Tearing Down Walls (Love Under Construction Series Book 2) (72 page)

Nikki was shocked; the woman was at least six feet tall. Some part of the Cabrizzi side of the family was obviously where her guys had gotten their height. She blushed and said, “
Ciao. Sono così felice di conoscerti,
” in her less-than-perfect Italian accent.

Isabella smiled, then turned to Tony. “Antonio, I am ashamed. It is impolite to speak a language that all cannot understand.” Tony shook his head and grinned. “You are Nicolette, no? Welcome to our home! Please, please, come in. We have refreshments for you after your drive.” Isabella took Nikki’s arm and steered her into the house, leaving Tony behind.

“Hey, are you gonna help me with the luggage so . . . no, I guess not.” He sighed, picked up all the bags he could, and followed them into the house.

After dinner that night with all of the Cabrizzis that Isabella and her husband, Armand, had managed to bring together, Isabella told Tony, “We have prepared a room for the two of you in the south wing. There will be no one else in that wing, so the two of you will have all of the privacy you need. It is, after all, your honeymoon!”

“But we can behave ourselves, honestly . . .” Tony tried to tell her.

“No, no. Feel free to make as much noise as you like!” she grinned, then she turned and watched Nikki blush. “My dear, you are in Italy. We do not have the, how you say it, taboos that Americans have about the lovemaking.”

Tony started to chuckle. “I’ve got news for you, Zia Isabella. This girl doesn’t have any of those taboos either! She’s a wild little thing!” By that time, he was laughing right out loud.

“Gee, thanks,” Nikki said, blushing again, but she started to laugh. “Maybe I’m Italian and just don’t know it!”

Tony leaned over and whispered in her ear, “I don’t know about that, but you’ve had enough Italian in you that you should be well on your way!” Nikki slapped his arm, but the look she gave him told him it would be a good thing they were staying in a wing by themselves.

“What the fu . . .” Nikki heard Tony mumble and looked up to see what had caught his eye.

Vic was standing at baggage waiting for them. He had on – could it be? – a pair of pale gray slacks and a blue, gray, and red plaid button-front shirt. And Sperry deck shoes. “What the hell?” Nikki whispered to Tony. “Did he have a stroke or something while we were gone?”

“Hey, guys! I’m so glad to see you!” Vic called out and hugged both of them. “Laura’s waiting upstairs. She’s in the pickup lane with the Yukon.

“Vic, you okay?” Tony was trying hard not to laugh.

“Yeah! Like the new and improved Vittorio Cabrizzi?” he asked. He shoved his hands in his pockets, gave them his best modeling pose, and started laughing.

“Where’s my cousin Vic and what have you done with him?” Tony laughed in gasps.

“You look soooooo handsome, babe!” Nikki gushed and hugged him.

“See? I don’t give a damn if you like it or not, cousin-brother,” Vic laughed. “I got the super-hot-babe seal of approval, and that’s all that matters! You guys have a good time?”

“We sure did! Lots of pictures too,” Nikki said, “I loved it. You know how I feel about the Smoky Mountains, and I loved being able to look up and see the Italian Alps pretty much everywhere I went.”

When they got to the Yukon, Vic waited a minute, then tried again – he’d already tried a couple of times. “So why are we going straight to McCoy’s office? What a great way to ruin a perfectly fine day. Don’t you want to go home first?”

“Just something we need to talk about.” That’s all Tony had said every time Vic had asked.
He’s obviously not going to give it up. Guess I’ll just have to wait,
Vic fumed.

Once they were seated in Steve’s office, Steve started the ball rolling. “Vic, Tony found your money. Your grandmother had the passbook. We think it’s in an off-shore account.”

“Yeah? So? How much is it?” Vic asked, his brow furrowed. “It can’t be much. I only modeled for two years. The most I figured would be about, oh, I don’t know, maybe a million if that?”

“I don’t know quite how to tell you this, so I guess I’ll just blurt it out.”

“Please do. I’m getting bored,” Vic said, sighing and looking at the floor.

“Cabrizzi, as best we can tell, there’s over twenty-eight million in that account.”

Laura gasped. Vic sat for a minute, showing no hint of comprehension. Finally he said, “Huh. I could’ve sworn you just said twenty-eight million.”

“I did.” Steve waited.

“I did
not
make twenty-eight million dollars. That’s not my money,” Vic said flatly.

“Well, it’s in an account in your name. Your mother stole over twenty-five million dollars from her husband’s off-shore accounts and put all of it in your name, Vic.”

Vic’s face fell. “That’s why he hired a hit man to kill her.”

“Yes.” Steve leveled his gaze at the big Italian. “He wanted to get his hands on you to get his money back. The transfer was made two days before immigration shows you and Serafina coming into the country.”

“Oh, god, I was the pawn,” Vic whispered, unable to believe what he was hearing. “Why would my mother do that?”

“Vic, your father controlled everything; where you went to school, who cut your hair, what kind of food was in the house, everything. And when you were gone to boarding school, he controlled your mother.”

“What do you mean?” Vic asked.

“Beat her, starved her, belittled her, threatened and intimidated her. Once, she went for three days with nothing to eat but an apple she’d managed to hide away. And he would lock her up sometimes,” Steve continued. Vic shuddered. “Do you remember a Mother’s Day when you were thirteen? You came home from a job in Milan to see her, but she wasn’t there?”

“Yes.
Babbo
said she’d gone to Venice on holiday,” Vic said. “I thought that was odd on Mother’s Day.”

“No, Vic. She was in the house. In the basement. He had a room down there where he locked her away, soundproofed, no light. He left her there for three weeks. It was his way of controlling her.” Vic’s heart cramped and he felt sick.

“Your mother knew what was happening. You were just a child. You believed that those women cared for you. Some of them did, in their own way; someone helped her get the information for taking the money, a woman named Paloma?” Vic’s face fell and he nodded. “That’s why your mother ran. She emptied his accounts. She felt that was the least he owed you. But she knew she had to get both of you away from there immediately or he would’ve killed her and used you to get the money back. He’d extorted the money from the women you serviced, and he needed it to pay bribes and gambling debts. He knew that, unable to pay them, the people he owed would come for him, and not just that, but expose his corruption too. She put it in your name so you’d have it later on.”

Tony nodded. “Vic, we confirmed all of this with the relatives in Italy, particularly your nonna and Zia Isabella.” Vic hoped a hole would open up and he’d be swallowed down so he didn’t have to think about any of it anymore. “Brother, your mother loved you more than anything. She did the only thing she knew to do to protect you. They all believe to this day that your father found a way to kill her, but no one could ever prove it. It just looked like a heart attack. And he didn’t dare come here looking for you. Papa and the older ones of us would’ve killed him to protect you.”

Vic couldn’t believe it; the money
was
his. But he sure could’ve used it years before. “Did anyone ever plan to tell me about all of this?”

“Yes. Your Nonna Annamaria has instructions in her will to send the passbook to Mamma or, if she wasn’t still around, to us, starting with Mark and working down the line.”

“And you didn’t know any of this?” Vic asked, glancing at his cousin and still trying to understand it all.

“No. No one but your mother, my Mamma and Papa, your Nonna Annamaria, and Zia Isabella. No one else knew. Over the years, they’d thought about telling you, but decided against it. They knew that, with your looks, it would be asking for women to take advantage of you.”
Oh, like they didn’t anyway?
, Vic thought, stifling a sarcastic chuckle. “They didn’t want your life to be harder than it was. I gave you a good job, so you didn’t need the money, and they just decided to leave well enough alone.”

Vic sat, eyes closed, his hand to his forehead. A million things flitted through his mind but, all of a sudden, something slipped right into the center of all of the confusion and stayed put: Laura. When her face came into focus, everything that was shifting and spinning righted itself; all of the chaos and noise disappeared, and when he opened his eyes, he took her hand, then sighed and smiled. “So what do I do now?”

“Your mother did it to give you something from all the pain and despair and abuse, something positive. Use it to help yourself, to help your family and friends. To help you and Laura start a life together.” Tony smiled at his dark cousin. “I assume that’s what you plan to do?”

Vic looked at Laura, whose face lit up when he turned to Tony and said, “We do.”

“Then you need to go and tell Mamma. She’ll want to know. She loves you like a son, Vic. This will make her unbelievably happy.”

“I’ll do that.” Vic stood and crossed the room to Tony, who stood, arms wide, and the two men hugged each other close. “I love you and appreciate you, cousin-brother.”

“And I you. Just get on it, have a happy life, okay?”

Vic broke the embrace and turned to Laura. “I already have a happy life.” She smiled and nodded to him, and Nikki couldn’t help but feel that everything was finally as it should be.

Two days later, Vic left his dentist’s office in Louisville and headed home. But when he got to exit 32 on I-64, he had an idea. He whizzed down the ramp and headed for Taylorsville.

Following the signs that pointed to the sheriff’s office, he found a sign on the front door that plainly said “Roy Billings, Sheriff.”
Okay, Cabrizzi, turn on that charm,
he thought as he strolled through the front door.

The two deputies standing behind the counter had clearly never seen anything like Vic. They both looked like someone had smacked them – hard. “I’m looking for Sheriff Billings. Would he be in by any chance, gentlemen?”

“Who can I tell him is here to see him?” one of the men asked in a tenuous voice.
Hah! They’re afraid of me!
, Vic laughed to himself.

“Please tell him Vic Cabrizzi of Walters Construction Lexington is here to see him,” Vic announced. The two deputies looked at each other, then one of them ducked down a hallway and disappeared.

Vic looked around. The building needed some work – dark wood paneling from the seventies, worn gold industrial carpet, and a Formica countertop that had more than its share of craters on its surface. The furniture was old too – heavy, gray steel, with a bank of mismatched filing cabinets. He had started inspecting the ceiling tiles when he heard a loud, booming voice call out, “Mr. Cabrizzi?”

Sheriff Billings stood in front of him, and suddenly Vic didn’t seem so out of place. He was almost as tall as Vic and outweighed him by about fifty pounds, and it wasn’t muscle either. “Yes, sir,” Vic responded. “I came to talk to you about a personal matter.”

Sheriff Billings eyed him suspiciously, then said, “Come on back to my office.” With that, he headed down the narrow little hallway with Vic following at a respectful distance. The sheriff stood by a doorway and swept his hand inward, and Vic entered the tiny office. Papers were everywhere, and there was no window. How depressing. “Please, have a seat,” the sheriff told him and motioned to a chair. Vic sat down, but he didn’t get comfortable; he sat perched on the edge of the chair, leaning in with his forearms resting on his thighs. “So you said this is a personal matter,” Sheriff Billings said, taking his seat behind the desk.

“Yes, sir. It’s about your daughter, Laura,” Vic said, tapping his fingertips together. He was surprised; at the mention of his daughter’s name, the older man made a snorting sound.

“What? I assume you know her then. Has she gotten into some kind of trouble?” he asked, watching Vic carefully.

“No sir. Matter of fact, yes, I do know her, and she’s doing quite well. She’s well employed and in a good relationship,” Vic told him.