Dangerous Desires

CHARLOTTE's POV 5 years Ago The left side of my head throbs. There is a faint tang of copper in my nose and on my tongue. Opening my eyes, I groan. The sunlight coming in through the open curtains is too bright. I am on the floor of my father-in-law's office. I sit up, shifting so I can lean against the side of the desk. Trying to remember how I got here, I reach up to my forehead. It hurts. I touch something wet and sticky and look at my fingers. I blink. They are smeared with red. Blood. Memory comes back in disjointed flashes. Noah screaming at me. Trying to shove me at the safe. Shaking me so my head snaps back and forth on my neck. Me falling. Terror makes my heart pound erratically in my chest. I jerk up onto my knees so I can see the gun safe. It's still closed. Grazie a Dio. Thank God. Relief washes over me. I didn't open it for him. Noah needs professional help. However, my husband, Liam, and his father insist I figure out how to care for Noah on my own. We don't go outside the family for help. Only, there is no one in the Tucson Silician Mafia trained to deal with a man who suffered traumatic brain injury at the age of twelve. Noah is now 20, only three years younger than me, but he still responds like the twelve-year-old he was when he took a shot to the head while out learning the business with his father. Only now he's the same six feet tall as his brother and equally as strong. However, while Liam would never hurt me, Noah has. Not on purpose, but that doesn't change the outcome. This is only the second time he's gotten this bad. My mind shies away from memories of the first episode like this and what it cost me. I don't know how long I've been knocked out, or where Noah has gone. I can't expect help from Liam or my father-in-law. They are doing their weekly inspection of the nightclubs they run for the Silician Mafia and will not be home much before dawn. Noah didn't get into the gun safe though, and for that I have to be grateful. He is obsessed with the idea of becoming a made man like his father and brother. The prospect of the unpredictable man with a mind of a child carrying a gun and thinking it is okay to kill people sends chills down my spine. My phone rings and I pull it from the back pocket of my jeans. My father-in-law prefers me in dresses, but during the day while he and Liam are gone, I wear casual clothes and tennis shoes. Keeping up with Noah requires flexibility of movement and the ability to run, even on the marble floors that cover so much of the first floor of the mansion. The phone keeps ringing and I see that it is Liam. I tap to answer. "Hi, Liam." "Listen,amore mio, there's paperwork in the safe that has the information you need to access my accounts in the Dominicas. Get it and then you and Noah have to get out of there." "Liam—" He cuts me off. "Go to the cabin and wait for me to call you there." I don't waste time trying again to ask why, or what's going on. Liam's voice is tight with tension and an emotion I don't think I've ever heard in it before. Fear. "Okay. I'll get Noah and we'll go." "Ti amo." In the three years we've been married, Liam has only told me he loves me three times. When I told him I was pregnant. The day I lost the baby and now. Dio mio, this is serious. "Be careful," I say. I don't know if he hears me before he cuts the call. Something bad is happening and I've got to find my brother-in-law and get us both out of Tucson. I get Noah to the cabin and we settle in. My texts to Liam go unanswered, but I don't contact anyone else. That is the protocol. Protocol doesn't stop me from checking the online news outlets for information. I am horrified by what I find. Two, possibly three, gangs are waging war in Tucson. The initial violence erupted in one of our clubs. Reading between the lines from who is quoted as saying what, I realize the Dublin gangsters and Chechen Mafia group have teamed up to take over Silician Mafia territory in Tucson. And everything is being played off as a war between rival gangs. It's warfare all right, but the main players aren't street gangs. They are organized crime syndicates vying for territory. Rumors of bystanders shot dead abound, but by the next day, twenty deaths are confirmed. The vise around my heart tells me that one of those people is Liam. He still hasn't answered my texts. The one call I made to him in the middle of the night, breaking protocol, went straight to voicemail. Hoping against hope, I read the news obsessively over the next two days, sleeping very little and only eating when Noah gets hungry. I gasp as I read the headline to a breaking story. My home has been fire bombed. Alessandro and Charlotte Enzo are presumed dead, burned to ash with our home in the chemically enhanced fire. My stomach cramps. Reading about the tragedy of our entire family being killed on the same night sends me running to the bathroom before I vomit bile all over the cabin floor. Liam is dead. Gabriele is dead. Noah and I are presumed dead. Liam and Gabriele are considered collateral damage to the gang warfare. The death toll has risen to nearly forty people. Authorities are baffled as to why our home was bombed. Right now, the two incidents are being treated as unrelated. They aren't. I am Liam's legal heir. The Irish and the Russians don't want me around to be able to fight their possession of the nightclubs on a legal front. Not that I would be the one doing the fighting, but my standing as owner to the properties would give my don legal leverage in this war. The same don who allowed the mounting tension between the Chechen and our mafia to continue. Don Dante took the path of least resistance too many times and now my husband, father-in-law and more than two dozen other Silician Mafia men are dead. From the names listed of the victims, it seems only nine are Russian or Irish. No names are given for the supposed gang members engaged in the conflict. Returning to the city would be signing my own death warrant. Noah’s too. Just as important is the promise I made to Liam when we got back from our honeymoon. He and Gabriele told me that I would be responsible for Noah’s care. Liam made me promise him that if anything ever happened to him and his dad, I would take care of Noah as if he was my own brother. I look over to where Noah is playing a video game on the cabin's big screen television. Liam would expect me to take Noah back to Tucson, to his grandfather, the Enzo patriarch. But my promise was to take care of Noah as if he were Dante. If Noah were Dante, I would make sure he got the medical treatment denied to him since his accident. Family takes care of family. Well, me taking care of Noah means doing what is best for him, not what is best for La famiglia. When I discover that the papers Liam wanted me to get show me how to gain access to several accounts in both our names in the Dominica Islands, I know I can do that. It means letting my family continue to believe I am dead. My heart hurts at the thought of never seeing my parents or brother again, but if I go back to Tucson, chances are both Noah and I end up dead for real. And maybe my family with us. Our enemies bombed one house. What's to stop them from bombing another? It is better for everyone if me and Noah stay dead as far as the Tucson Silician Mafia and their enemies are concerned.