the room and back as I did my best to explain the situation to Maria.

"I pretty much hated him while I was growing up. Mostly because he never seemed to be there for me or my mother. And I had the sweetest mother in the world, so I resented that he was gone so much and never there to help with anything. Because of his business and the estrangement, we never had an opportunity to know each other or to be close."

She watched me from her wheelchair, silent and attentive. I continued. "When I was in college, I got into a bit of trouble. In fact, it was my father's money that pulled me out of it. Then he got sick suddenly, and asked to see me. I almost didn't go home." Funny, I had just told Angela basically the same story. But for a very different reason.

"In the end, I was glad I did. That time, things were different between us." I noticed I had been rubbing my Rolex, as I stood there reliving my conversations with my father. I stuck my hands into my pockets.

"I didn't realize it at the time, but I guess what I heard was his deathbed confession. He warned me that I was turning out just like him. I didn't like that one bit, telling him that there was no way I was going to end up like he did. That's when he told me about you."

I paused for just a moment. "When he told me about you, and your family, Maria, I really hated him for what he'd done and on some level I vowed I would never forgive him.

"Then, he told me about his past. About the things he regretted and the ones he was proud of. And the ways he'd tried to make things right."

I sat down again, looking Maria in the eyes.

"Maria, why do you think your father came to me for help?"

"Because you're rich."

"Well, there is that," I had to laugh at her honesty. "But he came for another reason, too. He knew who Benito Mancini was and why he'd continued to send money all those years."

Maria sat there in silence, staring at her hands in her lap, my story washing over her. Then she looked up at me. "Did you ever forgive your father?"

I almost laughed again. Here I was, sharing information that might cause her to hate me the way I'd hated my father, but the first thing she was concerned about was my relationship with my dad.

"Yes, on some level, I had to. He made me promise I would continue sending the money to your family at Christmas, and that when you graduated from high school, I had to make sure the college money he'd set aside got to you."

"The Uncle Benito Educational Trust Fund," Maria said quietly.

This time I did laugh. "Is that what you called it?"

"I had intended to use it to study painting in Europe, but after the accident, well we started dipping into it in order to meet our expenses."

"I didn't realize." Some part of my heart clenched as I realized what these girls had been through. "Well, I'm glad he set the money aside for you."

"You have no idea how important it was. Have you told Angela about this?"

"Not yet, there hasn't been time." And now, I prayed it wasn't too late, that I hadn't lost the opportunity. "Honestly, at first, even after he told me about what happened, I had little interest in you or your sister. I was simply honoring my own commitment to my father's request. I'm sorry. That sounds so heartless."

"But you loaned money to my father, to Jack," she said. "That was something."

I stood there, looking out through the curtained window. "Yeah, I'm not sure how all of that came about. I mean, after my father's death, I looked into your family, so I knew who your dad was. We sometimes ran into each other at the games. Poker was something I'd picked up in college, so after I knew who Jack Tilson was, it's not so surprising that we would run into each other, especially since we had gambling in common. I suppose, when I heard about the accident, I felt a little guilty, or maybe a little responsible, or at least, somehow connected. I knew how my father felt about your family, and that he would not have wanted to leave you totally stranded. I still wasn't happy about the situation, but there really wasn't anything I could do about my father or what he had done all those years ago."

"And you're telling me this now, because?"

Her voice was still even, but there was a hint of something else. It wasn't anger, and it wasn't quite suspicion. But it had an edge.

"Because your sister had the audacity to come challenge me in my office," I shook my head, remembering my first encounter with her. "I'm not sure I'd ever seen anything quite like it. Or quite like her. Here was this beautiful young woman, obviously nervous, standing up to me to protect what she felt was hers."

"Yeah, that sounds like Angela. We were always a pretty close-knit family." There was a pride and possessiveness in her voice. She watched me for a moment as if she was assessing my worth. Her eyes had turned dark, and they had a protective quality about them.

"You know, Angela's been through hell with you."

Ouch. Undoubtedly I deserved that. I took a deep breath. "I can't tell you how difficult it's been with her around. For months now I've done my best to keep it strictly business between us, but that girl definitely has a mind of her own." I shook my head again, this time with a chuckle.

"I thought
I
was pretty persistent, but I think she's got me beat. Eventually she just wore me down. So, I stopped fighting it, fighting her. Fighting myself." I wondered why it was so easy to talk with Maria, where it hadn't been with Angela. Maybe with Maria I didn't have so much to lose.

"Antonio. I still don't understand why you're telling me this, now? Surely Angela's the one you should be confessing that to. And, she deserves to know the truth as much as I do."

I winced, she was right, of course, and I intended to make things right as soon as I found Angela. And that, of course, was part of why I was telling Maria all of this now.

"The problem is, I'm afraid that same audacious quality has gotten her into serious trouble. Exactly what I had hoped to keep her out of. From what I can tell, she may be caught up in some pretty nasty business."

I raised my hands to hold off the barrage of questions Maria seemed ready to throw at me. "I don't mean to scare you, especially since there's not a whole lot we can do about it at the moment. But I
am
working on it, and I swear to you, I'll do everything humanly possible to make sure she's safe."

Maria's shoulders lowered, and she sat back a little, her dark eyes watching me intently.

"But, I also figured it was time for you to understand everything, including our shared background. I don't want to hide anything, and in fact, I really want you to understand
everything
, including what we're up against."

"If it involves my sister, just tell me how I can help. I'll do anything for her. Anything I can. Just say the word."

"I know. That's why I'm here. But first," I took a deep breath, leaning back into the sofa. "You and I have something else in common, and I'm not sure you're going to like it very much."

Chapter Forty -Seven

ANGELA

I opened my eyes. It was pitch black. I turned my head from side to side, desperate to see where I was, but the darkness was impenetrable. The last thing I remembered was my air being pinched off, struggling to breathe, and following that, blackness. I wondered if that was where I was now—if my consciousness had simply shifted to another realm.

Or, maybe this was one of my crazy dreams. But somehow that didn't seem quite right, either. Wherever I was, either my eyes were no longer working, or there was no light getting in. I managed to feel around, in the tiny space, and discover that at least my eyes were operating mechanically. I could actually feel the lids opening and closing.

The only thing I could do at the moment was try to figure out where I was. Once I had that information, I might be able to use some of it. I took a deep breath. The air seemed a little stale, but still fresh, so that meant I had some time.

But it was disconcerting—I'd never been anywhere so dark. Even when we used to play hide and seek as kids, there was always that small trickle of light under the door. If you waited long enough, the darkness became friendly, and you could see the shadows of things around you. But of course, the trick was to let darkness become your friend. That wasn't working so great at the moment.

I still had my other senses, so I took a moment to sniff deeply into the air. I didn't know how to describe it, it was… new, a smell of newness. This place wasn't rotten and old. It still had a "newness" smell to it. That was good. A newness smell and not too stale. At least, that made me feel more comfortable.