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My father had almost sent men to kill Gabriel while I was hiding out in Cambridge. He’d suspected his rival had murdered me, and he’d been ready to go to war by the time Marco dragged me back to New York.
“Yes, I’m very happy to have Joseph back where he belongs,” Dad said coolly.
Shit. What I had to say wasn’t going to go over well with him, but it was actually a good thing Gabriel was here to hear it. If his people had been thinking about hurting Ashlyn to get to me, I wanted him to know that I had her safely tucked away at Marco’s estate, out of their reach.
“Yes, I’m glad to be back.” I turned my gaze on my father, but I spoke for Gabriel’s benefit. “I don’t think I told you about the girl I met in Cambridge, Dad. Her name is Ashlyn. We missed each other, and I was so worried about her being alone and sad at Harvard.” I emphasized worried. Dad would get what I was saying. “She’s decided to take some time off school to be with me, so she’ll be staying at Marco’s place for a while. I hope you don’t mind if I stay there instead of at home.”
I was essentially telling him I wouldn’t be in the city to help him with his business for a while, but Dad was sharp enough that he picked up on the veiled significance of my words. Even if I wasn’t telling him outright that Ashlyn had been under threat, he could apprecia
te my caution in bringing her to the safety of the De Luca estate.
“That’s great, son,” he said with a bland smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I hope I can meet her soon.”
“I’d like that,” I lied. I didn’t want Ashlyn anywhere near my mafia family, even my blood relatives.
I’d keep her safely guarded on the estate, with Marco and me. No one would be able to touch her while she was under our protection, especially not Gabriel Costa.
Chapter Six
Marco
I snuck into my bedroom to retrieve the notepad with Ashlyn’s messages. She’d fallen asleep, no doubt exhausted by everything we’d hit her with in the last few hours. Her tears had dried, but I’d waited a long time after her sobbing stopped before I entered the room. I’d been telling Joseph the truth: I didn’t like seeing her cry. I might be a monster, but I never hurt women.
Well, I might enjoy delivering a sound spanking when it was warranted, but that would be completely inappropriate. Even if Ashlyn was beautiful enough and bratty enough to make my palm itch to connect with her round ass.
But she belonged to Joseph. And if she was as innocent as he claimed, she wouldn’t accept the kinds of games Joseph and I sometimes liked to play with a willing woman. Ashlyn might be our captive, but I wouldn’t violate her.
I picked up the notepad from where Joseph had left it on the bed, and then I slipped out of the room, making as little noise as possible. Ashlyn didn’t stir, and I was happy for her to get more rest. She’d be more clearheaded once she got some natural sleep and the drugs fully left her system. I’d had to dose her twice to keep her out on the journey from Massachusetts to New York. She was probably still feeling some of the effects.
Leaving her safely locked in my bedroom, I went down to the media room and turned on my iMac. I usually used it for gaming, but it would do for this more important task.
I accessed the student portal at Harvard and entered Ashlyn’s login information to open her email. My lips twitched as I typed 1997unicorn. She really was cute. I could see why Joseph had become obsessed with her. The attraction part was easy to understand; Ashlyn was gorgeous. But Joseph had always longed for a simpler, cleaner life than the one we led. Ashlyn might not be simple, but she was certainly pure and innocent in a way no one from our world ever could be.
Yeah, I definitely understood why Joseph wanted her.
When her inbox loaded, I noted a few emails about coursework from professors and one from Jayme, Ashlyn’s roommate. She was getting worried that Ashlyn had missed her text, and Jayme couldn’t remember seeing her at their apartment last night.
That could easily be explained away. I’d seduced Jayme and then slipped her rohypnol to secure an invitation back to the apartment she shared with Ashlyn. Once she passed out on the couch, it was just a matter of waiting for Ashlyn to return from the library.
So, if Jayme didn’t remember much from the previous night, she’d blame it on her intoxication. She could have seen Ashlyn and simply forgotten about it in her drunken stupor. Jayme would have been confused enough this morning to make that plausible.
I typed out the message Ashlyn had written for her friend, adding a line about how she had seen Jayme sleeping off her hangover on the couch and hadn’t wanted to disturb her. The lie Ashlyn had come up with was serviceable: she was on a retreat in Colorado, and she wouldn’t have great cell reception there.
That solved the problem of keeping tabs on her text messages. I could turn off her phone altogether, and no one would be suspicious. Not after I finished sending these emails.
The messages to her professors were a little more businesslike, of course. She didn’t mention that she was heartbroken, but instead said she’d suffered a personal loss and needed time to grieve. She wrote that she would do her best to keep up with her coursework while she was absent.
That would do.
When I turned the page to find her message to her father, a weight pressed on my chest. The note was tearstained, the ink smudged. I could read her grief as easily as the words on the page.
A strange knot formed in my gut. She must be very close with her father. It probably killed her to lie to him. She’d communicated that she didn’t have to check in with her parents every day, but it was obvious that she loved him very much.
Yet another aspect of her life that was as pretty and perfect as she was. Ashlyn had a loving family, a doting father who wouldn’t bat an eye at her running off from college and spending money on a fancy retreat.
I’d never wanted for money, but that didn’t mean my life remotely resembled hers. My father had given me everything I’d ever demanded from him, mostly to keep me quiet and out of his way. I’d destroyed it all in a childish cry for his attention. That shit had stopped when I wrapped my new Ferrari around a tree at the age of seventeen. At that point, I’d grown up and stopped being an attention-seeking little pussy.
When I looked down at the tears on Ashlyn’s message to her father, something like envy singed my veins, pulsing through me before I could fully rein it in.
