Chapter 15 - The Ghost in the Farmhouse
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At two o’clock in the morning, the Rockland County farmhouse was dead silent except for the crackle of oak logs in the living room hearth and the quiet breathing of five-year-old Lily asleep on the sofa.
Clara couldn't sleep. Dressed in a borrowed black wool sweater and jeans, she stood by the darkened kitchen window with the Glock 43 tucked into her waistband, staring out at the tree line where the mist hung low over the wet grass.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Lorenzo kneeling on the icy front steps at six a.m., wrapping his cashmere scarf around Lily’s bare shoulders. She saw his dark eyes blazing with quiet fury in the sub-cellar when he saw her bloody hands. She remembered the feel of his lips pressed hard against her forehead right before they climbed into the chimney shaft.
In six years of working inside his mansion, she had watched him from afar—telling herself he was just another ruthless Bellini, cut from the same cold stone as his father Salvatore.
Except when she had been locked in the dark for seventy-two hours, praying someone would hear her four-beat knock before she died of thirst, she hadn't been praying for the police. She had been praying for Lorenzo to come home from Chicago.
Suddenly, one of Drago’s guards stationed outside on the back porch let out a low, sharp whistle—followed not by gunfire, but by the heavy crunch of boots coming up the wooden steps.
Clara’s hand dropped to her pistol as the back kitchen door clicked open.
Rico stepped back from the doorway with a wide grin on his bruised face—and walking past him into the warm yellow light of the kitchen came a tall, broad-shouldered figure dripping wet Hudson River mud from a stolen fisherman’s oilskin coat.
Lorenzo.
His dark hair was plastered to his forehead, a jagged three-inch burn mark was scorched across his left cheekbone, and his knuckles were raw and bleeding—but he was breathing, upright, and looking straight at her.
Clara’s hand fell away from her gun. Before she even realized she had moved, she crossed the kitchen floor in three steps and threw her arms around his neck, burying her face against his cold, wet throat.
Lorenzo let out a low groan, his strong arms locking around her waist beneath the heavy oilskin coat and lifting her clear off the linoleum floor as he held her tight against his chest.
"I told you," a small, sleepy voice piped up from the living room doorway.
Lorenzo turned his head with Clara still held in his arms. Little Lily was standing by the sofa dragging her white velveteen rabbit by one ear, smiling sleepily.
"I told Mommy you were a good swimmer, Uncle Enzo."
A rough, genuine laugh rumbled in Lorenzo’s chest—a sound Clara had never heard him make in six years. Setting Clara gently back on her feet, though keeping one arm wrapped tightly around her waist, Lorenzo walked over and crouched down to kiss the top of Lily’s dark curls.
"Best swimmer in Westchester, sweetheart," Lorenzo murmured. "Dive under the pier pilings, wait for the smoke to clear, and steal a kayak half a mile downstream. Now go back to sleep before your Nonno wakes up and makes you eat soup at two in the morning."
Once Lily was tucked back onto the sofa and Rico had retreated to the front parlor, Lorenzo walked into the small laundry room off the kitchen, shedding the soaked oilskin coat and torn Kevlar vest.
Clara followed him inside, clicking the door nearly shut behind them and picking up a clean cotton towel and a bottle of antiseptic from the counter.
"Sit," she whispered, pointing to the edge of the wooden bench.
"Giving me orders now, Mrs. Marsh?" Lorenzo teased softly, using her fake employment alias as he sat down, wincing slightly as his bruised ribs shifted.
"I think I’m fired as housekeeper anyway since the house burned down," Clara whispered back, stepping between his knees to dab antiseptic gently along the scorched graze on his cheekbone.
Her hands were trembling slightly now that the terror of losing him had faded. Lorenzo reached up, catching both of her bandaged wrists in his large, warm hands, and pressed his lips softly to the gauze covering her bruised knuckles.
When he looked up at her, the teasing glint in his dark eyes was gone—replaced by a raw, consuming intensity that stole the air straight out of her lungs.
"Six years you stood three feet away from me every morning," Lorenzo whispered, his hands sliding from her wrists to span her waist, pulling her flush between his thighs. "Do you have any idea how many times I tried to find a reason to fire you because I couldn't stop watching you walk down the hall?"
Clara’s breath hitched as his forehead rested against hers. "You never even looked at me."
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"If I had looked at you the way I wanted to while my father and Genevieve were living under that roof, they would have used you against me the first week," Lorenzo growled softly, his hand cupping the back of her neck. "I’m done not looking at you, Clara."
His mouth claimed hers in a slow, devastating kiss that tasted of smoke, rain, and six years of forbidden longing—and Clara kissed him back with everything she had left.
